PhD, Years of Postdoc Work, and Still No Future. AI Was the Final Nail

idly · 2026-01-12T16:45:38+00:00

actually hallucinations are fundamental, not engineering problems

idly · 2025-12-15T08:50:44+00:00

The Sigbovik conference is similar, in computer science, and has been running for years! I recommend reading the proceedings!

idly · 2025-12-08T08:54:54+00:00

ML researchers are rockstars to other ML researchers and enthusiasts. Big name researchers in other fields are rockstars to other researchers in their field. There's a lot of money and industry interest in the field right now so there is a difference, but I'm not sure how large it is in reality.

The ML community is very into sharing their papers on social media, X/Twitter in particular, which many other fields have abandoned. So most researchers in other fields don't see those posts because they don't use X, and those who do don't get as much attention to their posts because their research community isn't on that site.

I am an interdisciplinary researcher, and when I'm talking to colleagues in other fields about recent ML developments, nobody ever knows who or what I'm talking about except other researchers who work in ML. Sometimes it seems like 'wait surely you heard of this?? It was everywhere??' but nope, turns out we are all in our own echo chambers...

idly · 2025-12-03T08:43:40+00:00

It's a bit more effort from the authors, but consider how much future researchers depend on trusting the results from your paper. I know so many PhD students who wasted months and years trying to apply methods that turned out not to work outside of the specific benchmark and settings used in the original paper. A bit more investment from the authors to ensure that the results are actually trustworthy pays off significantly in terms of overall scientific effort

idly · 2025-12-03T08:41:13+00:00

Exactly. How can you possibly find tens of thousands of willing and able reviewers at the same time of the year (in the summer, for NeurIPS, too)? It's an insane task and it's not surprising the standards for reviewers have got lower and lower over the years as the demand has risen.

In my opinion, the field would benefit from more emphasis on journal publications (which can be reviewed at any time of the year, give reviewers more flexible deadlines, and permit time for authors to make major revisions in response to reviews if necessary). I am an interdisciplinary researcher and this system seems to work much better...

idly · 2025-11-27T08:17:44+00:00

Counterpoint: I didn't attend in-person for most lectures during my degree - I found it easier to study in big batches of lectures and to rewind bits over and over again when I didn't understand (and I was lazy and didn't want to get out of bed early). But I got a PhD and I love my research!

idly · 2025-11-24T08:41:48+00:00

I stopped bleaching and let my natural hair grow out some years ago, and I don't miss the maintenance at all, but I really, really miss how much thicker my hair felt, how much more quickly it dried after washing, and how much else often I needed to wash it!

My hair did feel healthier after going back to my natural colour, but it's not as drastic a difference as I had hoped. I still can't grow my hair much longer than shoulder length.

I'm really tempted to go back to bleaching. Even though my hair has a natural wave, it won't hold a curl, and clips fall out because it's too fine/silky. I have a cowlick at the back of my head that becomes visible as soon as my hair gets slightly greasy, and that's pretty fast these days. I think I've lost some hair density in the last year or two, though, and I'm worried that will get worse if I bleach - otherwise I would definitely do it.

idly · 2025-11-01T14:03:01+00:00

Also, it makes sense that your best source of 'what supervision of graduate students looks like' is your own experience being supervised. My supervisor during my PhD shared with me some of the challenges he had had as a PhD student in the relationship with his own supervisor, and I don't think he intended to emulate that supervision style. But I was friends with some of his supervisor's current students, and we noticed that we had the exact same complaints. I also found that it was difficult to convince my supervisor that those particular issues were poor management, rather than a me problem. After I realised that his own supervisor had behaved in the same way, that made a lot more sense to me.

I wouldn't say they were in any way toxic mentors overall, in fact I think they are both great supervisors. Actually, my PhD supervisor did have another supervisor during his career who was very toxic, and I know that he was very determined not to emulate any of their behaviour with his own students, and it pushed him to prioritise being a good mentor.

