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CertainMiddle2382 t1_j6n4jqb wrote

Reply to comment by StatisticianFuzzy327 in Students planning for career relevant to Singularity? by StatisticianFuzzy327

Biology as a specific field is too noisy and we didn’t see there the “unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in Natural Science”.

Most pure biology research involves heavy lab work with endless tries with minute random changes. It is not romantic, it is mind numbing.

Biology needs armies of young soldiers eager to work for nothing doing those experiments, so they have to promise future successes, grants, positions or discoveries that seldom come.

Despite that you can achieve big success in biology in the “harder” aspects of it like: data science, modelling, IA… of course.

Diving straight into biology will not teach you maths and physics and will only specialize you into XYZ gene/protein.

Love biology, learn about biology, participate in biological studies, but don’t work in biology (at least not until you have a solid hard sciences background).

Psychology is a lost domain, it is too subjective and moving with the “trend of the day”. General academic level is very poor, it is mindblowingly over populated and you’ll end up depressed/looking to escape in an HR position like most of them.

So yes, study hard science while to have stamina and fresh neurons. Then you can conquer the world in your terms:-)

In my field, Im a medical doctor, I’ve said 10 years ago that all academic positions will be soon for AI-“pick your favorite specialty”. I was right, it is just taking time because physicians are notoriously bad at CS and the few who are, are better paid outside of the hospital…

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StatisticianFuzzy327 OP t1_j6nbdrz wrote

Thank you very much. That makes sense. I'll make sure to train myself in the mathematical sciences, and seriously consider delaying working on the biosciences until later in my career while building my expertise and establishing a solid foundation in the mathematical tools and techniques that I could apply to the life sciences.

I also agree with what you said about psychology being a lost cause due to being very subjective, and I myself think that it needs stronger biological roots to have any credibility, but I never considered that seriously the idea that biology itself might require the application of mathematical tools to develop it more rigorously and extract general principle that are universally true.

I had some suspicions, but I had never come across such a perspective, so thank you once again for sharing your thoughts. I'll give it significant weight while making important career decisions in the near future.

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turnip_burrito t1_j6ovhm0 wrote

I also agree with the statements on biology (lab drudgery, imprecise, jobs) and psychology (imprecise, jobs) here by certainmiddle. If you want to understand and build AI or other related technologies, I'd avoid making these two fields your main area of study.

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