PhD (also Ph.D., PhD. etc.), or *doctor of philosophy*, written after the name, is the highest academic degree that can be earned by being a student in [University](university.md), the basic title required for working as a [scientist](science.md) (nowadays more like [soyentist](soyence.md)). It is earned through many years of study and especially active publishing of original research that pushes the boundary of current human knowledge in a specific field. Despite being called doctor of *philosophy*, the title is awarded generally to scientists in basically any field such as [mathematics](math.md), [physics](physics.md), [psychology](psychology.md), [chemistry](chemistry.md) etc., NOT just to those studying [philosophy](philosophy.md). PhD is yet above [master's degree](masters_degree.md). It is a doctorate degree, so a holder of PhD is called a *doctor* (Dr.), just as those with other forms of doctorates such as medical doctorate or honorary doctorate; however PhD is the *big doctorate*, the kind of highest, most prestigious one. People with a PhD degree are considered the foremost experts, the smartest, most educated elite, as only about 1 to 2 % of population hold a PhD, though PhD is also often considered an overkill and an overqualification (there are many cases of people with PhD not mentioning it on their CVs because such a high education can actually be a disadvantage), and of course, as with everything under [capitalism](capitalism.md), PhDs became a thing of business and conformance, subject to corruption and degradation (there now even exist PhDs in [astrology](astrology.md), [gender studies](gender_studies.md) etc.), at times even a [meme](meme.md). PhD isn't what it used to be -- in the past a scientist was someone wise with a generally wide knowledge and also some sense of morality, nowadays a PhD absolutely doesn't come with anything like that -- **[today](21st_century.md) a PhD is simply a thinking machine**, extremely specialized in some very, VERY narrow field such as studying the front leg of some subspecies of some prehistoric bug; besides this narrow specialization PhD knows absolutely nothing about anything else (in this they are similar to highly trained [neural networks](neural_network.md) that perform superbly at one specific task like beating world chess championship but won't be able to add 3 plus 4). Yes, unless one is a minority or a [woman](woman.md), he still has to be somewhat smart and talented to obtain a PhD, but nowadays it's probably more about pouring an extreme amount of energy, slavery and conformance to the corrupt academic cults, so the prestige of the title comes for a pretty high price, one not worth paying.
**Should you get a PhD?** Unless you live in the past probably not -- as said the sacrifice required is enormous, to make it you should have a REAL GOOD reason, of which there aren't many -- perhaps if you REALLY want to be teacher at University or if for some twisted reason you want to spend your whole life in the corrupt toxic [soyence](soyence.md) environment trying to prove [women](woman.md) are better than men and sucking capitalist dicks so that they throw you a bit of money so that you can buy a microscope, then maybe. The thing is that focusing on PhD sucks away a great amount of energy you could spend on actually good things, consider that instead of actually programming [less retarded software](lrs.md) you will just have to do slavery for your dissertation advisor, do bureaucracy, p-value hacking, make powerpoint presentations, [marketing](marketing.md) for your research, give handjobs to sponsors, do bullshit research you dislike (because [publish or perish](publish_or_perish.md)), all while withstanding incredible amounts of stress and dodging depression. Really [masters_degree](masters_degree.md) is [enough](good_enough.md) to give you all you need for a rich intellectual life and being able to do good things, and it won't suck the soul out of your body. On the best universities even [bachelor's](bachelors_degree.md) is probably enough. If you REALLY wanna be the smartass guy who others ought to call a doctor, in some countries you may get some kinda small doctorate, usually just for an extra exam and paying some fee (e.g. RNDr, PHDr etc., details will depend on your country so check that out). { TFW just getting the EZ dentist degree so that you may call yourself a doctor :D ~drummyfish } Nowadays you can also just buy a honorary doctorate online, it's absolutely legal business, though you probably don't wanna support this kind of capitalist bullshit, you just pay them unholy money for a piece of paper.
