PhD students in physics

I have experience as a graduate and undergraduate student in the United States and as a member of the graduate faculty in Chile. I also have observed as a postdoctoral researcher in Sweden and Belgium.

I read Make science PhDs more than just a training path for academia with interest. First, I think that often advisors and supervisors are more selfish than her committee member was, and the priorities are  the advisors/supervisors publications and the successful graduation of the PhD student. Only the most promising students get guided towards proposal writing. Additionally, the networking required now to be successful with the academic path is a high hurdle and often ignored in favor of the advisor's own needs.

But my core response is that there is just not a lot of time. Most of the time PhD students do really need in additional 2-4 years after the completion of their PhD to develop as a scientist. Cutting short the development would prolong this.

While you can argue that Lecturers, Science Communicators, Applied Scientists and Technicians do not need this development, Research Scientists and Research Professors do. And when I say that an additional 2-4 years are needed, I am only talking about development that the PhD student needs to do good science, the requirements to be successful in a search for an academic position takes additional skills in grant writing and networking which can also be a challenge for some and can take additional time to develop.

While I have been focused more on the Research Scientist and Research Professor trajectories, it is obvious to me that the Lecturer trajectory could use additional development after a traditional PhD as well. I think that this has become understood across physics.

It does not surprise me that the Science Communicator and Applied Scientist trajectories could use additional development. And I am sure that often part of the problem is a lack fo respect of other directions by the research professors that guide and mentor the PhD students. However, it seems to me that rather than bifurcating the PhD that the best approach is a combination of the following:

1. There is a certain amount of work in science that is low value and that PhD students usually end up doing as cheap labor. It might make sense to make time for PhD students by keeping them focused on high value labor and hiring more technicians for the low value labor. The PhD students time is valuable even if their labor is cheap. I think the best approach to make this change is a recognition of the problem in the field and maybe PhD student unions.
2. While in physics incoming PhD students are often well prepared for the physics, they are often lacking some fo the technical skills in communication and scientific computation that they need to finish a PhD and follow a good career trajectory after their graduation. This development takes time. It might be a good idea to follow Engineering and recommend that US Science students do 4 years of academic study and a 1 year internship before starting their PhD.
3. Finally, it is important that these other trajectories become more valued. I have begun to see this with Lecturers with the creation of the Teaching Professor position with equivalent pay (and status?) as Research Professor. As part of this, there should be respectable and respectably paid positions which provide additional training towards a trajectory as a Lecturer, Science Communicator or Applied Scientist just as there are postdoctoral researcher positions which provide additional training towards the Research Professor and Research Scientist trajectories. 

Change

After a decade working as an experimentalist, first as a postdoc and an astrophysicist in Sweden and Belgium and then as junior faculty and a neutrino physicist in Chile, it looks like I am moving on to other things.

I am proud of the physics measurements that I have contributed to.

This decade has been enabled by many scientists: Betsy Beise, Bogdan Wojtsekhowski, Olga Botner, Allan Hallgren, Carlos de los Heros, Catherine De Clercq, Roman Pasechnik, Will Brooks, Ivan Schmidt, Claudio Dib, Gabriel Perdue, Diego Aristizabal, and Pedro Ochoa.

It has very much been enabled by my long-suffering family.

Change in Science

Reading Sabine’s recent blog posts (physicists still perplexed I ask for and because science matters), and my own experience, has solidified my perception that fundamental physics has a social problem.

I think it comes down to economics, scientists are trained via incentives in the feedback cycle of publish, get positions and grants so that they can continue to publish. It impacts both experimentalists and theorists, and can cause waste in money and effort and, worst of all, true advances can become accidental.

In 2004 I changed from HEP theory because I thought what was needed, in HEP, was experiment. Today, I am more inclined to think that HEP Theory is needed, but not the sort that results in quick publications.

I have a radical suggestion.

Instead of rewarding publications with tenured positions and significant grants, why not return back to the older model where only a few people are tenured with nice positions and large enough grants to hire junior faculty and scientists (postdocs)?

The idea is to try and reward real advances rather than publications. By real advances I mean advances that would end up in an upper level undergraduate text book. This would fix the incentives.

