Hedge your bets by doing a start-up in year 2, which will hopefully be followed by the epiphany that a PhD is a poor metric of intelligence and "permanent sabbatical" has a nice ring to it.
I imagine your parent was commenting on this statement:
a PhD is a poor metric of intelligence
Making the observation that, whether or not it is a metric of intelligence, PhDs certainly get to work on some pretty cool things.
I find your stance confusing (JD not floating your boat? I see you aren't an academic).
I'm actually in a PhD program at a top 3 engineering school and I'm frustrated as hell by what I encounter.
It's true that Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson had "only" masters degrees, but Skunk Works was started back at a time when that was a common terminal degree for research engineers.
There is of course nothing magical about the PhD. What's magical is working within a research institution that has real resources to do real research. You generally don't have access to those resources if you go off on your own.
Also, when I talk to PhDs, they seem like little kids who don't have an idea of anything in comparison to startup founders. --> Do a startup
Pushing the envelope of human knowledge, one pixel at a time.
I'm curious why you feel qualified to judge the quality of PhD theses, or whether they were worth the authors' time. There's obviously a gradient in quality, but your post is overly dismissive.
I'm guessing you aren't in the startup world, or haven't been for very long.
Here's your answer.