Monday I attended a conference session on the metrics academics use to rate and rank people, journals, departments, etc.: Eugene Garfield developed the journal impact factor a half-century ago based on a two-year window of citations. And more recently, Jorge Hirsch invented the h-index to quantify an individual’s productivity based on the distribution of citations over one’s publications. There are also several competing “world university ranking” systems in wide circulation. Most traditional bibliometrics seek to build upon the citation structure of scholarship in the same manner that PageRank uses the link structure of the web as a signal of importance, but new approaches are now seeking to harness usage patterns and social media to assess impact. (
To gain a deep understanding of a mature science you have to invest thousands of hours in diligent study. At the end of it all you have a corpus of knowledge that's utterly useless to outsiders, a group which includes nearly every single person in the world. Unless you translated your erudition into lots and lots of money/prestige, or lots and lots of experiences that are story-friendly, most people will think, rightly or wrongly, that you made a stupid investment.
Dilettantes are not jealous of specialists. That's wishful thinking.
Specialization is a necessity. If you are to make any significant improvement, you have to spend at least a few years studing in a particular subfield, therefore repeatedly changing subfields and fields is not an efficient use of your time.
While it is true that some projects may be trivial or faddish, or even some research fields may be pathological (e.g. cold fusion, maybe string theory or even hot fusion), academia overall (or at least science and technology departments) do generate significant innovation that would not happen otherwise.
Well, no one gets a lot of status from working on string theory, nowhere close to the status you'd get from actual working predictive ToE. Yes, you do get some status from something like work on string theory, as you very well should as such work demonstrates capability to do work, thus demonstrating that you are worth funding or worth listening to, or a better candidate that someone with no work at all to their name. I'm thinking people with less favourable view are bitter for their own lack of status which is a product of lack of any achievement. And the bitterness about specialization tends to come from people who do not want to study anything beyond most superficial depth.
I don't feel that way perhaps because on a per hour basis I am paid twice the PhDs I work for (though as an independent contractor that doesn't tell much as I don't get paid for any time that I don't actually work). And this is on basis of software I make that they need and like, not on basis of somehow fishing for a decision mistake in your favour.
I think you have a more favorable idea of universities than many people, even in the selected fields. The contrary claim is that academicians are overspecialized, research projects often trivial, and programs subject to intellectual fads. In physics, there's at least a camp that claims that string theory has been oversubsidized and is more responsive to the mathematical interests of investigators than it is to its subject matter. Even if it's a blind alley, string theory would remain, wouldn't it, an excellent way to signal intellect. Advances require high intellect but that doesn't mean that advances are the most efficient way to signal intellect.
But what would be the IQ like metrics by which academics are ranked? In the fields I am familiar with (physics, neurobiology), there's literally nothing resembling "status by IQ test" what so ever. Status requires intelligence in those fields, but that's because actual advances require intelligence - if you are not of exceptionally high intelligence you just won't do anything important before someone else will. In economics, well, the game is presumably making the most money, and people who win at the game are way more powerful than people with citations or anything of that kind.
I find the impressionistic evidence for Hanson's theory more persuasive than you do, but I'm wary for two specific reasons:
1. The idea that impressive intellectual credentials award high status based on the power drive seems a bit too much like a nerd's wet dream.
2. Speaking of which, if well-credentialed academics are experienced as being powerful, why aren't people's erotic responses to academics consistent with this.
> Hanson's thesis is that people choose academics based on something closer to an IQ test than to a chess game.
I see nothing of that kind, except maybe in the fields where there's *no game* to begin with, no testing or anything. I assumed that his point was that the achievements deemed impressive are the ones requiring high intelligence rather than the ones supposedly advancing the field the most (if there's even a distinction between the two).
But yeah, it is too nebulous and ill defined for anything to be said against it, in any empirical way. Ultimately, there is actual impact your work makes on the rate of progress, which is dependent on how long it would have taken for that work to be done without you (if the work is of any importance), and that time will be short for work that does not require rare and exceptional ability. So if you look at the important works that advance the progress, they're also the ones requiring rare intelligence.
