It should be fun, but it's not clear for how much people it is fun and not merely Stockholm syndrome.

It feels like in many ways academia has it worse than the corporate world (lower pay, similar or more politics, more personal fiefdoms, greater chance of harassment / coercion), yet people propagate the image of a certain unfairly romanticized wonderland.

Agreed. As you noted, you don’t have much to lose by giving it a try, and you can always drop out and get the MS (like I did).

Not much to lose... except four to six years of your life. If you think of your working life, which has maybe 45 years, four to six years is a fairly major cost.

That's a fairly high cost even if it's fun. It still may be worth doing, and the fun may tip the scales, but... "don't have much to lose" is I think inaccurate.

I'm curious, how does it work in the US?

In Europe, you first study 3 years to get a bachelor's degree, then 2 more years for a master's degree (or an engineer degree), then you apply for a PhD which is supposed to last 3 years.

In natural sciences they do last 3 years in general, in human sciences they are usually quite longer.

This varies within Europe as well, for example in Hungary our bachelor was 3.5 years, the master 2, and the PhD 4.

You misunderstood: I was referring to trying out a PhD for those curious about it. Worst case, you spend ~2 years and get out with a MS degree.

> Worst case, you spend ~2 years and get out with a MS degree.

I wouldn't bet on that and it's rarely that clean. I think a very common story with PhDs is:

1) after a year or so you have huge doubts you're going to finish

2) you consider quitting but don't want it to look bad on your resume, you don't want to be seen as a quitter, you don't want to let people down, you don't want the money you've spent so far to be for nothing, you know if you give up now you'll never be able to try again etc.

3) you hope it'll get better and push on.

This problem then compounds itself year after year as 2 becomes a increasingly weightier issue and sunk cost fallacy takes over.

That's not so bad, especially when you're 22. But I'm 58 now, and even two years still seems like a long time to me, perhaps because I don't have that many two-year intervals left...

True, that makes the decision a bit more difficult. But if you’re truly interested in getting into the world of academic research, I still think it’s worth a shot.

That's a weird way to look at it. It's not like you're dead for 4-6 years... The start of your PhD is effectively like your working life - albeit a underpaid-but-interesting period. On net my PhD has almost certainly paid off the (ahem) 4-6 year-ish period (ha, ha) that it took me to get a PhD.

Incidentally, 4-6 years is a bit of a wildly optimistic estimate, even if you're not as big a screw-up as I was.