My summary: Science is like a hike. You have a general sense of what direction you want to go. You explore things along the way. You might make wrong turns but might also discover something new and interesting. While on your journey, you might spot new mountains or waterfalls or other vistas that look like they might be good to explore.
In contrast, AI is like taking a helicopter to your destination. Yes you got there quickly, but you missed a lot on the way.
Related, Tao later talks about the pipeline. It used to be that seminal proofs were rare, so there was lots of time for the community to review them, process them, share them, and summarize them in textbooks. Nowadays, AI helps a lot with generating more proofs, but not so much with the other parts of the pipeline.
My overall take: Tao is very thoughtful and insightful about progress in AI and math, and about what the tradeoffs are. We're seeing similar problems in computer science (my field), where conferences are now getting over 10x the number of submitted papers over just a few years ago (not an exaggeration). It's straining the research community in ability to review, understand, and present the papers.
I saw Jim Clark (of SGI and Netscape fame) talk one time about his new healthcare startup (Healtheon). He said something insightful that captures a lot of why it's hard to get things done in general: one person's inefficiency is someone else's bottom line.
The flip side of Bezos' "your margin is my opportunity". But that's for competitive markets, not for heavily regulated multi-party setups with minimal competition. That's the real wonder of American healthcare, as it manages to neither be a good market, nor to have regulator mercilessly going after the largest profit centers. Near the worst of both worlds.
Actual healthcare delivery is a growing field because boomers are getting old and dying and advances in health care mean that people that would otherwise die (eg people with cancers) are now receiving treatments that keep them alive.
Note that this is a Good Thing.
The issue with US (and privatized) healthcare delivery is that there is an incentive (by insurers) to deny treatment, as well as an incentive for healthcare suppliers (hospitals, doctors) to over-deliver treatment, as well as incentives to use more expensive solutions.
Demand in healthcare is inelastic, no one is ever "too healthy".
Supply is always insufficient, so there needs to be a mechanism to resolve that.
In the US, that mechanism is money, or the cost of insurance etc to provide a restriction on demand.
In universal healthcare, that mechanism is a combination of subsidizing medications based on results and waiting lists for limited supplies, prioritized by need (eg surgeries).
Is there any reason to believe less healthcare professionals would be employed under a universal system? Insurance claims adjusters and call centre scripted finance deciders, sure. But actual health delivery agents?
No, if anything there will be more because some of the funds freed up can be spent on healthcare delivery.
But you will lose endless billing departments at general/specialist practices, hospitals etc, because actual consumers would not engage. Hospital administrations will be driven by the government setting reimbursement rates for services that are transparent, so the argy-bargy between someone paying cash, someone getting insurance etc will disappear (mostly).
I'm in Australia, and the billing departments, even at private hospitals are minimal. Ditto at general practices. Reimbursements for GP/specialists that are not "bulk billed" (ie paid at the government rate) are automated into a nominated bank account and are usually instant.
Medicare for All in the US would move the 2/3rds that are not covered by Medicare, VA, etc into the same systems, with the reduction in overhead from 10-20% to the 2-5% of the current government run health systems.
Allowing Medicare to negotiate both drug prices (as a large purchaser) and health services will also dramatically reduce costs, because the government has the purchasing power to drive hard bargains.
The UK has a "universal system" as does Germany and the inevitable reality is that if administration does not limit/deny overuse of the system then it requires setting prices artifically low to limit costs. --> Causes Doctors to earn less wages and be overworked (many med cases). Ultimately, less doctors. =(
Alternatively, the government starts relaxing legal requirements on medical schools with the intent to flood the market with doctors. This not only severely depresses their wages, it leads to unemployment and indirectly to charlatanism and quackery as people try to make ends meet. Better hope the future AI doctors are good.
Alternatively alternatively the government could subsidize medical school for doctors and nurses reducing financial barriers and allowing more medical professionals without lowering standards.
Subsidizing existing schools merely makes it easier for existing medical students. It does nothing to increase the number of doctors entering the jobs market per year. You need to make more schools to increase that number.
You can't just conjure up a medical school out of nowhere though. That's extremely hard and expensive. You can do it if you relax your standards. Maybe by making the "hospital" part of the school optional or something. Students won't see patients but what does it matter.
Except this process is independent of whether there is overuse. It's always a pressure to lower costs, whether they are appropriate or not.
Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare are all basically universal systems for segments of the population. None work well. And all are subsidized from what people with private insurance pay. And the UHC proponents rely on a stacked deck--UHC is "better" in a system that makes 20% of the score "fairness". That is, UHC. And one of the other yardsticks is life expectancy. Sounds fine--but dig deeper. A big factor in lowering life expectancy is infant mortality. Again, sounds fine--except you see a big difference in infant mortality across the developed world that is not reasonably explained by differences in their medical systems. But you see an inverse relationship between infant mortality and stillbirths. Most of what you're really seeing is whether the doctors consider it a live birth that promptly died, or consider it a stillbirth. (And, yes, we are still an outlier--but by only 1/3 of the amount claimed.)
Show me it's better without your thumb on the scale!
Replace "passengers" with "users" and replace "airport workers" with "product team members", and you have a good argument for why good usability and good service design really matter in the world.
