Google Shames Slow U.S. ISPs With Its New YouTube Video Quality Report - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/google-shames-slow-u-s-isps-with-its-new-youtube-video-quality-report/ <comment><USER2> I know Google is traditionally very stingy when it comes to adding elements to their interfaces, but this seems important enough to dedicate at least a small portion of screen real estate to it on every YouTube video page. It would certainly have more of an impact than a report that 99% of users will never see.

It doesn't have to be a big deal - maybe just a "cellphone bars"-like icon, linked to further info and net neutrality content.

<comment><USER3> They are doing it. If you have a slow connection and the video start to buffer a lot, there is a banner that appear right under the video linking to the video quality report. I saw it yesterday

<comment><USER4> Good. We need to Name-n-Shame these ISP's into doing good by their customers.

There was an interesting interview with Comcast CEO the other day where he said, "[We] don't wake up everyday and go to work and say we want to be hated."

But then he attempted to shift the blame to content providers:

"Roberts followed up this statement by saying that Comcast is mostly hated because 'it's the company consumers have to deal with when other companies raise their prices.'"

[http://bgr.com/2014/05/28/comcast-ceo-roberts- interview/](http://bgr.com/2014/05/28/comcast-ceo-roberts-interview/)

<comment><USER5> What is the customer's recourse though? Get even slower DSL?

<comment><USER4> NO, the recourse is to choose independent ISP's.

They generally offer better pricing for faster speeds with less BS, ie no monitoring, ad injections, throttling, etc.

You will have to look for ones in your area, but they are there. Usually each major city will have a few. Rural areas will tend to have more WISP's (wireless isp's) that are also small and all about their customers.

The recourse is to call your Senator and Congressman and demand they force big ISP's to lease fiber/copper to smaller companies, much like phone-line providers are required to lease their copper to other companies. This will help spur competition, which means everyone wins.

<comment><USER6> I don't know what you mean by "major city," but I look in Milwaukee every six months or so. There simply aren't any "independent ISPs" here with remotely comparable speeds or prices.

<comment><USER7> Hi! I'm one of the four (that I know of) independent ISPs that serve Milwaukee and the surrounding areas with a combination of WISP, Fiber, and Copper technologies. We all suck at advertising and rely on referrals.

In the Milwaukee market we all focus on business users (and generally ones that need symmetric or high-upload service and would be looking at a fiber build) or MDU applications because... For the past several years we've seen a consumer preference for absolute lowest cost over quality or available bandwidth. At the extreme end we still have users on wholesaled ILEC DSL on provisioned for 768k download that just don't care enough to upgrade or switch because they like the sub $20 price. It's ILEC controlled so I can't just upgrade them out of the goodness of my heart either.

The participants list for our little Internet Exchange is somewhat workable as a directory of area independent ISPs although some of us are datacenter operators or as far away as Racine or Madison: [http://www.mkeix.net/](http://www.mkeix.net/)

<comment><USER8> This is my experience as well, just across the pond from you (West Michigan).

Home users demand the world for $19.99 a month and no contract. Therefore, they get terrible Comcast / TWC / ATT (essentially, they get what they asked for).

There are a _lot_ of people trying to run the "independent ISP" gauntlet, all over the US. (And I'm biased, as I am one of them). But those consumer prices usually only work if you offer bad/slow service, have a complete monopoly, or have government subsidy.

Since most Independents don't have or won't do most of those, they have to focus on business, as those are (usually) the only people who care enough to put actual money into service.

<comment><USER9> I haven't been in the access game for a long time, but I honestly don't know how you could sell to even smart "prosumers" these days.

I would _love_ to get a ~50mbps line to my home, from a reliable local ISP with clue. I'd pay around $150/mo for such service, and I'm not one of those guys that runs stuff maxed out 24x7.

There just are no options where I live for that amount of bandwidth other than Comcast. So instead I have my primary comcast line ($120/mo) which is 150/20, and a backup DSL line from USWest/Qwest/Centurylink/whatever they are calling themselves today. I believe that one is 20/2, but it sucks so bad (seriously no 1500 MTU still? sigh.) I rarely use it even for failover anymore. LTE is faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A link to the actual report: [http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/)

<comment><USER11> "Results from your location are not yet available" (I'm in Europe).

Could somebody post a link how the results page look like? Thanks!

<comment><USER12> There's a screenshot in the article. [http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/2014-05-...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/2014-05-29_0852.png?w=1006&h=670)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I imagine ISPs will start using these results in advertising really quickly. "Google rates us as Excellent for video playback. Compare us with your ISP! We're faster than 82% of ISPs in this area."

Google/YouTube speed ratings could very quickly end up being analogous to school rankings. You want to be in an area with good schools, and if you don't have good schools you're probably going to start putting pressure on people to improve things.

<comment><USER14> If there was any competition in your area. Soon it will be Comcast or Comcast. Unless you live in a Google place.

<comment><USER15> The (pending) merger of Comcast and Time Warner does not change any areas from a choice of Comcast or Time Warner to no choice, because there are no areas where the two cable providers cover the same addresses.

<comment><USER16> And somehow no one seems to think that's a problem in the first place...

<comment><USER15> Lack of competition and transparency in the last mile is the essential problem, but the Comcast/Time Warner merger doesn't really change the status quo there (unless someone makes a significant change a condition of the merger). The blueprint of a solution is the pre-2005 regulation of DSL by ILECs: make cable providers (or at least comcast), ILECs, and anyone else with a natural monopoly offer line-sharing on reasonable terms, and watch ISPs spring up (or re-emerge) with competitive offers and better routing than the incumbents. Bonus points if wholesale pricing is required to be at least as low as retail pricing, unlike in the DSL times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Provo, UT, is interesting. It has both Google Fiber and Comcast. Their performance is essentially the same, with perhaps a very slight edge to Comcast. I tried to compare them in the other Google Fiber cities, but Provo was the only one I saw both Google and Comcast in. (Austin, TX, is interesting, because that is supposedly a Google Fiber city, but Google Fiber does not show up in the report).

Comcast has similar performance in all the cities I've lived in as an adult (Los Angeles area, Silicon Valley, Seattle, small towns on the west side of Puget Sound). Certainly not what I expected given all the complaining I see on the net about Comcast and YouTube performance.

<comment><USER18> > _Certainly not what I expected given all the complaining I see on the net > about Comcast and YouTube performance_

Comcast gives many things about which to complain, but I've never had an issue with Youtube on them. What I've been shocked by in the past is the disparity between youtube on my comcast connection and youtube on people's TimeWarner connection when I've visited, where it has been completely abysmal in the past. Like, 1990s RealPlayer quality, not only because you have to turn it down to 144p just to play, but also because it still stutters horribly even at that resolution.

I feel like most of the "one weird DNS trick to fix youtube" posts have been about timewarner, though I don't know if my memory is accurate there.

Notably TimeWarner looks fine on these graphs (at least in a few places where I've had friends complain about it in the past), so maybe they've fixed things.

<comment><USER19> Oddly my wife used to see this on her laptop in our apartment in Los Angeles. I would play a video, and it would be fine at HD. I'd ping her the link, and she would attempt to play it and it would be stuttery and crappy. I'm not sure what changed, but eventually it just cleared up. We were on the same connection. Very odd.

<comment><USER20> Were you using the same dns servers?

<comment><USER19> I believe so. She probably wouldn't know how to change her DNS settings, and I don't think I would have changed either hers or my own from the default. I do recall turning off my ISP's auto-redirect on bad DNS spam. (It would try to suggest sites they got money from if I entered a website that didn't exist, for example.) But beyond that, I don't think we did anything to change DNS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm looking the report here: [http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/)

But I cannot understand the graph (Video consumption and Quality). Can anybody help here?

<comment><USER22> The graph shows what I assume is overall volume of bandwidth seen from that provider, and then the proportion of each type of YouTube stream the connection is capable of holding: HD, SD, or sub-SD. Seeing HD (dark blue) take up most of the volume is good, since it means the ISP provides enough bandwidth throughout the day to watch a video in high def.

<comment><USER9> This is just flawed. It will put your provider that tends to sell 3mbps DSL lines that are rock-solid 24/7 with great peering below that of providers that sell 50Mbps lines that have fairly crappy peering and you only get 4Mbps and 5% packet loss during peak.

Or at least it will look that way on these graphs, since very few HD streams will be performed by the first provider's customers.