I am not suggesting that we remove tenure or plum positions from anyone. I am suggesting, going forward, that large grants, tenured positions and the invitation to sit on significant decision making bodies should go to those senior scientists who have made significant advances.

The rest should have some continuing position, like untenured Research Professor, until such a time as their work is proven to be valuable. Or move on into Teaching or Industry. And such positions (untenured Research Professor and Teaching Professor) should be paid respectably.

Partisan questions before the Supreme Court

Two big decisions came down today from the United States Supreme Court.

One is a ruling that while extreme gerrymandering is wrong, that the Court is not able to fix it. While both parties benefit from extreme gerrymandering, Republicans currently benefit the most. The partisan advantage here is for Republicans.

The other is a ruling that while a census question about citizenship may be fine, that the current arguments are inadequant effectively removing the citizenship question from the 2020 census.  This decision came after information was uncovered that the Republicans supporting this question were not seeking to uphold the Voting Rights Act as claimed but were instead seeking to change voting districts for Republican advantage.The partisan advantage here is for the Democrats.

It seems to me that the court, which has a Republican lean, is trying to balance partisan questions.

Thoughts on the Simulation Hypothesis

There are books and many blogposts about the Simulation Hypothesis. Some scientists, such as Sabine Hossenfelder and Aron Wall, do not appear to find it very interesting. Some posts by Sabine (do we live in computer simulation and the simulation hypothesis and other and no we probably don't live in computer) influenced my own view on the topic.

While I think that the Simulation Hypothesis is not very interesting scientifically, I think that it is interesting philosophically or religiously (here I think that I disagree with Aron and Sabine). The Simulator is obviously not the God of Classical Theism, but the Simulator can be the Christian God (under some interpretations).

In fact, it is possible for the Simulator can have all of what I consider to be the most important qualities of the Christian God: being the source of existence of everything that we interact with, having a desire to have a personal relationship with us, having the ability to create change within us, being good, being one and having the ability to hear our prayer.

Also, we already have examples with our own simple simulations of simulation creators placing themselves in their simulation, so the notion of the Simulator having a presence in the Simulation (Jesus) is not difficult. Finally, resurrection would be simple for the Simulator as it would just be changing a few 'memory states' in the Simulation.

So while I claim that the God I worship, the Christian God, is the God of Classical Theism and so do not desire for the Simulation Hypothesis to be true, believing in it does seem to me to be just another way of saying "I believe in god(s)" and it can even be another way to say "I believe in the Christian God".

Thoughts on SuperGod

One of the blog posts that I have wanted to respond to on this blog for a long time is that of god and supergod by Noah Smith.

First I wanted to address the notion of SuperGod. Obviously, that might be pretty important for someone whose belief system is centered on Classical Theism (a Christian philosopher's take on classical theism). But for many of us Christians, the reason why we worship and follow God is not just because He is the Classical God. Rather, it is because of what He has done for us. If you look at the history of Abrahamic religions, our place in the relationship has been consistently reacting to what He has done for us.

While God came to Abraham and said go and Abraham went on faith, the rest of the relationship with Israel was based… on the part of Israel… on what God had done in the past (lead Abraham, lead Israel out of Egypt and bondage, give Israel Canaan) and what God promised to do (making Abraham’s children as the stars, giving Abraham’s children the Promised Land, all people being blessed through Abraham’s children (including the gentiles: Isaiah)).

And a Christian here and now should experience God in their lives. Not just as an abstract idea or concept, but an experience of transformation and redemption. God doesn’t just do the big picture stuff of creating humanity, setting laws and dictating the fate of nations. He desires, and is waiting to have, a personal relationship with each of us. And if we have been transformed and redeemed by Him, then we are not only ’saved’ but we also serve as the ‘hands’ of God, bringing about His will on earth.

That being said, I appreciated Noah’s sermon about not abdicating responsibility and saying ‘God will do it’ or ’the free market will do it’ or ’the forces of history will do it’. I just disagree with the ‘it’s all on you’. Rather, 'it's on God, working from within you'.

Didache

Recently I read the Didache for the first time. It is instruction for Christians in the early church and is generally dated to the first century (although some date it to the second century wiki ). I was confronted, again, with the fact that recent versions of protestantism are not a return to some pure original Christianity. Rather, Christianity before Constantine looks a lot more like Orthodox Christianity but with less pomp.

