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These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demoniz

These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors, but for some reason their ambitions often lacked. All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige. Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes. These friends are all in mathematics or humanities, and for those in humanities, I would especially die to be in their shoes. I recommend them books on a regular basis, collaborate with them on papers for fun, sending loads of notes that get chiselled down to whatever the editor is expected to prefer. The whole process is nasty from my perspective. A pile of people desperate to wiesel off the next because that’s the skill they were selected for from early on. In my best effort to put bitterness aside, I can only rationally conclude it’s rotten to the core. To be clear, these are very intelligent people. But, the system of schooling most go through selects fiercely against curiosity at it’s earlier stages. This is only a theory. Feel free to point to research on the topic.

NegativeLatency 8y ago
> They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite The grass is always greener
- extralego 8y ago
  Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argued with my teachers over subject matter in high school, it is infuriating. When this is what you were asking for all along, how can you be so surprised that it’s what you got? It does raise a question of how the grass is green, and why it’s on the other side. Fun fact: The grass on the hillsides in the opening sequence of The Sound Of Music was actually painted by hand. It was worth it for the altitude and the Austrian mountain backdrop.
  - warkdarrior 8y ago
    By "citation dependence" I assume you mean that researchers are judged by how many citations their own work has received. This is an time-efficient, yet imperfect mechanism to measure the importance of a research work. Are there more accurate ways to measure the importance/impact/relevance of research work?
close04 8y ago
Most things are a lot more fun when you're free to do them as you please and pick the good stuff. You get the fun stuff, they get all the stuff. :) Running across an interesting book might feel like gold, makes you imagine research must be gold. You forget about the countless days, months, or years (sometimes even more depressing, decades) spent digging in between the gold veins. I suffered from much the same disappointment when I started my PhD, after a masters that left me imagining research is a world of fun. Shortly after, I dropped it when I found a job/career that really brought me satisfaction. A move I have done more than once over the years after that. So I have one advice for people who feel the disappointment of being "stuck" and not knowing what to chase: Consider just the work that passes the threshold for a decent standard of living and then pick the one that fulfills you more, rather that the one that makes others say "wow". Living on "kudos" means you're at the mercy of others to get your satisfaction.
btrettel 8y ago
I agree that academia selects for conformists, which is bad for curiousity driven research. Jeff Schmidt's book "Disciplined Minds" makes a similar argument. I have not read it all, though, so perhaps I should pick it up again. The book has a good description of the problem, but in my view the author views the process as more political than it necessarily is. I also think the book's solutions are unlikely to help. But I still recommend the book as one of the few on the subject.
- extralego 8y ago
  Oof. Funny you mention that. I just bought it, but haven’t read it yet; only flipped through a little. It’s clearly a dangerous topic for me and if I can find the discipline in myself, I’ll return it before it’s too late. Thanks for the thoughts, and the other comments here are all very lucid. These points aren’t lost on me, and I expect plenty of truth to them.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    Norbert Wiener's book "Invention" is another on a similar topic. He argues that research should be driven more by the interests of individual researchers rather than managers and bureaucrats.
    - close04 8y ago
      Research will always be driven by the interests of whoever is financing it. It just happens that it's almost never the researchers themselves. And one thing to consider: a researcher's mind is an inquisitive mind that will "dig" even in directions nobody really cares about, don't help humanity, etc. The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. The downside is that it's mostly about money and power...
      - btrettel 8y ago
        > The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. Wiener argues that this often is not true, because the people with the money often have a poor understanding of what's actually important. To give an example, in my own area of research, my impression is that most industrial folks hate math. They consistently deny the benefit of it. As a theorist who tries hard to do practical work, I find it very irritating for my work to be written off by industry for a bad reason. I went to a conference a few weeks ago, and it was clear that industry folks won't attend my talks, but when I spoke with some of them in private they seemed much more interested in what I knew. It may be mostly an advertising problem, but I still have the math barrier to break through. My mantra now is "math is cheap", which seems to resonate with people who are used to paying tons of money for new experiments which usually don't give you useful information. At the very least I can tell them what sort of experiments would be valuable based on my theoretical understanding. Ultimately, we need a balance of input from those with money and those with more detailed knowledge. This is what I strive for. At the moment I'd say the vast majority of research is directed from above, so I'd agree with Wiener that we need to move in an individualistic direction.
tachyonbeam 8y ago
I work in a large academic research lab and I'm with you on the lack of creativity and conformism. Most people here don't have ambitious ideas. They always think in terms of basic improvements to ideas that were recently published about. They seem to automatically think that progress can only be made in the direction of the latest cool papers from well-established authors in the field. Me, I'm with Peter Thiel... Don't compete. Differentiate yourself. Try to find a niche that everyone isn't already trying to fill. People here are also seemingly very conformist. For the most part, they work extremely long hours, are in hetero-normative relationships, with similar life goals (get a high paying job, buy a house, have kids), they don't do drugs or rarely even drink. If they have any hobbies, it's going to be your typical going hiking and camping sort of deal. I'm surprised that STEM research doesn't attract more "freaks" and free-thinking people. People who want to challenge assumptions and do things differently, explore new possibilities. Unfortunately, I guess where I am, the main draw is prestige and the possibility of getting a high paying job when you finish.
- dagw 8y ago
  I'm surprised that STEM research doesn't attract more "freaks" and free-thinking people. At least when I was at university, those people generally didn't have the focus to graduate with good grades (or graduate at all for that matter). It's one thing to sit around and talk about all the 'out there' implications of quantum physics. It's an entirely different thing to get your quantum physics course work in on time and study enough to pass the exam.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    I think I'm one of the freaks in question. I'm not one to sit around pipe dreaming, but I've found a vastly better fit writing code at startups than I ever did in grad school. I get to invent, experiment, learn, and at a vastly faster pace. I'm even working in the same field, solving similar problems to the ones I worked on in school.
    - vkou 8y ago
      This is great if the problems you want to solve have direct business applications with a turnaround time of tomorrow. There aren't very many startups funding basic research, though.
pytyper2 8y ago
Intelligent in their ability to memorize or are they making original contributions to their fields and advancing the state of the art?
xamuel 8y ago
Can you elaborate what you mean when you say, "experts of citations"?
amyjess 8y ago
> All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige. > Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes. Huh. You'd think they'd just leave academia and go into industry after getting their Bachelors or maybe their Masters. I mean, I'm fairly uncreative and conformist, but I noped out of college after getting my Bachelors and went right into industry. I'm currently more than happy working at an enterprise telecom in a conservative suburb, and I'm glad I didn't stick around in academia.

