Hanging at non-academic conferences lately, I’ve noticed how their cultures differs from my familiar academic cultures. For example, in a “pitch culture”, speakers focus on showing energy, prestige, charisma, social support, and momentum, and try to induce enthusiasm. They try to accomplish concrete projects they see as important in the grand scheme of things. All of which I like.
"prestige, charisma, social support" Why do you like these things? They're all appeals to cognitive biases. You go on to say you *don't* like the focus on prestige and social support among academics. (and I don't either).
What I'd like to see is a communication medium that has explicit features to minimize these biases. A communication medium that facilitates communicating claims and justifications for claims and counterpoints to claims and similar topic-oriented items, and prohibits or at least makes difficult appeals to prestige or impressive language or charisma. For example, discussion can be anonymous, as in the Delphi method, and there can be judges who filter out appeals to prestige or popularity, and the discussion can focus around building a graph of justifications so it is not essay-format and you can't win points with impressive language. Maybe someday I will build it.
Following the money is useful here. In academia – especially some technical subfields – there's a very small community of people judging your work and evaluating your grant proposals. Impressing this specialist community is the key to a successful career. So that leads you to be measured, to be precise in technical details, and to give credit where it's due (lest you ruffle feathers).
In non-academia there is by contrast usually a very large community of people you are trying to impress. Most of those people are non-specialists, rarely in your same field, and are less sophisticated as a whole. You can win them over with enthusiasm and charisma and "truthiness".
It doesn't seem a coincidence that the social science disciplines most implicated in the recent replication (and fraud) crises, are disciplines very relatable to the average person. When an academic's fame and fortune starts deriving from Ted Talks, podcast appearances, and popular books – they are now working for a different master.
I feel like academic culture tries to avoid criticism. Cultures that are open to criticism use forums like Twitter where critical feedback can be very prominent. Academic culture uses forums like journals or conference presentations where criticism can be largely ignored.
I agree on rigorous language, though, that is a nice part about academic culture.
I agree wholeheartedly but beware which “academia” you’re talking about. Econ is pretty much in the middle of the hard-soft science divide, and my guess is that the good parts you talk about come from the hard and the bad parts come from soft. Especially the “allowing time for critical feedback” vs “treating prestige as evidence.”
I've been working at a university for the past couple of years after spending most of my career at non-profits. A few things that have really stood out at me:
1) "Prestige" is a toxic currency that encourages selfish decision making.
2) The attitudes of (some) tenured employees towards their employment at will coworkers feels similar to a caste system.
3) There seems to be some structural issues with finances in higher ed that nobody quite knows how to fix. University of Arizona's eye popping $177M budget deficit as an example.
From the outside, the academy seems rather insular (the "ivory tower" metaphor comes to mind). A lot of academics seem to spend a lot of time assuming they know how the business world operates., Most people in business spend zero time thinking about the academy, though some business people are rather obsessed with the notion, possibly false, that they could run the academy better than the academics.
Right, this will be my last reply. Truly at this point I'm not sure you're not just trolling so this is as much energy as I'm putting into this.
> You continue to be unintentionally (I hope!) funny. Thank you for your efforts.
Also, I will do my best not to resort to this type of mocking tone, on the off chance you really are making a serious point but just can't help yourself with the taunting.
> You have no way of knowing this, thus your mind has hallucinated a prediction and presented it to you as reality itself.
I have no way of knowing what terms physicists typically use, despite having spent a decade of my life living and working beside the type of physicists who deal with this sort of thing... Whilst you confidently affirm the same type of thing only based on what - Googling the term I'm telling you is not usually employed in serious discussions?
> This is orthogonal to the point of contention, but I do enjoy watching you act as if it is not.
An example of an iconic physicist arguing against treating an eventual complete description of fundamental physics as a complete description of even chemistry is relevant in that it contradicts your claim that physicists seriously believe such a description is a theory of literally everything, including not just all of physics but even metaphysics. To claim this is orthogonal to the point of contention is akin to claiming that the Pope's statements about a theological matter are irrelevant to the discussion of what Catholics think about said matter.
> Trust me when I tell you that you are speculating, necessarily.
Again, I am speculating about stuff I have lived and breathed for a significant portion of my life. Which you assure me is necessarily the case, presumably based on some source of higher knowledge.