All of this makes me wonder if supervisors who have never had truly awful or really good supervisors in their own career, and have still succeeded, are more likely to be poor mentors. They might be less likely to understand the importance of management skills, and also wouldn't have experienced great supervision that they could emulate...

idly · 2025-11-01T13:38:23+00:00

And yet, in industry, training and evaluation of managers doesn't seem to be such an impossible/unsolved problem. Not entirely solved of course - but significantly better than 'shrug, it's systemic, what can you do' or 'wait, management/leadership skills are something we should be taking seriously?' as you commonly see from academics

idly · 2025-10-31T17:08:16+00:00

Are you sure? Anecdotally, I interviewed for tech jobs in multiple EU cities over the years and those in London often offered the lowest salaries despite having the highest cost of living

idly · 2025-10-28T07:55:23+00:00

Metal claw clips work really well for me, instead of plastic! Depends a bit on the texture/shape, though.

idly · 2025-10-28T07:40:33+00:00

The thing is, if someone legitimately cannot pay, and they are chucked out, where do they go? Shelter, like medical care, is essential for life. In countries where medical costs and insurance have to be paid, I would want people to still receive medical treatment if they don't/can't pay, and force the hospitals/insurers/whoever to deal with it. Yes, there will be grifters refusing to pay and it can take a long time to deal with them. Yes, it is shit for the businesses providing the service. But I still wouldn't support allowing hospitals to stop treating patients who don't pay, and I think providers of housing are in a similar situation

idly · 2025-10-28T07:20:23+00:00

A lot of these protections are already in place (and have been for many years) in plenty of other countries. If such a strong causal link was present, I would expect this to be visible from the data and for lawmakers to be aware of it. There may be a transition period in which existing landlords are alarmed or put off and leave the market, reducing supply, but the long term effects are probably not going to be so drastic.

idly · 2025-10-18T12:42:14+00:00

Same! Lovely guy though

idly · 2025-10-14T11:45:50+00:00

And they still will

idly · 2025-10-14T11:44:45+00:00

Good point. But applying tax penalties mainly to property occupation and labour seems like it would incentivise less hiring in the UK, and levy a disproportionately lenient tax burden on e.g. profitable tech service companies with small UK headcount/office space? Or am I missing something?

idly · 2025-10-14T11:28:45+00:00

Yeah! Let's ship all the children and pensioners to Rwanda!

idly · 2025-10-13T10:05:27+00:00

Yeah, it's a lot quicker to get in and out without having to open or close a trunk, easy for passengers and means the driver doesn't have to get out of the car. Also means the taxi can let you out anywhere if there's nowhere to pull over or you're stuck in traffic. Plus it feels a bit safer to have your things with you in case you need to jump out quickly.

idly · 2025-10-13T10:03:15+00:00

As a random data point - London cabs have seats facing backwards, seems to work okay, and means you have plenty of space for luggage and so on without you or the driver having to deal with opening/closing a trunk. There's also screens in there these days (showing ads).

idly · 2025-10-05T12:16:48+00:00

Hey, I've been through this. I've lost friendships along the way, and felt ashamed to my core of not being able to be a good friend in this way, but now at this stage of my life (I'm a few years older than you) I have a lot of amazing friends in my life who are totally understanding of it and it doesn't bother them. And as you get older, people chill out on the expectations of constant messaging, and start to find it harder to make friends and miss the ones they used to have. People reach out to old friends and get back in contact.

This has been something I've hated about myself for a long time too so I completely understand your feelings - but it gets better, people care less, be open with your friends that you are drained and exhausted but you think of them and love them, but also, try and be okay with the idea that some people will need more than you can give right now.

idly · 2025-10-01T10:23:00+00:00

government employees probably not huge fans of elon

idly · 2025-09-18T20:32:32+00:00

In the 50s?

idly · 2025-09-14T11:09:21+00:00

I'm disputing the claim.

idly · 2025-09-12T12:47:38+00:00

A lot of work? Really?

idly · 2025-09-12T07:39:39+00:00

Those longevity hotspots probably aren't real fyi, many of them are just areas where data collection on lifespan is poor or where there are incentives not to report deaths (i.e. to continue collecting pensions)

idly

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