I'd be a heck of a lot more interested in looking at data that shows buffer underruns based on time of day. That will show congested providers vs. providers that simply offer less bandwidth. AKA it will separate the providers that lie, and those that are honest.

I don't know much about youtube's architecture, but in general these stats are pretty simple to do via basic math and access logging. You look at the total request time, how many bytes were sent, video bitrate, and then calculate how many seconds of video were actually downloaded vs. how long the request took. If the request took longer than the total seconds of video downloaded, then the user probably experienced buffering. It's a bit rough, but the numbers are incredibly useful in aggregate. I've used this method to identify peering issues (looking at you FT) when more advanced methods are not available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's the Netflix ISP Speed Index, which is more of an ISP ranking: [http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/](http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/)

<comment><USER24> Can anyone explain what these numbers really mean? How can they possiby be so low?

The only thing I can imagine is that it measures sum(max(clientSpeed,NetflixSpeed))/n , where NetflixSpeed is only about 4Mbps. That would make this a ranking of what isp has the lowest amount of users with really shitty WiFi, or users watching netflix on slow smartphones. I doubt there are many ISP's with offer a connection of less than 4Mbps between their backbone and Netflix.

Either way, it's good to see my ISP ranking the second highest worldwide.

<comment><USER25> > Can anyone explain what these numbers really mean? How can they possiby be > so low?

If you click on any details page (either the global chart or country full results) and scroll to the page bottom you get an explanatory text:

> These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix streams on each > ISPs network from Nov. 2012 through Sept. 2013 and average performance > during prime time starting in Oct. 2013. The average is well below the peak > performance due to many factors including the variety of encodes we use to > deliver the TV shows and movies we carry as well as home Wi-Fi and the > variety of devices our members use. Those factors cancel out when comparing > across ISPs, so these relative rankings are a good indicator of the > consistent performance typically experienced across all users on an ISP > network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Something that's interesting about this data is that it measures speed end-to- end. So if you are an ISP that gives out flaky WiFi routers, your score will be lower not because of any limit between YouTube and the ISP or the ISP and the CPE, but because of that "last meter"* between the access point and laptop.

* A new term I'm coining for this :)

<comment><USER27> Is FiOS still giving out those terrible Actiontec routers? If so, maybe this will get them to fix that.

I still remember switching from them to Comcast to what should have been a far better connection (over 2x download and maybe 8x upload) and thinking it was crap... until I turned off the access point in the Actiontec and started using my old AP again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For comparison purposes, Netflix has been releasing this data for some time: [http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa](http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa)

</comment><comment><USER29> It is impressive how local the results are. Comcast is rated as HD at my house (Natick MA) but SD at work (Boston MA).

I use RCN which performs well in both areas and costs much less.

<comment><USER30> I'm in Cambridge MA and got no results, so you're right, it must be quite localized.

 _UPDATE_ : Opening the page in incognito mode, I got results. My privacy settings prevented the tool from working. And those same settings are probably preventing YouTube from working well for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The graph in the actually video report is a poor way of representing that information IMO. It took me a second to figure out what the graph represented and then after that I still didn't know why I should care.

I guess average speed/bandwith was too esoteric to chart? #sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER32> And the average user will never see it. If Google really wants to do something effective, add a red warning bar at the top of the page that says "Your ISP is making YouTube slower. Call them at...". I guarantee ISPs will take notice then.

<comment><USER33> If you're watching a video and your connection becomes slow, it prompts you to take a look at the report to understand what's making it slow.

It's not a direct phone number, but a reasonable number of average people will hopefully take a look while their video is buffering and start to understand that their ISP may be the reason YouTube seems slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm sure Google's efforts to shame ISPs with this new report are well- intentioned, but I really miss the old YouTube speedtest which it seemed almost nobody knew about: [http://www.youtube.com/my_speed/](http://www.youtube.com/my_speed/)

It seemed to show more data – both throughput from your actual cookied sessions and graphs of comparable connections around you. It took months for YouTube/Google to generate these reports when there was existing data out there already. I guess they wanted something that'd be easily digestible for a Netflix-style monthly shame-a-thon.

</comment><comment><USER35> More companies should be keeping track of this, so in case we don't pass a strong net neutrality law, and ISP's do in fact start slowing everyone down in order to make them pay to get back to normal speeds [1], we can have a swift and strong backlash against them. Let's make it impossible for them to do this without millions of people finding out about it at once.

[1] - [http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this- hilarious...](http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious- graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/)

<comment><USER36> what happens if the big content providers pay the small (to them) amounts of money being asked?

if end users don't see a change in their content's speed - or if it comes FASTER because other data is being penalized, the problem is magnified. average joe says 'hey the internet has gotten much faster since they ended that pesky regulation' \- and doesn't see the 30 media startups that couldn't get off the ground, because for them, the money asked to provide faster access is very pricey.

a startup average joe hasn't heard of won't have the money to outbid their competitors for the limited 'media bandwidth' the isp is willing to send through. average joe doesn't care about a company he hasn't heard of because he doesn't know what they have to offer.

my guess is that's what the ISP's want. they give the users a better experience - prioritizing video packets over email, for example, at no perceived cost to them. in doing so, they set up a huge barrier to entry that takes a long time for average joe to understand. he won't take the time to understand this, because the harm caused is a huge loss on possible new things in exchange for a small benefit to existing things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting. Given all of the complaints about the big providers, the chart suggests to me that they're doing an OK job? Perhaps Google is trying to get out in front of the arrival of throttling?

Also, as a cynical person, I compared SF to Washington DC expecting to see that DC was perfect and SF was not. Instead they looked quite comparable. In fact, I couldn't really find any major metro in which _cable_ performed poorly (NYC wasn't wonderful).

</comment><comment><USER38> I feel some of these results may be misleading. I watch YouTube mostly through Wifi, where the Wifi is the bottleneck and and not my ISP. The methodology page [1] doesn't seem to take that into account.

[1] [http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#methodology](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#methodology)

<comment><USER39> Well they are showing only ability to maintain a HD stream, not absolute speed. Any decent wifi network should be able to get at least 10mbit, so it won't impact HD streaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Bad publicity on the most popular video website? Nice thinking for countering anti-net neutrality ISP's :)

</comment><comment><USER41> The visual storytelling of the associated video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH863XXRZEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH863XXRZEQ) is fantastic. You can watch the vid w/out sound and still understand the point they're trying to make.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Results are not available on your location

I suppose having net neutrality as a law helps, then?

</comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me a little of this service but for payment processor speeds/success: [http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com/explore](http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com/explore)

<comment><USER44> Very interested but the page never renders...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Centurylink. I have the highest internet speed you can give me. But, as for YouTube: you bottleneck this site like crazy.

"Youtube, you have failed this city." -The Arrow

</comment><comment><USER46> Would a cable company, ISP for most of us, want to offer connections capable of ultra HD quality video streaming? Streaming threatens half of their business.

</comment><comment><USER47> Can't seem to find a single city with both Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

</comment><comment><USER48> Yay, no ISP in my area is HD verified! Wait, booo!

</comment><comment><USER49> I assume Vimeo doesn't have this because it always sucks for everybody on every network.

</comment><comment><USER50> All I get is "Results from your location are not yet available."

<comment><USER51> Same here. I am in San Francisco (Sonic.net) and I cannot see the graph shown in the article for San Francisco. Is there any way to ask for results for a specific location?

<comment><USER52> [http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/) is working for me, even though [http://g.co/videoqualityreport](http://g.co/videoqualityreport) was giving me that same error.

<comment><USER50> [http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/) worked for me, thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150630-my-dentist-saved-my-tooth-but-stole-my-memory <comment><USER2> I would strongly question the idea that he has "no structural abnormality".

It would be very interesting to see exactly what type of imaging they performed on him. Bear in mind, an abnormality in the hippocampus or other memory related structures could be sub-mm in size and result in a significant impairment.

If, for example, he did not have an MRI with diffusion weighted imaging with a sufficiently high B value (gradient value) they may be missing/have missed a very small stroke (this test is also time sensitive -only positive within the first few days of insult).

If they did not perform susceptibility weighted imaging, they may have missed a tiny micro-haemorrhage. Both of these scenarios can result in memory loss if critical structures are involved.