I heard an interview with him this morning, where he's already in China. Some of his stated reasons for the move (also listed in the articles below) include the slashed research funding in the USA, increasing restrictions on research and international collaborations, as well as wanting a stronger push for the AI revolution in science.
The keywords in the headline are "Nobel laureate". They are superstars in academia and are getting money, resources and convenience that a tenured US professor cannot dream of. These are extremely rare compared to the number of Chinese professors in US universities.
> Not going to even mention the obscene difference in racism OR the language barrier, both of which are enormous factors.
Language wise, absolutely. Racism-wise, I think you underestimate how wildly racist the US is. As a European, I am still quite shocked. Everything in that country is viewed through the lens of skin color.
I think the main difference between Europe and the US is that European progressives tend to have a lot of national vanity and believe that their country doesn't have racism, regardless of the evidence. US progressives tend to have national self-hatred (the US is one of the world's most self-hating countries, according to polls) and work really hard to find racism everywhere.
I see the rise of the far right as fundamentally different in Europe and the US. In Europe it's driven by migrants who don't integrate well. In the US, immigrants typically integrate well, and the far right is fundamentally a reaction to our crazy far left: https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/how-crazy-is-darializa-avila... The US far right is worried about immigrants because they believe immigrants will vote for far left candidates, even though the data doesn't exactly support that position.
I am a European. I don't even remember when was the last time I had a conversation about race with someone who isn't American. And with Americans, it was mostly about how I supposedly owe something to other people because my skin is white.
> No dual citizenship at all, most probably no citizenship.
Citizenship is basically impossible unless you are born to Chinese parents, but work visas in China are lightyears easier to get than the US H1B shitshow. In China all you need is an employer's invitation and you can more or less get a work visa, especially if it's for a skilled job in science, technology, or finance.
> Not going to even mention the obscene difference in racism
I'm non-white and I've felt far more racism in the US than China. That isn't to say racism doesn't exist, but it's much less.
> OR the language barrier, both of which are enormous factors.
Language is not a barrier unless you think it is. The IQ of people in China isn't particularly different than the IQ of people anywhere else in the world. If 1 billion people can learn a language, you can.
I doubt many of the researchers migrating even want Chinese citizenship and the chains that come along with it, so why do most people (presumably Americans) keep harping on and on about it?
Once you're invited by the CCP for your exceptional research background, you're literally given an open chequebook for both your personal compensation and your future research endeavors. You're allowed to take your family along with you too, and the language barrier doesn't translate in the professional setting. Racism is a non-issue since I doubt these researchers will even be interacting with elements of that segment of Chinese Han society, unless they choose to.
Technically yes, but the ways US and China treat foreigners are at two extremes.
As long as you are invited and keep your mouth shut about ccp, China does not care about papers. One famous example is an athlete, when questioned about nationality after winning an Olympic gold medal for China, publicly claimed that I am Chinese when I am in China, and American when I am in the US.
>I doubt many of the researchers migrating even want Chinese citizenship and the chains that come along with it, so why do most people (presumably Americans) keep harping on and on about it?
Because it's an important matter regarding immigration. If you want to live in a country, you might want to actually be a citizen of that country. Does that need explaining?
>Once you're invited by the CCP for your exceptional research background, you're literally given an open chequebook for both your personal compensation and your future research endeavors.
None of which is related to immigration.
>You're allowed to take your family along with you too, and the language barrier doesn't translate in the professional setting.
>Racism is a non-issue since I doubt these researchers will even be interacting with elements of that segment of Chinese Han society, unless they choose to.
Are you seriously suggesting that people can literally just not engage at all with the society they live in?
This just reads like deeply, deeply delusional reasoning attempting to paint China as a good alternative.
Citizenship is quite politicized in the US, but in Asia (and probably most of the world) most immigrants will never obtain citizenship. There are many reasons for this I can get into if you want, but it's a tangent. All this generally entails, as opposed to permanent residency, is that your children won't be citizens by default, you can't vote, and that you need to occasionally notify immigration of where you live. On the other issue - yeah you can 100% not interact with locals if you choose.
Any position that's hiring foreigners is going to have multiple foreigners. And it creates a scenario where, by default, foreigners will hang out with foreigners and locals will hang out with locals. The same is true outside of work as there tend to be large expat communities everywhere and even schools/communities almost entirely for expats.
Immigrants (especially in Asia) are never going to blend in with the local population naturally. The cultures are so far removed that you'll never 'fit in.' That doesn't mean you can't make local friends and acquaintances, but that you can choose not to. And yeah I'd highly recommend almost anywhere in Asia to people, including China. It's an amazing place to raise children - ironic given Asia's at the forefront of the global fertility crisis.
It's nothing what like you probably imagine if you've never been. You can find about a zillion videos of people vlogging about their life in Asia. Here [1] is some random video from an American in China. Granted, he speaks crazy good Chinese so it's a different perspective than the one I'm talking about, but he can hit on more issues re:China. I've visited China, but never lived there. He's been there 16 years.
I don't think OP is doing this, just stating the obvious. The invitation implies $$$ but not naturalization.
> If you want to live in a country, you might want to actually be a citizen of that country. Does that need explaining?
