Comment author: SRStarin 25 February 2011 08:16:45PM *  3 points [-]

After writing the third paragraph below, it would appear I think your rebuttals to Arguments 4 & 7 are most salient. I believe the idea that fundamental research is very important for future discoveries to be possible, but I have an argument for that which you don't list. The great minds that gave us theories of gravitation, evolution, and quantum mechanics all learned their fields by doing research. Some of them did basic theoretical work, and others did applied work. But, even the ones who did applied work may have learned significantly from people who were more suited, or who more enjoyed, theoretical work.

So, if you really, really love the theoretical stuff, and you're just worried that you'll feel your life has been a waste at the end, being afraid of lifelong commitment is not a good reason by itself to fail to commit. Honest curiosity about other fields is valid, and if that's at least part of what you're feeling, read on. (Well, you may read on anyway, I'm aware :)

What else have you tried doing? Have you ever worked in a position where you did something other than pure research? If the answer is "No," I would say you should definitely value trying something else, at least for a little while. If you are currently a research graduate student, you are in the perfect position to take a year off and do just that. Apply for an internship to do math modeling for an oil company (or work at a radio telescope, or something else that has a practical application.) I did a one year internship at Los Alamos National Labs as a spacecraft payload operator based on my undergrad physics degree. In a "real job," you have several different kind of responsibilities--not just different responsibilities, but different kinds. I checked the daily health reports on the satellite, yes. But I also attended meetings of top astrophysicists, getting insight into how they think and what they do. (One of those scientists, Roger Fenimore, taught me the lesson that the people who really make important things happen often get experience from multiple disparate fields, and then notice important connections between them.) I investigated small failures in the satellite data, learning about materials science and clean room procedures along the way. I gave tours of our facility to visitors. I participated in a student council, helping to improve student life in a small, isolated town.

If you're a professor already, you're in a bit more of a pickle, because there's no guarantee of a place to come back to if you leave. Still, it might be worth the risk.

[26 Feb 2011: Edited for intended generality. I do not think working for an oil company is really your only choice. It's just an example of something a math friend of mine did.]

In response to Go Try Things
Comment author: Dorikka 25 February 2011 05:12:17PM 5 points [-]

This post reads as much too anecdotal to be a top-level post. Here's how I think that it could be improved:

I'm currently reading your post as (treating risk-prone/risk-averse as a continuum) "unless you see yourself to be considerably risk-prone already, you should adjust towards being more risk-prone." You haven't really answered the question "which areas are humans (in general) risk-averse, and why is this risk-aversion unjustified by an accounting of terminal utility generated/lost by success/failure?", and I think that having that data would be very useful.

In response to comment by Dorikka on Go Try Things
Comment author: SRStarin 25 February 2011 07:45:37PM 4 points [-]

I'll second including discussion of different areas in which humans are more and less risk-averse.

I work in a heavily risk-averse field, and I find that hesitation due to fear of failure has become ingrained in me. I used to be much more spontaneous. I'm still willing to sound like an idiot, which is good, but it's a lot harder for me to propose actions that could result in loss or damage to expensive public property, even if I really think the probability is heavily in favor of learning without loss or damage.

Comment author: Swimmer963 22 February 2011 05:11:59AM 0 points [-]

Thank you for the well-thought-out comment.

According to a test we did in my first-year psych course, I have a very poor short-term memory (and an excellent long-term memory, partly because I intuitively use word and image associations to memorize things.) I've always done well in school pretty easily, possibly because my learning style is well suited to the most common teaching styles.

Your car accident story is fascinating. I've never been put into a situation like that before, and I tend to worry how I would react–would my brain be able to rise above the immediate shock to reach the 'alert and analytical' level that you reached, or would I freeze and be useless?

Comment author: SRStarin 22 February 2011 07:27:58PM 0 points [-]

I have difficulty classifying my different kinds of memory as good or bad, and am often confused when others classify their own memories. I have poor verbal recall, short or long-term. I find it very difficult to remember poetry, unless it's sung. but, I never had a problem memorizing poetry when that was assigned in school--I just practiced saying it for a few days, and I had it. After I stopped saying it to myself all the time, I forgot it again.

I try never to argue with someone about what specific words were used in a conversation a year ago, the previous day (or often even an hour ago). However, I have very good short-term aural memory--whatever the last few moments of sound I heard have been, if I need to recall them, usually can sort of play them back, even if I wasn't paying much attention. This means I am often able to identify the exact words that have just been spoken, even when the speaker doesn't realize they've misspoken. I have good linguistic memory, and good spelling memory, but my ability to recall something that could just as well be one thing as another (like exact words versus my interpretation of general meaning) is I think below average.

So, do you have a generally poor short-term memory, or are there some things you can repeat or recognize perfectly shortly after seeing or hearing or feeling them?

