I work in a chemistry lab at a top 10 public university in the US. There's 10 grad students in the lab...

Measure wavelength of light.

Solved all cases where it matters, in every other case the choice of color is arbitrary and so it doesn't matter whether everyone experiences color the same way.

Lots of students take courses that do not interest them for purely economic reasons.
You cannot blame them for securing their future but they destroy the integrity of the field in the process...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_gap

Probably because you work for Erik

>The rest appear to, at least, partially regret going to grad school.
maybe if grad school at least attempted to be competitive with industry that wouldn't be the case.

here are the typical scenarios for grad students:
-someone from the third world that was looking to get into the US, so they will put up with shit pay/conditions
-someone who loves science so much they are too blinded by it to be bothered by the shit pay/conditions and/or a masochist
-someone who got suckered into going to grad school before realizing how shit it is and was too stupid to master out
>someone who got suckered into going to grad school before realizing how shit it is and was smart enough to master out

as a US citizen, getting a phd is more likely to hurt you than to help you.

the worst part is that things won't change because university administration is staffed by people too useless to remain employed in the industry, or even in the government. there is also no incentive to improve the conditions or environment because you have a long line of foreigners that will put up with any bullshit at a chance of entering the US.

lastly, most student organizations and unions are controlled by dipshits that just milk the funds dry for their own benefit. my inbox gets spammed with emails from the graduate student union about useless shit like remaking the contract with gender neutral pronouns (not even joking about this) or sending a dozen emails about trump. why the fuck is a student union even involved in politics, and what the fuck have they done with the hundreds of dollars they leeched from me to improve my pay or working conditions? at least the department graduate student organization did more as they got the department to drop the tuition differential for phd students, and they organize an end of semester party. they don't take a cut from my paycheck or spam my inbox with bullshit either.

So much salt in this thread

>le salt may may xD xD xD
Kill yourself, faggot.

I guess it depends on how it wears on you over time, naturally a 5th year becomes somewhat jaded. What year are you?

>"HAHAH dood philsoohpy is retarded its just "u cant no nuthin" xDDDDD
>"Wtf r qualia??? Also do we have free will???"

You will forever be cucked in the sexy industry positions e.g. never work on Google's Search Team

What's so bad about postgrad? Noob UG here
I assume you're talking about masters

First, I don't think you can say that 8 of 10 have some regret going to grad school without further speaking to them. Grad school is long, arduous, and has plenty of ups-and-downs; it's a grind. When grad students see our undergrad classmates in other fields (engineering, finance, consulting, etc.) making more money and advancing in their respective careers, the regret does creep into our minds. I'm saying this as a third-year grad student, as I now feel like a low-paid employee; as a first-year, it felt great -- like a paid student.

I think that many grad students go to grad school because they enjoy science, and to be a PI. However, that idealism falls apart. Graduate school is far more demanding and beyond the level of research and coursework depth at the undergrad level (at the time at which they would make the decision to move on to grad school). Also, grad students have a different perspective to the idealistic view of research that undergrads see: as more peers of faculty (more so than undergrads), they see the issues with funding, the time spent on writing grants, reviewing grants, reviewing manuscripts, teaching, etc. It's more than just "doing science". Combine all of this with the fact that 8% or 10% or 12% of PhDs becomes tenure-track faculty, and you can see why many grad students' optimism becomes deflated.

I don't think your scenario is all that different from any other field, quite frankly. In any endeavor, the best will be more productive and do most of the work and reap most of the rewards. Just like the superstars in grad school, the superstars in athletics have the most lucrative contracts and endorsement deals, etc. The superstar finance guys have the highest salaries, etc.

I think that these students who aren't interested in academic science and end up moving on do well for society. The notion is based on the idea that the "human capital" (read: intellect, skill sets, problem-solving) of PhDs has value in the private sector.

I actually read a really good answer to this. I'll see if i can find it and type it out for you.

Err, I found the answer in one of my philosophy books. It's not a definitive explanation, but it is a persuasive argument. Unfortunately, its so long I really dont want to type it here. Is anyone actually interested as to why it's unlikely we see the world differently from one another?

It's a meaningless question IMO but yeah, I'd like to hear your explanation.

I'm somewhat nervous that sci will just reject it out of hand. Remember don't shoot me im just the messenger.

Colour perception is the result of the stim¬ulation of the cones that pack the central part of the retina. The current best theory suggests that there are three different kinds of cone, L, M, and S (long, medium, and short). L cones "spike" or send messages down the optic nerve more readily when light of longer wavelength hits them, M cones get excited more when light of medium wavelength does, and S cones when light of shorter wave¬length does. The colour we perceive then depends in the first place on a comparison between the levels of excitation of these three kinds of cone. So, for instance, if S is much more excited than L this codes for blue, the colour at the short wavelength end of the spec¬trum. If L is much more excited than S, this codes for yellow. If L is more excited than M we get red, and if M is more excited than L, we get green. It is as if the channels are "opponents" and the result de¬pends on which of the opponents overcomes the other.