Yeah might, so it is big question depending on the situation, and even bigger once you got more passports or permanent residence. For example people intentionally avoid US permanent residence or citizenship for global taxation.
> Are you seriously suggesting that people can literally just not engage at all with the society they live in?
All the time, especially the US expats in China. They tend to live in nice communities for foreigners in a few tier-1 cities, they go to western style international hospitals and their kids goes to fancy international schools. Basically employers have everything prepared nicely for them, hence the contrast of China between foreigners and citizens.
In terms of racism in China or east Asia as a whole, there is practically no problem for white ppl, small problem for indians, big problem for blacks.
In the reverse direction in the US there are Chinese/Latino spending their lives in their own ethnic community without speaking English at all, it is not that uncommon, just invisible.
Replies like these reek of Western exceptionalism or the misfortune of not having travelled much.
Yes, there are certain countries where one can pretty much work in without the need to obtain citizenship. I wouldn't want to be a citizen of Qatar/the UAE (world's most powerful passports) or a citizen of China, simply because obtaining them subjects you to a whole can of worms of absolutist laws.
And yes, people can easily live in a country without interacting with the locals at all. Just ask the Americans and Europeans in the Gulf or Singapore, who barely interact with any locals outside of their workplace. Or ask expats in India and Indonesia who barely interact with locals except in the context of some menial chores.
Have you ever lived overseas? Honestly you sound delusional. Do you think the USA makes it easy to become a citizen? Short of that, there is a wide spectrum on how countries treats immigrants. This is the most important factor for people actually living in a place. Acting like the bar for living somewhere is citizenship is nuts.
> Are you seriously suggesting that people can literally just not engage at all with the society they live in?
This pretty much confirms you have never lived overseas lol. Anyone who has will have met many people that achieve this. Like living anywhere immersing yourself in your surroundings (w/e that means to you) takes extra effort. Most people go overseas to work. It's not playtime. With that comes a built in community.
> None of which is related to immigration
How is getting money and support to live in a place not related to immigration?
Why are you so reactive about something you clearly know nothing about? Because China bad?
I have lived abroad, yes. Does the USA make it easy to become a citizen? If the comparison is China, yes, a thousand times yes. Does language and society matter a truckload? Absolutely.
>Short of that, there is a wide spectrum on how countries treats immigrants. This is the most important factor for people actually living in a place.
Yes. Does China treat immigrants better than the US? As I explained, no. There is no contest. The comparison borders on the absurd. The US is a remarkably flawed country in many aspects, but the vast majority of the stigma around its immigration comes from the fact that it's a matter that the US takes very, very seriously. The bar for living somewhere is not necessarily citizenship but it absolutely is a factor if someone is seriously planning to immigrate somewhere.
For an incredibly evident and very current example, the 14th amendment was very recently reaffirmed, with a whole lot of people being horrified it was even thrown into question at all.
>How is getting money and support to live in a place not related to immigration?
Because any quantity of money beyond a livable wage has barely any relation to integrating people into a culture. A model of immigration based on money is not immigration at all, that's just hiring foreign workers.
Yes, if they're well educated enough. Which is the kind of immigration the article deals with in the first place. China doesn't want "doctors and engineers" from Africa and the Middle East. It wants engineering and scientific talent, and it brutally competes with the rest of the world with some of the highest pay packages. Pay for these folks is often higher than for even the best Chinese talent.
Compare that to the current US. ICE roaming the streets that my PhD and HSW MBA holding friends have to carry their passports even when going grocery shopping or out on dates. An administration that is hellbent on kicking them out and cutting their grant funding. One side of the house hellbent on discussing immigration and silly debates on Shariah law when it barely affects the country anyhow, while branding all foreign immigration as evil. You must be delusional if you think otherwise.
> . A model of immigration based on money is not immigration at all, that's just hiring foreign workers
That is precisely China's model. China wants technical mercenaries, not people who want to build roots. Work hard for a decade or two, then enjoy your newfound earnings.
You clearly have a certain cultural fixation with immigration that frankly is pretty narrow and seems of a particular American variety.
How is the condition of foreign workers not a question of immigration? What distinction are you making? Is your logic the United States treats immigrants well because any foreign national treated under a subpar regime you get to reclassify as a "foreign worker"?
You know not all "foreign workers" are treated the same right? This applies to almost all countries. Plenty of people are happy to go to a place and work. Not everyone who goes to a place wants to or plans to become part of that culture. Or would expect to fully integrate. It is a balance. The reaffirmation of the 14th amendment is not exactly impressive. Quite a low bar you've reached for there.
Where did you live overseas? For how long? Did you consider it "immigration"? What were the terms of your status re work? Did you become a citizen?
I just don't really buy it. For someone who lived overseas the narrowness of your perspective is rather alarming.
Why would you apologize for that? Name one claim I've made that is impeached by your "experience"?
Doubtless many others have shared your experiences. Good for you. It's not really the point. My questions as to the OP I was responding to of a personal nature were quite obviously rhetorical. The point was to perhaps suggest some introspection. Not everyone's experiences are the same.
The more substantive questions have still not been answered. Oh well, I'm not owed anything.
But the fact you doubled down with a "me too" shows you also missed the point. I can supply you with people who have the opposite experience. Will you suddenly have a different view?
