Wang Yin: Say goodbye to the doctor's degree

This article Wang Yin, Sichuan University 97 grade undergraduate degree, walk to Tsinghua University computer Department direct Bo. During the period of Tsinghua University computer department software, mainly for the research of integrated circuit routing algorithm. During this period, he was famous for "Gnu/linux work" and "non-research amateur stuff" such as the promotion of Tex. In only one year left to graduate, he applied to drop out of school, and will be more than 17,000 words of "drop-out Application" (titled Tsinghua Dream Smash) published online, causing the public opinion on the education system, idealism and other hot discussion.

Here is the full text of Wang Yin's blog:

After careful deliberation, I decided to "abandon" my doctorate again. This is the third time I have decided to leave my doctorate, and it should be the last time. This should not be surprising news, because I have been a doctor for 10 years, but my goal has never been a doctoral degree. I'm looking for something more important, and that thing has been found by me. So my "doctoral career" actually completed its mission, which basically can be successfully concluded.

If you have judged from my previous post that I am living in an environment that I aspire to, then you are mistaken. I learned what I wanted, but found that academia is no longer the place I aspire to. On the contrary, it hindered my progress. It is clear that the doctoral degree has been used by schools and academics as an "invisible chain" of cheap labor. You want the title of "Doctor", then it is cheap to work for us, can be out of the paper on the paper, can write code to write code. I do not need the title of "Doctor" to show my value, so it is not painful for me to abandon my degree, leave school, and leave academia.

Thought of the prison

If you think that academia means the liberation of thought and the selfless sharing of knowledge, then you are wrong. People who are not deep in the language often have a good illusion, that teachers are in the selfless transfer of knowledge, and students are free to discuss. But when you reach a certain level, you will find that very few people are selfless about knowledge, even the world's top scientists are no exception. What they "share" to you is often a bunch of elusive symbols and formulas that they present in a bunch of horrible terms. What they tell you is the "result" of thinking, not the "method" of thinking (the so-called "intuition"). When you get the same thing through your own independent thinking, you find that these masters have always hidden their intuition in a deep place, deliberately letting you know about it, but not knowing why. They may even denigrate the value of intuition itself, trying to convince you that they haven't come up with those formulas by using intuition, trying to convince you that only scary formulas, theorems and proofs are reliable, and intuition is unreliable. But the real intuition is very powerful, as long as you get it, you can fully understand the formulas, and will know how they come, and even find the problems inside, and then come up with new formulas.

Then you will suddenly discover that what you once thought of as "the Heaven of Thought" is actually "the prison of thought". You will find that many of your masters are not really scientists, but political masters. You will find that many people around you are actually deliberately mentioning some terminology in front of you to show your "deep". When you speak out of the secret behind these things, they don't talk, and then they have a grudge against you, hoping you'll disappear sooner. When you email a few of these terms and try to verify the intuition behind them, they will quickly stop replying to your email. When you try to get this intuition from the professors, they will be impatient to say to you: "You ask this question what is the point?" That's what this is about! "What does that mean?" It means they are afraid. They fear that their position is under threat, and they fear that once the intuition is mastered by most people, they will no longer be "academic authority" on the high. People would say, "That thing is really just ..."

That's what I've been through all these years. My colleagues do not really know, they admire the masters of the seemingly advanced theory, better already in my mind has been silently "killed". For me, they're just using a bunch of scary math formulas, tossing and turning about things that can be said in a few words, and they're much more than just something that's simpler. So one of the things that the Masters often do is recruit "disciples", so long as someone is willing to be their successor and "based on" their theory, the complex and empty concepts they put forward can survive and they can maintain their position. So you find some ridiculous phenomenon, originally a new concept is not related to an old concept, but is dragged together. Originally a concept can be understood independently, but is involved in a bunch of other concepts, is complicated.

That's why I've mentioned that I used to "extinguish" a study in some areas for 20 years in a two-week period. It doesn't mean I'm a genius, it just means that a lot of people are playing with academic tricks, and I see through their tricks. Seeing through these tricks does not bring tangible benefits, but it allows me to save myself time to solve really important problems. But I do not see any hope of improvement in academia in this regard. So, for the freedom of thought, I cannot live in academia.

The game of the paper

I used to think that my major (program language) is the least water in computer science, but in fact it is not, all Crows under. The only difference between a program language professional paper and other majors is that people in this field are playing tricks more skillfully. These papers touch the concept of Church, Turing and so on, so that even if there are no new content in it, you are already intimidated, don't mention the tricks. But because I see through some of the core concepts of the nature, so often browse some papers have found that there is actually no new things. Some of these papers are even from some of the most well-known "superstars" in the field. Because of their illustrious status, I will not be offended by the name here.

A common routine is to write some very simple "programs" with a bunch of "mathematical symbols" that are called "logic" or "type systems." People worship mathematical logic because they don't understand the bunch of symbols and rules of reasoning. But through my own efforts, I have seen a lot of logic home tricks. I can also play this trick and design new logic. But I also know that we do not need these logic, so I never publish this paper. However, this paper on "procedural logic" is still frequently seen in the highest-grade academic conferences. From the beginning can guess the end, a little suspense is not, let me feel very bored.