NegativeLatency 8y ago

> They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite The grass is always greener

extralego 8y ago
Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argued with my teachers over subject matter in high school, it is infuriating. When this is what you were asking for all along, how can you be so surprised that it’s what you got? It does raise a question of how the grass is green, and why it’s on the other side. Fun fact: The grass on the hillsides in the opening sequence of The Sound Of Music was actually painted by hand. It was worth it for the altitude and the Austrian mountain backdrop.
- warkdarrior 8y ago
  By "citation dependence" I assume you mean that researchers are judged by how many citations their own work has received. This is an time-efficient, yet imperfect mechanism to measure the importance of a research work. Are there more accurate ways to measure the importance/impact/relevance of research work?

close04 8y ago

Most things are a lot more fun when you're free to do them as you please and pick the good stuff. You get the fun stuff, they get all the stuff. :) Running across an interesting book might feel like gold, makes you imagine research must be gold. You forget about the countless days, months, or years (sometimes even more depressing, decades) spent digging in between the gold veins. I suffered from much the same disappointment when I started my PhD, after a masters that left me imagining research is a world of fun. Shortly after, I dropped it when I found a job/career that really brought me satisfaction. A move I have done more than once over the years after that. So I have one advice for people who feel the disappointment of being "stuck" and not knowing what to chase: Consider just the work that passes the threshold for a decent standard of living and then pick the one that fulfills you more, rather that the one that makes others say "wow". Living on "kudos" means you're at the mercy of others to get your satisfaction.

btrettel 8y ago

I agree that academia selects for conformists, which is bad for curiousity driven research. Jeff Schmidt's book "Disciplined Minds" makes a similar argument. I have not read it all, though, so perhaps I should pick it up again. The book has a good description of the problem, but in my view the author views the process as more political than it necessarily is. I also think the book's solutions are unlikely to help. But I still recommend the book as one of the few on the subject.