How have you spent two decades out of the US and found yourself so self assured? In your two decades did you not come across thousands with different experiences than you? Why would this give you such a high opinion of your own?
Fair enough. To be clear, these were made mostly in jest, in response to similarly assertive language made by the OP, which I guess you identified with. I certainly may be overly optimistic about Americans going overseas and learning some humility. But it's not like this is the first time I've been disappointed in this manner. Oh well.
I'm still curious if the OP acknowledges that some countries may make it easier to be a "foreign worker" vs a "citizen" and whether that has any value. I don't take these debates personally. I think the question of foreign worker vs immigrant could be an interesting one. Have a nice day!
Sort of a silly question. Can you name a single country like the US? Have you read your own history?
I said the reaffirmation was not impressive, not the amendment or the nature of said citizenship itself. The fact it had to be reaffirmed is not impressive. The OP I replied to already acknowledged this. Please read more carefully next time. Or if you think the reaffirmation was itself impressive, please just say so.
>Sort of a silly question. Can you name a single country like the US? Have you read your own history?
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here, exactly. The US is not the only country which offers birthright citizenship. But I don't believe there are any other countries like this in Europe or Asia.
>I said the reaffirmation was not impressive, not the amendment or the nature of said citizenship itself. The fact it had to be reaffirmed is not impressive. The OP I replied to already acknowledged this. Learn to read.
The OP brought up the 14th in the context of the country's stance towards immigrants. From this POV, I don't see why you would give undue weight to the reaffirmation compared with the "the amendment or the nature of said citizenship itself".
You can have the last word in this thread. Your incivility to clarity ratio is way too high for me to wish to continue further with you.
It's not about the last word. Just make a decent argument. There's nothing personal here. I actually hope to be corrected. That would be interesting. I don't hold anything against you.
As to your actual question, the reason is because they brought up the reaffirmation. Those were their words. As such, I gave it weight because they did - that was the point I was responding to.
As to the first part of your reply, I think it's very interesting actually. Birthright citizenship may not be exclusive to the United States, but it is relatively uncommon. The unique history of the United States plays a big part in this. This also does not automatically mean that the United States is a better place for immigrants today. One counterpoint is how it makes many of the debates around American immigration have a distinctly racial or cultural nature as nativist elements of the population want to find ways to control who can be born here. Of course it's not like those debates don't also happen elsewhere. No place is perfect.
I'm just pushing back against the self satisfaction of the OP I was replying to. These things are nuanced. I apologize if in my zeal to pushback I made you upset. Have a good day.
> Do you think the USA makes it easy to become a citizen?
Just because there are plenty of countries that make it easier to become a citizen doesn't mean there aren't plenty of countries that make it worse.
People going the H-1/O-1 route in a STEM field with an MS degree don't have a hard time becoming a citizen, unless they're Indian (and a little bit if Chinese). Literally everyone I know from my university and work days who went that route got it. A few got audited along the way, which added 1-2 years to the process, but they all still got it.
Now compare that with many friends of mine who left the US for ideological reasons and moved to countries where ... they have no hope for permanent residency, let alone citizenship. I just recently visited one of them - he has been in that country for 18 years, and is about to be kicked out because the economy is poor and they likely won't renew his residency status. For all those years, he never had a path to permanent residency (without paying a huge amount of money).
Another is a faculty member at a good university in the country he's in. He's surrounded by people who've spent their whole careers at that university and are now wondering where they'll move to post-retirement.
Yet another has spent almost two decades in a third country. He likes it, but admits the pressure to never lose a job and always find a stable one so he doesn't get kicked out does get to him sometimes.
It's worth pointing out that sometimes, some papers just become part of the general context of things and are no longer explicitly cited. Or people cite textbooks or general survey papers instead.
Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science...
Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic.
A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of specialization, your ability to write and do presentations, and your taste in research problems. These are all things take a lot of time to mature.
The problem with graduating fast is that (a) you wouldn't be able to do internships, (b) you would severely limit your ability to grow your social network (via workshops, conferences, internships, department service, etc), (c) you would limit your ability to deepen and broaden your portfolio of research, and (d) you limit the time your ideas have to percolate out into the rest of the research community and industry.
While I can't speak directly about your friend's experiences, learning how to do peer review and learning how to write first drafts are really important skills that can indirectly help with coming up and executing on a dissertation idea.
Taking a longer time to graduate to become the “world expert” in their field is fine if grad students weren’t paid next to nothing for the 60+ hours a week that they are expected to work. As it is now it’s better to finish as quickly as possible so they can have a real life.
To make "next to nothing" concrete: MIT EECS PhD students are currently paid about $4700/mo. This is substantially less than they'd make in industry, but it's around the US median personal income across all working-age adults, and well above the average 24 year-old. They frequently make a substantial extra at summer internships, putting them well above US median in the years when they do.
Also: it is school, not just a job. They are developing deep expertise and specialized skills. As a result, among other things, their earning potential tends to be significantly higher coming out of the PhD than out of undergrad.
You're looking at students at a top tier university in a field that pays extremely well. The numbers are going to be at the high end for what a grad student can make. A quick search for PhD salaries suggests that $20-35k/year is more common.
