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[faust]

It seems that you have some high standards for a potential PhD that you don't have for your current work (not that I think teaching isn't important). It's possible to just treat a PhD position like a regular job.

I would advise to at least hear her out. Presumably there is a reason she contacted you; maybe she intends to do a project that is closer to your area of interest/expertise.

You're also not committing. If it turns ot to be bad, you can quit a PhD position after like 6 months or so.

[silverspawn]

One problem is that saying no becomes way way harder after having talked to someone in person. Point taken though

[silverspawn]

And the other problem is that teaching is ultimately easy, and the hardest parts are due to it being new. If I do it again next year, it will be easier than this year.

Say it's 35 hours/week which to feels low. This is more time than I need right now, but it's also probably going to require a disproportionately larger amount of mental energy.

I'm not convinced that "do a PhD in a technical field but also do this other thing that you think is more important on the side" is realistic even if it's physically possible

[faust]

And the other problem is that teaching is ultimately easy, and the hardest parts are due to it being new. If I do it again next year, it will be easier than this year.

Say it's 35 hours/week which to feels low. This is more time than I need right now, but it's also probably going to require a disproportionately larger amount of mental energy.

I'm not convinced that "do a PhD in a technical field but also do this other thing that you think is more important on the side" is realistic even if it's physically possible

Well this is fair of course, and there should be some overlap between what you'd been doing in the PhD and what you want to focus on. I don't know enough about the fields in question to ascertain how realistic that is.

[silverspawn]

So I think my puny social brain foretells the conversation to go as follows:


S: Hi nice to meet you. Let's get to business. My research is {very close to what I figured out from looking over her publications}. I'm hoping for a phd candidate who does research in {subarea of aforementioned direction}, preferably in {more specific subarea}. Are you interested?

me: that sounds really cool but it's not exactly the direction I have in mind for myself

S: Okay, so what did you have in mind?

me: ... um well it's kind of like XXX


At this point, the prediction splits in two

Scenario 1: XXX is reasonably close to S's interests:

S: hm interesting okay so we can maybe do a compromise here. That would like roughly like YYY.

me (thinks) this is *still* *definitely* *not* close enough.
me (thinks) it's super nice of her to offer this wow

me: sure thanks so much!

S: great, here are some more details


Scenario 2: XXX is not reasonably close to S's interests:

S: ... that kind of is actually pretty much something totally different, isn't it?

me: kind of

S: why did you accept this interview again?

me: something game theory optional value strictly dominated strategy something something

S: I see well in this case this probably isn't going to work

[silverspawn]

Then Scenario one ends with me taking the position against my better interest, whereas scenario two ends with me suffering through several days of very unpleasant social anxiety and regret

[faust]

Well it seems like you don't believe that there could be a subarea that is interesting to both of you.

Ultimately, it's hard to predict what she wants out of this. Maybe she wants you to do something that aligns with your interest - you think this is unlikely though. (I will say that my advisor is in a different field from what my PhD is about, FWIW) It's also possible that she needs someone to do teaching and would give you relative freedom in your research. But in that case it might still be better to do that research in a group that actually cares about the same things as you do.

[silverspawn]

mmmm

[silverspawn]

leaning toward accepting it now but will wait until this evening

[silverspawn]

back to leaning toward declining

[silverspawn]

There really should be some kind of innate signal in the universe for important decisions. Dramatic music along with some mechanism to make it physically difficult. Not whether or not you press a button

[silverspawn]

well I declined and there was no music at all

[silverspawn]

just got back into poker, now won 4 9-man tournaments in a row

if I'm as terrible as everyone else, the probability should be 1/9^4 = 1/6561. Fwiw this still feels like significantly less unlikely than what poker was like before my last hiatus

this is the kind of thing that happens in my life all the time

[silverspawn]

If I'm very optimistic about how good I am now, which is not at all consistent with losing money on poker before the hiatus, then the probability is still 1/5^4 = 1/625

[Awaclus]

just got back into poker, now won 4 9-man tournaments in a row

if I'm as terrible as everyone else, the probability should be 1/9^4 = 1/6561. Fwiw this still feels like significantly less unlikely than what poker was like before my last hiatus

this is the kind of thing that happens in my life all the time

I'm pretty sure the same kind of thing happens in everyone's life all the time, most people just can't be bothered to calculate the odds every time.