There are also several technical issues that may have resulted in a sub- optimal scan, precluding finding a tiny abnormality. There's also the question of whether the person reading the scan got it right or whether the strength of the magnet/technical parameters of the study were sufficient to resolve a tiny abnormality.

Either of these scenarios could have been a consequence of reduced blood flow (hypoperfusion), a small clot (embolus) or a tiny blood vessel injury (dissection) that could have occurred during the procedure - possibly related to the anaesthetic but not definitively so.

I suspect there is a definitive abnormality that the clinicians that saw him were unable to pick up. This seams a lot more likely than the idea that we need to revise our entire conceptualisation of memory formation to suit a psychological theory.

<comment><USER3> Not to deny what you're saying, because I believe a key tenet of biology is that structure follows function, but how would the structural abnormality be caused by the operation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The doctors initially suspected that he'd reacted badly to the anaesthetic, causing a brain haemorrhage – yet they failed to find evidence of injury. So he was discharged with the mystery still hanging over him, and the family moved back to England, where he was referred to the office of Gerald Burgess, a clinical psychologist in Leicester._

 _Scouring the medical literature, he found five similar cases of mysterious memory loss without brain damage. Although none occurred during a trip to the dentist, they do seem to follow other periods of physiological stress during a medical emergency._

That doesn't prove that the anaesthetic isn't the root cause. The article title sounds link-baity.

<comment><USER5> Earlier this year I had a medical procedure and was given "twilight" anesthesia. I was explicitly told "you need to have your spouse or a friend here because we're going to give you instructions afterward and you probably won't remember it".

And, sure enough, my memory was pretty much wiped for the hour or so after the event. Later that evening I had a conversation with my wife that went like this:

"Um, did you help me with putting my clothes back on?"

"Um, no. You did that."

"Did I talk to you and the doctor?"

"Sure. Normal conversation."

 _I have no recollection of these events at all_. It gave me an uneasy feeling for a day or so. Nothing traumatic but every time I tried to reach back and think about that post-op period I drew and continue to draw a complete blank.

<comment><USER6> The fact that anesthesiologists apparently deliberately induce amnesia with benzos scares the shit out of me, much more so than full general anesthesia does (which seems backwards, right, because general anesthesia is actually dangerous). Why do they want me not to remember anything? Is it that horrible?

<comment><USER7> The use of amnesiacs like midazolam in conjunction with unpleasant surgery has become common practice because it has been shown to significantly reduce the psychological trauma associated with surgical procedures and related changes in behavior as a result. You will still experience the trauma at the time whether you remember it or not, but the experience is not persistently encoded into your brain.

This is important because the psychological trauma of a surgical procedure will often cause people to avoid future procedures even when procedures are medically advisable. These drugs temporarily prevent strongly negative experiences from becoming a part of who you are mentally, subconscious or otherwise.

<comment><USER6> And that makes intuitive sense. I'm still left with the question: is the experience of surgery really that bad?

<comment><USER8> I'll say yes. For example, sometimes we have to run electrical current through someone's chest to correct an arrhythmia. Depending on the urgency, we will give a medication such as midazolam. Ideally you want the sedation to have taken effect, but you don't always have the time to wait for that before your hand is forced and you have to cardiovert. The amnestic properties will help reduce some of the traumatic memories.

<comment><USER6> Sure. That makes sense. You gave me enough keywords with that comment to look up electrical cardioversion and pain, and so now there's something new that I'm scared of (kale for dinner tonight!) (thanks!).

But that's actually something different than what I'm asking. I have no trouble understanding why I wouldn't want to remember a pain "similar to that of surgical incision". Similarly: I wouldn't want to remember an unanesthetized incision!

But before learning that surgical patients were routinely given midazolam to zap their memory, my impression was that surgical patients were completely zonked out by general anesthesia, and so there'd be no need to zap their memory, because they weren't going to consciously experience the incision in the first place.

Now I'm like, is all of general anesthesia a scam, and we're all enduring horrible pain, and we just don't remember it? J/K ONLY SERIOUS.

<comment><USER8> Midaz can be used as premedication before induction of general anesthesia, but it's not an induction agent itself. If you're getting general (as opposed to "twilight") anesthesia, once you're induced, you should be unconscious (to the best of our ability to understand consciousness).

I'm medicine, not anesthesia, so I don't use these agents all day and therefore referred to cardioversion which is more in my domain. Cheers!

<comment><USER6> I am noting with interest and a small amount of alarm the abruptness with which you've ejected yourself from this thread after my suggestion that all of anesthesia is a huge scam. :)

<comment><USER9> FWIW, unlikely. I specifically remember being asked to count down from 10, going like 8 7 6 ... 5 wait I feel weird and sleepy. That is, my first thought after being woken up was the next number in sequence.

It seems unlikely that would be the case if the time inbetween was spent thinking 'oh my god this hurts so much' rather than just blacked out.

<comment><USER6> Were you given a benzo specifically to erase your memory of the events? Because this thread is about the fact that many (maybe most) surgical patients are.

(Let me clear, I'm being deliberately silly about all this. I do not think there is a huge anesthesia conspiracy. I am, at the same time, seriously skeeved out by having my memory deliberately tampered with.)

<comment><USER9> > Were you given a benzo specifically to erase your memory of the events?

I don't remember! :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oliver Sacks, in his wonderful essay collection "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" [1], describes a similar case of a soldier, "Jimmy G.", who lost his ability to form memories after being wounded in 1945. Every half an hour or so his memory resets, and so 20 or 30 years later he still thinks that he's an 18 year-old man who just got wounded in the war. There's a particularly poignant moment in the story where his brother comes to visit the man in hospital in the 1970s, and how Jimmy is puzzled why his brother looks so old.

Another well-known case of retrograde amnesia is Clive Wearing, a British pianist who was the subject of a BBC documentary, "Man Without a Memory" [2]. I recommend watching the clip. He describes his "resets" rather terrifyingly as slowly emerging from a sleepless coma. Whenever he sees his wife after such a reset, he leaps up to greet her as if they have been apart for a long time, and his evident happiness and inability to recognize his situation is heartbreaking. (His wife, unbeknownst to him, of course, has since divorced him, which only adds to the poignancy of the scene.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the condition that was described in Memento. Really fascinating stuff. It makes me want to keep notes on everything, because most people rely on their memory for a lot of things. When we forget something we are frustrated "Oh darn, I forgot it again!". Imagine not being able to remember anything at all...

<comment><USER12> _Imagine not being able to remember anything at all..._

...including the fact that you can't remember anything? That would certainly be scary.

<comment><USER13> I once lost a memory for couple hours - I was fully aware that I don't remember anything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In a talk that I attended, Steve Wozniak mentioned that he studied a lot of psychology when he returned to the university after leaving Apple. He thinks that he may have been the first person to have come up with idea that we lose our memories with our teeth, and that researchers later discovered a link between the loss of our early autobiographical memories and the loss of our baby teeth.

<comment><USER15> My Mom's got only three teeth left. Going by this theory, she should remember barely anything. But she does remember a lot.

<comment><USER16> Well Woz is a brilliant guy in many respects, but even highly intelligent people get the occasional wacky idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few comments in this thread mention "genera anaesthesia side effects" and long-term problems. I have never heard of this and a quick wikipedia/google search is not bringing up good source on the topic. Is this substantiated or another "vaccines cause autism" kind of thing?

<comment><USER18> General anaesthesia is actually somewhat dangerous.

Your chance of dying from anaesthesia is around 1 in 100,000 - 185,000. While it may seem like a safe number, it's orders of magnitude higher than winning a major lottery.

That number also doesn't include medical fuckups during anaesthesia, like overdose, airway obstruction. In that case the number shoots up to 1:2500 - 1:5000.

[http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/95.long](http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/95.long)

1.5 people in 1000 wake up, so the pain shock alone can kill you.

Dental anaesthesia is known to kill, around 2 children per year.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/dental-sedation- chi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/dental-sedation-child- deaths_n_1671604.html)

<comment><USER19> When having staples inserted (and also removed a year later) into the growth plates in my knees, I was given the option of having my legs numbed too for pain relief. I'm glad I took that option now - unless it was post-op only.

From the second op, I had a huge black bruise on my thigh in the shape of a hand print. I couldn't imagine the pain if I'd have woken during the cause of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >he wakes up every morning believing he is still in Germany in 2005, waiting to visit the dentist. Without a record of new experiences, the passing of time means nothing to him. Today, he only knows that there is a problem because he and his wife have written detailed notes on his smartphone, in a file labelled "First thing – read this".