The median wage number you cited is also for the total population. According to this graph the median wage for college graduates is around $7k/mo. I'm fortunate to make very good money but I'd still notice a $2k/mo pay cut.
That's MIT. At a state university my friends were making in the ballpark of ~30k.
And yes, that is "next to nothing" compared to the salaries they make now after quitting and just finding work. And their outlooks are in significantly better shape, whereas one friend was highly depressed before.
People can also develop "deep expertise and specialized skills" through their work, and network via conferences, generally paid by their employer. Well, if they can find a job as a junior nowadays.
As someone who graduated with a 7.5 year long PhD last month,
I feel like PhD stipends are not a major problem. Like I got $40K in a low CoL area, but accounting for tuition and overheads I cost my advisor closer to $150K/year.
Now why are tuition and overheads that high is a reasonable question and it ties into inefficiencies in broader American administrative processes, but I cost society and taxpayers $150K/year, and that I'm doing it for societal benefit is honestly only partly true. The first 6 years was just me building real skills and letting myself be frustrated, and maybe in the last 1.5 years I did things that justify the $1M bill and more.
Even if I did eventually do things that justified the $1M bill, I think most students don't. The larger value IMO lies in a workforce trained in the failures and frustrations of grad school. While I could rattle of plenty of limitations of academia/grad school, I'm not entirely convinced that me being shortchanged/underpaid was one of those things.
It's great that you recognize that the last 1.5 years were the period you feel like you did things to justify that bill. However, much like juniors everywhere, you justify all of your pay because we are not paying you for your skill at that moment, but for who you will become.
Even more so for PHD work because the expectation is that after the training you will produce many things that make the cost of training you essentially negligible.
I worked a ton in grad school, and it definitely sucked at the time.
But it’s crazy to complain about getting paid to go to school. A grad stipend is there to minimally support you so you don’t have to get another job and can focus on your research. It’s not supposed to be a career!
It’s not crazy… the wages are below food prep. What would be crazy is paying to help someone else’s career. That’s why a well known rule of thumb for graduate program evaluation is whether or not they pay their grad students.
If they pay their grad students, then at least the time the grad students spend creates enough value to offset the cost of paying them.
If not, stay far away from the program.
Also, regarding the career comment: If graduate school is not at least the first step in a given career (it should the second, undergrad being the first), how/why do you expect gifted intellectuals to spend their prime wage earning years doing it?
Most people do not have access to enough wealth to spend prime wage earning years toiling to help someone else’s career with no return on investment.
I was working retail in Eugene, Oregon during the 2014 University of Oregon grad student strike. I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder because I was working retail with a master's degree in physics (because I did not have the endurance to complete a PhD, but had not yet accepted that fact).
My then-partner was part of the strike. One of the strike demands was higher wages as teaching assistants. And while I worked 40 hours a week, for $11/hr, I made considerably more and worked fewer hours than her. She put in probably 30 hours a week just on her teaching load, plus an additional 30 hours split between explicit course work and dissertation work.
It's crazy that a job that requires excellent marks while completing a 4-year degree pays worse, has worse working conditions, and is considerably more competitive to get into than a job selling office supplies.
One of the other things the grad students were demanding (which they only sort of got) was paid parental leave, because they did not fail to notice that most of their professors were in their late 30s or early 40s before they could afford to stop work long enough to start a family. It was very rare for two academics to have children together, because of the heinous, career ending financial cost to having children when you were young enough that their high school graduation date was before your expected mortality.
It would be crazy if the university were getting nothing out of it, but your work as a PhD student benefits not only you but the university as a whole. I think it would be reasonable to give students a living wage. I don't think anyone is expecting to make 100k.
I think the key difference is that: "going to school", sure you need a living stipend, but the actual research phase has serious WLB and working condition issues
Most applicants know that that outcome is antithetical to pursuing a PhD. It's common knowledge that a PhD involves 5-7 years of academic work (read: low pay) in pursuit of becoming an expert in a specialized topic. You don't enter a PhD program expecting to immediately make money or to graduate as soon as possible. It's not a coding bootcamp.
I agree with you. It is definitely what the PhD student signed up for. But like I said in a sibling reply I think if we are worried about having fewer grad students (not saying that we should be), then we may need to change the incentive structure surrounding the PhD programs to make it more worthwhile for people to invest the time and energy. Because how it is currently going it seems to me like fewer and fewer people are going to consider it worth the investment just for the credential alone.
re: incentives, my proposal was always to let schools pay their football and basketball players, but require that grad research assistants are paid the same.
Football and other sports are marketing and their wages should be paid for by that department. Along with proof the marketing return on investment is there.
Grad students should be paid for their work as well.
Isn’t this sort of how all terminal degrees work? MDs, JDs, etc are all putting the candidates through the wringer, for relatively low wages, until they’re “experienced”. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s common knowledge it’s the way things work if you want to have those magic letters of a terminal degree next to your name in your email signature.
Don’t want to deal with the machinations required? Opt for the masters track or just get an Undergraduate degree and spend 20y working your way up.
