
Why I Left Academic Philosophy - xkr
https://medium.com/s/story/why-i-left-academic-philosophy-dc0049ea4f3a
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ImaCake
This is just a list of the usual gripes about academia. It applies to almost
every subject. Including Biology, which I work in. I like how the author
explains the pyramid scheme of academia:

>The task of standing out is nearly impossible. Usually it comes down to
informal factors, like having an influential advisor or coming from a “top
program.” My school was ranked ~25–30ish (in the world) for its philosophy PhD
program, and it would be polite to say most grad students struggled on the job
market. “Struggling” doesn’t begin to describe the pain and anguish of sending
hundreds of job applications and not landing a single interview. That’s not
uncommon.

As a PhD dropout and research assistant in a large lab filled with overworked
students, it hurts me to think about their futures. Because of my position I
can't say much, but I would love for them to look around and take note of the
ratio of post-docs to PhD students. If every lab has 5 students for each post-
doc, then the odds can't be good.

~~~
avoutthere
> Because of my position I can't say much...

Of course you can. Maybe not at work, "on the record", but if there's a social
gathering, you might, say, offer your view in a frank conversation about their
future prospects.

~~~
ImaCake
I can, and do. But I am mostly ignored by my friends and co-workers who are
PhD students. All of the Postdocs I know seem to be far more aware of their
situation.

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jimmytidey
Reminds me of an anecdote. GE Moore's wife met Wittgenstein, at the time GE
Moore and Wittgenstein were some of the most famous philosophers in the world.
Wittgenstein asked what she did, and she said "I work at a jam factory".
Wittgenstein was apparently delighted and said, "thank god someone is doing
something useful."

~~~
lou1306
After all, Wittgenstein also studied mechanical engineering.

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majewsky
Some of the things described are eerily similar to what I observe in IT.

> As an end-result, academic papers usually end up popularity contests, a game
> of who’s-who where the goal is to develop incestuous citation networks so
> that your impact factor will look better for hiring and/or tenure
> committees.

Not specific to IT: This description applies to management behavior in large
corps as well. In fact, a lot of things humans do end up popularity contests.

> I could hear [the protesters outside the lecture hall] chanting; the stark
> contrast between the esoteric subtleties of meta-ethics vs. the concrete
> realities of what would be considered “applied ethics” — a term usually
> uttered with slight contempt — made me deeply uncomfortable.

Programmers arguing about indentation styles while their inventions
drastically change how society works on all scales.

> [Image]

> An accurate representation of your average philosophy grad student.

Also an accurate representation of your average Silicon Valley startup "C" "E"
"O" if you add a Macbook and a Starbucks cup.

~~~
mnky9800n
I'm pretty sure the grad student has the MacBook and coffee too.

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dschuetz
There is some point in history of a profession where the people engaging in
this profession begin to look and sound like a parody of it. When the
stereotype (stuff of jokes) is status quo and any deviance or individualism is
considered "not serious enough" or unprofessional. Why is that? Is that a
thing of _academia_? Can we do something about it, or is it just the way it
goes?

~~~
analog31
_Is that a thing of academia?_

Middle management.

(Disclosure: I was a middle manager).

~~~
616c
In academia though?

~~~
analog31
In business. I'm kind of a jerk of all trades, with a science degree and some
tech skills that got me into an engineering job. From there, to project
management, and eventually to people management. I got sick of it and went
back to being a regular worker. Oddly enough they were willing to promote me
out of management, so I made out OK in the bargain.

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Shaddox
I realize it's a bit cynical of me to say this, but this is the free market at
work.

There can only be oh so many philosophy professors. Assuming a professor
career lasts 40 years and each of these programs produces 10 graduates a year,
how can they fit in academia? Maybe before you enroll you need to be made to
sign a disclaimer that the opportunities are very scarce in the field.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Why does everything have to be labelled a "market"?

Is it really helpful to talk about an exchange of "goods" to explain the poor
treatment of PhD students in academia?

~~~
VHRanger
It's not goods, it's a labor market. And when supply is out of whack with
demand, your bargaining power goes through the floor -- which leads to
situations like this.

~~~
131012
What is really nasty is the fact that there is a huge demand for phd students
as they drive research forward. So they deduce there will be demand once they
graduate, which is not the case.