That being said, it is not entirely inconceivable that a poker platform would rig the odds in favor of someone returning from a hiatus — it would certainly benefit them to do so. It could also be catastrophic for them if they got caught doing it, so it still seems pretty unlikely, but possible.

[silverspawn]

the hypothesis that really predicts the data is something like, there is a very cold utilitarian person looking at my life from behind a screen and interfering in ways that push me toward doing the important things

"no you're not supposed to take some random programming or editing job. let's make all that go wrong. And private lessons are too poorly paid so this won't work out either. but then out of nowhere we'll give you a job as a teacher. NO DON'T DECLINE THAT ONE JESUS. good. now this is just easy and fun enough to give you time to do other things, and it'll let you practice social interaction."

"You're spending way too much time on video games right now. Now poker? No that takes too much time. Have the most absurd losing streak ever. No it's not going to stop. quit already. quit already damnit. finally. Ugh, now you're trying MTG? still a video game. Have < 0.00003 first player bad luck until you quit. Ah finally you decided to spend a lot of time on mindfulness instead."

"no god damnit you're not supposed to do a phd. weren't the previous signs clear enough? You're supposed to do the thing that really matters, i.e. promote QRI. here is a series of rejections for you. oh *finally* you got the memo"

"poker again? ok this time you're doing it reponsibly and in your off time. here's some 1/2000 luck to keep you in a good mood. keep working"

also extends into the past

[silverspawn]

just got back into poker, now won 4 9-man tournaments in a row

if I'm as terrible as everyone else, the probability should be 1/9^4 = 1/6561. Fwiw this still feels like significantly less unlikely than what poker was like before my last hiatus

this is the kind of thing that happens in my life all the time

I'm pretty sure the same kind of thing happens in everyone's life all the time, most people just can't be bothered to calculate the odds every time.

yeah, this is certainly the obvious explanation from an outside perspective

That being said, it is not entirely inconceivable that a poker platform would rig the odds in favor of someone returning from a hiatus — it would certainly benefit them to do so. It could also be catastrophic for them if they got caught doing it, so it still seems pretty unlikely, but possible.

none of the smileys quite fit here

[silverspawn]

ok I got #3 this time, which breaks the streak. Still however a good result since 50-30-20 is the standard payout structure

[silverspawn]

The realistic explanation is some combination of very real bad luck then and good luck now, but also that I played too many tables at once before the hiatus and this degraded my performance significantly more than I had realized

[silverspawn]

because like there is no way I'm not better than most people now, everyone is so wretched at this game

[silverspawn]

one thing about online poker is that you want to think of stakes (i.e., how much money is on the line) as sort of skill level. If you do all the things you're supposed to do (which I am), then you follow extremely strict rules that dictate what stakes you can play depending on your account balance, so you only move up if you've had success

but this is not in fact true since *every* level has more players losing than winning. If all players did the things you're supposed to do, the player pool would shrink indefinitely. the system can only work if a subset is doing these things. Technically it could be a majority, as long as it's not everyone.

[silverspawn]

Probably posted this before, but by god this is brilliant.

[silverspawn]

Forget everything you know about the additive or subtractive color model, go to this website:

https://www.canva.com/colors/color-wheel/

and rotate the color picker around the circumference of the circle. How many phenomenologically distinct colors do you think there are? How many that add a new phenomenological tone rather than mixing two existing ones?

I think I'm going to run this experiment the next time I see my niece.

[silverspawn]

I'm biased now because I heard QRI's answer before trying. I wish I had been able to do it first

[silverspawn]

Though I don't know if my niece would be interested enough to participate given that the experiment isn't about horses at all