In response to comment by SRStarin on Ability to react
Comment author: Swimmer963 22 February 2011 05:17:11AM 0 points [-]

I'm interested by your mention of sports. Anxiety and stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, raising the heart rate, reducing bloodflow to the gastrointestinal tract, etc. Exercise has the same effects. I swam competitively as a teenager and I didn't tend to notice feeling nervous DURING a race, possibly because the exhaustion of swimming masked the physiological stress reaction. Also, sports are one of the few areas where the sympathetic "fight-or-flight" reaction can serve its original evolutionary purpose. You want your heart rate to be up before a race, whereas that reaction is pretty useless before, say, a spacecraft launch.

Comment author: SRStarin 22 February 2011 06:51:44PM 1 point [-]

Not being terribly good at sports, I tended to be very nervous leading up to a game. I frequently made mistakes that hurt my team (I only ever played team sports in any organized way), and I began to learn to fear making new mistakes. Then, once the game started and as it progressed, that anxiety changed depending on how much I was actually exercising and what skill I was showing (i.e. was I making us lose again, or was I actually being helpful?) And--here is the useful point for this discussion--I could observe during the game what effects my nerves were having. I could tell when I was getting too hung up on performing well and it was making me perform badly. I could tell when I was keeping the energy pumping enough and I was missing things. Not caring and caring too much about winning are the Scylla and Charybdis of sport. Sympathetic nervous system responses are the churning of the water, making you always have to adjust course.

You're not exactly correct about wanting me wanting my heart rate low before a launch. I clearly don't want to be bouncing off the walls, but I want a certain level of eustress (as opposed to distress) so that I can think quickly and clearly. That's how I work best.

In response to Ability to react
Comment author: SRStarin 19 February 2011 08:55:46PM *  7 points [-]

(Disclaimer: Nothing I say here should be construed as speaking for NASA. These are strictly my personal thoughts. All technical information written here is in the public domain.)

In my job as a spacecraft engineer, most of my time is spent designing and testing the systems that control spacecraft pointing and propulsion. However, those of us who design the pointing system generally need to be on-hand for launching a new spacecraft and establishing a stable attitude. So, I have helped operate a couple of spacecraft in their first few months (the first was WMAP, and the most recent was SDO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory).

Leading up to launch, it is customary to do a lot of simulations, especially of potential failures. The simulations sometimes go badly, with things really getting screwed up. But practicing until everyone is bored with simulations seems a key to a successful launch team.

On the actual launch day, the adrenaline level is weird. You have taken all these actions before in sims, yet you know it's quite likely to have no failures, but that it's more important this time that you catch any failures early.

Frankly, I love it. It's one of my favorite things about my job. Here are three things that I know have helped me be comfortable in high-tension situations:

I'm the oldest of three close brothers. We were a team so often as kids, with me the leader, that it feels natural to take control. (My friends in high school used to call me "O Imperious One" when I got too bossy.)

I played sports (badly) at an early age. Sport combines a need for quick reactions with physical exertion. By wearing myself out and still needing to perform, I think it helps me ignore the adrenaline. Then, I took that knowledge of my body's responses to stress to other situations.

I have performed music in front of audiences since I was a little kid. In performances, something can always go wrong. You rehearse and rehearse, but you still keep in mind that you have to react to unexpected events. I'm a decent but not great singer. The one time I got a choral solo in college was my final year. I did fine in rehearsal, but in the performance, my voice cracked horribly on the first note (the song was the Russian "Kalinka"). getting the error out of the way early let me calm down and focus on performing like I rehearsed. By the end, I was doing great and got some really nice applause (audiences love a recovered failure even more than a perfect performance).

So, that's my experience with what you're talking about. Great post!

Comment author: James_Miller 16 February 2011 10:12:41PM 0 points [-]

If your first paragraph is correct then the signaling model of education is false and my program wouldn't/shouldn't succeed.

Comment author: SRStarin 17 February 2011 08:15:49PM 0 points [-]

I agree with grouchy. I want to make the additional point that just because an activity or article of clothing or whatever has signaling value, that doesn't mean it can't have any intrinsic value. A Gucci purse still holds your car keys.

I think it is possible that the signaling model of higher education is more in play for the elite schools, as I have certainly read writers who had first-hand experience and claim as much. The signaling model would explain the much higher price tag for an Ivy League education.

Still, any college with anywhere decent facilities and at least a few good professors has enough for a determined and healthy person to get an education that will make them a more effective, interesting, productive, sociable, and thoughtful person. Those are all traits employers want, but are not easy to identify in applications or interviews. So, a college degree is pretty good evidence of progress in that direction.

Comment author: James_Miller 16 February 2011 09:04:09PM 0 points [-]

Why does getting admitted to a college signal creativity? If anything being admitted to an elite college means you got all As in high school by doing exactly what your teachers wanted.

