Good luck! I'm glad you're excited, the company you're going to work for sounds interesting. I made a similar decision many years ago (shifting from academic neuroscience to industry data science), for some of the same reasons (and some different ones). Good for you for making a big change like that, those decisions are never easy
Thanks Tommy! It was a difficult decision indeed, but now that it is made I feel a lot of relief. I feel like I have been pondering this decision for a ridiculously long time at this point (what academic hasn't?).
Thanks for the opioid-influenced reflections! To be honest, I couldn’t tell; your thoughts are lucid and relatable. I felt similarly when I left academia and moved to a national laboratory (also in the bay!). It was a tough decision at the time, but I am thankful that I made it. Good luck in your new role!
Good luck in the new job! I think the sector you're moving to is one where machine learning actually has the most potential, in the near term at the very least. Lots of impact to be made in the application of the already-well-understood as well. I haven't known a career academic who hasn't paid an enormous social and financial cost for that either!
Thank you Liam! Indeed, I think there is a lot to be gained in science by combining state-of-the-art LLMs and machine learning with more traditional existing method, provided you don't spread yourself too thin and try to do absolutely everything.
All the best to you, sailor. One thing in particular struck me as I read your piece: the idea that you see a promising future for scientific advancement in the private sector, rather than as part of an institution. My sci-fi senses tingled with apprehension. More power to you, pursue your destiny - but if more and more of our great minds follow such an example, what will that mean for our universities, our centers of learning? We will still learn, of course, and we still advance. But these advancements will increasingly be in the hands of corporations, with the aim of competition and economic dominance shaping their character and actions, rather than pursuit of public good.
Is this what universities or governments are doing now? Perhaps not. But I can see a future where the many instituons we have constructed over centuries lose their significance and crumble into obsolescence. Universities, governments, even nations themselves. What might replace them?
Are we moving into a world where the private corporation is the greatest and most powerful social institution? Where you’re not born a citizen of a country or kingdom, but a laborer in an industrial conglomerate? Where you grow, learn and work for the growth, learning and productivity of your company?
You raise important questions. I certainly hope the universities get reinvigorated somehow. We need knowledge exploration driven by non-profit based incentives too. I have no idea what the future holds or how anything gets fixed. But I know that the university path did not seem to offer a promising route for me - both in terms of me making some kind of impact, and for me to actually put food on the table.
"Are we moving into a world where the private corporation is the greatest and most powerful social institution?". This is a question more relevant than ever. Especially as corporations might become something closer to living organisms constituted by AI cells. I am no historian, but some of the works claiming an emerging neo-medieval order with power much more distributed between smaller entities and non-nation state entities seem interesting to understand here here.
Hadn’t thought of the historical comparison, but yes that’s exactly what I’m imagining - National governments akin to weak kings ruling fractious kingdoms, and mega-corporations as robber barons chipping away at their centralized power to carve out their own domains of influence.
Wonderful trajectory! SO clear eyed and full of sweetness, your departure from academia. Curious to know if your job will afford you any opportunity to do research?
Tangentially, I love that one of your uses for more money is to buy art that is still somewhat affordable — which, to me, indicates that the artist hasn't been sucked into that toxic vortex of financial instruments aka the Art World.
Thanks for the kind words! My job right now is full time research. Extremely intellectually stimulating still - just a somewhat different subject than in my academic career.
Ugh yeah, no interest in the Art World/Market. Just looking for the most beautiful things. Which often are made by less well known or unknown people
As my supervisor made me promise when I started my PhD: never try to stay in academia just for the sake of it, your skills doesn’t limit you the rat race that academia has become. Congrats on the new job!
Off-topic, but at some stage I'd like to get your thoughts on the quantum measurement problem and the wave collapse.
I haven't studied physics beyond school, and don't know the relevant maths, but maybe you could point me in the right direction.
I ask this from the perspective of someone who is sick of hearing that quantum physics will turn out to be the key for understanding consciousness (in some other way than its non-controversial role as the basis for chemistry, and hence cellular neurobiology).
It's... complicated :) It's a can of worms too deep to do justice to in a comment here. Perhaps look at Sean Carrol's exposition if you wanna have a go at it, he strikes a good balance between accessibility and also not simplifying to the point of meaninglessness. But let me at least dispel one common misconception quickly: a quantum measurement does not require consciousness, contrary to what is often said.
That said, there is a way that the question of consciousness in some sense comes back to haunt you though. If you go the route of the many worlds interpretation, where there is no wavefunction collapse, then the state of the universe instead branches into many possible paths when small things interact with big things. The question is why I subjectively experience one branch over the other. I don't know the answer to this (I am pretty sure nobody does). If I had no subjective experience, I wouldn't really see a puzzle with many universes existing at once, because my subjective experience didn't have to "pick a path".
