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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)

#181

Post by godelski »

borroka wrote: post #175
godelski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was referring to ... many PhDs with ambitions of an academic career having to leave academia... I see. I don't think this makes the system broken and I don't think a large portion of people going into industry is a bad thing. At the end of the day, schooling, even at the PhD level, is training. I am not concerned that we do not have a high retention rate, though I am concerned that the retention is not targeting…

> My complaint about the system being broken is more about the incentive structures and metrics that are used within the academic setting. We have to keep in mind that those incentives, targets, and metrics were set up by the academics themselves. It is the same in funding agencies and departments.

I'd be a bit hard pressed to agree with this. While I think it is technically correct I do not think it is meaningful. Because anyone working in the academic system is specifically considered an academic. But a researcher is not the same thing as an admin. The truth is that a dean is not the same thing as a researcher even if they previously were.

I'd specify that the metrics were setup by the bureaucrats, which does include overlap between administrators and researchers. I'd also add that just because the metrics were made up by these groups doesn't mean they can't decide to move past them. In fact, it even makes the case of internally solving the problem stronger because we did it before so we can do it again.

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

#182

Post by godelski »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #167
godelski wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if I knew how to do this I would do it. How do I convince a bunch of billionaires to hand me money to do very fundamental research? Dream would be to have it be very open too and hire people from multiple domains but keep a high focus on being nuance and detail oriented. Honestly, I don't think companies like OpenAI are going to end up being the first to AGI because they get caught in the profit stages and s…

> Honestly if I knew how to do this I would do it. Do an MVP in your spare time. I guess if you have a normal programming job in most countries (even in countries where programmers are not paid that well), you will likely be able to pay the bills for, say, server renting, domains, ... For things that you will do likely badly by yourself like design drafts (if you are bad at visual design), ask some friends whether th…

> Do an MVP in your spare time.

I think you gravely misread my comment if this is your first suggestion. I am essentially saying that what I would want to do is closer to starting something akin to DeepMind or what OpenAI looked like in the beginning. There is no clear minimal viable product because the goal is to create general intelligence. There are many demonstrations of narrow cases of generalizability and I even have work that demonstrates this, but the stronger sense and actually trying to build sentient machines.

I would make the argument that there is an advantage in what I'm proposing. Since the existing labs that are trying to perform a similar goal are all following similar paths. The chance of beating them using similar methods is quite low. But if you believe (as many researchers do) that the conventional approach is not correct or not efficient, then it reasons that you should take an unconventional approach. I'd also say that my preferred method can be great publicity for them if we do allow for a fully open research platform (open training/models/communication) and given the goals the computational costs are not quite what they are for OpenAI nor DeepMind. As I believe I could do a lot of work with a small team with only a handful of A100 or H100 nodes. That's pocket change to the Musk types and especially if split between multiple entities. It is a high risk high reward situation but I think also low cost.

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

#183

Post by Aeolun »

tnecniv wrote: post #156
Aeolun wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite telling that you never see people in industry long for their time in academia.

Eh I think there’s a good chance they’re less vocal about it. My father is a lawyer and he chose between going into a legal career and doing a PhD in philosophy. If you asked him, he’d tell you he wished he didn’t latter now that he’s nearing the end of his legal career. I think that 1) there’s a smaller percentage of people that made the choice between academics and industry and chose industry 2) they’re not vocal a…

That may be true, but here it concerns people that have never gone into academia at all?

I think having done it is important, otherwise you just have the regret, but people with experience in academia already, never seem to long for those days after moving to industry.

At least I haven’t heard of any.

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

#184

Post by bgnn »

dexwiz wrote: post #64
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…

I think there is a kind of grief associated with growing up that people don’t talk about. When you are young and inspired it seems like life is long and you can do anything, branching paths with unlimited doors. Once you're an adult, your past choices narrow down your future paths, and your sense of age starts to set in. In some way you mourn the paths not taken. This is called mortality, and can be a nasty combo wit…

This is free will in essence. Making a choice is also choosing to not to do the alternatives. A person has to make peace with this to live without anxiety over life decisions. We are free at the end. We can completely change track if we really want. This isn't meaning to be streched out of physical reality if course. One cannot be an olympic athlete after a certain age, but can start training to be a good athlete at any age if that is the desire. Financial security is often a big limitation unfortunately.