I am interested in understanding early Christianity, not only because I love history, but because I want to understand what the setting was when the canonical books of the Bible were selected. Christians then were a lot like Christians are now (and in the intervening centuries). Some spent a lot of time in study and thought very deeply, but many accepted and embraced the message but were (theologically) simple and their Christianity was acceptable to the disciples of the Apostles.

Reading the Didache has inspired me to again try and intenalize the reality that a relationship with God depends on continual revelation. Also, I have changed my practice to include the Lord’s Prayer every day. Many protestants assume we are sophisticated and truly understand prayer and do not pray the Lord’s Prayer often. The Didache instructs Christians to pray it 3 times a day and, humbly, I am taking on the practice of praying the Lord’s Prayer every day. I might be sophisticated and be drawn to theological sophistication but to grow I need to start simple.

(Didache)

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily (needful) bread, and forgive us our debt as we also forgive our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one (or, evil); for Thine is the power and the glory for ever..

Graduate school

When I was a freshman, Freeman Dyson visited my college. He taught a class for non-majors and gave a couple of lectures for the physics students. One that I attended had a number of us, including Dyson, leave the lecture hall to go to the theater and watch the Matrix. One thing he said at the time stuck with me, at least the concept (since the words didn’t). That was that physics was something you do and not what you study, that you needed to get involved in research and not just take classes.

I didn’t truly understand this idea and internalize it until I almost dropped out of my third year of graduate school. It has become one of my guiding philosophies as a physicist and physics professor. 

I have observed that online graduate degrees are popular (universities withstood moocs but risk being outwitted by opms). I don’t see the point of them. Even a non-lab undergraduate degree loses out on a lot of value being online only and graduate degrees lose out on most of their value. I think that a good undergraduate degree should be 70-80% course work, a masters degree should be 30-50% coursework and a PhD should be around 10% coursework. The non-coursework component can be done with industrial mentors instead of academic mentors, but the good mentors will generally be at the same location as the good academic mentors. Who is going to do the legwork, and how is that legwork going to be valid, for industrial mentors in a location without the academic mentors?

I think the real signal with these online graduate degrees provide is that new things have been learned. But that isn’t the purpose of a graduate degree.

Since I graduated with my PhD, I have continually learned new things and worked in new fields. I have never taken a course, just reading papers (and books sometimes) to understand where the field is or to find a good technique. I think that instead of doing this that many people are taking a Masters (and spending money on it). They do get a certificate that others can see, but they don’t get the deep knowledge that traditionally comes from a Masters (or PhD).

Easter

This morning we read the Easter passages of Luke 24 and John 20.

One thing that struck me, beyond the wonder being related about seeing the risen savior, was how Jesus was repeatedly not truly seen until the eyes of the follower were opened.

In John:

14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

In Luke:

13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him.

And I thought about the Resurrection. In my spiritual journey there was a period of time where, despite not having a critical perspective (doubting biblical miracles), I still doubted the importance of the Resurrection. In some sense I agreed with Serene Jones (christian easter serene jones) that the good news was that God Loved us and that His Love would triumph. Also, that the focus on our future state was emblematic of a wobbly faith. I was challenged by some of the best Christians who I have read: Paul and C.S. Lewis, who both described the Resurrection as the crucial component of Christianity. Many good Christians who I know personally agreed.

My experience with other Christians, particularly those who fall under the Anabaptist (Greg Boyd) and Lutheran umbrella, changed my perspective. I have come to embrace the Christus Victor model and so have appreciated the Resurrection a lot more.

A final comment about the piece about Serene Jones. She sees a reformation or change in Christianity, and I agree. I also have seen that there seem to be roughly 500 year cycles (1000 BC, 500 BC, 0 AD, 500 AD, 1000 AD, 1500 AD, 2000 AD...) of spiritual change. I think the end of this period will be the return of Christ, and, especially if that doesn't happen, I don't pretend to guess what the change will be. I will note that at least right now, despite the increase in non-believers, it doesn't seem like the liberal forces (representing a critical perspective of miracles/etc) of Christianity are ascendent. Rather it seems that they are dying. Of course, a different conclusion would be made 50 years ago.

