This article is worth reading, updating based on the evidence if appropriate, and then discussing if you have something to say.
Saying "This article is worth reading" is unhelpful. Would you post a link to it if you didn't consider it worth reading? "Update based on the evidence if appropriate" and "discuss if you have something to say" is like suggesting to read this web page only when your computer is turned on and your eyes are open.
Interesting data, no real analysis here or by nature. It deserves to be linked to, but not as a post.
Nature article (may be behind a paywall).
Nature is "creating a debate" which is a technique creationists use.
The article does not claim to be "creating a debate", so why the quotes?
Given that the current consensus in the West is that scientists do need to get Ph.D.s, to declare your own view to the contrary as beyond debate, to liken the conventional view to creationism, to invite people not to assess the article, but to agree with your view of it, to give no evidence bearing on the matter -- what are you trying to do, see how many errors you can compress into how few words?
OK, you were right and I was wrong, I edited it again.
What I should have done was compare Nature's rhetorical question of asking a question with one correct answer to a creationist technique, not to suggest that they were intentionally using such a technique.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/17e/why_im_staying_on_bloggingheadstv/139l is what I previously linked the words "creating a debate" to.
First para of the article at the link, block quoted, would have made a more fruitful introduction than just the title plus "read the article".
This is at least the third version of the post, and they have nothing in common except the target of the link. The original version included nothing but a descriptive link, but at least the link was sufficiently descriptive so I'd agree that it was superior to the current version.
I also thought so, but nothing but the descriptive link had already hit a critical mass of downvotes, so it seemed worth it to experiment further to see if I could quickly get a permutation that I got it back up into positive karma.
I suspected that people didn't like the descriptive link (which was the first two sentences of the article), because the writing style of a mainstream media article is rather jolting coming from the style of prose generally practiced on Less Wrong.
I downvoted because I favor the norm that links sans independent content from the linker belong in the Open Thread. If it's important enough, it'll get linked from a relevant future post.
What's the convention on making a top level post to link to something vs posting in the open thread?
The most recent top level post for linking was TED Talks: Daniel Kahneman and that one at least had a paragraph worth of non-link material. Other links with comparable thematic relevance have been posted in the open threads.
Unless you have nothing better to do with your time, after the first few days the open threads are so full of stuff that they are not worth wading through. That's one reason I don't even bother posting my short ideas or questions; if I don't bother to read the thread, why should I think anybody else is going to read it and and post a worthwhile comment on anything I might post on the thread.
You got it. Current site functionality is broken and is going to get worse as growth continues.
The only way I read the Open Thread is when the comments show up in the recent comments sidebar.
What I use is "don't make a top-level post if you think it is going to get downvoted". I'm open to better conventions. I suppose I could have got more karma if I wrote a sentence or two about how this is connected to rationality.
In this case, opening a thread on this seemed like a good idea because the question proposed by Nature does have an obvious correct answer.
If anyone wants to discuss this subject further, you can get some free karma if you start the 2010 meta-thread.
It seems to me that a PhD is mainly about doing research under somebody else's guidance, while doing some extra courses on the side. If you can accomplish the same research without the bureaucratic hassles involved in a PhD, win-win.
This article no content. It reads like the author saw one example (few PhDs on Chinese genomic sequencing project), thought, "hey, I can write a column on this!", and was off to the races.
The sad thing is that there might be something there if you were willing to do the analysis that the author didn't. Otherwise it's just open-thread material.
If you either go to a famous school (Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Stanford, U Chicago, etc.), or study a field with so much research money that even people who didn't go to famous schools can get some of it (biology, earth science), then getting a PhD is helpful.
If neither is the case, a PhD might not be helpful to you.
Do you think that 500 Chinese people with 4 year degrees could brute force Superintelligence?
OK, I guess it was confusing why this was on-topic; the post was edited to be more than just a link.
Also, the original link anchor text was the first two sentences of the article and this broke people's expected behavior for the site which was probably one or two of the three downvotes this got initially.
This article is worth reading, updating based on the evidence if appropriate, and then discussing if you have something to say.
Link