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| So this is a requested video from a student finishing his PhD in history. | |
| This is going to be a general strategic analysis of where he finds himself, where he can go from here, and what he should be doing and focusing on right now. | |
| So to kick it off, we all know Aaron Clary's book worthless. | |
| You know, we all know that a PhD in history is basically financially worthless. | |
| And, you know, I spoke to this guy a little bit, and yeah, and he told me, you know, I wish I'd read that book years ago because I was seriously considering going into biology. | |
| So all of you young kids that are learning from our mistakes, please learn from them. | |
| He wishes he'd gone into biology because there are tons of applications for that. | |
| And furthermore, I was saying to him, you know, like imagine if you'd gone into biology but maintained history as a passion. | |
| You could have, you know, Jared Diamond wrote some interesting books, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which have a lot of good history in them with a few liberal biases. | |
| But, you know, if he'd gone into biology, you know, hindsight being 20-20, then he still could have written about history, but with this information from his biology background, it could have been absolutely wonderful. | |
| So if you're a young kid, no, stay away from the humanities. | |
| They are incredibly expensive and ultimately pretty bloody worthless since most of your learning you can do in your spare time. | |
| You're honestly not going to learn that much from these props. | |
| It really is a giant Ponzi scheme. | |
| Now that said, I'm going to break from Aaron's stance somewhat in that I think that there is a lot of value to be had from living in a society where people do have PhDs in history, in English, in philosophy. | |
| Certainly the system's completely broken right now and they're shoving everybody and his kid brother into these degrees and the average IQ of universities is just plummeting. | |
| But there is some value to having these educations. | |
| It's just a shame that they're not doing a very good job anymore. | |
| So for this guy, because he's so close at this point, like he's got his master's, he's working on his PhD. | |
| At this point, you know, in for a dime in for a dollar, you might as well finish it. | |
| That's the basic advice. | |
| You know what? | |
| Finish it because then you can put a doctor next to your name and suddenly, even though you probably learned more about history because of your passion than you did from the actual school, despite that, that doctor next to your name will make a difference in a way that, for instance, BA won't. | |
| Even the master's is a decent accomplishment, even if other people that got the PhD or the masters are complete morons. | |
| So obviously at this point, stick with it. | |
| That would be my initial advice. | |
| Now on the broader level, and this is where it gets interesting. | |
| In the broader level, ask yourself what you're doing. | |
| See, on the one hand, right now, you know, you kind of made some mistakes, you're here now. | |
| Your first goal, your primary goal, is get the PhD and then secure a paid position from a college or a university. | |
| Realize that what you're doing at this point, the TA-ing that you're doing for other students, the research that you're working on, the papers you're writing, don't be doing this with this naive notion of you're part of the intelligentsia and noble calling to expand the knowledge of the human race. | |
| That stuff went out the window at least 50 years ago. | |
| What you're doing is playing a political game. | |
| There are very few positions for professors, and there are a lot of applicants looking for those easy dollars. | |
| You are in a very hyper-competitive zero-sum game. | |
| And that's the important part to remember: zero-sum. | |
| Every PhD candidate that gets one of these positions is one person that doesn't. | |
| It's not a growth industry. | |
| There's only so many slots each year. | |
| It is zero-sum, and you need to fight tooth and nails to get into one of those positions. | |
| And you need to say the right things. | |
| You need to be politically correct. | |
| You need to fit in with these people and get along with people. | |
| So certainly studying the art of getting along with people, studying game to understand how women work, all of this extremely valuable. | |
| If you're smart and charismatic, then you can likely get a position. | |
| So that's part one, the zero-sum part. | |
| Part two is not zero-sum. | |
| And this is where you make your contribution to humanity. | |
| Because doing this whole PhD thing, it's very cynical. | |
| It is very depressing. | |
| Nobody wants to be a mercenary like that, but you need to be a mercenary because it's zero sum. | |
| Only one person wins a war. | |
| The part where you contribute to humanity is the part that is not zero sum. | |
| And that is the market in general. | |
| You see, when somebody sells a book, you know, like for instance, like I have a science fiction novel for sale. | |
| When John C. Wright sells a science fiction novel, that's not a sale that he stole from me or that he took away from me. | |
| No, by him selling a good science fiction novel, that person now wants to read another good science fiction novel. | |
| It's a growth market. | |
| You know, that's the beautiful thing about the free market is it's always growth. | |
| Unless if somebody, you know, completely steals all the money out of the economy, thank goodness that's not happening. | |
| So ask yourself what your market is. | |
| Because yeah, this whole university intelligentsia bubble, it's going to pop at some point. | |
| You know, maybe, maybe not in the next 20 years, but it is going, it could be in the next two years. | |
| Who knows? | |
| You know, get there while you can. | |
| Fight for that zero-sum nonsense, but look at how you're going to contribute to humanity in this non-zero-sum way. | |
| How are you going to take this knowledge of history that you have and create a product that people want? | |
| And there's several ways you can go about this. | |
| You could, if there's a particular field of history that fascinates you, you know, don't write boring white papers that only other PhDs read. | |
| Like, what a waste of your bloody time. | |
| You know, write the papers they want to read. | |
| Don't try and write the truth for them. | |
| What you should do instead is take this knowledge and start putting it into books, for example. | |
| You know, if you can put a doctorate next to your name and if you're tenured at a college and you write a book for mass consumption, you know, for the laymen out there, you've just contributed to the overall level of erudition in this society. | |
| You've just done something great and you've given people a product that they want. | |
| Alternatively, YouTube videos. | |
| You know, you have experience putting together these lectures for when you're TAing. | |
| You know, you have this broad depth of knowledge. | |
| You are very familiar with researching things in the library and citing them correctly. | |
| And I dare say that you might know all the legalities controlling how you use images. | |
| You know, or maybe you don't, but if you don't look into that, you could be putting together great YouTube videos, great historical, informative things that are entertaining and fun to listen to. | |
| And with these, you've got long-term residual income coming in. | |
| You could also look into places like Khan Academy. | |
| Now, there might be some non-compete agreements if you do get a position, but nonetheless, you might be able to do videos for Khan Academy, which offers free history lectures, which both you and me wish we'd taken advantage of rather than shelling out for the paper. | |
| But yeah, it really separated into these two things. | |
| You've got the growth industry where you actually contribute to humanity, and then you've got the cynical, political, zero-sum game that you need to win. | |
| But aside from that, you know, if you're this close to a PhD, yeah, you could have spent the money better, hindsight's 2020, but it sounds like you're in a pretty good position. | |
| You just need to think creatively, think in new ways. | |
| Play the game the way they want you to play the game, but on your own time, make up your own game. |