Literally 50 First Dates...

<comment><USER21> Much like the movie, yes, though in her case it was a daily, not an hourly, thing. It's nice that the film seems to be based on a real-life condition and portrays it fairly accurately.

<comment><USER22> I mentioned this to a psychologist and she laughed at me very hard. She was a professor and said that she uses the movie 50 First Dates in her class -- by having them write down everything that is wrong. She says it's so horribly inaccurate that it makes for a good long discussion.

<comment><USER20> Out of curiosity what are some of the things wrong with it?

<comment><USER23> This page doesn't like the film, and lists some mistakes, but also lists some of the accurate bits.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychologist-the- movies...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychologist-the- movies/201212/amnesia-in-50-first-dates)

<comment><USER20> The only real "issue" that article seems to take with the movies was that (A) it used a term that doesn't exist to describe a condition that does have an actual name and (B) it was a cheesy romcom. But I mean, do you really expect any Adam Sandler movie to get to the real grit of living with a terrible disease?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A comparably horrifying experience: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing)

</comment><comment><USER25> If no link can be found between the dental surgery and the memory-forming loss, could it be that there is actually no link? Have any other hypotheses been researched besides the surgery?

<comment><USER18> Exactly. It can be just a coincidence. A blood clot, undetected cancer, genetic disorder, or a million other things.

<comment><USER26> Or more likely psychogenic, given the recent death of his father.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9810025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9810025)

</comment><comment><USER28> Most people took a little bit of time to get familiar with smartphone UIs, especially for someone who's jumping from no smart phone at all to the latest version of iOS and Android. I wonder if he has been slowly learning how to use a smartphone like the other condition, or if he has to rediscover the UI every time.

<comment><USER29> I believe the memory used to retain skills is separate from other types of memory. There was a famous patient, Henry Molaison[0] who was the first person to suffer this condition and participated in some really amazing research. He was able to learn new skills, albeit slowly.

"His ability to form long-term procedural memories was intact; thus he could, for example, learn new motor skills, despite not being able to remember learning them."

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison)

<comment><USER30> If you read the article, it says the patient mentioned can't form procedural memories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Damaging my mind is my biggest fear. I had a simple surgery a year ago(shoulder arthroscopy), and I specifically said that I don't agree to general anesthesia or any kind of sedatives, because even a small probability of a small brain damage isn't worth it for me.

Doctors tried to push me into accepting the general anesthesia, saying that it's the only option(and that we lose brain cells every day really, so who cares). I went to a different clinic where a doctor agreed to do the surgery under local anesthetics and without sedation without any problems. Said someting along the lines "don't worry, man, your brain is gonna be fine."

He failed to mention that local anesthesia can also lead to neurotoxicity, and I was too ignorant to know about it(for some reason I assumed that local anesthetics are harmless, and didn't do my research).

During the surgery I felt the symptomps(dizziness, difficulty speaking), consistent with neurotoxicity caused by local anesthetics.

I don't notice any permanent damage, though I doubt that I'd be able to tell. 6 months after the surgery I have developed tinnitus, but I can't tell if it's connected to it or not.

Anyway, my point is that no way in hell would I agree to the surgery if I'd have known the risks.

Also, before that, doctors pushed me into unnecessarily taking general anesthesia for a routine procedure. They convinced me that it can't be harmful, and I was too young and socially awkward to ask more questions or argue.

I also fear dental anesthetics. There is research indicating that they can cause neurotoxocity. I can easily sit through filling regular cavities(with a dental laser it really isn't that painful), but I'm not sure what I would do if I have to get root canal. I would take any option over anesthesia, but I don't know of any alternative.

Some doctors say that it's just an irrational fear. But given that there's some research saying that even dental anesthesia can cause neurotixicity, I'm not sure what's so irrational about not wanting my brain cells to die. My brain is what matters to me the most in the world, far more than anything else, it has infinite value, because that's literally "me", so even small chance of small damage is worth avoiding at all cost(in my value system).

It's infuriating how casual doctors are about such risks, especially in cases when they can be avoided. I understand taking necessary risks when it's a life-saving surgery, but when you have alternatives, I think patient should be able to make an informed choice.

<comment><USER23> The "irrationality"[1] is the weight you put on the unknown risk of brain-harm from anaesthesia, while not appearing to assign much risk to how you get there.

How likely is it that you're going to suffer brain injury in your day to day life versus from anaesthetic?

[1] irrational is probably a not useful word here. You have real fear of real things.

<comment><USER31>
        > while not appearing to assign much risk to how you get there.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, can you rephrase it?

If you are saying that I'm not putting enough weight on the risks of avoiding the procedure - let me be clear, I'm talking about cases where anesthesia is optional, and is a matter of pain vs comfort.

I know that avoiding root canal puts me at risk of dying from infection, so of course I wouldn't avoid doing it, and it makes sense to prefer "treating tooth with anesthesia" over "not trating a tooth." But I _could_ have avoided that surgery(it was about quality of life, not survival), and I _could 've_ avoided anesthesia if I was willing to suffer some pain/discomfort. And _that_ should be my choice to make.

I think that it is rational to take short term pain over (even small) probability of long term brain damage. If I could take some reasonable amount of pain over brain damage risk, I would take it any time, and it would be the _right_ choice. My problem with root canal is that I don't think I could handle the pain without anesthetics. So I fear that when faced with choice "a lot of pain" vs "safety for my brain" I will fear the pain, take anesthetics, and betray my values.

Do you see my problem here? If brain has literally "infinite" value, then no matter how infinitesimal risks are, it is rational to minimize them at all cost. If doing the procedure minimizes them, it is rational to do it, if it doesn't - the right thing is to avoid it.

Correct me if I misunderstood what you're saying.

        > How likely is it that you're going to suffer brain injury
        > in your day to day life versus from anaesthetic?

Ehm... Less likely? Possible, but less likely.

<comment><USER23> Having an anasthetic carries some risk. How much? How many people per million suffer the adverse outcome you fear?

Now compare that to the risk of day to day life. How much has the risk increased?

There's a bunch of stuff you do that you don't need to do that carries more risk than anaesthetic.

It's fine for you to chose your medical care. You might want to investigate an "advance health care directive". Having one should persuade doctors that you have spent time thinking about this and it is your sincere and considered desire to ignore their advice to have anasthesia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_health_care_directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_health_care_directive)

<comment><USER32> >There's a bunch of stuff you do that you don't need to do that carries more risk than anaesthetic.

I don't have any evidence for this but I suspect that the majority of brain injuries in otherwise healthy people come from trauma due to accidents. If my suspicion is true then wearing a helmet all the time might be the most effective way to avoid brain injury.

<comment><USER16> Helmets protect your skull. They are not as effective at preventing brain injury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Any chance he suffered a profound trauma being under surgery? I imagine an utter fear of surgery and this could have been triggered by something really insignificant like a small tingling or just the thought of surgery, of a foreign element cutting deep in your tooth canal. That, amplified over and over (he might even have lost conscience if his jaw was being held in place by a device -- the doctor wouldn't have known it this way) could have given birth of some kind of mechanism of memory wipe, sort of like the one victims of rape or horrible accidents develop as a self defence mechanism to (not?) cope with what just happened. Only in this case it went terribly wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> >local anesthetic

Local anesthetic is pretty much just a pain killer... it's not supposed to knock you out like GA (general anesthetic). I wonder if the article got the term right.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's a great movie by Christopher Nolan about exactly this condition: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_%28film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_%28film%29) [http://letterboxd.com/film/memento/](http://letterboxd.com/film/memento/) Highly recommended.

<comment><USER36> There is also a mediocre but surprisingly endearing Adam Sandler movie about this condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There is a Japanese movie about this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Housekeeper_and_the_Profes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Housekeeper_and_the_Professor)

I highly recommend it, especially if you are a mathematician.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is it necessarily the anaesthesia or a hemorrhage? Have they considered removing the root canal? Sometimes removing the materials from a root canal has improved a patient's health significantly.

Certainly one could understand why the dental industry would avoid the meme "root canal = bad!", but in this case the patient has little to lose, his future being lost already.

<comment><USER39> Claims that dental fillings are toxic, and that removing them will provide various health benefits, are a somewhat common medical scam. There is absolutely no evidence supporting these claims.