~~~
haihaibye
Elastic demand for labor - people want more when it's cheap, as much as they
can get when it's free (or the government pays you for each student)

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dstrohmaier
For those who care about the shortcomings of academic philosophy, I just wrote
a blog post on why I'm switching from academic philosophy to computer science
at least for a while.
[https://dstrohmaier.github.io/life/2018/04/20/restarting-
my-...](https://dstrohmaier.github.io/life/2018/04/20/restarting-my-life.html)

I recognise at least some of the points, although I'm much less bothered by
philosophy having little connection to the pragmatic purposes of many people.
The abstract she uses to illustrate her point is also a infelicitous choice.
It is from Sinhababu's "Possible Girls" and that guy is a weirdo, in the best
sense of the word, even for philosophy.

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cousin_it
I admire the work of academic philosophers like Nick Bostrom, Peter Singer or
David Chalmers (which, yes, includes the "metametaphysics" mocked in the OP).
And the few philosophers I've talked to in person, like Huw Price, left a very
good impression on me. And their work is important to the future of humanity:
I've talked to many people who changed their whole careers after reading
Singer's _The Life You Can Save_ or Bostrom's _Superintelligence_.

At the same time, it's true that academic careers are surprisingly terrible on
average and fewer people should choose them.

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woodandsteel
Philosophy was actually pretty popular in the US up until 1950 or so. In
particular, for the latter part of the 19th and first part of the 20th century
the country had Pragmatism, a philosophy designed for America.

But then the field got taken over by Logical Positivists and Analytic
philosophers following Russell and early Wittgenstein,and they tried to turn
it into a rigorous and mostly irrelevant science. And in the meantime in the
humanities people turned to continental philosophy and eventually
postmodernism,and in political science there were the Straussians. All of
these went off in very different directions from the country, and as a
consequence attracted followers who didn't have much useful or persuasive to
say to the vast majority of people.

There are exceptions, like Martha Nussbaum or Peter Singer. But academic
philosophy today is mostly irrelevant.

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sien
How can you be smart enough to get into an elite graduate program in
Philosophy and not be aware that this is exactly what academic life is going
to be like?

In the 1990s in Computer Science people were well aware that being an academic
could result in Professors getting less money than their graduates first jobs.

Is it because everyone still thinks they are a special snowflake and they will
get great prizes immediately or something?

(edit) Should have added. Some of the smarted people I know also went into
academia and some have really made it. It's just that well, there are so many
academic 'refugees' who leave because the job prospects are dire and this has
been the case for decades. And so many of those people are very bright and
hardworking too.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Lets consider the other side, how can a "elite" graduate program in philosophy
be dumb enough to accept someone with very incorrect expectations? A PhD
student dropping out is costly for them too.

~~~
sien
The graduate program gets money and cheap labour from enrolling students.

~~~
rohit2412
Then a smart program will find ones who won't drop out

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gkya
You don't become a philosopher when you are a researcher at a philosophy
department. If departments do this, they are mistaken. What you do is
basically history of philosophy. You can be a philosopher / thinker at the
same time, but you are not necessarily a philosopher if you are a researcher
in philosophy, or you don't necessarily need to participate in academia if you
want to do philosophy.

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SiempreViernes
Summary: it was academic and she didn`t like it, finding it too abstract and
disconnected from the real world.

I don`t see much else, sure there is the section on sexism, but she spends
more time talking about how boring her chosen subject was.

~~~
dieterrams
You left out the combativeness, the fact that hardly anyone will read your
work, the unnecessary inaccessibility of the field, the low pay of post-grad
work and poor odds of getting tenure, and the academic equivalent of pagerank
gaming to gain notice.

Even by an analytic philosopher’s standard, your summary is rather
uncharitable and reductive.

~~~
SiempreViernes
I would characterize that as the standard “I didn’t like it” for academia,
listing its well known problems. More interesting would be a discussion about
why the support systems in place didn’t protect her from them, but this is
simply a list of common problems.

~~~
dieterrams
Sure, but you might be surprised how many undergrads go in not realizing how
common these are.

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_pmf_
Seems true for academia in general. Most CS papers are utterly useless drivel,
too (speaking from my own stuff; nice projects, but completely useless from an
academic point of view).

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auggierose
The 97% white men stat is easy to explain: I imagine it difficult to really
prove yourself against implicit bias in the humanities.

~~~
dibstern
Bias is certainly possible, but you need proof of racism before you proclaim
it

~~~
jcadam
Ha! Since when has that ever stopped anyone?

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johnchristopher
HN has a fascination for the downfall of humanities career.

