Ok, so—I hear what you’re saying, but a) that is not the way it’s supposed to be, and b) you are missing the point.
First, a), even in the current academia, you are in a bad position. If I were you, I would switch mentors or programs ASAP.
I understand where you’re coming from perfectly. I had a very similar experience: I spent three years in a failed PhD (the lab I was working in went under at the same time as the department I was in), and I ended up getting a MS instead. But even in that position, which was all tedious gruntwork, I understood the hypothesis and had some input. I switched to a different field, and a different mentor, where most of my work was still tedious, but it was driven by ideas I came to while working with my adviser.
If your position is, as it seems to be, even worse—that you have NO input whatsoever, and are purely cheap labor—then you should switch mentors immediately. If you don’t, you might finish your PhD with a great deal of bitterness, but it is much more likely that you will simply burn out and drop out.
Which brings me to b). As I said above, it would be pointless for Eliezer to go to grad school now. Even at best, it contains a lot of tedious, repetitive work. But the essential point stands: in a poorly constrained area such as transhumanism, grand ideas are not enough. That is where PhD does have a function, and does have a reason.
Actually, my mentor is among one of the nicest guys around and is a good manager, offers good advice, and has a consistent record of producing successful students. It’s just that almost no grad student gets to have real input in what they are doing. If you do have that, consider yourself lucky, because the dozens of grad students that I know aren’t in a position like that. I just had a meeting today where my adviser talked to me about having to balance my time between “whatever needs doing” (for the utility of our whole research group rather than just my own dissertation) and doing my own reading/research. His idea (shared by many faculty members) is that for a few years at the front end of the PhD, you mostly do about 80% general utility work and infrastructure work, just to build experience, write code, get involved… then after you get into some publications a few years later, the roles switch and you shift to more like 80% writing and doing your own thing (research). The problem is that if you’re a passionate student with good ideas, then that first few years of bullshit infrastructure work is a complete waste of time. The run-of-the-mill PhD student (who generally is not really all that smart or hardworking) might do fine just being told what to program for a few years, but the really intellectually curious people will die inside. Plus, for those really smart PhD students out there, I think it’s in my best interest that they be cleared of all nuisance responsibilities and allowed to just work.
As for point (b), my reasoning would be like this: “in a poorly constrained area such as transhumanism, grand ideas are not enough, and that’s exactly why a PhD is irrelevant and I have no reason to think that someone has better or more useful or more important ideas than Eliezer just because that person has been published in peer reviewed journals.”
Ok, so—I hear what you’re saying, but a) that is not the way it’s supposed to be, and b) you are missing the point.
First, a), even in the current academia, you are in a bad position. If I were you, I would switch mentors or programs ASAP.
I understand where you’re coming from perfectly. I had a very similar experience: I spent three years in a failed PhD (the lab I was working in went under at the same time as the department I was in), and I ended up getting a MS instead. But even in that position, which was all tedious gruntwork, I understood the hypothesis and had some input. I switched to a different field, and a different mentor, where most of my work was still tedious, but it was driven by ideas I came to while working with my adviser.
If your position is, as it seems to be, even worse—that you have NO input whatsoever, and are purely cheap labor—then you should switch mentors immediately. If you don’t, you might finish your PhD with a great deal of bitterness, but it is much more likely that you will simply burn out and drop out.
Which brings me to b). As I said above, it would be pointless for Eliezer to go to grad school now. Even at best, it contains a lot of tedious, repetitive work. But the essential point stands: in a poorly constrained area such as transhumanism, grand ideas are not enough. That is where PhD does have a function, and does have a reason.
Actually, my mentor is among one of the nicest guys around and is a good manager, offers good advice, and has a consistent record of producing successful students. It’s just that almost no grad student gets to have real input in what they are doing. If you do have that, consider yourself lucky, because the dozens of grad students that I know aren’t in a position like that. I just had a meeting today where my adviser talked to me about having to balance my time between “whatever needs doing” (for the utility of our whole research group rather than just my own dissertation) and doing my own reading/research. His idea (shared by many faculty members) is that for a few years at the front end of the PhD, you mostly do about 80% general utility work and infrastructure work, just to build experience, write code, get involved… then after you get into some publications a few years later, the roles switch and you shift to more like 80% writing and doing your own thing (research). The problem is that if you’re a passionate student with good ideas, then that first few years of bullshit infrastructure work is a complete waste of time. The run-of-the-mill PhD student (who generally is not really all that smart or hardworking) might do fine just being told what to program for a few years, but the really intellectually curious people will die inside. Plus, for those really smart PhD students out there, I think it’s in my best interest that they be cleared of all nuisance responsibilities and allowed to just work.
As for point (b), my reasoning would be like this: “in a poorly constrained area such as transhumanism, grand ideas are not enough, and that’s exactly why a PhD is irrelevant and I have no reason to think that someone has better or more useful or more important ideas than Eliezer just because that person has been published in peer reviewed journals.”
http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/doug-casey-education