But I will start with Sean Carrol. I have always been deeply sceptical of any fundamental role of consciousness in physics or the measurement problem. I would like to understand theories of wave function collapse that don't need consciousness, rather than fall back on MW interpretations.
I will write more on the last point later, but I don't see why other paths would make this one seem fuzzy. I don't know enough of the maths to claim any certainty on the issue, but many worlds seems plausible to me.
I will write more on the last point later, but I don't see why other paths would make this one seem fuzzy. I don't know enough of the maths to claim any certainty on the issue, but many worlds seems plausible to me.
Your synesthetic insights are fascinating! I prompt-engineered with AI a few interesting philosophical thought experiments regarding whether our cognitive-symbolic mappings are merely artifacts of embodiment or whether they have some correspondence, however indirect, to the underlying structure of reality. I thought you might enjoy a refined and curated overview of the products. Firstly, if we take seriously the idea that our sensory experiences and symbolic associations provide a kind of perceptual cipher, then:
• Reality may be structured in ways that are not directly accessible but filtered through biological and psychological processing layers.
• The color associations given by a synesthetic individual might not correspond to the "true" nature of fields and forces, but they could encode something meaningful about our interaction with them.
• The encryption may not be random but reflects evolutionary affordances, functional distinctions, or deep metaphoric correspondences that resonate at multiple experience levels.
However, the utility of such a perceptual model might be "entirely extrinsic" to the physical phenomena under consideration. This aligns with the idea that:
• Many of our cognitive models are heuristic—useful for navigation and prediction rather than direct representations of an underlying reality.
• Scientific models are extrinsic because they often rely on mathematical formalisms that do not necessarily "look like" reality but work in predictive ways.
• If the synesthetic model has cognitive or heuristic value, it might serve as an alternative "extrinsic" encoding of the same dynamics that physics describes mathematically.
I also entertained a few speculations about whether symbolic associations have some basis beyond mere cultural accident:
• Magnetism and Blue: The connection between metals and blueness is interesting—many metallic reflections, especially in oxidized forms, appear bluish (e.g., copper patina, iron oxide phases). Culturally, blue is often linked to the mysterious, the distant (oceans, sky), which may metaphorically resonate with the hidden action-at-a-distance nature of magnetism.
• Electricity and Green: Green is often associated with growth, bioelectricity, and the vibrancy of life. The conductive pathways in biological systems (neural networks, photosynthesis) are crucial to life’s dynamics, and chlorophyll—essential for plant energy conversion—is green.
Could a latent, biologically mediated continuity exist between how our nervous systems evolved to process electricity and magnetism and how we assign symbolic meaning to these phenomena? If so, it wouldn’t mean that magnetism is blue or electricity is green in any absolute sense, but rather that these mappings reflect something about our engagement with these forces.
• Subatomic particles do not have qualities like hardness, color, or even "location" in the classical sense; they exist as probability distributions.
• Despite this, our brains—and, by extension, our social-symbolic ontologies—insist on mapping meaningful structures onto what might otherwise be an undifferentiated or purely mathematical domain.
Suppose social ontology (the network of shared meanings and conceptual categories) is a kind of extended cognitive system. Its symbols may be emergent bridges between human-scale perception and the deeper, structureless physical reality. In this sense:
• While biologically contingent, the mappings of synesthesia might still reveal hidden structures of cognition that mediate our engagement with reality.
• Social ontology, including our tendency to impose symbolism on physical forces, may be an extension of this same pattern-recognition process at a collective level.
Is Reality Encoded in Perception?
The possibility of continuity between psychological-symbolic associations and physical reality is compelling. Perhaps:
• Reality does not have colors, but our perception is shaped by deep biological and cultural encodings that map meaning onto otherwise structureless quanta.
• Synesthetic experiences might be distortions of standard perception, but they could also hint at alternative perceptual mappings we don’t usually access.
• The tension between physical colorlessness and human-symbolic richness suggests that our models are always interpretive, even in physics.
Good luck! I'm glad you're excited, the company you're going to work for sounds interesting. I made a similar decision many years ago (shifting from academic neuroscience to industry data science), for some of the same reasons (and some different ones). Good for you for making a big change like that, those decisions are never easy
Thanks Tommy! It was a difficult decision indeed, but now that it is made I feel a lot of relief. I feel like I have been pondering this decision for a ridiculously long time at this point (what academic hasn't?).
