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Benefits of being PhD?

category: general [glöplog]
"So, do you base your assumption on something else other than ignorance ?"

yes I do. Practical experience and a lot of freinds and family members who have doctorates. There is only one thing truely ignorant here, to call ignorant views on a person about which you know nothing at all. That's ignorant! and my oppinion stands!
added on the 2009-06-17 21:17:29 by NoahR NoahR
the person who lives the longest in a healthy state. has the highest iq. imo. well that is until he realizes he is either the last one left or that all the people left are unhealthy and unable to help him any longer.

phd's are good for showing you have skills. possibly amazing skills. but, it does seem like a legal way to be prejudice. so, that a person who is less qualified can't even get a job. because everyone is trying to be better than everyone else. rather than realizing that everyone needs a job or you end up homeless and starving. which is noones fault. it's just the way people are built.

...and then you die. i'm still waiting on that cure. because, i am not qualified to do it.

just felt like ranting for no particular reason. i'll probably stop giving a shit about it after i post it.
added on the 2009-06-17 21:22:13 by hexen hexen
Iblis, pratical experience such as the one you may have is only valid if it's not here to serve an a-priori opinion you may have had.

There's no way for me to know whether you had an a-priori expectation or any other bias, however I wanted to point out that it's very easy to confirm anything through "practical experience."
added on the 2009-06-17 21:29:03 by _-_-__ _-_-__
I second Navis. And in the scientific community we call that "triangulation" :P
added on the 2009-06-17 21:48:04 by chromag chromag
it also depends on how broad your definition of "humanities" is. in my traineeship-style education job thingy that i do, we've a coach who has a psychology phd and damn it shows. he's instrumental in making us all better at *ourselves*. it's really great to have the opportunity to make use of the skills of someone like this. on the other side, i totally dig eebliss's plato argument.
added on the 2009-06-17 21:53:48 by skrebbel skrebbel
Ebliss, If it wasnt for humanistic studies our science would still be contaminated by crappy greek metaphysics and mysticism, and Christian and Islamic occasionalism.

added on the 2009-06-17 22:42:00 by Deus Deus
Bias is the human condition :) We tend to read only what reinforces our held beliefs, prefer the company of people who think like we do ourselfs, and hear the news we like to hear. That is why we are fucked, but who is free from it? I most certainly are not, if that wasn't obvious.

Deus, expand please
added on the 2009-06-17 22:52:04 by NoahR NoahR
eebliss: modern physics is build upon a work of last 20 century of continuous humanities (art science) by all-those-philosophers-everybody-know-but-didn't-read...
for me this is enough to say that this branch of science is equally (if not even more) important, isn't it?
added on the 2009-06-17 23:31:07 by maq maq
interestingly... i have to consider this question IRL... though, i _know_ i am not that much of a scientific person as i always went like _ARGH_ when it came to *certain* scientific papers (you know, the ones that either state the obvious or are pissing against the right pole, but not lifting their leg high enough), as i fear i do not have it in me to be damn methodological, for which i blame my weird creativity, which is... not straightforward.. so yeah.. tough tough tough.. i do have the analytical brain for it, just not the method and devotion...
added on the 2009-06-18 00:08:20 by maali maali
a fair point. But by the same measure, shouldnt science fiction be labeled a science? While this at surface may seem a laughable proposition, several inventions and discoveries was inspired by science fiction. while we do owe the definition of ethics (not the phenomena itself mind you) and similar to philosophy, what makes it qualify as a science other than a historical dept? I am not belittling it, im questioning it's place in todays setting.

And I have much the same reservation about psychology. On one hand a good shrink can look at a few crimescenes and tell you what kind of type did it, this is very impressive, on the other hand the human mind have so many quircks and random outbursts that anything but group psychology is highly unpredictable.

It allows for no definite method, and it's predictions are often vague on the personal level. Group psychology is a little different, human groups are fairly predictable, but only to a certain degree. which is why a lot of "the next big things" never catch on, regardless of the amounts of group psychology professionals the add or political agency hired for the job. It is educated guesswork, which definately has its place, feel good about yourself courses is a good thing, heavens, most of us could properbly use it, but is it science? here is my beef.