It's also true that if you gave the two persons an IQ test and all you know are the scores, you would pick the one with the highest. But that doesn't tell you why you should use the chess game in preference to the IQ test to choose a chess coach. You'd pick the chess game winner because of the relevance of the particular skill demonstrated.
Hanson's thesis is that people choose academics based on something closer to an IQ test than to a chess game. This requires explanation; the one he proposes is that the choice is made for reasons of intellectual status rather than practical expedience.
You could deny the premise, that people go irrationally gaga about powerful high abstract ability, which may part your point. But it's an empirical question, whereas you're saying, I think, that Hanson hasn't specified his theory enough to say what would count against it; that ordinary expediency would explain the same facts. If that's what you're saying, I think you've incompletely understood Hanson's thesis.
Suppose you have 2 persons. You know that one won a chess game against some chess engine on easy, and you know that the other won a chess game against a good chess engine on hard. That's all you know. Who'd you pick to be your chess coach?
Same applies when you need to choose an academic. High intelligence is rare, and mere low strength of evidence for high intelligence implies lower expected intelligence.
It's not that anyone in particular wants to reward anything in particular to make society work in a particular way, it's that individuals act as agents that process evidence and act upon it - in this case they process evidence of exceptional abilities, and act upon it (such evidence raises expected gains for example).
Furthermore, since intelligence is normally distributed, it is optimal to have the few highly intelligent people do the work that actually requires high intelligence.
Fair enough ... but my larger point is that such questions as whether truth is correspondence or coherence (to use your example) cannot be falsified in any meaningful way ... and to the extent many academics are engaged in research whose results are not falsifiable, then maybe academia is just about signaling how clever or original one is
A puzzle within the puzzle, based on construal-level theory: Why does academic high status depend primarily on the complexity and elaboration of near-mode thought (if I'm right that it does), when far-mode is associated with greater status in general?
One obvious possibility is that near-mode is easier to credential reliably. Its near-mode character may account for the fact that this high-status academic operation doesn't really garner consistently high status among ordinary people, who often see academics as narrow specialists who aren't truly intelligent.
If the "abstract thinking" of academics were far-mode, this could supply a compromise version of your theory: a sensitivity to broad societal concerns and a grasp of their essence would be incorporated into the abstract impressiveness the academic must prove. But my impression is that far-mode thinking is usually absent from the precursors to academic prestige because of narrow specialism. (Inter-disciplinary studies would probably introduce more far-mode thinking.)
On the other hand, the very rise of academia as a status nexus would seem to partly depend on the prestige of far-mode thought. What was impressive intellectual power like in primeval times? I'm thinking it consisted in facility with far-mode thought. These contradictions seem to augur status anxiety among academics.
Yes, you could say that, but that doesn't collapse into disputes about normative values. Should we pursue justice or should we pursue truth instead (where they conflict)? is a dispute about normative values. Is truth correspondence or is it coherence? could be called a "normative question" but it isn't about values. It's about the nature of the norms, not their value.
It would be fairly easy to rank academic subjects by how much credibility or respect non-academics get within the subject field from a defined subset of aficionados (i.e., the 2010s equivalent of "underground" novelists probably outrank, measured by fiction readers, the current equivalent of "underground" mathematicians, who are generally considered cranks or, at best, recreational mathematicians by people who can follow math). This could extend to current or recently (like 40 years ago) non-academic subjects as well, such as cookery, jazz, and pamphleteering i.e. blogging. Thinking about this, I am wondering if the sum total of respect in the world, outside of immediately appreciated individual performance (home or restaurant-cooked food, entertainment, fictions, math puzzle solving), is not a lot lower than I thought it was before reading Robin's post, (since my gut feeling is few people really actually respect academic successes)
Your theory seems to make it mysterious that any innovation comes out of academia. The the set of useful thoughts is a miniscule subset of clever thoughts, leaving aside the useful unclever thoughts.
Do you think the societal usefulness of academia is an illusion?