Great piece! Subbbed. Liked. And restacked.
From one out academic to another, you’re making a smart investment in yourself and in a community of increasing impact. Keep it up!
happy to have you here my friend! Glad you got some value out of it.
Nice! Keep us posted about the new job.
Thanks for the opioid-influenced reflections! To be honest, I couldn’t tell; your thoughts are lucid and relatable. I felt similarly when I left academia and moved to a national laboratory (also in the bay!). It was a tough decision at the time, but I am thankful that I made it. Good luck in your new role!
Thank you Tanner!
Good luck in the new job! I think the sector you're moving to is one where machine learning actually has the most potential, in the near term at the very least. Lots of impact to be made in the application of the already-well-understood as well. I haven't known a career academic who hasn't paid an enormous social and financial cost for that either!
Thank you Liam! Indeed, I think there is a lot to be gained in science by combining state-of-the-art LLMs and machine learning with more traditional existing method, provided you don't spread yourself too thin and try to do absolutely everything.
Congrats on your escape!
Thank you Charlotte!
All the best to you, sailor. One thing in particular struck me as I read your piece: the idea that you see a promising future for scientific advancement in the private sector, rather than as part of an institution. My sci-fi senses tingled with apprehension. More power to you, pursue your destiny - but if more and more of our great minds follow such an example, what will that mean for our universities, our centers of learning? We will still learn, of course, and we still advance. But these advancements will increasingly be in the hands of corporations, with the aim of competition and economic dominance shaping their character and actions, rather than pursuit of public good.
Is this what universities or governments are doing now? Perhaps not. But I can see a future where the many instituons we have constructed over centuries lose their significance and crumble into obsolescence. Universities, governments, even nations themselves. What might replace them?
Are we moving into a world where the private corporation is the greatest and most powerful social institution? Where you’re not born a citizen of a country or kingdom, but a laborer in an industrial conglomerate? Where you grow, learn and work for the growth, learning and productivity of your company?
You raise important questions. I certainly hope the universities get reinvigorated somehow. We need knowledge exploration driven by non-profit based incentives too. I have no idea what the future holds or how anything gets fixed. But I know that the university path did not seem to offer a promising route for me - both in terms of me making some kind of impact, and for me to actually put food on the table.
"Are we moving into a world where the private corporation is the greatest and most powerful social institution?". This is a question more relevant than ever. Especially as corporations might become something closer to living organisms constituted by AI cells. I am no historian, but some of the works claiming an emerging neo-medieval order with power much more distributed between smaller entities and non-nation state entities seem interesting to understand here here.
Hadn’t thought of the historical comparison, but yes that’s exactly what I’m imagining - National governments akin to weak kings ruling fractious kingdoms, and mega-corporations as robber barons chipping away at their centralized power to carve out their own domains of influence.
Wonderful trajectory! SO clear eyed and full of sweetness, your departure from academia. Curious to know if your job will afford you any opportunity to do research?
Tangentially, I love that one of your uses for more money is to buy art that is still somewhat affordable — which, to me, indicates that the artist hasn't been sucked into that toxic vortex of financial instruments aka the Art World.
Thanks for the kind words! My job right now is full time research. Extremely intellectually stimulating still - just a somewhat different subject than in my academic career.
Ugh yeah, no interest in the Art World/Market. Just looking for the most beautiful things. Which often are made by less well known or unknown people
As my supervisor made me promise when I started my PhD: never try to stay in academia just for the sake of it, your skills doesn’t limit you the rat race that academia has become. Congrats on the new job!
I hope the artwork you are buying is the one you used to illustrate this post… it is what drew me in to read your blog…I was not disappointed.
Off-topic, but at some stage I'd like to get your thoughts on the quantum measurement problem and the wave collapse.
I haven't studied physics beyond school, and don't know the relevant maths, but maybe you could point me in the right direction.
I ask this from the perspective of someone who is sick of hearing that quantum physics will turn out to be the key for understanding consciousness (in some other way than its non-controversial role as the basis for chemistry, and hence cellular neurobiology).
It's... complicated :) It's a can of worms too deep to do justice to in a comment here. Perhaps look at Sean Carrol's exposition if you wanna have a go at it, he strikes a good balance between accessibility and also not simplifying to the point of meaninglessness. But let me at least dispel one common misconception quickly: a quantum measurement does not require consciousness, contrary to what is often said.
That said, there is a way that the question of consciousness in some sense comes back to haunt you though. If you go the route of the many worlds interpretation, where there is no wavefunction collapse, then the state of the universe instead branches into many possible paths when small things interact with big things. The question is why I subjectively experience one branch over the other. I don't know the answer to this (I am pretty sure nobody does). If I had no subjective experience, I wouldn't really see a puzzle with many universes existing at once, because my subjective experience didn't have to "pick a path".