extralego 8y ago
Oof. Funny you mention that. I just bought it, but haven’t read it yet; only flipped through a little. It’s clearly a dangerous topic for me and if I can find the discipline in myself, I’ll return it before it’s too late. Thanks for the thoughts, and the other comments here are all very lucid. These points aren’t lost on me, and I expect plenty of truth to them.
- btrettel 8y ago
  Norbert Wiener's book "Invention" is another on a similar topic. He argues that research should be driven more by the interests of individual researchers rather than managers and bureaucrats.
  - close04 8y ago
    Research will always be driven by the interests of whoever is financing it. It just happens that it's almost never the researchers themselves. And one thing to consider: a researcher's mind is an inquisitive mind that will "dig" even in directions nobody really cares about, don't help humanity, etc. The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. The downside is that it's mostly about money and power...
    - btrettel 8y ago
      > The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. Wiener argues that this often is not true, because the people with the money often have a poor understanding of what's actually important. To give an example, in my own area of research, my impression is that most industrial folks hate math. They consistently deny the benefit of it. As a theorist who tries hard to do practical work, I find it very irritating for my work to be written off by industry for a bad reason. I went to a conference a few weeks ago, and it was clear that industry folks won't attend my talks, but when I spoke with some of them in private they seemed much more interested in what I knew. It may be mostly an advertising problem, but I still have the math barrier to break through. My mantra now is "math is cheap", which seems to resonate with people who are used to paying tons of money for new experiments which usually don't give you useful information. At the very least I can tell them what sort of experiments would be valuable based on my theoretical understanding. Ultimately, we need a balance of input from those with money and those with more detailed knowledge. This is what I strive for. At the moment I'd say the vast majority of research is directed from above, so I'd agree with Wiener that we need to move in an individualistic direction.

tachyonbeam 8y ago

I work in a large academic research lab and I'm with you on the lack of creativity and conformism. Most people here don't have ambitious ideas. They always think in terms of basic improvements to ideas that were recently published about. They seem to automatically think that progress can only be made in the direction of the latest cool papers from well-established authors in the field. Me, I'm with Peter Thiel... Don't compete. Differentiate yourself. Try to find a niche that everyone isn't already trying to fill. People here are also seemingly very conformist. For the most part, they work extremely long hours, are in hetero-normative relationships, with similar life goals (get a high paying job, buy a house, have kids), they don't do drugs or rarely even drink. If they have any hobbies, it's going to be your typical going hiking and camping sort of deal. I'm surprised that STEM research doesn't attract more "freaks" and free-thinking people. People who want to challenge assumptions and do things differently, explore new possibilities. Unfortunately, I guess where I am, the main draw is prestige and the possibility of getting a high paying job when you finish.

dagw 8y ago
I'm surprised that STEM research doesn't attract more "freaks" and free-thinking people. At least when I was at university, those people generally didn't have the focus to graduate with good grades (or graduate at all for that matter). It's one thing to sit around and talk about all the 'out there' implications of quantum physics. It's an entirely different thing to get your quantum physics course work in on time and study enough to pass the exam.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  I think I'm one of the freaks in question. I'm not one to sit around pipe dreaming, but I've found a vastly better fit writing code at startups than I ever did in grad school. I get to invent, experiment, learn, and at a vastly faster pace. I'm even working in the same field, solving similar problems to the ones I worked on in school.
  - vkou 8y ago
    This is great if the problems you want to solve have direct business applications with a turnaround time of tomorrow. There aren't very many startups funding basic research, though.

pytyper2 8y ago

Intelligent in their ability to memorize or are they making original contributions to their fields and advancing the state of the art?

xamuel 8y ago

Can you elaborate what you mean when you say, "experts of citations"?

amyjess 8y ago

> All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige. > Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes. Huh. You'd think they'd just leave academia and go into industry after getting their Bachelors or maybe their Masters. I mean, I'm fairly uncreative and conformist, but I noped out of college after getting my Bachelors and went right into industry. I'm currently more than happy working at an enterprise telecom in a conservative suburb, and I'm glad I didn't stick around in academia.