Last semester, I did a semester of research with the tutor about "type System". Said to be "with the mentor", but in fact he only played a stumbling block role. Not only did he not really participate in the discussion, but it was clearly against my deep findings, and he kept hitting me. The energy I use to "persuade" him is several times greater than the energy I used to study. In the end I found that he did not listen to what I said! I've always found some complex types of system functions that are either completely impractical or can be implemented in simpler ways. So these discoveries are actually "killing" several dozens of-year-old areas, merging them into the same very simple thing. These discoveries, however, have eliminated some unnecessary things, but have not brought any "new things". So he always says to me, "What's the use of your ideas?" Then I realized that what he wanted was not an in-depth, simplified understanding, but something else. This "something else", of course, is the paper and funding. It is clear that the tutors are simply the students who may bring him papers and funds. They prefer students who have no idea of the nature of things and who are dancing with the "new concept". Because these students can quickly create more complex new concepts, write seemingly advanced papers, and then from the NSF and other research institutions to money.

Therefore, in-depth understanding of the essence, in fact, in academia is not respected. Because in-depth understanding is often very simple. Such a simple thing, it seems that everyone can do, and how to get funding?

The flood of politics

I can not be modest to say that I am the best student here. The same professional classmates around me, no one can go beyond what I can do. And there's nothing that I can't do that they can do. At Dan Friedman's two highly difficult courses are A +, and in the R Kent Dybvig Scheme compiler Course get a A +, and in a way surpass them. Within two weeks, I wrote the correct CPS transformation (more than 10 years of research) and the ANF transformation (the most important result of my mentor), entirely on my own. Several more than 20 years of research in some areas have been "extinguished" within two weeks. Have their own insight into a lot of things. There is a project for Google on the project, and some of my own projects, ...

But none of this has allowed me to be respected by my peers. On the contrary, because I like to tell the truth, they hate me and fear me. They are afraid to discuss their own research with me, because I can always quickly see their nature, so talk with them always feel a layer of something separated. Those who are adept at playing politics are clearly more appreciated. I did not want to put these "performance" out, in fact, I have been very modest, have not mentioned these things in front of people. But obviously, in the course of Friedman and Dybvig students struggling, in some meetings sent a little trivial article of the classmate, is now very high-toed, they certainly hope that others do not know my excellent. They like to say a few words that I've seen long ago, and the voices are chattering.

But they have lost too much of it. I could have helped them, but because of their selfishness and arrogance, they lost the chance to get my help. The content of their papers (and even doctoral theses) is actually better than the results I got a few years ago, but I was too lazy to write papers for these trivial things, and I could have given them to them for free as papers. Remember once, a few Friedman class students want to do a summer program, trying to improve Minikanren (Dan Friedman Design Logic language) efficiency. At that time I had already re-implemented the Minikanren, and independently added some extended functions, such as constraint logic programming. As soon as I heard their plan, I told them that the substitution data structure used by Minikanren was a association list, and the lookup time was linear and obviously inefficient. Using another "functional data structure", such as a functional balance tree, is much better. But when they heard this, they kept a terrible silence, as if I didn't exist in front of them! More than a year later, they published a paper in which the basic content was what I told them. Of course, the signature and the "Thank You" are none of me. I do not care about such a small idea, I originally felt that it is not worth writing a paper, write a blog is almost. But they did not express a bit of gratitude, but in front of me to show off, it is really ridiculous to the extreme. If they are willing to consult me, I am afraid that the time to publish the paper is not a year, but one months.

There were several similar cases, and I didn't want to say anything. Later, I got some real information from a classmate's mouth. Some people, he says, like to be deliberately struck or indifferent when they hear good ideas from others. When people lose interest in their own ideas, they take the idea out of their own name and publish it. This kind of thing happened to him once. His mentor has been hitting him so much that his paper has not been published for two years. When he decided to leave, he found that his ideas had been published by his mentor and another person. His name was not on the office.

That's why I don't like to talk to people more and more, because a lot of people get those ideas, they want to play tricks to keep them for themselves, to be famous, and they don't even say a word of thanks. I see this phenomenon not only exists in my side, but also exists in the entire academic circle, this is the inevitable result of the academic industrialization. Academics do not sell products, they have to take "ideas" to sell. But the idea that this thing is so strange, once you tell others, others have this idea, how do you prove that the idea is yours? So the result of academic industrialization is a world without the exchange of ideas.

With such politics and intrigue, what is the point of me staying here? I am here, so that the whole academic community, in fact, there is no one worthy of cooperation.

Go

Of course, the next thing I need to think about is what I should do. Obviously, the knowledge I learned can easily bring me a high-paying job. But I also know, in fact, the programming language is a few tricks in the final analysis. So I am more willing to explore the wider world, learn new things, find the real worthy of cooperation, create real value. In addition, I will gradually take these "tricks" I know to the public in an intuitive and easy-to-understand way, so that the mysterious veil of authority disappears.

Wang Yin: Say goodbye to the doctor's degree