6 ms·

Here is a possibly unpopular opinion. I have a Phd (got it when I was young). In some areas of computing (e.g. OS, Systems) work gets obsolete fairly quickly. I

Here is a possibly unpopular opinion. I have a Phd (got it when I was young). In some areas of computing (e.g. OS, Systems) work gets obsolete fairly quickly. I suspect my PhD topic was useless about 4-10 years after I finished the thesis. Of course, I got a few hundred citations, and this suggests that perhaps more enduring work was done based on mine, but in any case, I don't buy the dent in the universe argument for some fast changing fields (e.g. Deep Learning today). My wife was reading the life story of Louis Pasteur to our 6 year old, and it was remarkable what a dent his contribution made. Most people I knew who finished Phds did not do much of note (and this is fairly elite tier). One person has an algorithm named after them but it is also a bit obsolete (e.g. happened to a lot of classical CV and NLU algorithms post DL). I was talking to a theoretical Physics PhD at a conference recently, and even he was quite jaded (he switched to CS post PhD). It was obvious that this person was wicked smart and had quant knowledge. So if you want a PhD for transferable skills, go for it! A masters might be faster though. Do what makes you happy at the end.. it is sort of nice I can drop in the fact I have a PhD and it was probably good for me on the whole .. but if you are thinking of getting a PhD in CS, consider attending top conferences in your field before committing (e.g. SOSP for OS/Systems, CVPR for vision, CHI for HCI,...). I just had no clue what I was getting into and I actively wish someone had given me this sort of info before I got into it. A PhD has a huge opportunity cost.

beambot 5y ago
Whenever anyone asks about pursuing a PhD, I usually tell them it only makes sense if one of more of these hold true: (1) You want to pursue a career in academia or research where the credentialing will matter; (2) You want access to equipment or material that is otherwise difficult to obtain; (3) You want the freedom & flexibility to pursue random interests for another couple years; or (4) You have a deep affinity for a specific topic at the frontiers of human knowledge. The PhD definitely isn't required if your goal is to maximize learning & earning, apply research to commercialization, or to make a huge dent on the world -- the latter is just exceedingly rare statistically speaking.
light_hue_1 5y ago
> In some areas of computing (e.g. OS, Systems) work gets obsolete fairly quickly That's a very surprising statement. The number of advances in systems in the 21st century is.. embarrassingly low. It feels like a stale dead field. People keep pumping money into what is basically a dead body at this point. > consider attending top conferences in your field before committing (e.g. SOSP for OS/Systems, CVPR for vision, CHI for HCI,...). I I don't think that this is good advice. Certainly I would never suggest it to my own students. It's hard to see what they would gain. So you go to CVPR or NeurIPS, you see hundreds of posters per session and talk after talk. Maybe you stick around for workshops to interact with people. So what? This gives you zero information about what you will be doing as a PhD student or how useful your PhD will be. The way to figure out if you want to do a PhD is simple: do research first. Spend a summer in a research lab related to some topic you like and figure out if you like it. > I was talking to a theoretical Physics PhD at a conference recently, and even he was quite jaded (he switched to CS post PhD). Speaking of dead fields... I know many postdocs who come from physics into ML because many areas of theoretical physics just don't seem to be going anywhere anymore. Not a good sign!
- sjg007 5y ago
  Theoretical physics has been “dead” since the 70s. So all the physicists went to Wall Street and basically rebuilt it. Next up is biology etc…. but there’s a new kid in town which is ML/AI/DNNs These are great little democratic black boxes.
- atrettel 5y ago
  > Speaking of dead fields... I know many postdocs who come from physics into ML because many areas of theoretical physics just don't seem to be going anywhere anymore. Not a good sign! I do not necessarily agree with the notion that many fields are dead --- they could just be "resting" until some paradigm-shifting idea comes along, at which point they may spring back to life --- but I do agree with your observation that many people with PhDs have to move out of science or research. There simply are too few jobs available in research, so many people with PhDs eventually transition to non-scientific or non-research roles as their opportunities to continue doing research diminish. It's just economics. I do have to agree that it is frustrating how slow progress can be while conducting research, but I think people leave science more often due to the lack of job opportunities than the lack of progress in their research.
jsemrau 5y ago
Counterpoint: I wrote my Master Thesis on Value Networks in 2004. While I got a perfect grade on it it was largely unnoticed. Now with Social+ and Crypto getting together, it becomes really useful for my work almost two decades later. So I am saying, give it time.
- mgaunard 5y ago
  A master thesis is not a PhD.
  - froh 5y ago
    While technically correct how does that relate to the dialogue above? A PhD is even deeper work in a niche topic than a masters, right however that doesn't contradict that the niche know how may become useful later.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    If it's far enough ahead of its time, I suppose it might earn you an honorary doctorate someplace. Sore subject, huh.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    While true, in Portugal it used to be so that a master degree was a requirement for a PhD, unless one was a prodigy child. I suspect the same happens in many other countries. So it already puts one above everyone else that has a classical university degree.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Which GP did not claim it was. Also: besides being pedantic this comment mostly seems to be to put the writer down in some way, so applying the principle of charity here, what did you want to achieve with your comment?
  - la_fayette 5y ago
    There are outstanding master thesis, which introduced quite revolutionary concepts or algorithms. E.g., John Canny developed the canny edge detector within his master thesis. There are of course other examples...
ramraj07 5y ago
Unless you’re a super genius or are super lucky, you’re likely not going to make a dent in any field especially at a PhD level. Not in these days at least. But the product of a PhD, according to me and many mentors I respect, is you. It’s your mind and experience (not even necessarily the knowledge). A good phd fundamentally transforms who you are as a person. I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult. I probably realistically lost millions I could have earned in my twenties because I spent 9 years on my higher education (which has nothing to do with what I do now). But I’d not have done most anything different about it! Caveat being that it needs to be a good PhD with a good mentor - which is harder to find than a good job or even a good partner lol.
- vasco 5y ago
  > I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult Not sure how you define change, but I'm pretty sure one experience with psychedelics is going to effect more change in about 4 hours than a PhD in 4 years. Not the same type of change, granted.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    At least according to Feynman many of his successful colleagues said psychedelics helped them with their imagination. But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip. It looks more like the Lu just get happier about their life but nothing else.
    - vasco 5y ago
      You talked about changing your mind and transforming as a person, not doing great science.
    - _Wintermute 5y ago
      > But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip. Kary Mullis claims to have come up with the idea for PCR while on an LSD trip, though he also said a lot of nonsense so I'm not sure you should be too much weight on that.
twofornone 5y ago
>Most people I knew who finished Phds did not do much of note (and this is fairly elite tier). One could argue that research in general is a probabilistic, distributed gradient descent search and you are fulfilling a certain voluntary social duty even if you are not successful. Unfortunately that doesn't apply to many pursuits because of various perverse incentives in modern academia...
pdevr 5y ago
Louis Pasteur is one of my most favorite scientists. That being said, he won't have been able to do it all on his own. Variolation was practised in Africa, India and China long back[1]. The record shows that [...] Edward Jenner heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox.[...]” It fact, it was a common belief that dairymaids were in some way protected from smallpox[1]. That knowledge (regardless of the accuracy of the specific story of the dairymaid) helped Jenner to develop the smallpox vaccine, and that in turn helped Pasteur in coming up with his array of vaccines and other innovations. So, I would argue that every person who contributes to research is making a dent in the universe. Your published paper may have been the impetus for someone else to make a "visible dent". Publishng papers of failures would have been ideal, but until that happens, every person who contributes to research is contributing to the progress of humanity in the long run. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
rnd420_69 5y ago
I think your idea about how this dent is supposed to work is a misconception. If you made some nontrivial insights that were only temporarily useful but other people used it to make their own insights without having to go through the manyears of doing your work, and then the process repeats, there is something permanent there that would not have happened without your work. Of course someone else might have done your work in your stead, but the same is true for literally all the other scientific greats we can think off, it's extremely unlikely that we would just end up at a standstill with nobody figuring out what's going on if certain people never existed.
vmception 5y ago
> it is sort of nice I can drop in the fact I have a PhD A saying in my circles is that the less likely someone credentialed can operate on a human heart, the more likely they’ll tell you they’re a doctor

