[mathisfun123]

i had a kid (~last week) ask me to edit his PhD proposal (I guess in the EU you have to already have a project in mind?) and I said I would happily edit it for him if he first let me try to convince him not to do a PhD.

my hypothesis on the value of a PhD: if you are the kind of person that can finish an honest PhD i.e., real work that's not necesssarily novel (I don't give a flying fuck about "novelty") but actually requires you to stretch hard to achieve, then you don't need one and it will cost you years of productive/rewarding/lucrative work in industry (and 100% academia is not for you).

i don't know what the "on the otherhand" is though - I really have no idea how anyone comes away from this process thinking "hmm yes I want more of this pile of bs" so I have no idea what kind of psychopaths go into academia (for which the PhD is indeed a prerequisite).

[ghaff]

Long ago, I used to think that in a world where I had more money than I could possibly need, getting a PhD and becoming something like a history professor wouldn't be a bad life. Let's just say that I no longer believe that would have been the case.