[http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/mercury.ht...](http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/mercury.html)

<comment><USER38> We're talking about _root_ _canals_, not dental fillings! Other than the anaesthetic, the materials used in root canals are are entirely different from those used in a dental filling.

Furthermore, root canals require different training and are (usually) done by endodontists. Dentists usually handle the more mundane and more tested procedure of dental fillings.

My point is, root canals are much more invasive and have their own problems(not associated with dental fillings).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> so is root canal dangerous??

<comment><USER32> All medical interventions have the risk of adverse outcomes. Treating a patient is a risk-benefits analysis.</comment></comment>


Did your prospective hires wipe their job history? - <AUTHOR> http://mobocube.com/post/5312332640/did-your-prospective-hires-wipe-their-job-history

<comment><USER2> I've thought about excluding an employer from my resume. I left Google in April, worked at another company for 6 months, didn't like it and resigned, and started at Strava (which I'm loving) in November. I have a decision to make: do I include or omit the 6 month job on my resume?

A resume, and a LinkedIn profile, are about getting hired while telling the relevant truth. It's putting the relevant experience in front of the recruiter, interviewers, and hiring team. If I feel that I didn't learn much at the 6 month job, I may omit it - not to wipe my history, not to hide anything, but because I may conclude it's not useful or relevant to the hiring company.

Resumes should tell the truth. They should be trimmed to be most relevant. And maybe that's omitting irrelevant career experience.

<comment><USER3> A resume is a sales brochure. It is you marketing yourself. When I apply to jobs, I edit my resume to emphasize the experience and knowledge I think makes me most suitable for the job I'm applying for. To do otherwise would be doing a disservice to myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If prospective hires are expected to not do this, it would seem only fair for the potential employee to ask the company to provide a full history of all its interactions with employees, both happy and unhappy.</comment>


Those Who Lack Courage Cannot Behave With Integrity - <AUTHOR> http://notepad.thomasknoll.info/those-who-lack-courage-cannot-behave-with-integrity#.U0BPcK2pXxh

<comment><USER2> This is tru ! But actually... not if you have already understood courage as being a problem of your personality, and honesty a consequence of it.

In this case you may find people who impose themselves to be honest / with courage to level them up (which is good) !</comment>


The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/ <comment><USER2> I am surprised that so many people are relating PhD's to the money you'll make. I hear (very frequently) that "the amount of time you spend doing your PhD will put you far behind the 4 years of having a job" or "if you want to get rich, go into ...", or "management is where all the money is; you need an MBA for that".

Uh... I'm doing a PhD because I like scientific research and can't stand the thought of being a process engineer. If I'm going to spend 8 hours a day working on something for the rest of my life, it better be something I enjoy! While it is possible to do R&D with a bachelor's degree, your chances of being able to do exactly the kind of research you want goes up significantly with a PhD, plus you've already had the experience of doing it for 4 years.

Also, I'm not sure where this "not much money" concept comes from anyway. I'll start at an engineering salary, right out of grad school. I guess that's not "Hacker News wealthy", but that's plenty more than I need to even live comfortably!

<comment><USER3> _your chances of being able to do exactly the kind of research you want goes up significantly with a PhD, plus you've already had the experience of doing it for 4 years._

I'm not so sure that's a valid generalization.

I'm getting a PhD in computer science, but any corporate R&D department I know of that would hire a fresh graduate would only let you do R in service of their particular D needs, i.e., you have too little autonomy.

I definitely think I can find jobs that I love and that are lucrative (I have some in mind), but I won't be doing research as, say, a tenured professor would define it.

<comment><USER4> I'm not even sure that all tenured professors are doing research as they would define it.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not. Look at the publication record of any tenured professor at a non R1 university and you'll typically find that it's dropped to almost nil.

<comment><USER3> True, I really just meant "at R1 universities." Which isn't fair to all those other tenured professors at non-R1 universities (and I may possibly even be one, someday).

Of course, I have heard of R1 tenured professors who claim to spend 50% of their effort procuring funding (though I think 10% is a much more representative estimate).

<comment><USER4> Also, the research that people are writing grants for and doing is dictated by what is fundable, which is not necessarily exactly what they'd choose to be doing were there no constraints.

<comment><USER3> I know tenured professors who don't apply for grants, and therefore don't have any money to pay students, but they still get paid a salary by the department. They can do whatever they want (research, or not), modulo teaching responsibilities. Some profs actually do very good research, without students. It's a reasonable way to go, once you have tenure.

Problem is, you can't take that route to get tenure in the first place, unless you're an absolute genius.

<comment><USER6> Most places are redefining tenure though, so the only people that still have _any_ meaningful resources are those that have extramural funding. Anymore, tenure means you get a closet for an office and a phone. And for new hires, if you don't have grant support, even with tenure, you can still lose your job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The missing half of this article is the failure on the part of academic departments to even acknowledge this problem publicly in their recruitment process.

I was an astrophysics Ph.D student at a fairly well-known program until last year when I left with an M.S. to go full time for the web development shop I started. It was a good decision on my part, for sure, but what really struck me is that after I broke the news to my advisor, he was quite open with me about how poor the job market is (not that I wasn't already aware). He and many other faculty members in the department sung a very different tune to me and my classmates during the recruitment process, as did my undergraduate mentors. This is an endemic problem throughout astronomy (at least) and probably many other disciplines in the physical sciences as well.

Even the students often seem to have a sort of Stockholm syndrome about the problem. I still hear from lots of my former classmates that a.) they're well aware of the extreme shortage of jobs in astronomy, b.) they're not seriously expecting to get an academic job and are aware that there are virtually no non-academic jobs doing astronomy and c.) they'll figure out how to get a job "in industry" (i.e. what the rest of us call "having a job") when they finish.

Many students in these programs seen to labor under the assumption that if academia doesn't pan out, their programming skills or quantitative knowledge will make them good candidates for a software or finance job. This is not really as true as they think, since as most HN readers are aware, good developer jobs entail knowing about a lot more than just a programming language, and the sort of programming and quantitative analysis you do in Ph.D research is really pretty far from what those of us in the private sector do with our programming skills.

Nonetheless, a lot of these same classmates would go full-out with their encouragement of prospective students when they came to visit. In my last year at grad school, I remember going on a long rant at the prospectives about how bad an idea a Ph.D in astrophysics is, and the looks of horror on my classmates' faces.

<comment><USER8> I agree deeply. After I chose not to do a PhD I was told all the downsides from everyone. Before that it was all Roses to try and get me to do my PhD with everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This goes well with Philip Greenspun's "Women in Science:" <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>, though I don't think his argument about medical school is a good one.

(See my view on the perils and opportunity costs of med school here: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should- beco...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a- nurse-or-physicians-assistant-instead-of-a-doctor-the-underrated-perils-of- medical-school/) ; Greenspun hosted this: [http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/why-i-gave-up- practicing...](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/why-i-gave-up-practicing- medicine) in 2011.)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's certainly a big misconception (in the U.S. and elsewhere)that study and research produces innovations and innovators. However, academia really fosters a type of conservative innovation. You pick your battles, apply for grants that you think you can win (and hope for the best).

For the most part, you don't swing for the fences. You learn how to integrate yourself into a certain type of system, and you hang on until you graduate. You operate in the zone where the marginal return on labor is usually miniscule.

In my opinion, Academia is pretty poor at fostering and developing any type of disruptive innovation. This kind of innovation is generally what makes headlines and gets funding.

Disclaimer: I am by no means the first person to have this thought. Here's a blog post from Forbes: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/19/innovato...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/19/innovators- dna-hal-gregersen-interview/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Two points not made here:

1) It's quite common to study for PhD while getting paid for it instead of paying for it - and in that case, it should be treted as a fun and enriching (though not very high paying) job for a couple of years instead of "delaying 4 years". Getting into a huge debt for it is a whole different thing, though.

2) It feels that this problem is partly USA-specific. Sure, other places may have noticed similar tendencies but not as sharply; and science is very, very global - I'm seeing a lot of great researchers moving between countries/universities every 5-6 years based on where the major research projects in their area are happening & funded.

In general, a solution would be to try to decouple research from teaching instead of mixing them all under PhD/professor positions - the future tendency seems to be with much less people needed in teaching (due to changes in society, student funding/loan systems, MOOC's, etc) and thus more PhD's shifting towards research.