beambot 5y ago

Whenever anyone asks about pursuing a PhD, I usually tell them it only makes sense if one of more of these hold true: (1) You want to pursue a career in academia or research where the credentialing will matter; (2) You want access to equipment or material that is otherwise difficult to obtain; (3) You want the freedom & flexibility to pursue random interests for another couple years; or (4) You have a deep affinity for a specific topic at the frontiers of human knowledge. The PhD definitely isn't required if your goal is to maximize learning & earning, apply research to commercialization, or to make a huge dent on the world -- the latter is just exceedingly rare statistically speaking.

light_hue_1 5y ago

> In some areas of computing (e.g. OS, Systems) work gets obsolete fairly quickly That's a very surprising statement. The number of advances in systems in the 21st century is.. embarrassingly low. It feels like a stale dead field. People keep pumping money into what is basically a dead body at this point. > consider attending top conferences in your field before committing (e.g. SOSP for OS/Systems, CVPR for vision, CHI for HCI,...). I I don't think that this is good advice. Certainly I would never suggest it to my own students. It's hard to see what they would gain. So you go to CVPR or NeurIPS, you see hundreds of posters per session and talk after talk. Maybe you stick around for workshops to interact with people. So what? This gives you zero information about what you will be doing as a PhD student or how useful your PhD will be. The way to figure out if you want to do a PhD is simple: do research first. Spend a summer in a research lab related to some topic you like and figure out if you like it. > I was talking to a theoretical Physics PhD at a conference recently, and even he was quite jaded (he switched to CS post PhD). Speaking of dead fields... I know many postdocs who come from physics into ML because many areas of theoretical physics just don't seem to be going anywhere anymore. Not a good sign!

