71–80 of 159 posts
Incidentally, this describes what I believe to be the great difficulty of PhD research. You have to take a topic you find interesting and read all possible related work in it, which tends to result in significant scope creep as you realize just how much there is that already does you want to do. Having exhausted your initial energy and excitement for the project, you have to force yourself the remaining 20-30% of he…
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It would be good (especially with the replication crisis), but historically to earn a PhD, especially at a top-tier institution, the criteria is conducting original research that produces new knowledge or unique insights. Replicating existing results doesn't meet that criteria so unknowingly repeating someone's work is an existential crisis for PhD students. It can mean that you worked for 4-6 years on something that…
And here we once again see an example of misaligned incentives baked into another one of our most hallowed institutions.
It’s as if a committee of middle managers got together and said, “how can we replicate and scale the work of people like Einstein?”
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I worked at a chair for 12 years - in that time I've seen a lot of PhD students go through this. If it helps anything at all: It's normal. At this point, you've already proven you're smart and knowledgeable. Now, the universe wants to see if you can also finish what you've started. That's the main thing a PhD proves: That you can take an incredibly interesting topic and then do all the boring stuff that they need you…
This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD. When I did my MSc thesis he told me it was a pretty good PhD. (Befo…
My professor once told me he presented at a small conference, the whole audience everybody had PhD in mathematics and maybe 2 of the 50 or so people in the audience could follow along. The point he was trying to make is at some point the people in the audience were not really interested in what was being presented because it is difficult to just follow along some really niche topic.
I'm _exactly_ in this situation right now with a side project. It's in a field that I have little experience with (Information Retrieval). So there is obviously prior art that I could learn from or even integrate with. This article motivates me further to learn things by focusing on building my own and peek into prior art as I go, when I'm stuck or need ideas. Recently a Clojure documentary came out and the approach…
> Recently a Clojure documentary came out and the approach of Rich Hickey was seemingly the opposite: Deep research of prior art, papers, other languages over a long period of time. That was also on my mind thanks to the documentary. Then I followed up with "Easy made Simple" and "Hammock Driven Development", and it makes me want to learn Clojure. Clojure documentary on CultRepo channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch…
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This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD. When I did my MSc thesis he told me it was a pretty good PhD. (Befo…
> This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD. My professor once told me he presented at a small conference, the…
He discussed this topic and how generally it's left to those who are more notable in a field to ask the 'dumb' questions everyone else is afraid to ask. And such questions often need to be asked to get the audience on board and open the floodgates with areas of niche research - the speaker themself is often too far into the rabbit hole to discern the difference between opaque and obvious.
So it stands to reason, at smaller conferences this would be a big problem, with fewer thought leaders in attendance whose reputations are intact enough that they wouldn't mind looking foolish.
I mean if you don't reconsider the foundation of computer science, mathematics or what even is information, can you truly be building a cool CRM?
Kids these days just want to use prefab libraries and frameworks with a million dependencies doing god knows what and written by randos.
(Unrelated to how commenters these days just want an excuse to use the term "peanut smut".)
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Oh man I feel that in my bones. Any advice on how to mitigate this?
I worked at a chair for 12 years - in that time I've seen a lot of PhD students go through this. If it helps anything at all: It's normal. At this point, you've already proven you're smart and knowledgeable. Now, the universe wants to see if you can also finish what you've started. That's the main thing a PhD proves: That you can take an incredibly interesting topic and then do all the boring stuff that they need you…
in my field this would be terrible advice. instead you need to be doing something that your audience actually will give a shit about.
In one of his speeches, Obama said "Better is good". I think about this a lot. It feels like better compounds over time, too. Small improvements add up. From experience, nothing new is perfect the first go round, so sitting around trying to come up with a perfect design is counterproductive because there's no such thing. "impediment to action advances action. what stands in the way, becomes the way".
I had a coworker who would always be diplomatic about code changes he felt could be improved but when he felt he was nitpicking, where he would say: It's better than it was. It allowed him to provide criticism while also giving permission to go ahead even if there were minor things that weren't perfect. I strongly endorse this kind of attitude.
Incidentally, this describes what I believe to be the great difficulty of PhD research. You have to take a topic you find interesting and read all possible related work in it, which tends to result in significant scope creep as you realize just how much there is that already does you want to do. Having exhausted your initial energy and excitement for the project, you have to force yourself the remaining 20-30% of he…
Oh man I feel that in my bones. Any advice on how to mitigate this?
Uhh... unless you plan to stay in academia? Then, this is a terrible idea.
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Day 1: We aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of an existing industrial catalyst in a novel application that has not seen commercial usage, potentially lowering cost of production of precursors for essential medications Day 400: Having thoroughly described a universal theory of everything, we set out to build an experimental apparatus in orbit at a Lagrange point capable of detecting a universal particle which acts…
That’s how I do side projects.
Like, if you stay focused, is it even really a side project?
Which is why my 2d top down sprite-based rpg now has a 3d procedural animation engine, a procedural 3d character generator with automagic rigging, a population simulator that would put Europa Universalis to shame if I ever get around to finishing it (ha!) a pixel art editor, a 2d procedural animation engine using active ragdolls.........
You might wonder why a 2d game needs 3d procedural animation, well...
The scope creeps in mysterious ways