I think “different timelines don’t change the EV of different options very much” plus “personal fit considerations can change the EV of a PhD by a ton” does end up resulting in an argument for the PhD decision not depending much on timelines. I think that you’re mostly disagreeing with the first claim, but I’m not entirely sure.
In terms of your point about optimal allocation, my guess is that we disagree to some extent about how much the optimal allocation has changed, but that the much more important disagreement is about whether some kind of centrally planned ‘first decide what fraction of the community should be doing what’ approach is a sensible way of allocating talent, where my take is that it usually isn’t.
I have a vague sense of this talent allocation question having been discussed a bunch, but don’t have write-up that immediately comes to mind that I want to point to. I might write something about this at some point, but I’m afraid it’s unlikely to be soon. I realise that I haven’t argued for my talent allocation claim at all, which might be frustrating, but it seemed better to highlight the disagreement at all than ignore it, given that I didn’t have the time to explain in detail.
I think “different timelines don’t change the EV of different options very much” plus “personal fit considerations can change the EV of a PhD by a ton” does end up resulting in an argument for the PhD decision not depending much on timelines. I think that you’re mostly disagreeing with the first claim, but I’m not entirely sure.
Yep, that’s right that I’m disagreeing with the first claim. I think one could argue the main claim either by:
Regardless of your timelines, you (person considering doing a PhD) shouldn’t take it too much into consideration
I (advising you on how to think about whether to do a PhD) think timelines are such that you shouldn’t take timelines too much into consideration
I think (1) is false, and think that (2) should be qualified by how one’s advice would change depending on timelines. (You do briefly discuss (2), e.g. the SOTA comment).
To put my cards on the table, on the object level, I have relatively short timelines and that fewer people should be doing PhDs on the margin. My highly speculative guess is that this post has the effect of marginally pushing more people towards doing PhDs (given the existing association of shorter timelines ⇒ shouldn’t do a PhD).
I think “different timelines don’t change the EV of different options very much” plus “personal fit considerations can change the EV of a PhD by a ton” does end up resulting in an argument for the PhD decision not depending much on timelines. I think that you’re mostly disagreeing with the first claim, but I’m not entirely sure.
In terms of your point about optimal allocation, my guess is that we disagree to some extent about how much the optimal allocation has changed, but that the much more important disagreement is about whether some kind of centrally planned ‘first decide what fraction of the community should be doing what’ approach is a sensible way of allocating talent, where my take is that it usually isn’t.
I have a vague sense of this talent allocation question having been discussed a bunch, but don’t have write-up that immediately comes to mind that I want to point to. I might write something about this at some point, but I’m afraid it’s unlikely to be soon. I realise that I haven’t argued for my talent allocation claim at all, which might be frustrating, but it seemed better to highlight the disagreement at all than ignore it, given that I didn’t have the time to explain in detail.
Yep, that’s right that I’m disagreeing with the first claim. I think one could argue the main claim either by:
Regardless of your timelines, you (person considering doing a PhD) shouldn’t take it too much into consideration
I (advising you on how to think about whether to do a PhD) think timelines are such that you shouldn’t take timelines too much into consideration
I think (1) is false, and think that (2) should be qualified by how one’s advice would change depending on timelines. (You do briefly discuss (2), e.g. the SOTA comment).
To put my cards on the table, on the object level, I have relatively short timelines and that fewer people should be doing PhDs on the margin. My highly speculative guess is that this post has the effect of marginally pushing more people towards doing PhDs (given the existing association of shorter timelines ⇒ shouldn’t do a PhD).