Quoting myself (regarding PhDs): "Why one if you can have two, and at the same time!"
... Well, I can tell you, it is not exactly a great idea. Do people thing PhDs are additive? I would say perhaps they follow a logarithmic law or so, although Germans think they are additive since they write name prefixes as "Dr. Dr... XXX" with the number of "Dr"s equal to the number of PhDs you hold, plus any other academic position. If they were done at the same time it should be something like Dr.^2. Does 2 PhDs give you the double of credibility? A little off topic perhaps, but funny enough. On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:05 PM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > > If you want to raise **business** $$ for an AGI project 5 years from now, > the best thing you could do IMO would be to spend the next 5 years becoming > successful **in business** > > Then you will be able to go to investors with a load of biz credibility. > You'll also have some of your own $$ to invest. And, you'll easily be able > to line up PhD advisors to give you academic cred. > > The downside is, you'll make no AGI progress during those 5 years, > implementationwise or conceptually, because becoming successful in business > requires both luck and a lot of work (well, OK, unless the amount of luck is > incredible...) > > There are many good reasons to get a PhD, but to boost your odds in raising > startup $$ is really not one of them... > > If academic credibility were the key to getting biz funding for AGI, I > suppose Novamente LLC would have been funded by now, rather than being an > eternally-marginal software consulting company doing AGI R&D on the side. > We certainly have enough publications and academic cred, and a bunch of PhDs > on staff in addition to me. > > ben g > > On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 4:00 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > On the contrary, getting a PhD is an astoundingly poor strategy for >> > raising >> > $$ for a startup. If you have a talent for biz sufficient to raise $$ >> > for a >> > startup, you can always get some prof to join your team to lend you >> > academic >> > credibility. >> > >> > It is also useful in terms of lending you more credibility when you talk >> > about your own wacky research ideas. This may be part of YKY's >> > motivation, >> > and it's a genuinely meaningful one. But having credibility when >> > talking >> > about research ideas is not particularly well correlated with being able >> > to >> > raise business funding. >> >> Getting business funding may be an inherently hard thing to do. So, >> other things being equal, spending some time + money on a PhD degree >> may still be better than all other options. That's my current >> reasoning... >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> agi >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ >> Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > -- > Ben Goertzel, PhD > CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC > Director of Research, SIAI > [email protected] > > "I intend to live forever, or die trying." > -- Groucho Marx > > ________________________________ > agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Hector Zenil http://www.mathrix.org ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