In the US, phds and professional degrees are more or less geared toward students who are comfortable enough financially to stomach the opportunity cost of 6-10+ years of additional education, unpaid or underpaid residencies and internships, and long apprenticeship hours (which prevent backfilling financial gaps) before making “real” income.
Most of the other comments are basically saying this ("the pay is too low for too long for not enough reward").
Anecdotally: I'm teaching a course in "How To Be Successful In College" (not it's real name) at the US community college where I teach Computer Science. I've got more than 1 student who are going to get a credential for nursing because there's just no way they can spend 8-10 years in school to become a doctor.
Would they be good doctors? The question is moot because it's never gonna happen.
I don't know that people even care, at that. The way most are forced to interact with the healthcare system, a doctor is just a nurse in a white coat who's also a bit of an asshole (aloof and/or smarmy). Especially when they misdiagnose or miss a diagnoses.
>The way most are forced to interact with the healthcare system
If you have an advanced CS degree, and I come to you with a complex issue concerning my desktop, and you spend 15 minutes filling out a digital intake form, 2 minutes tapping the tower, and finally tell me to power cycle whenever it comes up, I have every right to call you no better than a Geek Squad agent.
Let's be less pompous and let conduct speak for itself. If you're a skilled and highly-trained professional, demonstrate it. No credit for phoning it in, no credit for limiting your level of consideration and attentiveness to what a nurse is capable of. You're not owed prestige.
JD isn't a terminal degree. There's two higher degrees I think.
MDs and JDs are professional professional qualifications, which makes their situation a bit different from purely academic degrees. For example the ABA acts kind of like a cartel.
I don't think I disagree with you, by the way. I'm just more unhappy about it. All of these sclerotic, even corrupt, institutions acting like aging vats for talented youth, all to exclude newcomers and to maintain hierarchies...they're not ideal.
Yes, but I think as time goes on, fewer and fewer people are going to consider those letters next to their name worth it for the years that they need to invest. So, I am just saying that if MIT or whoever else is worried about having fewer grad students (not saying that they/we should be), then maybe it's time to change how it works.
Can you define that with more specificity? I find that academics have a major blind spot where good career means "the path I took" to the exclusion of all other paths.
>Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science
And your CV says another 6 dropped out. What was good for their careers?
The vast majority (>75%) of Computer Science PhDs leave academia. [0] Becoming a "world expert in a specific topic" is overfitting skills for a sub-niche of a specific career. There certainly aren't enough jobs in academia.
Yes, they don't realize it or lie to themselves because ~50% dropout.
Given the attrition, I really question if PhD programs are honest with incoming prospects. Law schools and business schools are similarly "guilty" of pimping outcomes.
ITT: it's people complaining about being overworked and mislead in their PhD programs.
> Yes, they don't realize it or lie to themselves because ~50% dropout.
I think there's some misinterpretation here. Not staying on in academia after PhD (common/modal) is not the same as not getting to complete a PhD (rare).
In CS/tech, those who exit academia after PhDs get paid $300K-$500K in the industry. I don't think there's any misleading going on.
>is not the same as not getting to complete a PhD (rare)
BTW, your perspective is bizarre.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that PhD candidate attrition is rare. Maybe at MIT where only 20% don't finish (within 10 years -- which is generous), but these are already pre-screened superstars. Most other places converge around 50%.
As for salaries, the median salary for CS PhDs outside academia is $180k. That means a lot are lower and probably aren't working at big tech with full comp pushing them above $300k. [0]
PhD programs have remarkably high attrition rates prior to graduation (ie dropout). I don't know that it's 50% and obviously it varies by institution and field but it's quite large.
>In CS/tech, those who exit academia after PhDs get paid $300K-$500K
Yes, I'd like to see data on what percentile gets this and breaks even for lost wages from their PhD years. IMHO, it's not fair to generalize this outcome. I could be wrong.
A research professor typically graduates dozens of PhD students. Perhaps there was a post-war bootstrapping period where every one of those students got a tenured position somewhere, and in turn also trained dozens of PhD students; but it's pretty obvious it's not realistic to expect this to continue indefinitely. We're way past saturation right now. Certainly very few are going to get their own tenured positions, and as for the rest, it depends on the winds of funding availability in industry.
A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years, come to the US and do a 2-3 year postdoc (with higher pay than a PhD student), and are ahead of their American peers.
Also, depending on where you do it in Europe, the pay as a PhD student is higher. At the extreme end, I knew students getting paid $60K/year in one country, while I was getting $24K/year in the US.
> A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years
Yes it is.
In most European universities, you will graduate in 3-4y.
And there is simple reasons for that: The funding associated with a Phd in many European country is 3-4y. So if you do not graduate, you actually become a burden for your lab.
A US thing again? My friends all did 3 year bachelors, 3 year PhD. Some dragged out the PhD to 4. Those who do a masters do it in one year, and typically don't do a PhD. Some undergrad courses are 4 year and you get a masters at the end. And my UK bachelors was recognized as equivalent to a US masters degree for visa purposes.
Maybe this is CS-specific? Finishing physics PhD from high school in 6 years sounds just not enough time. Even exceptional people I know in my field needed at least 7-8 (3+4 or 3+2+3). 3 years into theoretical physics grad school is around the time people start doing decent research
It's common, most of the people I know from the UK system did their PhD in 3-4 years.