As Edison wrote "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." My graduates would show that they could do the 99% part so perhaps have signaled their high capacity for creativity?

If colleges teach you how to think clearly than the signaling view of college is false and my proposed program is worthless. Your IQ is your ability to process complex information so if colleges don't raise IQs knowing someone graduated from college should tell you nothing about their ability to think clearly if you already know their IQ.

Comment author: SRStarin 16 February 2011 09:49:30PM *  0 points [-]

I think your proposed program would not be valuable because colleges do, for the most part, make available the skills for thinking and communicating more clearly. And getting a degree does, for the most part, mean that the person is capable of sustained, organized work on challenging tasks that require creative application of a large skill set. In other words, they can be successful at a profession.

All colleges are going to have some bad students, and some of those students will be able to cheat their way through without learning much. But most professors want to see both creativity and diligence in their students' work, and they grade accordingly. (I should note that my university experiences are mostly large state universities. I don't have much exposure to elite schools or the students that attended them.)

In my experience, smart people who try college and don't finish (for reasons other than financial or the like) are not very good at working for others. They sometimes make great entrepreneurs, but I wouldn't want them working for me until they'd built up a lot of real world experience and demonstrated they can succeed. Smart people who never go to college I don't have much experience with

Comment author: [deleted] 10 February 2011 12:32:52AM 1 point [-]

I like the grooming questions especially.

Besides by keeping clean, how do I go about smelling nice? Who should and shouldn't wear perfume and cologne? What kind? How do you use it?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Procedural Knowledge Gaps
Comment author: SRStarin 10 February 2011 01:59:13AM 1 point [-]

Anyone who wants to can wear perfume/cologne (it's essentially the same stuff, just a different word for a different gender of user). If you're wondering whether you should try it, then try it! Go to a large department store and try out their testers, then walk around for the day and see if you and your companions like it. The effect immediately after application is often not the effect after it airs a bit. You can even try mixing scents. The one thing I strongly recommend is to avoid the really cheap stuff. If the budget is tight, try different good high-quality scents for free for a while, so you can be sure you'll like what you get.

The way I've seen perfume applied usually sprayed on one wrist, then the wrists are rubbed together, and then the wrists are lightly touched to the neck and clothes. This avoids getting too strong a smell, and if you overspray the wrist, you can wash it off.

When I use cologne, I spray it in my armpits instead of deodorant, and maybe on my throat. That's not necessarily typical--it's sort of the old way cologne was used, and works for me because I have light BO. You can also use cologne the same way I described for perfume.

In the U.S., cologne is not usually considered an appropriate substitute for deodorant, but individual tastes run a broad gamut on that. Some people are allergic to most perfumes and colognes--they do have actual botanicals in them.

Comment author: Elizabeth 09 February 2011 09:32:06PM *  4 points [-]

It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I first consciously noticed that I was incapable of using other people's names to their faces. I could do it with immediate family, and I could do it in third person "Howard was telling me..." I have since made strenuous efforts to get better at it, but it is still really psychologically difficult. That's also when I realized that it was almost impossible for me to leave a message on an answering machine. I'm working on that one too, but doing so is a serious effort. One of my roommates my freshman year of college had the same issues, but neither of us had a clue why.

Comment author: SRStarin 09 February 2011 11:52:47PM 0 points [-]

That does make it difficult to use the techniques I suggested. Some people do not like other people to use their names because they experience it as an attempt to control them emotionally. They feel it invokes automatic parent-child responses that others ought not have access to.

I think the number of these folks is very low (I've only met one person who feels this way). But, if he feels that way, it makes sense that there would be people who might be overwhelmed by the emotional burden of invoking such an emotional response. I certainly feel more burdened when I use his name in the first person. I'm not claiming that's what's going on with you. But, your description reminded me of this other person, and we can often gain great insight in hearing something even approximately related to our own difficulties.

As for suggestions, I would suggest that a good, small place to start, if you are able, is to repeat a person's name immediately after they introduce themselves to you, and leave it at that. I suspect it will help cement a few more names than you otherwise would have, and it might have less emotional impact on you to have a formulaic circumstance in which you can think of using another person's name with them.

Comment author: gwern 09 February 2011 07:40:09PM 0 points [-]

Very interesting. I keep a list of haptic-compass links and I recently added http://www.monkeysandrobots.com/hapticcompass to it - was that you?

Comment author: SRStarin 09 February 2011 07:45:41PM 0 points [-]

Nope, not me. But the video on that site looks a lot like a bigger version of the inner guts of the North Paw. Just to be clear for any who didn't follow the link in my comment, I put together a kit that Sensebridge sells--I did not design the anklet.

View more: Prev | Next

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit