I think these arguments only apply if you are somehow doing a PhD in AI safety. Otherwise you just wasted most of 5 years doing only tangentially relevant work. The skills of developing and evaluating research programs are taught and practiced, but I’d say they usually occupy less than 1% of the time on task.
Source: I did a PhD in a related field, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I feel like it was probably worth it, but that’s for the content of my studies, not anything about methodology or learning to do research.
But it’s also hugely dependent on the advisor. Most advisors are too stressed out to spend much time actually training students. If yours isn’t, great.
I now say that no one should do grad school in any topic without having a very good idea of how their specific advisor treats students. I saw it do tremendous damage to many students, just through transmitted stress and poor mentoring skills.
OTOH I think it’s far too harsh to say that academia is particularly bad at teaching bad thinking or incentivizing fraud. Every field does those things. I think more academics are informally rationalists and good people than are found in other careers, even though it’s still a minority that are really rationalists.
I think these arguments only apply if you are somehow doing a PhD in AI safety. Otherwise you just wasted most of 5 years doing only tangentially relevant work. The skills of developing and evaluating research programs are taught and practiced, but I’d say they usually occupy less than 1% of the time on task.
WRT evaluating research programs, see Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia.
Source: I did a PhD in a related field, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I feel like it was probably worth it, but that’s for the content of my studies, not anything about methodology or learning to do research.
But it’s also hugely dependent on the advisor. Most advisors are too stressed out to spend much time actually training students. If yours isn’t, great.
I now say that no one should do grad school in any topic without having a very good idea of how their specific advisor treats students. I saw it do tremendous damage to many students, just through transmitted stress and poor mentoring skills.
OTOH I think it’s far too harsh to say that academia is particularly bad at teaching bad thinking or incentivizing fraud. Every field does those things. I think more academics are informally rationalists and good people than are found in other careers, even though it’s still a minority that are really rationalists.