EPTWhat is a PhD? - Page 21
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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ZERG_RUSSIAN
10417 Posts
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves. When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself. I have a Ph.D. This is what's known as "projection" in psychology, when you place your own issues onto others  | ||
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On September 07 2013 12:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.> No, no, you don't get it, we do it to shit on people. Edit: And btw, I think a lot of PhD candidates ask themselves if doing a PhD isn't precisely the thing that is making their life meaningless. Like Belarius put it nicely: On September 07 2013 05:06 Belisarius wrote: Believe me, the first lesson anyone doing a PhD learns is that their work is of questionable value, questionable quality and is questionably funded. I've learned it, and am still learning it. I'm fairly sure everyone here who has one will have learned it as well. A PhD teaches you, first and foremost, how to fail. That is a hard lesson, and you might need to make some adjustments to the way you respond to criticism if you want to try it. EDIT: + Show Spoiler + and that was my 2k. Good.... | ||
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phar
United States1080 Posts
On September 07 2013 09:53 Alex1Sun wrote: Doing PhD is a great way to not have a paying job. Most importantly not having a paying job usually continues after PhD is granted, often for many years  On the brighter side PhDs are among the most valuable members of our society, because they are the ones who expand our understanding of the universe and make life better for future generations =) Like undergrad degrees, this depends entirely on what field you have a PhD in. | ||
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves. When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself. I have a Ph.D. No. People get PhDs to sleep with undergrads. | ||
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Derrida
2885 Posts
Btw, HIGH FIVE DELEUZE ^ | ||
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
On September 07 2013 21:59 Derrida wrote: I am getting a Ph.D. because I'm fucking lazy to do any other work. Just gonna read stuff and have a comfortable chair for the rest of my life. Btw, HIGH FIVE DELEUZE ^ High five Derrida! Being paid to read. It's a tough job but someone has to do it. | ||
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iSTime
1579 Posts
On September 07 2013 02:25 GhastlyUprising wrote: As for attending conferences and reading papers that come up every day...you simply don't seem to have a very good understanding of the history of science and how scientists make their discoveries. As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.) Do you actually think Feynman didn't keep up to date or collaborate with other top physicists? What do you think the probability is that he would have come up with the "sum over histories" formulation if he never read recent papers or collaborated with colleagues? Are you confident that his revelation after reading Dirac's paper would have come had it not been for all of his other research and training? | ||
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Dr.Sin
Canada1126 Posts
A PhD at first appears to be focused on discovering new knowledge, but that implies that a PhD is knowledge specific when in fact, it is much more the mastery of a method. Getting a PhD (at least in science) is about learning how to ask a question and getting an answer. A PhD is about learning how to communicate all this knowledge and the questions that are a part of this discovery process in language other people can understand. When you get a PhD you demonstrated your mastery over this method by contributing new knowledge to your given field. Edit: if I were to add to your visual depiction, I would make the big circle smaller and add tons of little circles at the outside. Then I would make the arrow from the center non-linear, because when you do a PhD, what you started working on is rarely what you ended up working on. In the end, the experience of doing the PhD will have led you in unexpected places while trying to get to your destination. A linear arrow assumes that you are getting to where you aimed to get to, but if that were the case, you wouldn't have needed to get on the road to get there to begin with. When you're doing research, you find out that going down that following that road actually led you some place else entirely. Thus by doing research, you discover that the assumptions that you made, that made you believe you would get to that particular point by following the road you took, were not true. Discovering that these assumptions were false is often as important to understanding how things work, as compared to reaching that one goal you hypothesized the road you took would take you to. Edit 2: So to make this sound less convoluted, let's use the example of the gentleman who put his point right outside the big circle and called it "Saving my son's life". There are indubitably many points like these all around the circle that can save a lot of people's lives. We don't know where they are. When a scientist will make a hypothesis, he will make an educated guess that doing a set of experiments (ie the road) will demonstrate how something works that will add this outside point to the circle, that we will discover something useful that will help someone. However, what will happen is that instead of getting there, the scientist will get to a different point entirely, which may or may not help anyone in the immediate future (thus not linear). | ||
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peacenl
550 Posts
On September 07 2013 22:13 Deleuze wrote: High five Derrida! Being paid to read. It's a tough job but someone has to do it. I've looked into becoming a Ph.D, but unless you have a godlike focus for years on end, this is not for you (might differ in relation to universities though). Being lazy and becoming a Ph.D don't go hand in hand, I suppose. | ||
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Kambing
United States1176 Posts
On September 07 2013 17:26 ZenithM wrote: For example, you have a much better shot at being hired by Google as a software engineer if you have a PhD in computer science. Not necessarily as PhDs are held to a higher standard in terms of skills and maturity. That being said, I would like to think that if you have the gumption to complete a PhD (in computer science) that you can demonstrate more than enough skills to hack it in industry. In other words, it's less about the degree and more about the skills you inevitably acquire on your way to receiving that degree. At least in this particular example. | ||
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GhastlyUprising
198 Posts
On September 07 2013 22:23 iSTime wrote: I already admitted he collaborated a lot with Wheeler and it was probably formative for Feynman. His Nobel Prize address makes that clear. Doesn't change the fact that he got the chief inspiration for sum over histories from a passage in a 15-year-old paper.Do you actually think Feynman didn't keep up to date or collaborate with other top physicists? On September 07 2013 22:23 iSTime wrote:What do you think the probability is that he would have come up with the "sum over histories" formulation if he never read recent papers or collaborated with colleagues? Are you confident that his revelation after reading Dirac's paper would have come had it not been for all of his other research and training? If he chose the independent route and stayed with it, he would have had a different kind of training.In previous centuries there were lots of independent, "gentlemen scientists". I agree there haven't been many recently, but that might change thanks to the Internet and all the opportunities it brings. | ||
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On September 07 2013 23:04 Kambing wrote: Not necessarily as PhDs are held to a higher standard in terms of skills and maturity. That being said, I would like to think that if you have the gumption to complete a PhD (in computer science) that you can demonstrate more than enough skills to hack it in industry. In other words, it's less about the degree and more about the skills you inevitably acquire on your way to receiving that degree. At least in this particular example. Yes, exactly. In this case, the PhD degree is just a filter, Google then checks that you can really do smart stuff in their job interviews :D | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On September 07 2013 17:19 phar wrote: Like undergrad degrees, this depends entirely on what field you have a PhD in. No. It just depends on how much effort you actually put into it/having a job. Literally any degree can be quite successful. Some just aren't as easy as others. Sure, life isn't fair and you may get screwed, but there isn't a degree out there that is worthless by default. | ||
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Subversive
Australia2229 Posts
On September 07 2013 12:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.> Haha exactly. | ||
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babylon
8765 Posts
On September 07 2013 12:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.> Teaching at a university level is basically meaningless. Academia's no different from a circus at heart. In fact, it's probably worse due to all the bureaucratic and political bullshit you have to put up with. It's a dream for the people who make it though. People pay me to entertain myself and them with esoteric knowledge that nobody really cares about? Hell yeah! | ||
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dreamsmasher
816 Posts
On September 07 2013 17:26 ZenithM wrote: For example, you have a much better shot at being hired by Google as a software engineer if you have a PhD in computer science. depends on the what exactly you wnt to do at google. you can get hired as an undergraduate too, you just have to be really good. | ||
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Count9
China10928 Posts
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babylon
8765 Posts
On September 05 2013 13:06 sam!zdat wrote: political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is. Also, this is bullshit.  Talk to more political scientists, and you'll start to get a glimmer of an idea of how wide and diverse the field is in terms of research interests and practice, esp. between policy and academia. | ||
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