<comment><USER11> Opportunity cost. PhD stipends pay less than unskilled labor, after you subtract "tuition"

<comment><USER12> If you consider the sheer number of hours I tend to spend on my dissertation work compared to the stipend I get, I'm paid criminally less than minimum wage. But you're not given the leeway to focus "exclusively" on a single research contribution in a focused manner in other higher-paying options.

Even if you're not taking out a loan in the monetary sense, you're taking out a loan from your long term earnings, one that has little chance of being repaid, to put your mental assets/skills to a non-remunerable task, and get a certification that you did so. The problem is that the option to continue doing this (tenure-track academic jobs) are limited and (naturally) highly contested.

However, you make a good point--there's an underlying and insidious opportunity cost that is often unknowingly sacrificed: that of atrophying skill sets. It's easy for a PhD to be a hugely insular experience, if you let it, and if you take the easy way out and don't stretch your engineering skills (speaking in terms of CS here, since that's what I know), you're in for a rude awakening if you determine that academia is not for you. If you're not careful, you'll get good at writing papers, but might actually get /worse/ at writing portable, readable, and maintainable code. And as brilliant as your papers may be, if you can't ship good code, you're going to have trouble in industry.

The good thing, again at least for CS students like me, is that the "fun and enriching" environment of academia means a lot of opportunity for starting companies, creating libraries/frameworks, working on side projects, and doing contract work, so there's no reason you have to atrophy. Which is something that, sadly, the visions of the tenure-track academic job are engineered to beat out of you.

<comment><USER13> > If you consider the sheer number of hours I tend to spend on my dissertation > work compared to the stipend I get, I'm paid criminally less than minimum > wage.

That may be so. Are you familiar with the concept of a wage being equivalent to the marginal product of labor (or value of last hour worked)? :).

I'm with you. I'm working on my dissertation at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It will no doubt be shocking news to Mr. Weissmann to find out that factors such as a desire to learn more or to make new contributions to human knowledge can motivate aspiring PhD candidates. It's also rather ironic to see such analyses promoted by someone who chose a career in the notoriously unprofitable field of journalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> _It will no doubt be shocking news to Mr. Weissmann to find out that factors such as a desire to learn more or to make new contributions to human knowledge can motivate aspiring PhD candidates._

"A desire to learn" and "Make new contributions to human knowledge" are laudable goals that I admire. But, even leaving aside the important question of whether grad school _as it is currently structured_ is a good way of pursuing either, it's hard to make new contributions to human knowledge when you're having trouble making enough money to support yourself, and it's frustrating to see your new contribution made when your buddy is working for Google and writing software that millions of people use every day—and getting paid well for it.

It seems not unreasonable to me to balance life / career goals with learning and wealth. The opportunity costs of grad school are incredibly steep. If you are the rare person who doesn't care _at all_ about material possessions or the physical quality of life, then by all means go to grad school. But if you go expecting a tenure-track job at the end—which most people seem to—then you're making a mistake. I am not at all opposed to someone who simply says, "I don't care _at all_ about income."

<comment><USER14> I've been to graduate school and disagree with your comment about expecting a tenure-track job. When you get to know them, PhD students are not poor deluded souls slaving away in the misguided expectation of a plush, secure position at the end. They are rather intelligent, motivated individuals, who choose to work on projects that are more interesting/important than optimal ad placement or crafty financial swaps, and who are prepared to sacrifice some Caribbean cruises and latest model cars in return.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I've been to graduate school and disagree with your comment about expecting a tenure-track job. When you get to know them, PhD students are not poor deluded souls slaving away in the misguided expectation of a plush, secure position at the end._

I have too (see here: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you- should-kno...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know- before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs/) for some comments, mostly job-related), and I think most grad students—at least during the first half of their experience—do think they'll be the exception.

 _They are rather intelligent, motivated individuals, who choose to work on projects that are more interesting/important than optimal ad placement or crafty financial swaps, and who are prepared to sacrifice some Caribbean cruises and latest model cars in return._

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Most seem to be pointlessly delaying adulthood. Note that there are exceptions.

Without data the rest of this discussion might be pointless, but the prevalence of articles warning against PhDs seems to me to point in an important direction.

<comment><USER15> Ah, right, because doing anything financially sub-optimal is _delaying adulthood_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you cite a sentence in which I said that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awareness of the opportunity cost and likely outcomes has been hitting me hard lately as I consider dropping out of my top-5 science (not CS) program 2 years in. I've gotten to a comfortable place with python/numpy/matplotlib and am wondering how hard it would be to break into web development as somebody who has only programmed in a scientific setting. Besides Python, I also know enough R and statistics to build linear regression models, do significance testing, make pretty plots with ggplot2, and other things you learn in a first year grad data analysis class.

Those of you in the gallery: Have you or somebody you know successfully made the transition from (non-computer) science into a tech career? In the current economy, what are the chances you'd hire a highly motivated science dropout with programming competence and basic stats knowledge? Would something like Dev Bootcamp be worthwhile for somebody like me?

I hate buzzwords like "data scientist", but I think that might be my best angle. What I'd really like is to apprentice in a Django shop, or possibly wear a little of both hats as a dev and a "data scientist".

<comment><USER17> _"Have you or somebody you know successfully made the transition from (non- computer) science into a tech career? In the current economy, what are the chances you'd hire a highly motivated science dropout with programming competence and basic stats knowledge?"_

I did it, have worked with others who have done it, and would now hire people who did. The important part is your ability to program. There are tons of PhD students (even in CS), who can't (or won't) write code. There are even more who write horrible, unmaintainable code. You have to be better than those folks.

Also, do not be deceived by "data science": it's mostly a bullshit term, and translates roughly to _"programmer who knows basic statistics"_ , rather than _"scientist who knows some programming"_. Nobody wants to hire you if you can't implement your theories in a production context.

The bottom line is that if you're a good coder, nobody cares how you wasted your youth.

<comment><USER18> _Also, do not be deceived by "data science": it's mostly a bullshit term, and translates roughly to "programmer who knows basic statistics"_

This is utter rubbish; I really wish people would keep quiet about things they know nothing about. I suggest that you have never actually discussed a domain with a data scientist if you think it's "basic statistics".

In our dev. shop, we have a lot of great programmers, but none of them can touch our data scientist when it comes to working out what our tens of millions of users are actually doing and what their salient attributes are.

As for the data scientist needing to 'implement their theories', that's what the developers are for. The data scientist does the analysis, then works with the developers to implement systems that incorporate the results. Neither group is capable of the other's work.

<comment><USER17> _"I suggest that you have never actually discussed a domain with a data scientist if you think it's 'basic statistics'."_

Utter rubbish, perhaps. But since I've actually done the job, I do happen to know something about the subject. It's a marketing term, not a term of art.

The vast majority of "data science" performed at web companies boils down to knowledge of summary statistics and probability theory, a smattering of basic statistical models, and (most importantly) the ability to write code. There's not much that would challenge an advanced undergraduate, let alone a doctoral- level statistician.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem here is merely a misunderstanding of career statistics. The statistics for success in academia are thoroughly against any one Ph.D. The competition is too high, the rewards are too low, and the competitors are too desperate. This is not a place where you wish to compete - unless you have some kind of overwhelming advantage - aka really, really brilliant - you know who you are.

For everyone else - look straight at industry - where the competition is a hell of a lot lower, the salaries much higher, and the competition is really not that bright. If you are getting a Ph.D - and you know you're not a genius - be looking at getting a cushy engineering job at a large firm.

The benefits are great, the salaries are great, the job security is great and you can always jump back into academia. It's also the closest analogue to academia as you'll get, next to research labs.

Don't ever compete on the same terms as the people around you. Don't play a game where you will lose - a game where you are probably outclassed. Go look to where you can charge monopoly pricing and extract as much as you possibly can.

Competing for limited resources is a losers game - hell, competition SUCKS BALLS (just ask any Chinese manufacturers you know :) - monopoly is where it's at (just ask AAPL/GOOG/MSFT/TSLA).

Separately - people should go out and learn some basic statistics, microeconomics (macro is pretty fucking useless), game theory and psychology. These will help you to avoid getting stuck in what can appropriately be called real life versions of the "Hunger Games" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games>).

Reminds me of Tony Hsieh talking about poker strategies, and the conclusion of the movie WarGames:

 _> Through reading poker books and practicing by playing, I spent a lot of time learning about the best strategy to play once I was actually sitting down at a table. My big "ah-ha!" moment came when I finally learned that the game started even before I sat down in a seat.