But I will start with Sean Carrol. I have always been deeply sceptical of any fundamental role of consciousness in physics or the measurement problem. I would like to understand theories of wave function collapse that don't need consciousness, rather than fall back on MW interpretations.
I will write more on the last point later, but I don't see why other paths would make this one seem fuzzy. I don't know enough of the maths to claim any certainty on the issue, but many worlds seems plausible to me.
I will write more on the last point later, but I don't see why other paths would make this one seem fuzzy. I don't know enough of the maths to claim any certainty on the issue, but many worlds seems plausible to me.
Lykke til!
Mange takk!
I really enjoyed what you wrote, it's thought-provoking and beautifully written. Wishing you all the best for the future!
Thank you! All the best to you as well
Your synesthetic insights are fascinating! I prompt-engineered with AI a few interesting philosophical thought experiments regarding whether our cognitive-symbolic mappings are merely artifacts of embodiment or whether they have some correspondence, however indirect, to the underlying structure of reality. I thought you might enjoy a refined and curated overview of the products. Firstly, if we take seriously the idea that our sensory experiences and symbolic associations provide a kind of perceptual cipher, then:
• Reality may be structured in ways that are not directly accessible but filtered through biological and psychological processing layers.
• The color associations given by a synesthetic individual might not correspond to the "true" nature of fields and forces, but they could encode something meaningful about our interaction with them.
• The encryption may not be random but reflects evolutionary affordances, functional distinctions, or deep metaphoric correspondences that resonate at multiple experience levels.
However, the utility of such a perceptual model might be "entirely extrinsic" to the physical phenomena under consideration. This aligns with the idea that:
• Many of our cognitive models are heuristic—useful for navigation and prediction rather than direct representations of an underlying reality.
• Scientific models are extrinsic because they often rely on mathematical formalisms that do not necessarily "look like" reality but work in predictive ways.
• If the synesthetic model has cognitive or heuristic value, it might serve as an alternative "extrinsic" encoding of the same dynamics that physics describes mathematically.
I also entertained a few speculations about whether symbolic associations have some basis beyond mere cultural accident:
• Magnetism and Blue: The connection between metals and blueness is interesting—many metallic reflections, especially in oxidized forms, appear bluish (e.g., copper patina, iron oxide phases). Culturally, blue is often linked to the mysterious, the distant (oceans, sky), which may metaphorically resonate with the hidden action-at-a-distance nature of magnetism.
• Electricity and Green: Green is often associated with growth, bioelectricity, and the vibrancy of life. The conductive pathways in biological systems (neural networks, photosynthesis) are crucial to life’s dynamics, and chlorophyll—essential for plant energy conversion—is green.
Could a latent, biologically mediated continuity exist between how our nervous systems evolved to process electricity and magnetism and how we assign symbolic meaning to these phenomena? If so, it wouldn’t mean that magnetism is blue or electricity is green in any absolute sense, but rather that these mappings reflect something about our engagement with these forces.
• Subatomic particles do not have qualities like hardness, color, or even "location" in the classical sense; they exist as probability distributions.
• Despite this, our brains—and, by extension, our social-symbolic ontologies—insist on mapping meaningful structures onto what might otherwise be an undifferentiated or purely mathematical domain.
Suppose social ontology (the network of shared meanings and conceptual categories) is a kind of extended cognitive system. Its symbols may be emergent bridges between human-scale perception and the deeper, structureless physical reality. In this sense:
• While biologically contingent, the mappings of synesthesia might still reveal hidden structures of cognition that mediate our engagement with reality.
• Social ontology, including our tendency to impose symbolism on physical forces, may be an extension of this same pattern-recognition process at a collective level.
Is Reality Encoded in Perception?
The possibility of continuity between psychological-symbolic associations and physical reality is compelling. Perhaps:
• Reality does not have colors, but our perception is shaped by deep biological and cultural encodings that map meaning onto otherwise structureless quanta.
• Synesthetic experiences might be distortions of standard perception, but they could also hint at alternative perceptual mappings we don’t usually access.
• The tension between physical colorlessness and human-symbolic richness suggests that our models are always interpretive, even in physics.
What would Goethe say?
Could I get the name of your startup? Sounds really interesting.
No relation between the decision and medical procedure :) It was nothing very serious.
As for AI. I’m just excited to build something genuinely useful, and here I have a great opportunity for doing it. Brand new way to compute