A phd in physics will not get away with posing for very long if they are incompetent at what they do, their daily reviewers are likely to be their peers. A psychologist on the other hand, can get a Phd for knowing all the rigth words, terms, phrases and history and still be entirely incompetent at handling other humans. Thus it can serve as a shielding for incomtence rather than a sign of being so good at what you are educated to do that society itself gives you a formal title before you even enter the workforce.
added on the 2009-06-18 01:08:09 by NoahR NoahR
Quote:

"So, do you base your assumption on something else other than ignorance ?"

yes I do. Practical experience and a lot of freinds and family members who have doctorates. There is only one thing truely ignorant here, to call ignorant views on a person about which you know nothing at all. That's ignorant! and my oppinion stands!


ok fair enough. But I would like to see what is your definition of "humanistic" sciences. Plato an irrelevant cult leader ? only he affected western world thinking for a couple of thousand years, long before your fucking computers, your fucking "computer science" phds and your fucking demos even existed.


Respect to true humanity scientists.
added on the 2009-06-18 01:10:03 by Navis Navis
dont take things so seriously Navis, I am not blind to the dept we owe to such philosophers, but it is is entirely subjective whether or not it was a good thing.
added on the 2009-06-18 01:13:45 by NoahR NoahR
well we'll never know, will we. But I suspect that in civilization, action is better than inertia. Plato's and others contribution generated a fractalesque interest and debate over many aspects of science, art, politics, ethics, etc. etc. that echoes to present days, surely something good has come out of that too (or potentially will come).
added on the 2009-06-18 01:18:38 by Navis Navis
i am officially a "doktorant" since this week. so you might be able to call me dr. dipswitch in 3-4 years. =)

no, seriously, i see this (given i receive a stipendium) as a good opportunity to to full-time science for a while, work in the archives, and write a hopefully interesting book. the phd title is a nice thing of course, and absolutely necessary if you want to stay in science (which i definitely do want) - but still, i am rather looking forward to hold my book in my hands and read the reviews about it. a bit of a scene release mentality... :)
added on the 2009-06-18 01:19:23 by dipswitch dipswitch
I certainly am not going to disagree with that. i merely expand upon it the possability of the influence to have atleast bordered, just another one of many of our obsessions which has ended up properbly serving as the opposite of it's intention, a set of intellectual fetters. A little like religion i guess, and to be honest I feel that those two realms are much closer related than either of them is to science as understood today.
added on the 2009-06-18 01:25:55 by NoahR NoahR
congrants mr.doktorant :)
added on the 2009-06-18 01:26:31 by NoahR NoahR
ah yes, but no religion = no oratoria from bach, mozart etc.

not much fun in that
added on the 2009-06-18 01:30:59 by Navis Navis
religion is just one way of seeking the truth...
added on the 2009-06-18 01:46:28 by maali maali
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added on the 2009-06-18 01:52:54 by wWales wWales
the truth is noone actually knows and science is just something that is basically an observation of reality. which was here before anyone started observing it.
added on the 2009-06-18 02:04:59 by hexen hexen
is this even about the benefit of a phd anymore?
added on the 2009-06-18 02:07:24 by hexen hexen
could the question be answered objectively at all in the first place?
added on the 2009-06-18 02:21:41 by maali maali
well i think dipswitch hit the nail on the subject, at least as far as any demoscene relations to this topic goes, that the benefit of being a phd is that you are the one who gets to release the stuff coming generations will get inspired by (or will try to disprove, forcing them to creative thinking and constructive research)

:)
added on the 2009-06-18 02:37:13 by wWales wWales
Phd = scientific demoscemers. Check out what i can do in 30 000 words.

I like this thread, everyone is watching their spelling and trying their best not to prove themselves an idiot. Quite nice.
added on the 2009-06-18 04:01:09 by alumunum alumunum
there's only so much you can predict, extrapolate or say about our existence by shoe-horning phenomena to match illusiory number statistics (or vice versa). i find it odd that athiests claim that religion and science are mutually exclusive. almost conspiratorially odd.

i mean, if i were a super-duper scientist who'd somehow gathered and understood all current scientific theory and could go no further (which i'm patently not), religion would be my next stop. afterall, krishna was explaining metaphysics before we even had a name for it. true meditative religion holds the key and science is the language of "God" but it answers very little of importance in and of itself.

i dread to think of the shell of humanity we will become once athiests have completed their rampage :/ will we even have a desire for science?
added on the 2009-06-18 04:15:08 by button button

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