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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

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Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#341

Post by iqkznnft »

mmastrac wrote: post #226
tomatowurst wrote: post #92

> Because this article received somewhat more attention than I expected/feel comfortable with, I’ll take it down for a moment. Sorry. I’ll leave the disclaimer: Here's the original: Just a bit over half a year ago, I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it, I thought Quantum Computing was an interesting challenge to get into. What should I say? Quantum…

If someone takes the post down, is it a good idea to post the text here? They clearly didn't want it left up in public.

No post body was provided.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#342

Post by iqkznnft »

zekrioca wrote: post #310
mcbuilder wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in principle, but the second you make a public blog post, especially a controversial one, these days assume it's public forever. Someone intelligent enough to do attempt a PhD should know this. Him making it private was a futile attempt based in naïveté. I've been in a similar position, saying something incendiary on a large corporation's public intranet comment section. What I said was more objectiv…

Yes, and I think the author also realized the same causal relationship of a given position and that's when the person removed the text. And that's also how one can see the person did not think about this when opting to join a PhD program.

No post body was provided.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#343

Post by wombatpm »

bumby wrote: post #277
wombatpm wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD programs exist to create new faculty members at other institutions. Other people hiring PhDs is a side benefit that has nothing to do with the purpose of the programs.

I disagree. I'm curious what you base this conclusion on? I've heard professors say similar, but it always seemed that it was because they were in an academic bubble. If this is true, then you almost have to concede the model is broken. There will be a glut of PhDs compared to faculty positions. One of the reasons so many PhDs are disgruntled is because of the false expectation that every PhD is on track for a profes…

My time as a graduate student at a major research institution with the #2 program for my engineering field , and two years as the President of the Graduate and Professional Student Association. What institutions say and what faculty actually do may differ in reality.

CS programs may be different, but engineering and physics were definitely geared for academics

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#344

Post by selimthegrim »

zackmorris wrote: post #337
selimthegrim wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re looking for exists with stuff like Gleason’s theorem and noncontextuality, but it’s not what you would train up in if you wanted to be “productive”.

I'll use your comment to correct myself, I meant to write "qubit" heh. Thanks yes, after posting my comment, I was researching qubits and Hilbert spaces and stumbled onto ergodic processes, where the properties of a process can be inferred from random sampling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_process I believe that combining it with the Born rule (which gives the probability that a measurement of a quantum syst…

For starters, you have to extend Gleason’s theorem to apply it to qubits. In general I would start with John Bell’s book “Speakable and Unspeakable…” but a little mathematical maturity is required. Then you can try Hardy’s paradox but it is not easy.

I think getting rid of complex numbers is a mistake because phase information is important. These analogies you invoke totally use things like principal axis which is a similarity operation, center of mass which uses normal modes which are found using eigenvector, etc. The real rotation matrix (which can be described as a composition of reflections) has complex eigenvectors! Diagonalizing a diagonalizable matrix involves conjugating by a matrix (and transposed one) of its eigenvectors!

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#345

Post by kirubakaran »

Beldin wrote: post #292
dahart wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time. I’m not sure that’s very realistic, but I’d love it too. Big problems are that kids and jobs lock you into needing to make enough money. I actually tried to join a PhD program after 5 years of industry experience, and they offered the top fellowship they had, which was not enough to cover only the health insurance for my family, not to mention…

> It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time. We do. You can do a PhD in part-time, self-funded. Yes, your financial situation will definitely take a hit; you can control to what extent though. Expect to need about 5-6 years of 1.5-2 days a week. If you'd like to know more, I'm happy to discuss my experiences as a supervisor of such PhD students and share what insights I have.

> If you'd like to know more, I'm happy to discuss my experiences as a supervisor of such PhD students and share what insights I have.

It would be really cool if you can share that here.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#346

Post by ModernMech »

barrysteve wrote: post #335
ModernMech wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who are in fields for status rather than because of intrinsic joy of the work itself are often not the most productive or ethical. On the other hand, I've found that people who convince themselves that they are pursing a path based on intrinsic joy of the work itself quickly lose interest when they hit a wall and the work becomes not fun at all but a slog.

Like monks??

In academia. If you have religious fervor, that's another thing entirely.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#347

Post by zekrioca »

tomatowurst wrote: post #329
zekrioca wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm just inferring your ethical framework for this specific situation. Shedding more light into a matter that is not settled yet is not appropriate at this time, specially because the author is the vulnerable person in question.

and you know this because you've spoken to the author?

No, but there is a (public) status of the PhD position.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#348

Post by hedora »

walleeee wrote: post #325
hedora wrote: post #77

There are basically three good outcomes from CS PhD's: - Learn you like teaching / mentoring - Become trained to read and write world class research, and become a world class engineer. - Learn that you are great at marketing and networking, and become a professor or nontechnical exec somewhere (perhaps your own startup). Obviously, the more of the above boxes you tick, the better (all three is the path to ACM Fellow…

> quantum computers are almost real now in what sense is this true? practical quantum computers seem almost as far off as they were decades ago and NISQ appears to mean not large or reliable enough to do much with one consequence being people take option 3 and pad a career with speculative papers, too many of which are lacking in rigor QCs are "possible in principle" but remain a formidable engineering challenge in w…

IBM claims they'll be at 4096 bits in a couple of years.

I agree "option 3 only" types are particularly problematic. They soak up funding and burn out students. It's hard to weed out professors for only being good at getting tenure and grants though.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#349

Post by Beldin »

afr0ck wrote: post #260
Beldin wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But most likely, when you come home and a loved one asks what you did today, you won't be able to have an answer My PhD - and subsequent research - is in security. I will happily explain my research to anyone who will listen. In case I'm not sure, I just start explaining just in case. How privacy in voting is important. How most scraping studies have a fundamental flaw. How to catch scientific fraud. Current WiP is…

It seems like you are very new to Academia.

I've been in academia since 2004; just not US academia. Maybe that's the main difference?

There's plenty of wrongs in academia on this side of the pond as well, but some of the stories here just couldn't occur.

Case in point: a regular PhD position is an actual full-time job (with regular salary, healthcare, other benefits) here. You have to apply for such a position - which comes with a supervisor & a project description. No "can't find a supervisor" problems; no deciding on a subject all on your own.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#350

Post by sally_glance »

dehrmann wrote: post #314
sally_glance wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most faculties this is already happening, mainly because solving a problem that big corp is interested in will make it more likely to secure funding (by big corp), and in general you probably want to discuss (or even evaluate) the practical applications of your (maybe theoretical) research. They will still be part of the rat race though. Actually it's been interesting to observe the opposite, I know some PhD stude…

> big corp offered them a nice position in their innovation branch with much more freedom (and financial security) to work on their favourite problem I'm going to pick on Timnit Gebru, or at least what became more obvious with that debacle. Both the directional freedom and financial security are there, but part of your job is PR, and you don't have the same freedom a professor with tenure gets. If you have a paper th…

Thanks for the reference, I did not follow that particular debacle.

But I'm not convinced this couldn't happen at a faculty. "part of your job is PR" (i.e. fishing for grants) and "they can kill it" (i.e. funding dried up and focus changes) apply there as well...

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