Glad to see someone's enjoying it. I think I came out my program more jaded than the average student.
I agree that there are intellectually satisfying problems to solve. However, without getting into the tedious debate on the values of basic science vs translational science, how much of that intellectual satisfaction is mental masturbation?
Are these problems really that important? How much of the cool intellectual questions will directly give you a meaningful biological interpretation? Perhaps this is more of a comment on our field. I found a lot of the intellectual satisfying questions during my phd to involve algorithms/data structures, which mostly are just the tools to get at the biological interpretation.
I agree that there are intellectually satisfying problems to solve. However, without getting into the tedious debate on the values of basic science vs translational science, how much of that intellectual satisfaction is mental masturbation?
Are these problems really that important? How much of the cool intellectual questions will directly give you a meaningful biological interpretation? Perhaps this is more of a comment on our field. I found a lot of the intellectual satisfying questions during my phd to involve algorithms/data structures, which mostly are just the tools to get at the biological interpretation.