It is hard for me to think of much advice that has gone worse for rationalists/EAs on average than ‘Get a PHD’. I know dozens of people in the community who spent at least some time in a PHD program. There is a huge amount of people expressing strong regret. A small number of people think their PHD went ok. Very few people think their PHD was a great and effective idea. Notably, I am only counting people who have already left grad school and had some time to reflect.
The track record is incredibly bad in the community. The opportunity cost is extremely high. I very strongly urge people to reconsider.
Another angle is that it is just a very unhealthy environment on average. Here is Ben Kuhn explaining the data:
First I looked for a bigger survey of graduate student depression and anxiety rates. It wasn’t too hard to find one, and the numbers were almost the same: 41% of graduate students had “moderate to severe” anxiety compared to 6% of the general population; 39% had moderate to severe depression compared to 6% of the general public.
To give a bit more context: I’ve specifically seen some ML PhDs work out fine, but feel like I’ve seen almost every other type of PhD work out badly, with my sense being that the person was not in a substantially better epistemic or career position after their PhD, especially compared to them having worked an industry job in the direction they would have liked to go into, or just independently writing blogposts.
More than half of the PhDs I have heard of were aborted in the middle, with the person going through a major depressive period or something similar like it during it, and the levels of regret afterwards being quite high.
ML PhDs seem somewhat better, in particular at places like CHAI where my sense is that people are working on stuff that’s a lot more aligned with their goals. Though I think the track record is still pretty bad.
It is hard for me to think of much advice that has gone worse for rationalists/EAs on average than ‘Get a PHD’. I know dozens of people in the community who spent at least some time in a PHD program. There is a huge amount of people expressing strong regret. A small number of people think their PHD went ok. Very few people think their PHD was a great and effective idea. Notably, I am only counting people who have already left grad school and had some time to reflect.
The track record is incredibly bad in the community. The opportunity cost is extremely high. I very strongly urge people to reconsider.
Another angle is that it is just a very unhealthy environment on average. Here is Ben Kuhn explaining the data:
Having talked to many people for multiple hours (>100) over the years about their career decisions, I share this assessment.
To give a bit more context: I’ve specifically seen some ML PhDs work out fine, but feel like I’ve seen almost every other type of PhD work out badly, with my sense being that the person was not in a substantially better epistemic or career position after their PhD, especially compared to them having worked an industry job in the direction they would have liked to go into, or just independently writing blogposts.
More than half of the PhDs I have heard of were aborted in the middle, with the person going through a major depressive period or something similar like it during it, and the levels of regret afterwards being quite high.
ML PhDs seem somewhat better, in particular at places like CHAI where my sense is that people are working on stuff that’s a lot more aligned with their goals. Though I think the track record is still pretty bad.