Why are humans looking more cynically at old universities and closed organizations?
Liberato Manna @MannaLiberato The number & quality of applicants for PhD positions worldwide is dropping, according to what I hear from colleagues from many institutions (& my personal experience). We need to reverse this trend with 1) higher stipends; 2) better career prospects; 3) higher quality of training
Replying to @MannaLiberato
Why are humans looking more cynically at old universities and closed organizations?
Liberato, Part of the reason is that colleges are often too expensive for what they provide. People can become billionaires by working together globally. Those old certificates and very high priced schools are not as relevant.
Many professions are shifting to new countries and groups. Just as steel and computers moved, so too are many “knowledge worker” and “memorization based” professions. Going for years and spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars to memorize a few dozens of books and papers and words is not as efficient as learning to get the most from the Internet, global networks of entrepreneurs and thinkers, innovators and very often now, investors and people realizing they cannot take the money with then when they die.
Much of the product of PhDs globally is highly diluted. Putting one person with one supervisor and a few advisors from one department in one school in one country – pales compared to tapping and synthesizing (with computer aids) the efforts and ideas and shared experiences of 10s of thousands of old schools and almost as many new ones. And many more independent often brilliant individuals. Each contributing jewels that AIs can be trained to gather and combine and then nurture those humans for decades of productive lives.
I can almost keep up with the whole of it, working 18 hours a day, seven days a week and with decades of experience. I test the AIs continually and try to tease and guide those groups to build the real intelligences needed for global scale, all humans and related species, all phenomena and data problems and opportunities now.
Challenge yourself to look at all facets of what you said.
Particularly check if you or someone near you needs help with money or support – why you are sensitive to this now.
You said the number and quality of applicant is dropping. That can also mean the quality applicants have taken different pathways and are not just lining up to buy tickets to schools that are not working at the really deep and wide problems facing the whole human species — in an open and collaborative and verifiable way.
There are ways to check.
I see you are working on @NanoLetters It could be that global competition is drawing good people away from what is now an aging nano industry that hasn’t quite moved to pico and femto. It is on my list to check but I cannot help every industry and company.
I followed NanoLetters just now. I glanced at the papers and see part of the problem.
If your PhD friends do not like the slow pace and low prospect of old paths, maybe they can take some risks. If anyone comes close to my “hard scenarios” they might all be finding new careers at things only humans can do. The largest universities might be the first to show signs. Some of that simply from global competition for the best humans, but also because the younger (literally) countries and groups are not carrying so much baggage and have less to unlearn and discard.
I am 75 this year and aging rapidly the last few years. I do not expect to see great grandchildren and even the huge numbers getting their AIs working on “extending life in healthier bodies for all”, might not be fast enough for me. There is almost nothing now that is impossible where the reason for groups giving up in the past (“oh it is so hard, it must be impossible” ) was “humans forget” and “not enough human hours in a work week”.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
