Students planning for career relevant to Singularity?

Submitted by StatisticianFuzzy327 t3_10pvu7z in singularity

Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well. I was just wondering if anyone here has any ambitions aligned with Singularity or is planning for a career related to it, especially students.

I am soon going to start university, and I have formed a rough plan of what I wish to do in the future. It doesn't fit any of the conventional careers present today, the fields it involved are very new and there aren't many people working in them at the moment.

In brief, I'm interested in some topics that are investigated by computational and cognitive neuroscience through the lens of multiple disciplines, such as intelligence, memory, consciousness and emotions.

I'm curious to understand these phenomena, but also to eventually be able to have an impact in the field of disorders related to deficits in cognition and intelligence, and cognitive enhancement.

Other than that I'm also interested in topics like genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, neural implants, altered states of consciousness and the psychedelic revolution, synthetic biology, Longevity research, biocompatible nanomaterials and personalized healthcare/ precision medicine.

My interest understanding intelligence also relates to my desire to implement it in machines at the right level of abstraction to develop AGI, or at least more efficient AI, and investigate systems like ANNs to understand the brain more clearly so both of the fields could be mutually beneficial to each other.

I was curious if anyone else has any such plans, and wishes to pursue a career to further the goals of transhumanism. If so, feel free to share your plans or connect if you have similar interests or work in any of the fields I have mentioned in this post. Thank you.

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turnip_burrito t1_j6mftk5 wrote

Very cool. I don't know how many people you will find (I'm sure there are some) but good luck!

And don't sleep through math. The best neuroscientists and AI engineers have rock solid math foundations. Be a calculus rock star. Learn basic physics, and probably take at least a few chemistry classes.

And learn statistics. And learn how not to use statistics improperly. Lots of bullshit statistical studies exist because people don't understand what statistical tools can and can't do.

Find professors that are open to letting you participate in research with their research groups. You'll get to do a lot and learn the cutting edge. See if they can help you attend research conferences and seminars where people show off their work. You'll probably learn and remember a lot more of the stuff you see this way compared to just seeing it in classes.

Best of luck in your career!

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StatisticianFuzzy327 OP t1_j6mkz5k wrote

Thank you very much!

Yes, I've realized that if I wish to be a great scientist or inventor, I absolutely need to gain mastery over certain if not all topics of Mathematics, and I'm working on it.

My interests include other topics too, because I like finding connections between different fields and tackling a problem or investigating a topic with techniques from multiple disciplines. I'll make sure to learn more Physics and Chemistry.

I'll definitely include statistics in my list of topics. I've heard how important it's in the social sciences and how people manipulate data to use statistics say what they want, or worse. I'll make sure to avoid such mistakes myself and so I can scrutinize serious research papers myself.

I have also found some research labs and groups that are working on my research interests, and I'll make sure to approach more professors and researchers and try to get involved in research as soon as possible, and see if I can attend conferences and seminars too.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_j6mq8tg wrote

Whatever you choose don’t go into psychology, it is full of bogus research to the brim.

It won’t lead you anywhere.

Be careful about “neurosciences” it can be legit clinical or applied research but it can also be the rebranding of the aft mentioned.

Avoid biology at all cost, it is not fondamental science and involves a whole life of wetware work with little chance of success. It will lead you into a deadend into your 30s because what you learned is not generalizable.

If I had to do it again, spend most of you youth stamina in studying the abstract framework underneath all of this: the algorithmics itself, signal theory, logic, statistics, proof theory…

This are the foundations, this is guaranteed not to change whatever happens and this will give you insights and an edge for the rest of your life.

And you can pick a “softer” passion/topic/field on the side.

But make it as formal as you can, it is where the rubber is going to meet the road when that stuff will happen.

You could dive into linguistics to try to convey laws into algorithms. Also think about ethics or even theology :-)

Economy/finance could be a great way to apprehend the world of emotions through objective observation.

That is the big problem we are going to have, “teaching” our values to mindless machines…

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StatisticianFuzzy327 OP t1_j6mtma9 wrote

Thank you! That's interesting, because Psychology is a subject I'm seriously considering doing a major in, and I've heard that it's mostly outdated and needs to be supplemented with some rigorous mathematics and programming courses to be relevant, but nonetheless I enjoy learning about it's theories and more importantly study the topics that are currently investigated mostly by psychology- intelligence, cognition, memory, consciousness, emotions etc.

I'll make sure to keep in mind whatever you have said and reevaluate my decision to study psychology or neuroscience. Thought it's surprising to see that you included biology in your list of bogus subjects.

I was aware that it's not a fundamental science and not as generalizable as mathematics and physics, but isn't it because it's relatively newer in the history of science along with all the social sciences, and it'll take time for it to come up with generalizable laws, but is it okay to completely dismiss it as bogus and disregard it's validity as a fundamental science?

How about the biology researchers who come up with breakthroughs in the biological sciences that result in a greater understanding of how to cure diseases and develop clinical tools, or those who win the Nobel in physiology or medicine, or even doctors for that matter?

I'm not trying to say what you're saying is not true, I'm just curious to know what you think about it, because I wish to understand your point of view and it'll be important for what I decide to study at the undergraduate level. Even though this is a perspective I have never encountered before, I'm receptive to your ideas and welcome them with an open mind if you could just answer my questions and make me understand why you claim that biology, psychology and neuroscience are useless majors.

It's good to see that you mentioned algorithms, logic, statistics and proofs, because those are topics I'm interested in and plan to study more deeply in the near future. Signal theory is new for me, and I'll make sure to include it in my list.

I also like the idea behind what you said about them not changing for the rest of your life whatever happens.. because I've myself been trying to find generalizable principles that hold true in all of the universe for all of eternity, and reading a little philosophy of science to understand how we can design experiments that could help us establish relationships between cause and effect that would hold true under all conditions no matter what, provide us with a certainty if not equal to then as close to the certainty that we have with mathematics and logic. Is that what you're trying to hint at?

Is this also the reason you're telling me to stay away from biology? But even in this case the questions I posed earlier hold true- what about the people who are making discoveries in the biological sciences with a background in biology or neuroscience? Do you think it would be better for me to get trained in a mathematical science and then apply it to solve problems in the neurosciences?

I too have been thinking of studying a softer discipline on the side- topics like philosophy, anthropology, sociology, literature, linguistics. I'll try to look deeper into linguistics and ethics, these are subjects I already know a little about, but theology I have never tried, so I'll try to read a little about that too.

"Teaching values to mindless machines" This is actually a problem I'm trying to figure out- how to formalize rigorously logically and mathematically our values, and it looks pretty grim at the moment because these things seem to be completely out of the realm of logic, so I'm trying to do that plus at least come up with a framework to discover out true values, at least that seems more attainable.

On a similar note, I'm also trying to get involved in AI Alignment research, because it deals with the problem of getting AI aligned with our values before we develop AGI. I'll also try to learn some economics, I've already read a lot of books about behavioural economics, and that's been very insightful and interesting. I'll try to learn some finance too. Thank you.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_j6n4jqb wrote

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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