[Added. 12 a.m.] But that's probably too pessimistic. What the theory seems to imply is that academic norms and institutions are not much more disposed to produce intellectual progress than they're disposed to produce intellectual regression. But individuals in academic positions aren't motivated exclusively by the norms inherent in the institution. Academia may allow a few people to do good work, without encouraging it. (I suppose that's the justification academics would have to offer if they believed your theory.)
To gain a deep understanding of a mature science you have to invest thousands of hours in diligent study. At the end of it all you have a corpus of knowledge that's utterly useless to outsiders, a group which includes nearly every single person in the world. Unless you translated your erudition into lots and lots of money/prestige, or lots and lots of experiences that are story-friendly, most people will think, rightly or wrongly, that you made a stupid investment.
Dilettantes are not jealous of specialists. That's wishful thinking.
Specialization is a necessity. If you are to make any significant improvement, you have to spend at least a few years studing in a particular subfield, therefore repeatedly changing subfields and fields is not an efficient use of your time.
While it is true that some projects may be trivial or faddish, or even some research fields may be pathological (e.g. cold fusion, maybe string theory or even hot fusion), academia overall (or at least science and technology departments) do generate significant innovation that would not happen otherwise.
Well, no one gets a lot of status from working on string theory, nowhere close to the status you'd get from actual working predictive ToE. Yes, you do get some status from something like work on string theory, as you very well should as such work demonstrates capability to do work, thus demonstrating that you are worth funding or worth listening to, or a better candidate that someone with no work at all to their name. I'm thinking people with less favourable view are bitter for their own lack of status which is a product of lack of any achievement. And the bitterness about specialization tends to come from people who do not want to study anything beyond most superficial depth.
I don't feel that way perhaps because on a per hour basis I am paid twice the PhDs I work for (though as an independent contractor that doesn't tell much as I don't get paid for any time that I don't actually work). And this is on basis of software I make that they need and like, not on basis of somehow fishing for a decision mistake in your favour.
I think you have a more favorable idea of universities than many people, even in the selected fields. The contrary claim is that academicians are overspecialized, research projects often trivial, and programs subject to intellectual fads. In physics, there's at least a camp that claims that string theory has been oversubsidized and is more responsive to the mathematical interests of investigators than it is to its subject matter. Even if it's a blind alley, string theory would remain, wouldn't it, an excellent way to signal intellect. Advances require high intellect but that doesn't mean that advances are the most efficient way to signal intellect.
But what would be the IQ like metrics by which academics are ranked? In the fields I am familiar with (physics, neurobiology), there's literally nothing resembling "status by IQ test" what so ever. Status requires intelligence in those fields, but that's because actual advances require intelligence - if you are not of exceptionally high intelligence you just won't do anything important before someone else will. In economics, well, the game is presumably making the most money, and people who win at the game are way more powerful than people with citations or anything of that kind.
I find the impressionistic evidence for Hanson's theory more persuasive than you do, but I'm wary for two specific reasons:
1. The idea that impressive intellectual credentials award high status based on the power drive seems a bit too much like a nerd's wet dream.
2. Speaking of which, if well-credentialed academics are experienced as being powerful, why aren't people's erotic responses to academics consistent with this.
> Hanson's thesis is that people choose academics based on something closer to an IQ test than to a chess game.
I see nothing of that kind, except maybe in the fields where there's *no game* to begin with, no testing or anything. I assumed that his point was that the achievements deemed impressive are the ones requiring high intelligence rather than the ones supposedly advancing the field the most (if there's even a distinction between the two).
But yeah, it is too nebulous and ill defined for anything to be said against it, in any empirical way. Ultimately, there is actual impact your work makes on the rate of progress, which is dependent on how long it would have taken for that work to be done without you (if the work is of any importance), and that time will be short for work that does not require rare and exceptional ability. So if you look at the important works that advance the progress, they're also the ones requiring rare intelligence.
It's also true that if you gave the two persons an IQ test and all you know are the scores, you would pick the one with the highest. But that doesn't tell you why you should use the chess game in preference to the IQ test to choose a chess coach. You'd pick the chess game winner because of the relevance of the particular skill demonstrated.
Hanson's thesis is that people choose academics based on something closer to an IQ test than to a chess game. This requires explanation; the one he proposes is that the choice is made for reasons of intellectual status rather than practical expedience.