> Think of all the things that could go wrong here, resulting in diminished accuracy in your "some notion of what goes on in philosophy departments". Regardless, what goes on in philosophy departments is not the same thing as what philosophy is capable of.
Again, I give you first hand experience and you give me wise headshakes. Listening to professional philosophers who work on matters to which physics is relevant, in their natural habitat, is insufficient to conclude that many of them lack basic understanding of matters directly relevant to their work... but your word is to be taken at face value because you say so?
And what philosophy "is capable of" is irrelevant. This exchange came from my telling you what about philosophers (not philosophy) was putting off physicists with an interest in philosophy.
> Have you any more slow, fat pitches to throw to me?
This is all you're getting from me. And it is far more than your trolling tone deserved.
Academia and academia-like settings attract a particular type of personality to whom such strictures come naturally. The pitch attracts quite a different type of personality.
I think this is spot on, and I had a similar culture shock when I first entered the tech ecosystem (from a learned profession). In Big Law, everyone is very circumspect, explicitly hedging any analysis with what they don’t know, areas or precedent they didn’t investigate, and where any and all limitations on their analyses might be. Plus, taking credit for someone else’s work is very gauche. It’s part CYA and part a function of operating in a world of adversarial BS-detection—the great fear is that someone might catch you in a misspeak, and then call you out on your error. Credibility BURNED. In startup world, everyone is very sure about everything, knows everything and everyone, founded everything, and has no weaknesses. The first impression is that everyone must be brilliant. Then you realize they’re just BS-ing, and no one seems to care, and if BS-ing is the game, well, lawyers are good at that.
I have been to a lot of business conferences in my life. The pitch driven culture is awful in every way. The audience learn nothing because the speakers are all pitching a message and the speakers learn nothing because they are too busy pitching to listen. Maybe that all seems good to an outsider but long sine cut these events out of my business life.
I really appreciated this. "....they often treat the existence of a prior literature near a topic as the only needed or wanted reason to consider a topic." I've wondered about this also.
The truth is we need a natural reservation for weirdos and nobody is providing us with it
"prestige, charisma, social support" Why do you like these things? They're all appeals to cognitive biases. You go on to say you *don't* like the focus on prestige and social support among academics. (and I don't either).
What I'd like to see is a communication medium that has explicit features to minimize these biases. A communication medium that facilitates communicating claims and justifications for claims and counterpoints to claims and similar topic-oriented items, and prohibits or at least makes difficult appeals to prestige or impressive language or charisma. For example, discussion can be anonymous, as in the Delphi method, and there can be judges who filter out appeals to prestige or popularity, and the discussion can focus around building a graph of justifications so it is not essay-format and you can't win points with impressive language. Maybe someday I will build it.
Following the money is useful here. In academia – especially some technical subfields – there's a very small community of people judging your work and evaluating your grant proposals. Impressing this specialist community is the key to a successful career. So that leads you to be measured, to be precise in technical details, and to give credit where it's due (lest you ruffle feathers).
In non-academia there is by contrast usually a very large community of people you are trying to impress. Most of those people are non-specialists, rarely in your same field, and are less sophisticated as a whole. You can win them over with enthusiasm and charisma and "truthiness".
It doesn't seem a coincidence that the social science disciplines most implicated in the recent replication (and fraud) crises, are disciplines very relatable to the average person. When an academic's fame and fortune starts deriving from Ted Talks, podcast appearances, and popular books – they are now working for a different master.
I feel like academic culture tries to avoid criticism. Cultures that are open to criticism use forums like Twitter where critical feedback can be very prominent. Academic culture uses forums like journals or conference presentations where criticism can be largely ignored.
I agree on rigorous language, though, that is a nice part about academic culture.
I agree wholeheartedly but beware which “academia” you’re talking about. Econ is pretty much in the middle of the hard-soft science divide, and my guess is that the good parts you talk about come from the hard and the bad parts come from soft. Especially the “allowing time for critical feedback” vs “treating prestige as evidence.”
I've been working at a university for the past couple of years after spending most of my career at non-profits. A few things that have really stood out at me:
1) "Prestige" is a toxic currency that encourages selfish decision making.