Now consider the fact that colours have a lot of interesting properties. Here are some: you cannot have a surface that is yellowy blue. You can't have one that is reddish green. You can on the other hand have surfaces that are bluish green, or yellowish red (orange). You can't have a bright brown. You cannot have a bright grey (it is difficult to imagine a grey flame or a brown flame). Yellow is a lighter colour than violet. You can have a transparent red or blue or green gem, but you cannot have a transparent white gem -- the nearest would be a milky white, like an opal. You can have white light, but not black light.

All these might seem to be brute facts about the Cartesian realm of the mind, where colours are supposed to hold their residence. But we can begin to see them as expressions of various physical facts. We can't see a surface as yellowy blue, because yellow and blue are produced by mathematical opposites: we get yellow when L > S, and blue when S > L. Similarly for red and green. We cannot have bright brown, because brown is darkened yellow. A surface is seen as brown when it would be coded for yellow, except that there is only a low overall energy level compared with that of other sources of light in the context. Similarly for grey, which is darkened white. Yellow is lighter than violet because yellow light (L > S) is also nearer the frequency at which our visual systems are maximally responsive. By comparison both red at one end and blue at the other end of the visual spectrum are taking us towards the dark, where we cannot respond at all. You cannot have transparent white because something is only seen as white when it scatters light.

hmm, IMO this doesn't really address the matter of qualia possibly being intrinsically different per person.

All this of course only scratches the surface of colour science. But it gives us a glimmering at least of the way in which things "make sense". With enough facts of this kind in front of us we might be less enchanted by the inverted spectrum possibility. Let us take first the simpler case of monochromatic (black-and-white) vision. Suppose it is suggested that someone might be a physical duplicate of me, but see as dark what I see as light, and vice versa. Is that possible? Our snap judgement might be that it is. Perhaps we imagine the world appearing to him as it appears in a photographic negative. But this does not really work. If I make a piece of grey glass lighter, I see better through it; if I make it darker, I see less well through it. Since he is a physical duplicate, this has to be true of my twin. But for him, when we clear the glass it "seems" as though we added soot, since it becomes subjectively darker. And when we add soot it "seems" as though it is becoming clearer. But then we have to imagine that for him, as a plate of glass becomes darker he sees through it better and better, and as it becomes lighter he sees through it worse and worse. And that just doesn't seem to make sense. It doesn't mark a coherent possibility.

Now consider someone who is physically identical with me, but supposedly sees yellow as I see blue, and vice versa. It is now not quite so easy to imagine him. He has to respond in the same way as I do, so he cannot go round saying that yellow is a dark colour, for example. That difference in response and behaviour would be a physical difference. So we have to ask how he sees blue as bright, and yellow as dark. If he really sees yellow as dark, as I see blue, how does he see brown? How does he see orange? Brown is darkened yellow, but for him yellow is already dark. So it is difficult to imagine how his physical discriminations could match mine, given this complete disparity in mental experience.

In short, the possibility becomes a good deal less clear, and we may feel our way to denying that it is a possibility at all. We would be engineering a conception of the mind that closes the gap between the physical and the mental, that is, between the fully functioning and responsive visual system in the brain and the apparently superadded "subjective" qualia of colour experience. Such a piece of engineering would be a vindication of Leibniz's position. Subjective colour experience becomes not just a queer add on, but the inevitable, rationally explicable, expression of the kinds of physical functioning of the creatures that we are. If the same can be done for all the elements of our consciousness, the problem is solved.

Fair go mate. I'm ok with you not agreeing with Blackburn, but wait until I've posted everything first

yea soz didn't realize you weren't finished

>for him, when we clear the glass it "seems" as though we added soot
This is clearly wrong, since for the twin the process of adding soot will be associated with his subjective experience of the colour becoming lighter, and clearing the glass will be associated with his subjective experience of the colour becoming darker.
>But then we have to imagine that for him, as a plate of glass becomes darker he sees through it better and better, and as it becomes lighter he sees through it worse and worse. And that just doesn't seem to make sense.
But it makes perfect sense, it's exactly what will happen if you film the process and then invert the colours of the film.
I'm having a hard time exactly pinning the fault with the argument, but it seems he sort of arbitrarily applies the "sense-inversion" in some cases and not in others, and from that concludes it can not be self-consistent.

Yes the same thing occurred to me when I read it years ago. I'm still really having trouble with the concept of "black light" or a "black sunbeam", perceived by someone with reversed qualia maybe its a lack of imagination on my part.

In any case, if your willing to take it up with the author, he is still active and teaching at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His e-mail should be available from the university's staff search page.

