"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.
Look, anyone who follows a dogma uncritically is open to manipulation. For instance, my grandfather 'saved' Chevy money by using cheap parts, making his department look good, and the department that had to repair the crap look bad.
So, uhh, as long as you don't think she's as unassailable as my granpa's boss did, and she thought herself, then fine. Because she made some mistakes I tell you what. :P
> anyone who follows a dogma uncritically is open to manipulation.
a) Is this true for all dogmas?
b) Is there any human, dogma afflicted or otherwise, who is not open to manipulation?
> For instance, my grandfather 'saved' Chevy money by using cheap parts, making his department look good, and the department that had to repair the crap look bad.
Sure, but one instance can *disprove* a comprehensive claim, but one instance cannot prove a comprehensive claim.
> So, uhh, as long as you don't think she's as unassailable as my granpa's boss did, and she thought herself, then fine.
So, you have zero aversion with the general public's belief in Rand's ideology?
> Because she made some mistakes I tell you what. :P
Oh, I agree!! But not nearly as many people (most of whom haven't even cracked one of her books) believe!
Ayn Rand, Like God, is an excellent litmus test for the quality of a human's skills in epistemology.....for both believers and non-believers.
a) Yes. Even my own philosophy shouldn't become an unchanging dogma. Though I tend towards paranoia when I don't take time to watch observable reality, and engage with ideas I disagree with; I have quick feedback when I am too far into my own head. I imagine that others tend to get just as distanced from reality, just usually more slowly and probably in a different trajectory. I understand that empathy based on 'like myself but different' is likely to bring my own flaws to understanding others, but if I don't know where those flaws are it's the best start I have. : )
b) Not open to manipulation is a very tall bar to clear. Everyone is affected by others, sometimes by dishonestly or against our best interests. It's good to know how this can happen, and take precautions where they are not prohibitively expensive. It's good to be humble enough that if one is manipulated, one can let go and fix one's mistakes, and being dogmatic is often synonymous with being too self righteous to admit mistakes.
>Sure, but one instance can *disprove* a comprehensive claim, but one instance cannot prove a comprehensive claim.
Well, I wasn't actually trying to create a whole new worldview for you, I was just expanding my witty one liner into a 2 sentence story. My grandpa got big bonuses from Chevy by hurting Chevy, in a way that his boss was blind to because he was uncritical of Rand's ideology.
>So, you have zero aversion with the general public's belief in Rand's ideology?
I have trouble parsing that sentence. I have aversion to every idea sometimes, comes with the paranoia. I have family members who have it worse than me, thus I have strong feelings about making mental health help available. Any philosophy that would discard those lives who may not be able to repay it... feels like an attack on family. Less personally and more generally, the world is richer for having people who need help to get to the point of participating, more than it costs to help the people who never get there. I have no problem with quantifying the worth of people *per se* as long as they're worth isn't calculated in a way that doesn't respect that.
>haven't even cracked one of her books
Look I tried reading it but couldn't get far in. Characters were dry enough I had an easier time reading the philosophy without them. Maybe stuff was lost in the translation. But the wierd thing is, I have similar instincts to her with some things. Nouns as labels for collecting entities that do a similar set of verbs, rather than things in their own right *makes sense*. Especially for abstract ideas. But then going to claim her philosophy is a whole thing that can't be divided into parts... that's the action of a charlatan. "Buy the whole deal now or you'll never get another chance!" (because we don't expect any business from those who've taken the time to think on it so putting pressure to buy now is the only way to get business x_x ) Still, I can believe that she meant to illustrate the flaws in a society that hurt her, even if she didn't see that her cure had more flaws, and lacked the empathy to see that communism was also made by people like her trying to cure the society that hurt them.
Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ is a book that I *could* read that refutes Rand well (and predates her). I do like my angsty stories. Funny that the writer was aiming to convince people of communism but only convinced people that food needed health standards. (Near the end he literally advocates automagic price increases for goods that are labor intensive to create.)
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.
Besides, many Biologists do use Twitter as the main medium to advertise their work. Not that that's the best place for honest criticism. Really, physics and mathematics have a better system - see subthread about those
This depends heavily on the academic discipline. You have physics (and kinda math but that's a special case) at one end and some more fadish disciplines at the other. Even the best of them do tend to have substantial gatekeeping (criticism tends to mostly be accepted from those with phds) but good academic disciplines really do this.
I was thinking of physics, specifically astronomy because I have been working with some astronomers recently. Plenty of postdocs have a physics PhD, read papers, think to themselves "these claims are completely ridiculous", and maybe they chat about it with the other folks in the office or something, but mostly this critique just goes into the void.
Now, if you publish a paper where you show some results, say your results are better, and say some other paper is ridiculous, then the academics will pay attention. But a critic who is just pointing out that your reasoning is bad, or something like, "You say that you published the code to do X, but you have not published any code at all." This sort of critique just gets ignored.
I think the gatekeeping is mostly in the "channel". Published papers that contain critiques are considered an important critique. But a paper that is *only* a critique of another paper will never get published. So the only real critiques are ones that are taken as "pot shots" at competing researchers. Having a PhD doesn't really help you give critiques, it only has any effect in publications.
