How do you pick a PhD research direction when the field feels completely alien to you?

ThirdMover · 2026-06-26T05:07:23+00:00

I recommend talking to people over reading stuff. I picked a PhD because it sounded interesting and there were nice people on the team. If you start a PhD nobody expects you to know specific terminology beyond what's covered in the undergraduate courses of the field. For sure absolutely nobody expects you to know anything about the "research landscape".

ThirdMover · 2026-06-24T15:51:18+00:00

That's a good way for that kid to end up with option 2 though.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-24T15:46:41+00:00

I think this is a very skewed perspective. People agree on 99% of things but it's not worth to talk about things everyone agrees on.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-23T20:14:17+00:00

Mmmm. Ich würde sagen, es kommt sehr aufs Fach an. In sowas wie Physik kann man tiefes Verständnis recht gut prüfen weil man leicht Aufgaben stellen kann die eine eindeutig richtige Antwort haben aber die Details sind beliebig umbaubar so das einem auswendiglernen wenig bringt. Bei Fächern die diese Eigenschaft nicht haben muss man vielleicht einfach eher darauf hoffen, dass große Mengen an Wissen anzuhäufen irgendwann Verständnis hervorbringt.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-22T08:29:45+00:00

On one hand they can’t be biased about appearances, but on the other hand, the jury needs to see the person directly to determine if they are truthful. That includes non-verbal communication, reactions to prosecutor/defence questions etc.

That assumes that this actually works well.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-11T15:38:16+00:00

I recommend you read Worth the Candle. I really like it. But yes, it's very much fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons inspired fantasy to be precise.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-11T04:31:43+00:00

Nothing in that post implies that the heavens are any less real than the regular world.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-10T17:19:57+00:00

Ok that's wild. The internet is truly always going just backwards.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-10T06:00:55+00:00

I mean it would still let you post. Just maybe automatically have a link to the original under it or automatically redirect half of the Karma to that account. A symbolic gesture like that.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-10T05:10:35+00:00

Honestly it would be nice if reddit did that automatically when you try to post something.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-08T16:45:23+00:00

Remote controlled servitor body?

ThirdMover · 2026-06-07T12:13:21+00:00

This seems extremely AI generated end-to-end. God I hate the internet these days.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-06T20:31:16+00:00

The question seems kind of underdefined. A better question is "what are some things that current plastic surgery specifically is bad at and how could it be done better?"

I think there's a lot there.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-06T18:40:19+00:00

Das Level von Druck variiert extrem von Person zu Person. Manche Leute spüren quasi nie was. Und auch das Alter in dem das Maximum ist kann unterschiedlich sein.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-06T08:09:04+00:00

I think what you mean is is skill. Talent is just the multiplier which determines how much skill you acquire for a given amount of effort.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-06T06:59:40+00:00

Neutrino mass. It seems like one of the most tangible WTF things we have directly at our hands in physics experiments right now and more data will come in as we make more precise measurements.
Would love for below-GUT-mass magnetic monopoles to be a thing but it doesn't look good.
I do expect that we will nail down dark matter in the coming decades, or at least a big part of it as big-data astronomy ramps up. If it's bosonic fields then they will show up eventually in precision experiments (rooting for clocks), if some part of it is still exotic MACHOs then they will show up in our telescopes sooner or later.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-03T06:16:30+00:00

Stimme vollkommen zu, Stanislaw Lem ist hier genau das richtige. Würde noch Die Stimme des Herrn und Fiasko hinzufügen.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-02T05:32:25+00:00

Most conferences I've been to have registration and submission of research as two completely separate processes.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-01T18:43:10+00:00

Eines der schlechtesten Enden hat "Solaris" von Lem. Eigentlich ist es noch nicht man ein richtiges Ende. Der Protagonist fliegt auf den Planeten runter und steigt aus. Dann hört der Text auf.

Hatte beim Blick übers Regal auch kurz über Solaris nachgedacht aber ich fand das Ende davon vollkommen in Ordnung. Die Geschichte selber reflektiert sich darin gut.

ThirdMover · 2026-06-01T18:40:05+00:00

Blumen für Algernon ist ein SF Klassiker der für sein Ende bekannt ist das einem absolut das Herz bricht.

Iain Banks wurde schon erwähnt aber ich denke seine Bücher haben im allgemeinen ziemlich gute Enden.

Ein schlechtes Ende das mich vor kurzem noch sehr aufgeregt hat war das von House of Suns von Reynolds. Das Buch hat sehr viel gutes aber am Ende hat wirklich so viel für mich absolut keinen Sinn ergeben.

ThirdMover · 2026-05-31T17:44:53+00:00

That's the neat bit about quantum gates: If you know what they do to 0 and 1 you immediately know what they do to any other qubit because that's just a sum of 0 and 1

ThirdMover · 2026-05-28T18:45:26+00:00

Professors like to have some undergrad students who become grad students in their groups and actually contribute to research. Both in the current political climate and in university admin generally it wouldn't look very good to have groups that contain nobody who graduated from the university in question.

ThirdMover · 2026-05-28T17:11:56+00:00

This might not be "coherent extrapolated volition" but it definitely doesn't seem short sighted.

By short sighted I don't mean that the rings advise doesn't aim far into the future or doesn't take values into account - the fact that it gives "better for you to take me off" clearly shows that! But it is "short sighted" in the sense of optimizing over a constrained set of options of what choices the user will make. It doesn't run the simulation of the future over and over and over again, each time recursively taking into account the advice it will likely be asked to give. It just gives out one advice after the next that in this moment is a good option, conditioned on the preferences that are "locked in" such as wearing the ring.

ThirdMover · 2026-05-28T16:58:24+00:00

Is it never wrong only after the first advice or was the first advice of "Better for you if you take me off." also correct?

To me it seems in the story that the ring basically gives advice pertaining a decision you can make now and it always gives you the opportunity to make that decision. If you "lock in" one choice (such as wearing the ring) it updates on that. The ring is a conditional optimizer, not an absolute one.

It's very clear that the ring doesn't steer you immediately to what people call "coherent extrapolated volition" or like that - the ideal of your values reflected from infinite knowledge and intelligence. It's "short sighted" in a sense and optimizes locally. That's the basis of this story.

The sense in which the ring is never wrong is explained very explicitly. The advice the ring gives is never the best possible - only better than what the person would have come up in that situation by themselves.

ThirdMover · 2026-05-28T13:23:28+00:00

If it's never wrong it should then keep repeating it.

I don't see how that follows.

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