His point that nothing can be transparent AND white still stands I think. I like this particular gambit; maybe our "subjective" experience aren't so subjective.

i went to a public school for a semester (now i go to community college, i'm sorry) and i went to a sds meeting and they were talking about how they could get money from the college for a fucking concert so i walked out
the worst part is that in 2011 during the sds shit in Wisconsin at the university I went to, the sds people took over a courtyard, and although I wasn't in sds, some1 gave me the mic after some sds people were telling republicans to leave (ther were some with signs), and I said let's bring them up and see what they have to say, an sds leader took the mic and was like "no"

>But it makes perfect sense, it's exactly what will happen if you film the process and then invert the colours of the film.

Actually scratch that, I think you've misunderstood him. The twin has to be identical to him; indistinguishable. If he runs into a glass panel after you've cleaned it because now he can't see through it he's not identical. There is a means by which you'd spot his reversed qualia; say if he has more trouble driving after you've cleaned his winshield. It's true that we can do it on film, but thats not the point; a person who saw the world that way wouldn't be a twin. It would have behavioural consequences. Something simply cannot be both darker and more transparent. And it may well be you could apply similar arguments to ALL our respective colour qualia.

Soot-stained glass is not more opaque because it is darker, but because there's something on it (i.e. soot) blocking the light. Whether the soot is experienced as dark or light doesn't seem like it should make a difference in how well you can look through it.

Note i didnt use the soot example, I used the example of cleaning the glass. Something cannot be simultaneously darker and more transparent; something is always harder to see through, more opaque if it is darker. At any rate, I really encourage you to give Simon Blackburn an email. The passages above were published in his book "Think", under the title "Inverted Spectra: Private Languages".

I'd really rather argue with strangers on the internet lol. I'll give the book a try though, thanks.

Ordinarily i'd love to entertain you, but im nursing a tumbler rather too full of cognac at the moment so im not at my sharpest.

this is an economics problem.

you make school easy to get into and you flood the market with cheap, low value students with no incentive to be more than minimally productive. it creates emotional pain for everyone because working at something you love, or at least being productive makes you feel good, and those who are unable to get a spot in school because someone who does not even really want to be there is there, feels depressed.

same problem with rent control. they pass the law on the premise that they are creating "affordable housing" and "for the poor" but what actually happens is no new housing gets built, existing housing is not maintained, everyone buys more housing than they need (some people have 4 apartments) people who want an apartment cannot get one, unmaintained, but maintainable buildings are abandoned because the owner doesn't make enough money to cover costs, and perfectly good housing goes to waste while homelessness increases

Being a research student is tough. They pull all kind of things on you to try to pressure and milk you as much as possible and people less skilled than you will get promoted and often right in your fucking face to see if it works on making you salty or not.

chances are you won't get those positions, anyway. google might do things differently since they are backwards, but with most companies after you get a masters experience > further education.

i'm talking about a phd, a masters is fine. the only negative about a masters is that the universities try to jew you any way they can, but if you get your employer to pay for it then it's a moot point.

also, as someone who works in a wet lab you're expected to be the researcher, technician, mechanic, and manager. so far we were only able to get someone to come out and service our equipment once, otherwise it's always up to us to do the work. you waste time calling the company, going through manuals, and doing anything you can think of to troubleshoot before you even get a chance to repair. similarly, running the experiments is highly menial, tedious, and repetitive. anyone could be trained to do it.

yeah that's pretty much the norm. they'll send emails about inclusion and acceptance, but they decide who gets included and accepted. what chaffs my balls though is that they take a cut from my already shit pay and do absolutely nothing for me.

people darker than you are also treated better. a hispanic lab mate got put on a 30k/year university funded fellowship just because he's hispanic. he didn't even have to apply for it. after that ended, the minority center gave him extra pay in addition to the base pay that phd students get.

best part is that i'm a white immigrant and economically both me and my family are worse off then him, but because my skin is white i don't qualify for any of the intensives he gets.

It's a matter of attitude and perspective

wow OP here didn't expect this thread to live.

I'm in agreement that the problem solving and intellect developed in grad school is useful in the private sector regardless of the subject of your PhD. However, did these students really need grad school to develop those skills? Would they have developed intellect and problem-solving in a regular job because they are the top of people that enjoy learning? I think so.

One thing that I don't think exists in the private sector is comradery. Once you get a job, you work the 9-5, come home, watch TV, and repeat. At least in grad school you go out with your peers and get shitfaced.

That being said, I think a Masters would be adequate for probably 80-90% of people that are pursuing their PhDs.

>At least in grad school you go out with your peers and get shitfaced.
kek

you realize most phd students are chinese, indian, or iranian/middle eastern, right?

Maybe at crappier schools, but that doesn't seem to be true at top 20 schools (for chemistry at least)

Holy fuck you are a brainlet.
>doesn't seem to be true at top 20's
>doesn't even attend a top 20
This is prevalent at top 20's just like it's prevalent at your shit tier uni.

What the fuck??? I go to a top 10 and it's DEFINITELY not true at my school