This could all be specific to the traditions around publication in a particular field, though.
Ohh yes, I 100% agree with this as a problem. I just don't think it's resistance to criticism so much as structural issues with the incentive/publication system. I've been pushing the idea for awhile that every journal article come with a slot that publishes the best critique submitted within 2 months (of some minimum quality) and maybe for experimental sciences first pre-registered replication of similar power.
Note that it isn't always in an academic's best interest to go public with their critique of a given piece of work, because that might be the germ of an idea they can develop and publish themselves. Quite a bit of knowledge hoarding goes on in academia, which stubbornly resists reasonable proposals like publishing datasets and analysis codes. It's an outcome of the incentive structure.
That is changing. Funding agencies like NIH and NSF now require applications to state their data sharing plan. The data sharing includes files with meta data, statistical analysis plans, code shared on GitHub, etc.
Note that the system I propose mostly solves that problem in that it effectively gives them a publication (maybe not counted as a full publication) in exchange for submitting the criticism. I think it would reverse that concern.
Rhetorical tricks, intentional or not, like "I just don't think it is" and "so much as [something else]" are great techniques for directing attention away from considering legitimate shortcomings.
Also note that in my experience with theoretical physics it's not uncommon to find papers which are purely takedowns on other papers. Usually those are called "Comment on ..." and admittedly are not usually published so much as dumped on arXiv (but still cited!). If you're lucky you might even find a "Comment on Comment on ...". And most times even where they wrote nothing you will find these people criticising these papers at conferences. And those discussions can get very detailed and very brutal.
But also where the things being criticised are consequential for popular lines of investigation, it's the most common thing in the world for these critiques to be incorporated in larger constructive papers.
I see papers on arxiv suggesting modifications or raising issues with the standard model all the time -- some of them published in decent journals. You can't really object to a theory of everything because we don't have a plausible one yet.
True, you can't get taken seriously with your objections without showing you have a good understanding of how the existing physics works and a familiarity with why various alternatives proved difficult. But, at least in the case of physics, that's reasonably justified in most cases. You can worry that physics has been too credulous re: string theory and the like but that concern is taken seriously.
> I see papers on arxiv suggesting modifications or raising issues with the standard model all the time -- some of them published in decent journals.
My complaint is not with the standard model, it is with it being advertised as a Theory of Everything.
> You can't really object to a theory of everything because we don't have a plausible one yet.
Yes you can - science's coverage of the metaphysical realm is minuscule, and it is part of Everything (the actual one).
> True, you can't get taken seriously with your objections without showing you have a good understanding of how the existing physics works and a familiarity with why various alternatives proved difficult.
Demonstrating how insular, reductive, untruthful, etc the culture of science is.
> But, at least in the case of physics, that's reasonably justified in most cases. You can worry that physics has been too credulous re: string theory and the like but that concern is taken seriously.
I worry much like Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". Now here we are with numerous issues on our hands with science playing a crucial role in their causality, and while they loooove accepting compliments for their deeds, when the topic of responsibility comes up.....well then, well, they had nothing to do with it you see!
1. Nobody has ever advertised the Standard Model as a Theory of Everything. It does successfully get you 75% of the way there, which makes the possibility of covering the remaining 25% seem plausible to reasonable people.
2. Understanding of existing theories and arguments as a prerequisite for taking your objections seriously is not a sign of insularity, reductionism, or untruth. Rather, it is commonsense epistemic hygiene. Why take seriously someone who clearly lacks basic understanding of what he criticises?
> 1. Nobody has ever advertised the Standard Model as a Theory of Everything.
What is the scope of this claim? What is your method for resolving the truth? Are you saying not one scientist has literally stated that sequence of words?
I have a feeling the word "pedantic" would be used as a weapon in any such conversations.
> It does successfully get you 75% of the way there, which makes the possibility of covering the remaining 25% seem plausible to reasonable people.
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Where did these numbers come from? Where (or *what*) is "there"? How can you make finite claims about an unknown phenomenon, in an epistemically sound manner?
> 2. Understanding of existing theories and arguments as a prerequisite for taking your objections seriously is not a sign of insularity, reductionism, or untruth.
Perceiving that superior knowledge in those fields makes one's opinion necessarily correct in an argument happens from time to time, and some other things. The Hindus warned us about Maya. For a more Western take on the idea, see Edmund Gettier.
> Rather, it is commonsense epistemic hygiene.
Yes, *common* sense, which even at its best is highly constrained by current cultural norms. Take online arguments like this for example.
> Why take seriously someone who clearly lacks basic understanding of what he criticises?
Perhaps one has an appreciation of the relevance of things like ontology, set theory, self-reference, etc have to the point of contention here, *and thus one would naturally take them seriously*. You are referencing a realm beyond understanding, putting finite numbers on it, *and then asking me why you should take me seriously*.
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.
Yeah, the incentives of prestige are often really bad. For example, someone starts a multi year project, then gets recruited away to a different institution. Now no academic wants to work on this half complete project. The originator can't, because they left, but nobody else can get "full credit" for it according to the academic prestige system. In general it is really hard to share prestige among a larger group, or to incentivize critical but uninteresting parts of a larger project. Money (or stock options) do a much better job of incentivizing group work.
