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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

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Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#101

Post by godelski »

borroka wrote: post #62
tnecniv wrote: post #13

As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want to do anything about it (which maybe is simply fatigue).

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#102

Post by heresie-dabord »

borroka wrote: post #90
etrautmann wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for a surprisingly large number of people. It's very easy to lose time in a post doc that's not either fun science or advancing your career in a high ROI way. Many post docs don't have the experience and diversity of perspective required to recognize this trap, and nobody around them is incentivized to help. This is true whether you're planning to stay in academia or not.

This is one of the reasons I stopped informally mentoring postdocs. It was an exercise in frustration. It was like telling someone who had only had one husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend in their life (and now has left or is leaving) that there were many other people in the world with whom they could have been as happy as they were with their ex (willy-nilly), and even much happier, if only they had allowed themselves…

There is only so much one can do for people in that situation. They need to close the chapter themselves. Their Stockholm Syndrome [1] is a mix of helplessness and Sunken Cost fallacy [2].

People invest heavily, are encouraged to believe by the power structure, and suffer as they slowly begin to see that they have been beguiled (scammed).

[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[2] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#103

Post by BubbleRings »

phkahler wrote: post #50
BubbleRings wrote: post #19

For a really cool video from the International Space Station about a phenomenon related to the spinning plate stuff, see here: Dancing T-handle in zero-g, HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-HMSCDYtM

That is really interesting. I know it's not correct to simulate rigid body dynamics as constant unless an outside force is applied, but what to do differently is not obvious to me. That looks like the object changes orientation while it's world-coordinates momentum vector remains unchanged. Got any references for why that happens? I mean orientation changes regarding the flip, not the obvious spinning motion.

Not me. I only understand half your post, to tell you the truth.

But Derek Muller on the youtube channel Veritasium has a good video on this, where he mentions how, when asked one time, Feynman couldn't think of a simple way to describe how it works, and then Muller goes on to explain it in a way that I could see. Great stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#104

Post by borroka »

tnecniv wrote: post #84
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

Well I should clarify. There are jobs that I can do certainly, but very few that I’ve thought would given me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me (and I think could give me again). Before I was hired as a postdoc I applied for various research scientist positions at places that would still let me publish, but then all the hiring freezes happened. Whether that counts as academia is in the eye of…

> There are jobs that I can do certainly, but very few that I’ve thought would given me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me (and I think could give me again).

My comment is not meant to be advice-column material, but I get the impression that as long as you think that “[there are] very few [jobs] that I’ve thought would give me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me," you are unlikely to resolve or leave behind your current frustration. This is not an invitation to try all the jobs for which you might be qualified, but until you have tried some of them, you cannot know.

Before I left academia, although I was a fairly well-rounded person in general, looking back at what I thought at the time, I didn't have a clue about the tech industry, the private sector, the tools used, the money I could make, the weekends spent doing things that weren't trying again to run a simulation model that no one was interested in anyway.

But, as I said in another comment, it's like listening to someone say "I'll never find a man like him again" while you think that that man, who you know, is for you in the bottom 15% of men with IQ>70. You are incredulous, you can't understand how someone could say that, but here we are. She has to broaden her perspective to understand what you now know, and all the words said in the meantime will be forgotten, like wind in the pines.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#105

Post by divyaranjan1905 »

bee_rider wrote: post #47
hathawsh wrote: post #16

While this passage is inspiring, it boils down to: 1. Get good at something 2. Get paid for doing it 3. Get burned out by doing it 4. Return to the fun way of doing it 5. ??? 6. Win a Nobel prize or similar How repeatable is that pattern? Is that one of the patterns we want to teach the next generation? Serious question. I don't know the answer. Feynman is obviously rather exceptional. Should we encourage people to f…

Most people aren’t Feynman and won’t get a Nobel prize whatever strategy they follow. Finding a fun way to do things does seem like it produces better solutions, though. I mean, if you dread reading about your solution, what do you expect from people who don’t even want to devote their life to it?

Or, act as if you're excited about it, how visionary you are.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#106

Post by borroka »

godelski wrote: post #101
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want…

First, a postdoc on the way out of academia is not going to fix academia.

Second, how is the system broken? There are mismanaged resources, some nepotism (in the U.S., a lot of nepotism if we look at countries other than the U.S. or the like), some research questions that are (wrongly) favored, but it doesn't change the fact that many more PhDs with academic career ambitions are being produced than there are (and will be) positions available. And this is not just an academia problem: the same mismatch between supply and demand is found in many other creative and aspirational careers, think actors, singers, sports. Only a small percentage of those who want that life can get it, and those who are left out are often frustrated by the perceived unfairness of life. But that does not change the fact that many aspiring creatives, because of that massive mismatch between supply and demand, will not be able to pursue those careers.

Sure, more permanent research positions could be thought of instead of forcing careers through the very narrow bottleneck of tenure track positions, but the vast majority of PhDs with academic ambitions (at least 8 out 10) will not have the opportunity to make that career, and they are (or are themselves) being bread-crumbed for years and years hoping that their dreams will, one day, come true. But they won't come true. And, as soon as they find another fulfilling occupation, they will find out it was not a real dream anyway, just a dream they thought they had.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#108

Post by tnecniv »

godelski wrote: post #101
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want…

When I was still a PhD student, my advisor lamented that he couldn’t find postdocs to hire because big tech was paying them more for the same role with minimal constraints. If that kept going for a while, I imagine it’d put pressure on at least some parts of academia (CS and engineering don’t expect you to do a series of postdocs like biology does, and pure math has their own system of seniority I only know a little about). The money dried up though.
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