sjg007 5y ago
Theoretical physics has been “dead” since the 70s. So all the physicists went to Wall Street and basically rebuilt it. Next up is biology etc…. but there’s a new kid in town which is ML/AI/DNNs These are great little democratic black boxes.
atrettel 5y ago
> Speaking of dead fields... I know many postdocs who come from physics into ML because many areas of theoretical physics just don't seem to be going anywhere anymore. Not a good sign! I do not necessarily agree with the notion that many fields are dead --- they could just be "resting" until some paradigm-shifting idea comes along, at which point they may spring back to life --- but I do agree with your observation that many people with PhDs have to move out of science or research. There simply are too few jobs available in research, so many people with PhDs eventually transition to non-scientific or non-research roles as their opportunities to continue doing research diminish. It's just economics. I do have to agree that it is frustrating how slow progress can be while conducting research, but I think people leave science more often due to the lack of job opportunities than the lack of progress in their research.

jsemrau 5y ago

Counterpoint: I wrote my Master Thesis on Value Networks in 2004. While I got a perfect grade on it it was largely unnoticed. Now with Social+ and Crypto getting together, it becomes really useful for my work almost two decades later. So I am saying, give it time.

mgaunard 5y ago
A master thesis is not a PhD.
- froh 5y ago
  While technically correct how does that relate to the dialogue above? A PhD is even deeper work in a niche topic than a masters, right however that doesn't contradict that the niche know how may become useful later.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  If it's far enough ahead of its time, I suppose it might earn you an honorary doctorate someplace. Sore subject, huh.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  While true, in Portugal it used to be so that a master degree was a requirement for a PhD, unless one was a prodigy child. I suspect the same happens in many other countries. So it already puts one above everyone else that has a classical university degree.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Which GP did not claim it was. Also: besides being pedantic this comment mostly seems to be to put the writer down in some way, so applying the principle of charity here, what did you want to achieve with your comment?
- la_fayette 5y ago
  There are outstanding master thesis, which introduced quite revolutionary concepts or algorithms. E.g., John Canny developed the canny edge detector within his master thesis. There are of course other examples...

ramraj07 5y ago

Unless you’re a super genius or are super lucky, you’re likely not going to make a dent in any field especially at a PhD level. Not in these days at least. But the product of a PhD, according to me and many mentors I respect, is you. It’s your mind and experience (not even necessarily the knowledge). A good phd fundamentally transforms who you are as a person. I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult. I probably realistically lost millions I could have earned in my twenties because I spent 9 years on my higher education (which has nothing to do with what I do now). But I’d not have done most anything different about it! Caveat being that it needs to be a good PhD with a good mentor - which is harder to find than a good job or even a good partner lol.

vasco 5y ago
> I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult Not sure how you define change, but I'm pretty sure one experience with psychedelics is going to effect more change in about 4 hours than a PhD in 4 years. Not the same type of change, granted.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  At least according to Feynman many of his successful colleagues said psychedelics helped them with their imagination. But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip. It looks more like the Lu just get happier about their life but nothing else.
  - vasco 5y ago
    You talked about changing your mind and transforming as a person, not doing great science.
  - _Wintermute 5y ago
    > But I’ve not heard of anyone doing great science (or great anything really) because they went on a trip. Kary Mullis claims to have come up with the idea for PCR while on an LSD trip, though he also said a lot of nonsense so I'm not sure you should be too much weight on that.

twofornone 5y ago

>Most people I knew who finished Phds did not do much of note (and this is fairly elite tier). One could argue that research in general is a probabilistic, distributed gradient descent search and you are fulfilling a certain voluntary social duty even if you are not successful. Unfortunately that doesn't apply to many pursuits because of various perverse incentives in modern academia...

pdevr 5y ago

Louis Pasteur is one of my most favorite scientists. That being said, he won't have been able to do it all on his own. Variolation was practised in Africa, India and China long back[1]. The record shows that [...] Edward Jenner heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox.[...]” It fact, it was a common belief that dairymaids were in some way protected from smallpox[1]. That knowledge (regardless of the accuracy of the specific story of the dairymaid) helped Jenner to develop the smallpox vaccine, and that in turn helped Pasteur in coming up with his array of vaccines and other innovations. So, I would argue that every person who contributes to research is making a dent in the universe. Your published paper may have been the impetus for someone else to make a "visible dent". Publishng papers of failures would have been ideal, but until that happens, every person who contributes to research is contributing to the progress of humanity in the long run. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

rnd420_69 5y ago

I think your idea about how this dent is supposed to work is a misconception. If you made some nontrivial insights that were only temporarily useful but other people used it to make their own insights without having to go through the manyears of doing your work, and then the process repeats, there is something permanent there that would not have happened without your work. Of course someone else might have done your work in your stead, but the same is true for literally all the other scientific greats we can think off, it's extremely unlikely that we would just end up at a standstill with nobody figuring out what's going on if certain people never existed.

vmception 5y ago

> it is sort of nice I can drop in the fact I have a PhD A saying in my circles is that the less likely someone credentialed can operate on a human heart, the more likely they’ll tell you they’re a doctor