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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

No sane non-narcissistic person will ever fathom doing 2 PhDs. You do a PhD to learn how to think and research things. The only reason you would imagine doing a second one (assuming you're not someone who completely misunderstood what a PhD means), is so you can boast about it.

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What utter rubbish. I know several people with two PhDs - for example one guy who went from theoretical physics to economics - and they are all humble and brilliant.

If I didn't have a family to support and a mortgage to pay, I'd consider doing a second PhD, given how much I enjoyed my first.

I dont have a family or mortgage and cant fathom affording top PhDs.

I imagine you're talking about a specific econometrics professor at McGill?

I'd say he's extremely unique, it's far from the typical.

No, a former Ukrainian colleague of mine from Germany.

I also just had a double PhD apply for a job with me - one PhD in stochastic differential equations, one in machine learning.

It’s rare, for sure, but not unique.

In High School, I went to a summer chemistry program. One professor had 23 degrees, for real, ranging from chemistry to religion. I don't know if he had more than one Ph.D.

But when I got to college, one of my professors had been this first guy's student, and one of my other professors had been the second professor's student.

fwiw...

One of my professors had two PhDs: one in physics, and one in computer science. Considering that they worked on quantum computing, I’m not sure I could call it a bad choice.

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