Yes, I agree. The same thing you said about teaching could be said about research too. I'll try to keep that in mind while making decisions, thank you.

That makes sense, the point about PhD being contributing to the field with novel research rather than just acquiring large amounts of knowledge. I thought that a PhD involves specializing in a very narrow subtopic of a discipline, but recently I have discovered that there exist interdisciplinary and joint PhDs that allow you to tackle a subject from multiple disciplines. That might be what you are talking about, and what is more aligned with my plans. I'll definitely look into it.

I'm also reaching out to professors and researchers working on my research interests and trying to get in touch with them. I do intend to eventually get a PhD, so I plan to do the right things during my undergraduate years to maximize my chances of getting into the PhD program of my choice and develop the skills needed to carry out independent research.

I like the point about not studying what seems to be the next big thing, and just going with what's the most popular thing and basing such important career decisions based on such unreliable criteria, I'll make sure to not fall for such traps. I'll work on what I find interesting and also allows me some degree of financial security.

I'll also try to choose something that won't be automated anytime soon. Plus I was planning to study neuroscience and psychology but this comment has made me seriously reconsider that decision: https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/10pvu7z/comment/j6mq8tg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Anyway, I'll try to make an informed decision based on my interests, abilities, financial prospects, and the type of life I want, as you said. Thank you very much for sharing your comments.

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.

Thank you! That's an interesting perspective, because even though most of my interests are theoretical and intellectual, I've been planning to get involved in more practical and hands-on activities lately. I'll definitely consider that.

But if the point of doing that is just to make sure that your job isn't taken over by robots, wouldn't it be better to go with something even more robot-proof such as, say, teaching, therapy, politics or medicine, because they involve human interaction and that would be the last thing to be automated. What do you think?

There was a study by Oxford a few years back on which jobs are the most likely to be taken over, and it had similar conclusions, though I read it a while ago so I don't remember the exact details. You might be interested in checking it out: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-of-employment.pdf

Hmm I see. I turned 19 very recently, and I suspect what you say is true, because it'll remain sci-fi for my life, or it'll be so fast that we are able to witness the rise of true AI this decade, I don't know.

But I'll still try to work on my research interest while not neglecting financial security (and possible financial independence) to carry out my research activities, regardless of the outcome. Thank you!

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.

Haha. Thank you. I'm not sure if you meant it seriously, I respect your advice, and this is something I myself used to think not too far back in the future- I'd get multiple doctorates and combine all these fields and learn everything!- but then I read stuff written by other people, heard what they have to say, and realized that multiple PhDs is looked down upon in academia as it shows you weren't able to decide what it is that you're interested in, and that you have "perpetual student syndrome"..

So that was discouraging at first, but then I realized that I don't need any sort of credentials to do what I want, and I can just learn everything by myself and with the help of the professionals who have those credentials, no need to get a piece of paper from institutions that tell me what I'm capable of.

Thought I still do plan to major in multiple disciplines, and I was happy to discover there were things like joint PhDs, Interdisciplinary PhDs and MD-PhDs, and I might just end up doing it anyway but I'm not as hell bent on it as my younger self who used to think that these credentials are necessary to gain the knowledge necessary to make new inventions and discoveries; I no longer have any such delusions, at least I think I do.

Of course, I might be wrong, and I'd be happy to change my mind if you share your perspective and present me with convincing logical reasons, but that's just my current opinion, and what I think about multiple doctorates.

Thank you!

I am going to keep that in mind while making decisions. I am not planning to do something completely useless or irrelevant to the present job market, because I too need to sustain myself and my research activities, and I'll try to be at the cutting-edge yet be prepared of all contingencies.

I don't see any flaw with your logic, sounds good, except we need to develop such an injection first. There's also a very interesting thing there in your argument, something I have thought about a lot in the last few months.

It's basically this: If the scientist really enjoys doing science, regardless of what the future holds for him that makes his efforts redundant, and if the slacker likes whatever he is doing, why is one better than the other? Just because one has interests and aptitude that is looked upon more favourably by the society, even though both are just following their passions and natural inclinations?

Another thing to consider here is that if a scenario such as what you proposed would come true, the scientist would never regret doing what he did, because he could never imagine being someone like the slacker jerking off to cartoons for years.

He simple can't, because his genes and early environment predisposed him in a way that only made him satisfied with his actions when he did science, and if he even tried doing what the slacker was doing, he'd instantly get buried with regret and intense dissatisfaction. That holds true even if he wasn't working on the pill. A similar point could possibly be made for the slacker, but I'm not sure.

Another point is that both the scientist and the slacker made the decision for how they wanted to spend their time and what career they wanted to do (or not do) at a time when they didn't have adequate information about the singularity (like today) and so they went ahead with whatever information was available to them and any other constraints and goals they happened to have.

Why does that matter? Because I believe that a decision should be judged by all the information that was available to the person at the time he made it, and it would remain a good or bad decisions regardless of what the future holds. So the scientist may have thought that singularity or not, they like science, and this is what they want to do with their life, and so even after the singularity, their decision was a good one.

On the other hand, the slacker might have thought the even if there were no singularity, maybe life is meaningless or they are a pathetic loser not smart enough to do science or that they adjust don't feel like it and choose to rely upon the singularity even though it was uncertain if such a thing would occur in the future. He was willing to take the risk, and bear the cost if singularity didn't take place, so he also took an informed decision (hopefully).

I agree with your last paragraph- even if it's not possible, it's still uncertain, and the best case scenario, the expected benefits if there's even a tiny chance that it's possible, would be worth any amount of resources that we could put into doing research on it, and the scientist would have done science anyway, so even if he's the one who finds out the singularity isn't possible, no time wasted.

Thank you! That sounds very uncertain, but also very exciting. So many possibilities, and the future depends on the events and discoveries that are going to take place in the present. Glad to be alive in such times when the pace of progress is so fast.

We still have so much to understand, and most careers are probably not going to be significant impacted, but as you said, the job market might look very different, so I'll just try to keep up.

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.