2) The attitudes of (some) tenured employees towards their employment at will coworkers feels similar to a caste system.
3) There seems to be some structural issues with finances in higher ed that nobody quite knows how to fix. University of Arizona's eye popping $177M budget deficit as an example.
What academic field are you in? I don't recognize at all the academia I know in your description. It's true I left a while ago.
From the outside, the academy seems rather insular (the "ivory tower" metaphor comes to mind). A lot of academics seem to spend a lot of time assuming they know how the business world operates., Most people in business spend zero time thinking about the academy, though some business people are rather obsessed with the notion, possibly false, that they could run the academy better than the academics.
Right, this will be my last reply. Truly at this point I'm not sure you're not just trolling so this is as much energy as I'm putting into this.
> You continue to be unintentionally (I hope!) funny. Thank you for your efforts.
Also, I will do my best not to resort to this type of mocking tone, on the off chance you really are making a serious point but just can't help yourself with the taunting.
> You have no way of knowing this, thus your mind has hallucinated a prediction and presented it to you as reality itself.
I have no way of knowing what terms physicists typically use, despite having spent a decade of my life living and working beside the type of physicists who deal with this sort of thing... Whilst you confidently affirm the same type of thing only based on what - Googling the term I'm telling you is not usually employed in serious discussions?
> This is orthogonal to the point of contention, but I do enjoy watching you act as if it is not.
An example of an iconic physicist arguing against treating an eventual complete description of fundamental physics as a complete description of even chemistry is relevant in that it contradicts your claim that physicists seriously believe such a description is a theory of literally everything, including not just all of physics but even metaphysics. To claim this is orthogonal to the point of contention is akin to claiming that the Pope's statements about a theological matter are irrelevant to the discussion of what Catholics think about said matter.
> Trust me when I tell you that you are speculating, necessarily.
Again, I am speculating about stuff I have lived and breathed for a significant portion of my life. Which you assure me is necessarily the case, presumably based on some source of higher knowledge.
> Think of all the things that could go wrong here, resulting in diminished accuracy in your "some notion of what goes on in philosophy departments". Regardless, what goes on in philosophy departments is not the same thing as what philosophy is capable of.
Again, I give you first hand experience and you give me wise headshakes. Listening to professional philosophers who work on matters to which physics is relevant, in their natural habitat, is insufficient to conclude that many of them lack basic understanding of matters directly relevant to their work... but your word is to be taken at face value because you say so?
And what philosophy "is capable of" is irrelevant. This exchange came from my telling you what about philosophers (not philosophy) was putting off physicists with an interest in philosophy.
> Have you any more slow, fat pitches to throw to me?
This is all you're getting from me. And it is far more than your trolling tone deserved.
Academia and academia-like settings attract a particular type of personality to whom such strictures come naturally. The pitch attracts quite a different type of personality.
I think this is spot on, and I had a similar culture shock when I first entered the tech ecosystem (from a learned profession). In Big Law, everyone is very circumspect, explicitly hedging any analysis with what they don’t know, areas or precedent they didn’t investigate, and where any and all limitations on their analyses might be. Plus, taking credit for someone else’s work is very gauche. It’s part CYA and part a function of operating in a world of adversarial BS-detection—the great fear is that someone might catch you in a misspeak, and then call you out on your error. Credibility BURNED. In startup world, everyone is very sure about everything, knows everything and everyone, founded everything, and has no weaknesses. The first impression is that everyone must be brilliant. Then you realize they’re just BS-ing, and no one seems to care, and if BS-ing is the game, well, lawyers are good at that.
Anonymous? Judges who filter? Graph [i.e., nested hierarchy] of "justifications"? Sounds like reddit to me.
I have been to a lot of business conferences in my life. The pitch driven culture is awful in every way. The audience learn nothing because the speakers are all pitching a message and the speakers learn nothing because they are too busy pitching to listen. Maybe that all seems good to an outsider but long sine cut these events out of my business life.
I really appreciated this. "....they often treat the existence of a prior literature near a topic as the only needed or wanted reason to consider a topic." I've wondered about this also.
I braced myself for the usual put-down of academia, but found a reflective and reasonable pro-and-con. Thank you.
In non-academia, it is rarely important to follow the consensus, which is often political, to be allowed to talk.