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

#185

Post by aleph_minus_one »

godelski wrote: post #182
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly if I knew how to do this I would do it. Do an MVP in your spare time. I guess if you have a normal programming job in most countries (even in countries where programmers are not paid that well), you will likely be able to pay the bills for, say, server renting, domains, ... For things that you will do likely badly by yourself like design drafts (if you are bad at visual design), ask some friends whether th…

> Do an MVP in your spare time. I think you gravely misread my comment if this is your first suggestion. I am essentially saying that what I would want to do is closer to starting something akin to DeepMind or what OpenAI looked like in the beginning. There is no clear minimal viable product because the goal is to create general intelligence. There are many demonstrations of narrow cases of generalizability and I eve…

> There is no clear minimal viable product because the goal is to create general intelligence. [...] I would make the argument that there is an advantage in what I'm proposing.

Then set the MVP to some project that partially solves some small aspect of what you general intelligence is and proves that your approach is so much better than what other labs are doing.

If you succeed on this, you can iterate.

> if we do allow for a fully open research platform (open training/models/communication) and given the goals the computational costs are not quite what they are for OpenAI nor DeepMind.

Then work on a way to decrease these computational costs by magnitudes. Or find a way how even volunteers with "skinny" GPUs in their computers can still support your computations via crowdcomputing.

Perhaps this is even the more important problem to solve ...

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

#186

Post by aleph_minus_one »

borroka wrote: post #176
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, a postdoc on the way out of academia is not going to fix academia. I disagree: just found an edtech startup for tertiary education or (post-)graduate level research.

> just found an edtech startup for tertiary education or (post-)graduate level research. How is an edtech startup going to solve post-graduate research, an enterprise that involves millions of people around the world working on all fields under the sun, and is, by its very nature, unprofitable?

> How is an edtech startup going to solve post-graduate research, an enterprise that involves millions of people around the world working on all fields under the sun, and is, by its very nature, unprofitable?

Well, I have two ideas:

1. Concentrate on academic disciplines where research is "less unprofitable" than others, and by using well-known methods of business administration make it profitable.

2. I know quite a lot of people who were previously in academic research, and now (because of job perspectives in the academic job market) work somewhere else in some industry. Because they still love research, they spend quite some money on post-graduate level textbooks and similar things. People who might not be rich, but love spending money on learning does not sound like the worst foundation for a business modell ... ;-)

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

#187

Post by mtekman »

borroka wrote: post #177
mtekman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I started interviewing for positions in (tech) industry, got a monetary offer 5 times what I was making as a senior postdoc, started a new career, and never looked back. Hello, I'm in a similar sort of transition position. May I ask where you applied (US/UK/EU-based?) and what your main experience was in adapting your academic CV to industry? (Feel free to reach me by email or matrix too)

I applied for tech positions in the United States, where I was (and still am) living. I came from a quantitative background and it was quite easy to repurpose my statistical and mathematical modeling into AI/ML. The best thing to do is to be agentic and assertive, which in this case means contacting people at the companies where you would like to work (you may or may not know them personally, the former is obviously…

Thanks for the insight!

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

#188

Post by weakfish »

sirpilade wrote: post #165
dexwiz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a kind of grief associated with growing up that people don’t talk about. When you are young and inspired it seems like life is long and you can do anything, branching paths with unlimited doors. Once you're an adult, your past choices narrow down your future paths, and your sense of age starts to set in. In some way you mourn the paths not taken. This is called mortality, and can be a nasty combo wit…

I totally agree with your comment. I should add that, as the Romans used to say quite some time ago, 'Audentes fortuna juvat' (fortune favors the bold). With this I mean to say that some more optimistic and unmindful attitude usually helps in finding those doors, or at least in forgetting the ones that did not eventually open.

Hmm, I’m curious what you mean by unmindful. I feel that a mindful (as in meditation mindfulness) and grounding oneself in the present would _help_ find doors, rather than being unmindful (I.e. wrapped up in future or past thinking)

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

#189

Post by sirpilade »

weakfish wrote: post #188
sirpilade wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your comment. I should add that, as the Romans used to say quite some time ago, 'Audentes fortuna juvat' (fortune favors the bold). With this I mean to say that some more optimistic and unmindful attitude usually helps in finding those doors, or at least in forgetting the ones that did not eventually open.

Hmm, I’m curious what you mean by unmindful. I feel that a mindful (as in meditation mindfulness) and grounding oneself in the present would _help_ find doors, rather than being unmindful (I.e. wrapped up in future or past thinking)

well, I meant unmindful as in trying to forget that to get to the point where you stand today you had to pass past some doors that you decided not to open. A child-like attitude towards discovery, free from preconceptions. Then, after discovery, we should ground ourselves and leverage from our adult experience. My own experience with great thinkers I knew (some Nobel-prize level) is that we need to go from moments of imagination to moments of reality check many times. Kind of the same line as Feynman’s experience
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