In a poker room at a casino, there are usually many different choices of tables. Each table has different stakes, different players, and different dynamics that change as the players come and go, and as players get excited, upset, or tired.

I learned that the most important decision I could make was which table to sit at. This included knowing when to change tables. I learned from a book that an experienced player can make ten times as much money sitting at a table with nine mediocre players who are tired and have a lot of chips compared with sitting at a table with nine really good players who are focused and don't have that many chips in front of them.

In business, one of the most important decisions for an entrepreneur or a CEO to make is what business to be in. It doesn't matter how flawlessly a business is executed if it's the wrong business or if it's in too small a market.

Imagine if you were the most efficient manufacturer of seven-fingered gloves. You offer the best selection, the best service, and the best prices for seven- fingered gloves--but if there isn't a big enough market for what you sell, you won't get very far.

Or, if you decide to start a business that competes directly against really experienced competitors such as Wal-Mart by playing the same game they play (for example, trying to sell the same goods at lower prices), then chances are that you will go out of business.

In a poker room, I could only choose which table I wanted to sit at. But in business, I realized that I didn't have to sit at an existing table. I could define my own, or make the one that I was already at even bigger. (Or, just like in a poker room, I could always choose to change tables.)

I realized that, whatever the vision was for any business, there was always a bigger vision that could make the table bigger._

Source: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-hsieh/tony-hsieh- zappos-c...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-hsieh/tony-hsieh-zappos-ceo- del_b_589543.html)

 _> Instead, Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility. Joshua obtains the missile code but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, finding they too all result in stalemates. The computer concludes that nuclear warfare is "a strange game"; having discovered the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), therefore "the only winning move is not to play."_

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames>

In summary:

Competition is M.A.D. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction>), the only winning move is not to play!

And long live monopoly!

<comment><USER20> Couldn't agree more! I'm an economics Ph.D. dropout who focused primarily on microeconomics and game theory (because like you said, current macro theory [see: DSGE] is completely bogus) and I think your points about finding monopolies is a great one. I left my Ph.D. early because it was a losing game as I wanted to be learning more computer science since it was a necessary skill to obtain in addition to a microeconomic/econometric education to master the "data science"-esk skills I wanted to in order to ensure I properly aligned myself for the future.

Although I haven't made the move to industry yet, I did recently get myself a nice little research gig doing big data work in a lab at one of those universities in Cambridge.

<comment><USER21> Hey, I'm an undergrad considering a phd in Econ. Could I email you some questions about your experience?

I'd also love to hear about the big data work that you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As far as desirable traits, a job can be: 1\. Interesting 2\. Secure 3\. Lucrative

You get to pick two at most, and that's if you're lucky--most people only get to pick one, or none.

Jobs in academia are certainly no exception to this rule.

<comment><USER23> OT, but I find it amazing that the triangle of desirable traits applies in so many places. There's the obvious "faster, cheaper, better. pick any two" and yesterday I heard another one "sane, smart and beautiful, pick two", which I'm sure has a corollary like "handsome, sensitive and rich, pick two". It's as if Brook's "no silver bullet" can be applied to just about everything our life (or it's just that easy to pick three desirable traits that are often mutually exclusive of one another)

<comment><USER3> That "amazing triangle" idea is just nonsense.

For example, computers have gotten faster, better, AND cheaper over time.

There definitely are women who are sane, smart, and beautiful. Are you kidding me? Just walk around any research university where they're doing graduate- level research and you will see lots of them.

As for the other gender triangle, pg is definitely handsome, sensitive and rich, so there's your disproof.

The "no silver bullet" thing is talking about something totally different. And it's an observation specific to software engineering (or, possibly, other specific domains, considered individually). There is a silver bullet for vaccinating against polio, but not for classroom teaching techniques.

<comment><USER24> The point that breaks the triangle(rectangle?) is if you add whether or not she is interested on you.

<comment><USER25> Add this point before yours: whether or not she is taken already.

If you find a smart, sane and beautiful woman doing graduate research, it is highly probable that she is already married or planning for marriage with her boyfriend/partner as soon as she is out of school. (Well, this is from my experiences in Science and Engineering departments. Might be different for other fields.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One thing this article leaves out is the sky high attrition rates in PhD programs. The grim statistics presented are for the people who actually finish. Overall attrition rates for PhDs in engineering, the best of the bunch, are about 35%. It only gets worse for science and humanities. Keep in mind that attrition rates for elite law or medical schools are generally less than one half of one percent. So it is no exaggeration to say people fail out of elite PhD programs at roughly 100 times the rate for elite professional schools.

It does frustrate me to watch congress base public policy on the notion of a shortage of scientists and engineers when the evidence clearly does not support that assertion.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure that all of them fail out. When I got my masters, the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that you had a better chance of being accepted if you applied for a Ph.D. and then quit with a Masters, which is what I did. Also, many of the other posters here decided that the job prospects were terrible and quit.

<comment><USER26> You are right that "mastering out" is not the same thing as failing out, so I may be overcounting here. Universities do also use the trick of admitting aspiring PhD students as MS students first, so that it doesn't affect their numbers when they fail to enter the doctoral program later. So there is also a possibility of undercounting as well.

I need to think a little more about this, but you're certainly correct in pointing out that it is more complicated that what I wrote - especially in engineering or CS, where an MS makes sense as a terminal degree goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article fails to compare Computer Science PhD's who are in high demand and job openings for them far exceed the supply of CS PhD grads.

<comment><USER29> According to the American Physical Society the same is true for Physics PhDs. Sure we're tiny relative to the life sciences, but we've got 4% unemployment one year after graduation (data from 2010, 2012 isn't available yet).

<http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/phdinitial.pdf>

I'm extremely wary of this guy's data part of which come from his "own calculations". Bleh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Canada is handing out citizenship for anybody with a Ph.D right now, so are a lot of other countries. If you don't want to move write books or self publish ebooks, or write articles for industry journals or mailing lists and watch offers come in. This is what a girl I know with a doctorate in anthropology did: write endless articles for some academic publication, she had a job offer in Israel after the first few months because another graduate somewhere was doing research into what she was writing about.

<comment><USER31> That's an exaggeration for Canada.

As <http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm> says, a PhD is +25 points and you need 67 to get in. It helps a lot, but far from a guarantee.

<comment><USER32> Not even that.. "A two-year university degree at the Bachelor's level AND at least 14 years of full-time study = 20 points"

So just doing a bachelor's will give you 80% of the PhD points..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can only speak to electrical engineering and computer science since that's my field. I've been in the working world for 7 years, and here's what I've found...

First of all, I don't know any good engineers who are unemployed, regardless of their level of EE/CS degree. If you have an EE/CS degree, and you're having trouble securing a paycheck, this might not be the field for you. Sorry.

That said, if "getting a job" is your goal, a BS is all you need. A 5-year BS/MS program is a great deal if your school offers it. Otherwise, I'd look for a job with tuition benefits. I was able to get a Master's part-time at night, and it was completely paid for by my first employer. In my experience, an MS is definitely worth getting, as it will give you a slight salary increase, possibly a better job title, and is probably just expected at good companies.

A PhD in engineering is for teaching or being a research engineer (i.e. at a government/corporate lab or a university). I honestly believe you should only get an engineering PhD if you think (1) you're really smart, and (2) you can study at a top-tier university. If you're not an elite engineer, I don't see the point of a PhD. Work experience will look better on a resume than a thesis with an advisor no one's heard of. And a research job won't pay more, but it will require a bigger brain.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm wondering if this same graph can be applied to non-PhD track students, meaning people coming out of STEM programs with a Bachelors, or are you basically getting nothing by even bothering coming out of STEM without a PhD/Masters?

</comment><comment><USER35> "Employment at graduation" is not a particularly meaningful metric, because STEM PhDs who are not employed at graduation usually just means that they haven't gotten a post-doc. They will take a few months and find a job in the tech industry.

<comment><USER36> In addition : The end-date of a PhD is indeterminate (at least in the UK), since one doesn't know for sure whether the thesis defense will require any re-writing, etc. So it's difficult to have a job fixed up completely on the day the magic letter arrives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reading the article and then reading the comments. I start to feel very confused. Do we need a huge debate about this? Some of us just want a higher degree and we just want to go to graduate school to do research. For me, I also love the people I have met in graduate school. It may turn out to a wrong decision? But we will never know that because we could not go back and re-make those decisions. Even if somehow one day I knew for certain that going to grad school was a wrong decision, so what? It was something I wanted to try and I tried it. I think I would regret more if I didn't try something I really wanted...