In Europe you just study what it says as well. You happy to do a bachelor's in physics, your classes are all physics. You don't read shakespeare and learn french.
You can also do this in high school, so you can from age 16 be studying just physics and math.
I did none of my degrees in US, and my physics degree was 95% math and physics.
Physics degree is quite sequential anyway. You can't do QM in your first year or QFT in your second year.
I've checked random people I know from oxford and none started after 3-year undergrad and those how did after 4 all did 4 year dphil (small sample size warning). 4+4 is reasonable.
Maybe things have changed. We did QM in our first year at Imperial. I suppose we have to make allowances for Oxford. Got to fit the poetry in somewhere. =)
Obvious disclaimer: At this point we are talking about outlier colleges/universities.
But to give some examples, I know colleges (both in US and abroad) where people did real analysis and abstract algebra in their first year (and why not - neither requires prerequisites other than maturity).
I know a college (in the US) where they did Jackson for E&M in the 3rd year (and some advanced students did in the 2nd year). In most US universities, people normally do Jackson in the first year of their PhD.
I think it's rare to do QM before 2nd year, but in principle, as long as you know calculus/diff eq, you can get going on it. The catch is that the interesting applications require other branches of physics (e.g. E&M). When I did QM, all those applications were part of QM II anyway.
But yes, again, these are outliers and I wouldn't want to say it's the norm in the whole country.
Yeah 3 - 4 is typical in STEM at Imperial, depends on the scholarship or funding source. The standard funding tends to assume 3 - 3.5 years, but I vaguely recall that in some departments supervisors had a habit of forcing people to stick around for a few months without funding.
In some countries, the PhD program is fixed at 3 years. You either graduate by then, or you're out (in reality, they give some option for you to pay to continue, but almost no one can afford it). I suspect in those places, people have done a 2 year MS.
I agree with all those things, but we should be starting that training in middle school. Deconstructing arguments, making reports, giving presentations, solving open ended questions. Many of these things involve a modest amount of critical thinking, prediction and self-reflection.
Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement.
PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits
PhD candidates in the US usually get somewhere between $25K and $50K stipend, also some level of benefits (typically health care). Sometimes there is a tuition waiver (student does not need to pay grad program tuition).
In my case I was making $32K/year with a tuition waiver and health benefits around ~2000, in SF, which was barely enough to rent a shared apartment and eat food. The only way I could rationalize it is that I was maximizing my future freedom (job choice).
Yes, I suppose you could try to justify it as "this is the price you pay for having the freedom to build your own research plan in the future" ("maximizing your future freedom") but in reality, this just sets you up for more of the same- getting a faculty position (pre-tenure) with a low salary, and immense pressure to bring in funds via research grants/publish papers.
I eventually tired of the process and moved to industry because the struggle wasn't worth it.
No it's typical. It's just that your stipend is usually just x amount of Dollars + whatever tuition is so you never have to care what it is and you don't pay it directly per se, it's just included in your stipend. Someone pays for it at the end of the day though.
Yeah, I distinctionly remember a postdoc I knew who was irrationally excited to move to a role where they were going to get paid $35k, in 2010s money, and they were damn excited about it. And they were moving to a high cost of living area (from a high cost of living area). I was utterly flabbergasted because they were very smart, very technical and should have been earning 5-10x that. I feel like they didn't know what they were worth and academia had utterly failed to teach them that.
I don't know how they paid any of their accumulated (I assume) student debt, let alone had an even decent standard of living.
In France STEM PhD are expected to last 3 year and the funding is sized like that. It is also considered as a job. It is only done if salary is funded in most cases.
Often it spill over a bit and I guess France travail (French job agency managing insurance for people losing their job) should often be cited /thanked in Phd student thesis for funding the final steps of their manuscript.
There are limited internship culture during the phd itself Afaik.
However phd is never started at Bachelor level, only after Msc that last two years and requires an internship or research projet.
I heard a person saying a bit like you that it is not enough to grow a Real expert though compared to US phd. But Oftentimes postdoc always follow for Longer and longer
It’s also a set of credentials, which might be immediately useful for one reason or other. All those other things you can do outside of a program, especially if you’ve already got the network or career trajectory to support it.
I agree that completing a PhD under the time originally agreed may not be good, as you lose some of the learning opportunities that come with the apprenticeship (yes, it is) program.
However, taking more time than the standard length, whatever it is depending on the university or country where you are pursuing the title, is also something universities and specially PIs should be actively avoiding.
Maybe I have this view because I got mine in NL, where a PhD is a job with a defined length (4 years) and if you go over it, you don't get paid. So yes, it is an apprenticeship, but you should not be doing work for free in any case. Becoming an expert and the (relative) independence on how to do your research are of course selling points of the PhD, but a job is a job.
>The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic.
In my opinion and from my experience, this is an odd expectation considering that a PhD is the absolute beginner career stage in research. It's the equivalent of being trusted to not mess up the morning coffee run.
A PhD is only indicative of having demonstrated the ability to complete research to a level that satisfies other researchers. Many of the things you describe are things one is expected to learn in their postdoc and as a junior researcher.
