Response to: The Value of Theoretical Research
Reading paulfchristiano's article the other day, I realized that I had had many similar discussions with myself, and have been guilty of motivated stopping and poor answers to all of them.
However, one major roadblock in my pursuing better answers, is that I feel that I have been "locked in" to my current path.
I am currently a mathematics Ph.D. student. I did not have a minor. I don't have significant programming skills or employment experience. I know nothing about finance. I know a lot about mathematics.
Paul says:
There is a shortage of intelligent, rational people in pretty much every area of human activity. I would go so far as to claim this is the limiting input for most fields.
However, "most fields" is not a very good tool for narrowing my search space; I have spent my entire life in school, and I like having structures and schedules that tell me when I'm doing productive things and that I've progressed to certain stages. I'm not ready to drop out and do whatever, and I don't have a particular idea of what whatever might be.
On the other hand, I currently have a variety of resources available to me. For example, I have a steady income (a grad student stipend isn't much, but it's plenty for me to live on), and I have the ability to take undergraduate classes for free (though not the spare time at the moment.)
My current intent is to continue and finish my Ph.D., but to attempt to take classes in other subjects, such as linguistics, biology and chemistry, and computer science which might lead to other interesting career paths.
Has anybody else had a similar feeling of being "locked in"? How have you responded to it? For those who have studied mathematics, are you still? If you continued, what helped you make that decision? If you stopped, what about that? What did you end up doing? How did you decide on it?
When I said "most fields" I really meant "almost every field" (including math).
There are a lot of problems that need solving which will still get you publications, even in math. The issue is that there are also a lot of problems which don't need solving which will nevertheless get you publications (and that telling which are which is difficult). Given the number of people who seem to be somehow engaged with theoretical research here, it seems like a topic that could be profitably discussed.
I suspect that there are. However, I doubt my ability to accurately find such problems and solve them.
I am in particular interested in finding non-math things that I am interested in and could reasonably pursue, and narrowing down such "non-apples" to something like this or this (the part about biotech); and then especially I'm interested in turning that into a set of tasks.
What I would like to leave with is a to do list that reads like: "Take chemistry classes next year and earn a degree in biology while remaining a graduate student, then apply for biotech internships."
Obviously this is somewhat personal and I've digressed into something that is more of an addendum to the OP rather than a reply to your comment.