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?
I was in a PhD program for Physics, then left it for Operations Research (where I will likely get a masters then exit, but may stick around for the PhD). In some sense that is the field of applied rationality, so you might want to check it out (it may be called Industrial Engineering where you are).
Did I feel locked in? A little. I was leery about committing to a research group for several years, as I hadn't come across any groups that I was really interested in or ideas I really wanted to pursue. But I always had very broad interests (I have programming skills, employment experience, finance knowledge, and know a fair amount about math), and so while I eventually realized I was sticking with my plans out of inertia I had several other options that I was ready to jump ship for.
I ended up deciding on OR rather than economics much for the same reason I decided on physics over economics- economics is what I get most fired up about (well, efficiency in general, but it's more fun to argue than do), but I wanted to make something besides policy papers. I was already planning to take my physics degree and do industrial research / invent something / go into consulting, and so I decided to change my "invent something" desire from physical things to software and scrap the industrial research plan in order to get into consulting in 2 years rather than 5-6.
You may want to look at being an actuary. They draw a rather significant income using skills you have most likely already developed.
Becoming an actuary is something that I've looked into in the past. I was turned off by the various certifications that I didn't understand, and the fact that I have essentially zero finance knowledge.
But when I looked at the actuarial exams, I was like "word problems?! HELLS YES!" so it's definitely something that is on my radar.