Lessons from my PhD • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#131

Post by mrjangles » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

vkk8 wrote: post #119

mrjangles wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the joke goes, once you realize it's all bullshit is the day they go "Congratulations, you finally understand the field, so here is your PhD". Then you just have to decide if you want to continue on and get paid to do bullshit.

The thing is, I think there are people in academia who are not just bullshitting. Occasionally real scientific advances do happen. It's just that if I don't personally have a breakthrough in sight, I'm supposed to just produce garbage and pretend that I'm doing a good job while trying to do the actual good research on my free time or something.

Yes, that is exactly how it works. Well said.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#132

Post by natechols » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #130

natechols wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people in my program and others like it (molecular biology, US) the decision point tended to be at the end of the second year, after the qualifying exam(s). This is because the first year tends to be full of lab rotations and some classes, and you don't really start doing research until nine months in.

My program was pure research, so I'd say that decision point lines up pretty well with the "1 year of research in, are you looking good?" Though it seems weird to me to be in classes and labs without it being associated with it's own academic achievement (did that qualify as a certificate of any sort?)

If you dropped out after passing the qualifying exam, you got an MS.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#133

Post by xab31 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

lambdatronics wrote: post #128

xab31 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...Scientists go looking for trouble." It is several repeated and very costly attempts that I made to do just that which leads me to give the advice I did. The pyramid quote is an interesting one. Obviously there is a tension between being passionate about an idea/goal/cause but not being overly siloed. It seems the best-case scenario is: pick your passion, find some people who're thinking in the same general dire…

Thanks! What kind of problems outside academia are you interested in?

Well, I do aging research (mostly from a computational+biochemical perspective). I've met most/all of the important players in the field, and it baffles me how this important area of research continues to be a backwater, as far as the public's concerned.

It's hard for me personally to think of something more important than aging, so if I were to expand outwards, it would be to pursue the same goal, but maybe with fewer constraints. In general, I'd work towards streamlining and automating certain aspects of it. Technologically, the field is in the Dark Ages. There are realistically ~200-300 (max: 5000 including subordinates and techs) people in the entire world working on this seriously, which is fairly mind-boggling, considering that it is the primary risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and indeed COVID-19, along with many other diseases and the more transhumanist and futurist implications.