M87 Black Hole

Some are not scientifically impressed by the recent BH picture (black hole picture blues black hole picture is mainly triumph of engineering ). While I am interested in tabletop ideas to push GR, as an experimental nuclear physicist and experimental particle astro-physicist, my intuition is to look closely at scattering from an object where GR might break down (most likely a BH).

While there is currently poor resolution in this data, it is a first step towards looking closely at scattering off a BH and so, I think, a step in the right direction.

In a previous post I mentioned the idea of Science as being the intersection between Nature, Mathematics and Technology. This is obviously a scientific advance of Technology. Like with Gravitational Waves, with the current technology we still see Einstein's General Relativity. But it is a new technology and maybe we can push it to discovery. That is why it is promising physics, not just interesting engineering.

I haven’t read the scientific papers, so I don’t know what the limitations are in the resolution. Would we be able to increase resolution significantly with a 20 billion dollar investment? (Observatory on the Moon/Mars) Or is it something we could improve by just building better observatories here on Earth?

Science Budgets

A few years ago I wrote about how both Republicans and Democrats were generally pro-science funding, and that the problem with science funding is that it wasn’t a priority to either group and so would be left off at the negotiating table.

The Trump administration has been repeatedly and broadly anti-science and anti-education. The Republican Party has changed to match Trump on many of his positions, and while there has been push back, in the Republican Party, against Trump's broad anti-science and anti-education tilt, I am concerned that the Republican Party will become broadly anti-science and anti-education.

The Trump administration recent budget had cuts to Higher Education (10% cut) (trumps budget proposal would cancel public service loan forgiveness), the NSF (12% cut, 1 billion) (trump proposes cutting national science foundation budget by billion dollars) and NASA (3% cut, 550 million) (President Trump proposes 550 million cut to NASA).

I am suspicious that this is similar to his tax cuts which were design to hurt the upper middle class in blue states, and is based on transactional politics.

I can hope that the Republican Party in the senate continues to push back against this anti-science budget and the Democrats in the House continue to support Science.

Kim and Trump

I don’t usually make many predictions about the future, but I am going to predict that Trump and Kim come to an agreement in 2020. They will do this because Trump will want to boost his chances for reelection and Kim will want to have an agreement with Trump before he leaves office. The agreement will probably be more to Kim’s advantage than the one just discussed in Vietnam if Trump is seriously facing impeachment or his approval drops below 35%. It will probably be more to Trump’s advantage if it is rather happening in the context of Trump wanting to increase his approval in July, August or September (maybe even October).

Interesting links between Daniel 7, Newton and Christology

A couple weeks ago I continued my study of Daniel. While Catholics and Theologians (who generally don’t believe in supernatural revelation) clearly agree that Daniel was written about 50 years before it was used religiously in the Dead Sea community, many religious Protestants (including the denomination I was raised in and am a member of, Adventists, and Newton) are inclined to identify the fourth beast as Rome and the blasphemous little horn as the Middle Ages Catholic Church.

I haven’t yet read Newton’s writings about Daniel or detailed discussions of them, but in the sermon it was mentioned that the 3 barbarian groups which are identified as being extinguished by the early Catholic Church were Arian (and so not Trinitarian). Newton identified Trinitarianism as the great Apostasy and his date for the return of Christ in 2060 was based on the year for a day principle from the point where he identified Trinitarianism as becoming dominant in the Christian Church.

The Millerites, from whom the Adventists descended (along with other denominations like the Jehovah Witnesses and the Church of God (7th Day)), came up with the date of 1844 as the end of Daniels prophecy using the year for a day principle. Adventists were born out of the Great Disappointment when Christ did not return. While the Bahá'í also identify 1844 as the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy, it isn't clear to me that the interpretation is preferred for any reason other than that it fits the life of the Báb.

Note that while many Adventists are not Trinitarian, most are and I am and was raised Trinitarian. I hope to write a blog post about Trinitarianism at some point in the future.

