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Adele_L comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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Hi everyone. I have been lurking on this site for a long time, and somewhat recently have made an account, but I still feel pretty new here. I've read most of the sequences by now, and I feel that I've learned a lot from them. I have changed myself in some small ways as a result, most notably by donating small amounts to whatever charity I feel is most effective at doing good, with the intention that I will donate much more once I am capable of doing so.
I'm currently working on a Ph.D. in Mathematics right now, and I am also hoping that I can steer my research activities towards things that will do good. Still not sure exactly how to do this, though.
I also had the opportunity to attend my local Less Wrong meetup, and I have to say it was quite enjoyable! I am looking forward toward future interactions with my local community.
Hi Adele. Given what you write in your introduction, it's likely that you have already heard of this organization, but if this is not the case: you may want to check out 80,000 Hours. They provide evidence-based career advice for people that want to make a difference.
Thank you. I have been meaning to look into that more, so thanks for the reminder!
Welcome! I like your username.
EDIT: I know several people in this community who dropped out of math grad school, and most of them were happy with the decision. I'm choosing to graduate with a PhD in a useless field because I find myself in a situation where I can get one in exchange for a few months of work. I know someone who switched to algebraic statistics, which is a surprisingly useful field that involves algebraic geometry.
I haven't looked at this issue in detail, but I seem to recall that not getting more education was one of the more common regrets among "Terman's geniuses", whoever those are. Link.
What is their reasoning?
I can't speak for them, but I expect it's something like this: One can make more money, do more good, have a more fun career, and have more freedom in where one lives by dropping out than by going into academia. And having a PhD when hunting for non-academic jobs is not worth spending several years as a grad student doing what one feels is non-valuable work for little pay.
You'd have to speak to someone who successfully dropped out to get more details; and of course even if all their judgments are correct, they may not be correct for you.
Thanks, it's just my name and last initial.
Ah, I thought it was a math-flavored pseudonym. Also, I added an addendum to my comment above.
There are several people on LW (myself included) who continue to be in graduate school in mathematics. If you're interested in just talking math, there'll be an audience for that. I would personally be interested in more academic networking happening here--even if most people on LW will end up leaving mathematics as such.
Oh yeah, of course! I currently intend on getting my Ph.D. at least, although I am less certain about remaining in academia after that. I'm not sure LW is the place to talk about math that isn't of more general interest, but I am happy to talk more about it in PMs (I'm also a number theorist).
I consulted the Magic ∞-Ball (a neighborhood of semantic space with oracular properties) and it said: "The adelic cohomology of constructive quantum ordinals is technically essential to proving that induction plus reflection is asymptotically optimal in all Ω-logical worlds, and that's the key theorem in seed AI. So number theory is very important."