</comment><comment><USER38> The article is written from an American perspective where PhDs (5? 6? years) are typically several years longer than, say, in Britain (where they're 3/4 years). So, a question: do you think it's possible to have the best of both worlds? Do a shorter PhD for the intellectual benefit without sacrificing too much opportunity cost in industry?

I've chosen to do a PhD because I enjoy research and it gives me the time to learn a host of other skills too. I should have just turned 25 when I finish, all going well, with a whole bunch of stuff to add to my CV (not just papers, but the more intangible stuff too--going from a shy undergrad to someone who can present at international conferences, foster collaborations between different groups at different institutions, program relatively competently, use very delicate/expensive equipment responsibly etc.) Though it feels worth it to me it's also difficult to get perspective from "within" the PhD, so I'm asking anyone reading this from a more objective point of view: do you think it's all worth it? Or would it have been better to go into industry at the end of my undergrad? Obviously it varies from person to person, but I'm just trying to get a sense for where other people stand on this.

<comment><USER39> I'm doing a PhD in NZ (also 3-4y). It's nice to hear someone who has similar reasons to mine for doing a PhD. Like you, I'm hoping to get the best of both worlds.

For me, my (engineering) PhD is a chance to take on an entire project. I get to do system-level design, hardware, software, signal processing, user interface, the lot. The thought of spending four years in a job at the bottom of the ladder doing small, well-defined tasks that my manager told me to do didn't really appeal. Instead I get to manage a project, make real decisions, and learn to deal with the consequences of those decisions. I'm not doing it for the sake of any opportunities that _having_ a PhD might bring so much as the opportunities presented by _actually doing_ the PhD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In Computer Science, at least, outside of teaching, a Ph.D and a masters for that matter is required for only a small percentage of positions, and here's some evidence: [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22computer+science%22+and...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22computer+science%22+and+%22Ph.D%22%2C+%22computer+science%22+and+%22masters%22%2C+%22computer+science%22+and+%22degree%22&l=)

Relative graph to assure you that the dip at the end is just due to less data collected recently: [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22computer+science%22+and...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22computer+science%22+and+%22Ph.D%22%2C+%22computer+science%22+and+%22masters%22%2C+%22computer+science%22+and+%22degree%22&l=&relative=1)

I have only would have wanted to apply for one position in my life so far that required a Ph.D, and that company did not end up doing well. I also managed a Ph.D before (from China) and, in my opinion, he was no more productive than others on the team that had neither Masters or Ph.D. That doesn't prove anything, I know. But, although I have a lot of respect for education, I don't think it is worth it typically.

</comment><comment><USER41> IMHO this numbers must be compared with employment rates of people who haven't got into a PhD. We may discover a similar (or even more significant) downfall. I think that it is not an awful market specifically for young scientists, its an awful market for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER42> Most jobs, even technical ones, truly do not require a Ph. D. This is just the market sorting things out. Why have zero (or negative) income to get post baccalaureate education if you can go work somewhere (for money) and learn on the job?

<comment><USER43> Physical and intellectual freedom are worth more to me than money.

<comment><USER44> Who's more likely to have physical and intellectual freedom:

1) A recent PhD with $40,000 to his name

2) A Google engineer who graduated from undergrad at the same time and has $400,000 to her name

<comment><USER43> The answer is 1), but anyways:

1) Most engineers do not work at Google, and 2) I have plenty of friends who do/did, and, guess what?: They still write code all day! Most of which does not do neat things like drive cars, but rather: increases AdWord click-through rates! Or: manages address book contacts. Fun!

I don't care how much free pizza and foosball you offer me, nothing can match the freedom of pursuing my own interests.

<comment><USER45> Could not have said it better myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813519>

practicing what was called "the mushroom theory of management." It was an old expression, used in many other corners of corporate America. The Eclipse Group's managers defined it as follows: "Put 'em in the dark, feed 'em shit, and watch 'em grow."

"For everyone else - look straight at industry" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management></comment>


The kivaloo data store - <AUTHOR> https://www.tarsnap.com/kivaloo.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting performance and consistency characteristics, but "keys of up to 255 bytes with values of up to 255 bytes"? What is the use case?

</comment><comment><USER3> Stop posting every link you see on tarnap.com. That's getting annoying.</comment>


Ask PG: Is Ray Kurzweil full of shit? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed that few other topics spark as much acrimony and mudslinging on HN as Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity -- maybe it's worse when the libertarian and liberal wings of HN go at it, or the ongoing "language wars" flare up, but that's about it.
Ray seems to have a pretty impressive list of supporters - Marvin Minsky, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Peter Norvig, Rafael Reif, Tomaso Poggio, Stephen Wolfram, Dileep George, etc. - and some high-profile detractors - Hofstadter, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Kapor, Gary Marcus, and Paul Allen.
Personally, I think a lot of his conclusions are probably inevitable in the long term - say 100 years out - but I'd guess that his timelines may be too optimistic to benefit any of us here personally. It's also hard to ignore the parallels between the Singularity and religious belief, and how that might betray wishful thinking on the part of its adherents.
Anyway, I just thought it would be interesting to hear your take on it. <comment><USER2> I'm not as bothered by his predictions as I am by his blinding, religious-like devotion to their results. I would take him more seriously if he focused more on the science and less on some pseudo-technocrat-religion.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Notice that Ray Kurzweil mentions provoke flamewars.

2\. Ask if Kurzweil is "full of shit".

3\. Make sure to work "Ask PG" into the title, that's always good for a handful of upvotes.

Where're the reddit "TrollympicsJudge" novelty accounts when you need them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you even read my comment? I'm genuinely very interested in PG's take on this, and it was inspired by a protracted debate from earlier today:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5003916>

Also, in my opinion "full of shit" accurately reflects the opinion of the majority of the anti-Kurzweil people on HN. It's an example of the sort of middlebrow dismissal that typifies a lot of the comments at the link above. That's what I'm trying to get at - whether HN really thinks Kurzweil deserves these sorts of knee-jerk, absolutist reactions, one way or the other.

Personally, I think the ideas are serious and deserve some thought and consideration. As I mentioned above, I'm fairly sympathetic to them long-term, but a bit skeptical short-term.

The headline is also obviously a bit of an attention getter, sure, but I'm certainly not a Karma Farma'.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe you.

Quite sincerely. I don't believe you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, because it's perfectly logical that I would engage in a multi-thousand word, multi-month debate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923914>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5003916>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791558>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851307>

all as preamble in my master plot to... ??? wait, what is it exactly you're accusing me of again? "Trolling"? - or was I just after those whopping 7 karma points this whole time?

In all seriousness, I've wanted to post this Ask PG for a long time, and I used the debate from the article earlier today as an excuse to write it. I've read pretty much every word both Kurzweil and PG have ever written, but they've never really crossed paths as far as I'm aware. PG's a very pragmatic, no-nonsense, deep thinker, and my guess is he'd be skeptical, but it's too bad this post didn't take off because I really would have loved to read his take on it.

Maybe I should have said 'full of crap' or 'full of it'. Didn't mean to offend your virgin eyes. ;) PG-13 titled posts are nothing new to HN, so I really didn't think I'd be making waves.

<comment><USER3> I generally don't plumb people's comment histories.

Your post fit the half-decent troll template perfectly.

Controversial topic: check.

Used inflammatory language: check.

Had some half-reasonable-sounding stuff too: check.

Mentioned high-profile participant by name: check.

I'm glad to learn that you were a false positive. But, given the same _prima facie_ facts again, I'd make the same judgement again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey jacques_chester, fair enough. It obviously wasn't only you who assumed that, because unfortunately the post was flagged. In retrospect it was obviously the S word that did me in, but it really didn't seem out of line compared to the dozens of very popular, slightly-NSFW titles I've seen on HN over the years.

Anyway, I've reposted it with a safer title in case you want to chime in on the debate. Hopefully it takes off again because I really would love to hear PG's take on the whole thing:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006328

Boy, I don't remember ever seeing a comment war escalate and de-escalate so quickly. Maybe there's hope for the Middle East after all. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>