Honestly it really just seems like the world’s PhD programs are designed to ritually haze students and sort them into academic society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable expectations. I do not have a PhD but all my friends who do (save one) have expressed that they would rather have done something else with the time and resources it took to get theirs. Really sad. My cousin is a Psych professor at an Ivy League and he says that in his first class of the semester he tells everyone getting PhDs they will likely be taking antidepressants by the time they finish -and- that probably all of their professors are already taking them. Chilling honestly.
"Honestly it really just seems like the world’s PhD programs are designed to ritually haze students and sort them into academic society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable expectations."
This is accurate. It's very hard to explain to people who haven't been through a PhD program the kinds of expectations that are placed on students (example: highly influential profs telling an incoming cohort that their expectations were "all of you should get a top-20 job"). Those who do not "make it" are spoken of in hushed tones as if they died and even those who go on to great industry jobs are considered failures of some degree.
Many of those who "make it" and get those vaunted prestigious TT jobs are also desperately depressed in many cases (at least up through getting tenure, but even afterward the whole experience seems scarring). This seems to select for incredibly dedicated and usually quite intelligent, but also very obsessive and emotionally fragile people to finally make it through into permanent employment in academia. They then often have similar expectations for their grad students to do the same as they did, even if they claim on social media to be "caring" and such.
Yeah, such is the effect of "jigsaw puzzling" hundreds of papers to get a feel for a field. One had better be really interested to come into dialogue with others' observations, and not have it be trite. Philosophically, scientific idealism instead of materialism is one possible way forward as the sense/relationship of self-other evolves.
I think it's really hard for people to understand what's going on, because there isn't really a "designed" system. Rather, it's more "designed" like our DNA, with no designer, and much variation, but yet many emergent traits that are credibly well above the noise floor and worthy of concern if not outrage.
I have a physics PhD. I had a good experience. My advisor really went to bat for me, and was supportive when it became apparent that I wasn't destined for a rockstar career, even though he was a rockstar himself in his subfield.
There is something about the "failure is not an option" experience that molds people for certain kinds of work. I still work on the same kinds of projects, albeit not in the same field. But I sincerely wish it didn't produce the human cost that it does. The risk is too great.
Noting a sister comment in the same thread, when I was in grad school, students had no access to healthcare or therapy.
There are a couple ways of looking at this, yours is one take.
We can look at it another way. The kind of people with the intelligence and persistence to successfully complete a Ph.D. are disproportionately neurodivergent, IME. You’ll find a lot of people on the spectrum at the upper ranks of academia. Such people lack in dopamine production, and may end up taking medication to deal with that as they are diagnosed during the course of their graduate education, which typically provides access to healthcare and therapy.