I finished mine (computer engineering) in ~5 years, practically 7 since I transferred near the end of a 2 year masters program. I was/am blessed with a good supervisor though.
All of the things you mention can also be done as a PostDoc. Which might be even better for social networking, broadening your research portfolio, etc. than staying in a single PhD position for the duration of a PhD + PostDoc.
> Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career.
this is such a "trust me bro it's good for you" con.
i graduated in 3.5 years and went directly to FAANG where i make 2x the highest paid TT at the T10 school i graduated from. do you really have the gall to tell me that it wasn't good for my career to accelerate my PhD and thereby minimize its cost (i.e., opportunity cost).
> A PhD is more like an apprenticeship
the vast majority of advisors have no skills other than how to hack the pub game. they literally have zero clue about the research. the remainder are the "exceptions that prove the rule".
As much as I would have loved to get out in sooner than six years, I tend to agree. In hindsight, if I'd treated it like a job and just done the coding and writing necessary to get the projects I published out the door, I could have done it in three, maybe two. But that would have missed the whole point.
We're working on AI user testing, to make it dramatically faster and cheaper for product managers and dev teams to find major usability issues with web sites. Give us a web site and a task users would do (e.g. "Add a pink shirt to the shopping cart"), and we have some AI users try their best to do the task. The output is a report with a prioritized list of problems identified, plus narrated videos that show each AI user trying the site.
If you want to try it out, we offer some free credits at https://fuguux.com
Any feedback you have would be incredibly helpful! We're considering more kinds of reporting, support for QA testing, better integration with CI/CD, and more.
Note: we don't want to replace real user testing, but rather complement it. With AI user testing, you can get quick feedback on potential usability problems in hours for a fraction of the cost, making it so you can iterate much faster. We advocate doing user tests with real people to understand problems that require domain knowledge or nuance.
Two concepts that help explain the original article are Diffusion of Innovations and Social Proof.
Diffusion of Innovations is a widely cited theory explaining why people do or don't adopt any kind of innovation, from boiling water to eating limes on British ships to installing telephones. The concept of innovators, early adopters, and late adopters comes from this theory. More relevant to this post is that this theory posits five factors contributing to adoption, one of which is Observability: you can easily see other people gaining benefit from an innovation. The more Observable an innovation, the more likely it is to be adopted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
The other is Social Proof. Seeing what other people are doing, especially those that are similar to you in some way, can help steer your behavior, often in subtle and unconscious ways. There are studies about how simple signs like "people who stayed in this hotel room re-used their towels" or "most of your neighbors are reducing their electricity usage too" can shift people's behaviors, even without people explicitly realizing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof
My colleagues and I used these concepts in several pieces of research on what we called Social Cybersecurity (joking that the term "Social Security" was already taken). The insight we had was that cybersecurity has very low observability, making it hard for innovations to diffuse through one's social network. That is, I don't know what your cybersecurity practices are, and vice versa, making it hard for best practices to be adopted.
One intervention we did was a large-scale intervention on Facebook to improve observability, showing that simple messages like "108 of your friends use extra security settings" did increase clickthru and adoption rates of those settings.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2660267.2660271
Nearly 20 years ago after reading Diffusion of Innovations I decided to use everything in the book. The company ran off a few svn servers (formally cvs) and so I ran a handful of Git courses at my work to help us ultimately migrate to Git (this was early days of Git). I explicitly tried to find folks not just near me, but physically around the office building across all of the floors, teams, and orgs. They were my early adopters and when random folks would come to me either curious or for help I would bring them to the "local" expert and together solve their problem, from there they had a local expert and little hubs sprung up. We had the standard svn => git mirror going when the time came to convert to Git full time in the office it was very painless and a complete success.
I was too young to understand that this is how you run a successful "transformation project", I simply was having fun using every trick from that book and done the same playbook a number of times over my career.
I saw Jim Clark (founder of SGI, Netscape, Healtheon) talk one time about entrepreneurship. He said something that compactly explains a lot of issues humanity faces in general: "One person's inefficiency is someone else's bottom line."
A lot of the things that the original post shares has this characteristic. Sure, things in US healthcare are wildly inefficient, but that's how a lot of these companies make a lot of money. And they will lobby and fight to the death that cash flow.
Here's an excerpt of the video where he explains his idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svl_1upFpQo
My summary: Science is like a hike. You have a general sense of what direction you want to go. You explore things along the way. You might make wrong turns but might also discover something new and interesting. While on your journey, you might spot new mountains or waterfalls or other vistas that look like they might be good to explore.
In contrast, AI is like taking a helicopter to your destination. Yes you got there quickly, but you missed a lot on the way.
Related, Tao later talks about the pipeline. It used to be that seminal proofs were rare, so there was lots of time for the community to review them, process them, share them, and summarize them in textbooks. Nowadays, AI helps a lot with generating more proofs, but not so much with the other parts of the pipeline.
Tao also explains the math pipeline issue in his talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians, also shared on HN last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056620
My overall take: Tao is very thoughtful and insightful about progress in AI and math, and about what the tradeoffs are. We're seeing similar problems in computer science (my field), where conferences are now getting over 10x the number of submitted papers over just a few years ago (not an exaggeration). It's straining the research community in ability to review, understand, and present the papers.
reply