You could deny the premise, that people go irrationally gaga about powerful high abstract ability, which may part your point. But it's an empirical question, whereas you're saying, I think, that Hanson hasn't specified his theory enough to say what would count against it; that ordinary expediency would explain the same facts. If that's what you're saying, I think you've incompletely understood Hanson's thesis.
Suppose you have 2 persons. You know that one won a chess game against some chess engine on easy, and you know that the other won a chess game against a good chess engine on hard. That's all you know. Who'd you pick to be your chess coach?
Same applies when you need to choose an academic. High intelligence is rare, and mere low strength of evidence for high intelligence implies lower expected intelligence.
It's not that anyone in particular wants to reward anything in particular to make society work in a particular way, it's that individuals act as agents that process evidence and act upon it - in this case they process evidence of exceptional abilities, and act upon it (such evidence raises expected gains for example).
Furthermore, since intelligence is normally distributed, it is optimal to have the few highly intelligent people do the work that actually requires high intelligence.
Fair enough ... but my larger point is that such questions as whether truth is correspondence or coherence (to use your example) cannot be falsified in any meaningful way ... and to the extent many academics are engaged in research whose results are not falsifiable, then maybe academia is just about signaling how clever or original one is
A puzzle within the puzzle, based on construal-level theory: Why does academic high status depend primarily on the complexity and elaboration of near-mode thought (if I'm right that it does), when far-mode is associated with greater status in general?
One obvious possibility is that near-mode is easier to credential reliably. Its near-mode character may account for the fact that this high-status academic operation doesn't really garner consistently high status among ordinary people, who often see academics as narrow specialists who aren't truly intelligent.
If the "abstract thinking" of academics were far-mode, this could supply a compromise version of your theory: a sensitivity to broad societal concerns and a grasp of their essence would be incorporated into the abstract impressiveness the academic must prove. But my impression is that far-mode thinking is usually absent from the precursors to academic prestige because of narrow specialism. (Inter-disciplinary studies would probably introduce more far-mode thinking.)
On the other hand, the very rise of academia as a status nexus would seem to partly depend on the prestige of far-mode thought. What was impressive intellectual power like in primeval times? I'm thinking it consisted in facility with far-mode thought. These contradictions seem to augur status anxiety among academics.
Yes, you could say that, but that doesn't collapse into disputes about normative values. Should we pursue justice or should we pursue truth instead (where they conflict)? is a dispute about normative values. Is truth correspondence or is it coherence? could be called a "normative question" but it isn't about values. It's about the nature of the norms, not their value.
Innovation as a byproduct of the fight to become dean. A pesimistic view but not unfeasible at all.
It would be fairly easy to rank academic subjects by how much credibility or respect non-academics get within the subject field from a defined subset of aficionados (i.e., the 2010s equivalent of "underground" novelists probably outrank, measured by fiction readers, the current equivalent of "underground" mathematicians, who are generally considered cranks or, at best, recreational mathematicians by people who can follow math). This could extend to current or recently (like 40 years ago) non-academic subjects as well, such as cookery, jazz, and pamphleteering i.e. blogging. Thinking about this, I am wondering if the sum total of respect in the world, outside of immediately appreciated individual performance (home or restaurant-cooked food, entertainment, fictions, math puzzle solving), is not a lot lower than I thought it was before reading Robin's post, (since my gut feeling is few people really actually respect academic successes)
Retracted.
Your theory seems to make it mysterious that any innovation comes out of academia. The the set of useful thoughts is a miniscule subset of clever thoughts, leaving aside the useful unclever thoughts.
Do you think the societal usefulness of academia is an illusion?
[Added. 12 a.m.] But that's probably too pessimistic. What the theory seems to imply is that academic norms and institutions are not much more disposed to produce intellectual progress than they're disposed to produce intellectual regression. But individuals in academic positions aren't motivated exclusively by the norms inherent in the institution. Academia may allow a few people to do good work, without encouraging it. (I suppose that's the justification academics would have to offer if they believed your theory.)