Psalm of Daniel

This year my church has had a sermon series on Daniel. I decided to reread it, perhaps for the first time in over a decade, and while I didn't get past chapter 7 or so I was initially struck by the praise in Daniel 2. Daniel was a wiseman, one of the educated of his time and in some way the middle eastern antecedent of a scientist, and he praised God for the knowledge that was bestowed on him.

NRSV (Daniel 2:20-23)

“Blessed be the name of God from age to age,
    for wisdom and power are his.
21 He changes times and seasons,
    deposes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
    and knowledge to those who have understanding.
22 He reveals deep and hidden things;
    he knows what is in the darkness,
    and light dwells with him.
23 To you, O God of my ancestors,
    I give thanks and praise,
for you have given me wisdom and power,
    and have now revealed to me what we asked of you,
    for you have revealed to us what the king ordered.”

As I have sought knowledge and understanding as a scientist, I have prayed for insight (and occasionally even for wisdom). I feel that in some small measure that I have been given some. I think it is important, as a scientist and a Christian, to acknowledge God's place in my seeking and appreciate finding in Daniel a biblical model to identify with.

Other Blogs

Sometimes you come across someone that has not only done what you wanted to do, but also has succeeded far more in every way. I realized that it was the case for me when I came across Aron Wall's blog a couple of years ago.

I strongly recommend his blog, named UNDIVIDED LOOKING.
Before that, I came across a nice presentation of his about the Fine Tuning argument for the existence of God.

He is a much more successful physicist, a particle theorist (which was my original interest), regularly updates his blog and blogs about Christianity and Physics. We even had some overlap at the University of Maryland, but I think that we didn't meet as I spent most of my time at Jefferson Laboratory starting in January of 2006.

Evolution of Humans

I read How humans tamed themselves with interest and I have not read the related scientific article(s). But the obvious thing that came to mind, as a parent, is that there is an another obvious hypothesis.

We were tamed by being parents. Our children do not take 6 months or 1 year or even 3 years for basic functionality and not the level of functionality needed to care for themselves until they are somewhere near 12 years old. Orangutans are usually cared for until they are about 6 years so that is pretty long.

When you are caring for someone, and it requires a group not just one person, then you have to put aside violence and work together. And (less domestic) individuals who don't do that, would end up being less successful, and be less likely to have children.

Artificial Intelligence

As someone who has worked closely with Machine Learning Algorithms for this decade, I have been very suspicious of calling them Artificial Intelligence. The ones that I use: Support Vector Machines, clustering (Nearest Neighbor),  Boosted Decision Trees and (Deep Convolutional) Neural Networks do not look anything like Intelligence as we define it among humans. At least to me.

I have only followed at a distance the game playing machine learning algorithms like AlphaGo. That seemed to be interesting but the state space was still so small that it didn't seem so different to me. It (could be) just memorizing precise patterns and matching them and applying the correct response. They use reinforcement learning, which is something that I haven't spent much time thinking about.

I haven't had the time (with parenting, politics and my own projects in mathematics and physics) to follow the field closely. I was interested though when they announced that they were going to tackle Starcraft 2. I think that the best players end up knowing the game very well, but for me as an amateur it was an example where I needed to deal with new information and to display some intelligence. Although when I did my best in competitive play is when I had responses, which could be considered sort of automated, that I learned.

While the DeepMind AI did get defeated when hampered similarly to a human, it is still an impressive showing.

What I would like to see is taking the same AI (not the same network, but the same reinforcement trained AI) and have it play Warcraft 3 or Defense of the Ancients or even Civilization 6. There would need to be some mapping of controls and limitations, but if intelligence is actually being trained then the AI should be successful there after being trained on Starcraft 2.

After all the state space of Real Life is by some considerations effectively infinite. The fact that the computer can be trained to find patterns at a much increased rate to humans doesn't necessarily make it more intelligent, rather it is if a trained algorithm can be put into a real time situation and adapt and find/relate patterns to be successful in a new situation.

I haven't really read the papers, so when I get time to do so I should be able to think more intelligently on this topic.

The Vox article https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/24/18196177/ai-artificial-intelligence-google-deepmind-starcraft-game which shows that the Starcraft 2 state space is (probably?) too large to be completely mapped for the machine learning algorithm and so it is displaying strategy and tactics and not just exact situational responses.