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
Who's best suited to build the reservation? A weirdo with a good sense of society, like Kolmogorov?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/
I think it's due time the orthodoxy of the science is taken down a peg or three.
"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.
You would be the most hated person on the planet 😂😂
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.
Underfund a branch, it looks terrible, "Look at them, and then see how great we are!". Slick.
That's how you get a Randian boss to give you all their money.
Oh God please don't force me to defend Any Rand again lol
Look, anyone who follows a dogma uncritically is open to manipulation. For instance, my grandfather 'saved' Chevy money by using cheap parts, making his department look good, and the department that had to repair the crap look bad.
So, uhh, as long as you don't think she's as unassailable as my granpa's boss did, and she thought herself, then fine. Because she made some mistakes I tell you what. :P
> anyone who follows a dogma uncritically is open to manipulation.
a) Is this true for all dogmas?
b) Is there any human, dogma afflicted or otherwise, who is not open to manipulation?
> For instance, my grandfather 'saved' Chevy money by using cheap parts, making his department look good, and the department that had to repair the crap look bad.
Sure, but one instance can *disprove* a comprehensive claim, but one instance cannot prove a comprehensive claim.
> So, uhh, as long as you don't think she's as unassailable as my granpa's boss did, and she thought herself, then fine.
So, you have zero aversion with the general public's belief in Rand's ideology?
> Because she made some mistakes I tell you what. :P
Oh, I agree!! But not nearly as many people (most of whom haven't even cracked one of her books) believe!
Ayn Rand, Like God, is an excellent litmus test for the quality of a human's skills in epistemology.....for both believers and non-believers.
a) Yes. Even my own philosophy shouldn't become an unchanging dogma. Though I tend towards paranoia when I don't take time to watch observable reality, and engage with ideas I disagree with; I have quick feedback when I am too far into my own head. I imagine that others tend to get just as distanced from reality, just usually more slowly and probably in a different trajectory. I understand that empathy based on 'like myself but different' is likely to bring my own flaws to understanding others, but if I don't know where those flaws are it's the best start I have. : )
b) Not open to manipulation is a very tall bar to clear. Everyone is affected by others, sometimes by dishonestly or against our best interests. It's good to know how this can happen, and take precautions where they are not prohibitively expensive. It's good to be humble enough that if one is manipulated, one can let go and fix one's mistakes, and being dogmatic is often synonymous with being too self righteous to admit mistakes.
>Sure, but one instance can *disprove* a comprehensive claim, but one instance cannot prove a comprehensive claim.
Well, I wasn't actually trying to create a whole new worldview for you, I was just expanding my witty one liner into a 2 sentence story. My grandpa got big bonuses from Chevy by hurting Chevy, in a way that his boss was blind to because he was uncritical of Rand's ideology.
>So, you have zero aversion with the general public's belief in Rand's ideology?
I have trouble parsing that sentence. I have aversion to every idea sometimes, comes with the paranoia. I have family members who have it worse than me, thus I have strong feelings about making mental health help available. Any philosophy that would discard those lives who may not be able to repay it... feels like an attack on family. Less personally and more generally, the world is richer for having people who need help to get to the point of participating, more than it costs to help the people who never get there. I have no problem with quantifying the worth of people *per se* as long as they're worth isn't calculated in a way that doesn't respect that.
>haven't even cracked one of her books
Look I tried reading it but couldn't get far in. Characters were dry enough I had an easier time reading the philosophy without them. Maybe stuff was lost in the translation. But the wierd thing is, I have similar instincts to her with some things. Nouns as labels for collecting entities that do a similar set of verbs, rather than things in their own right *makes sense*. Especially for abstract ideas. But then going to claim her philosophy is a whole thing that can't be divided into parts... that's the action of a charlatan. "Buy the whole deal now or you'll never get another chance!" (because we don't expect any business from those who've taken the time to think on it so putting pressure to buy now is the only way to get business x_x ) Still, I can believe that she meant to illustrate the flaws in a society that hurt her, even if she didn't see that her cure had more flaws, and lacked the empathy to see that communism was also made by people like her trying to cure the society that hurt them.
Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ is a book that I *could* read that refutes Rand well (and predates her). I do like my angsty stories. Funny that the writer was aiming to convince people of communism but only convinced people that food needed health standards. (Near the end he literally advocates automagic price increases for goods that are labor intensive to create.)
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.
Besides, many Biologists do use Twitter as the main medium to advertise their work. Not that that's the best place for honest criticism. Really, physics and mathematics have a better system - see subthread about those
This depends heavily on the academic discipline. You have physics (and kinda math but that's a special case) at one end and some more fadish disciplines at the other. Even the best of them do tend to have substantial gatekeeping (criticism tends to mostly be accepted from those with phds) but good academic disciplines really do this.
The others need reform.
I was thinking of physics, specifically astronomy because I have been working with some astronomers recently. Plenty of postdocs have a physics PhD, read papers, think to themselves "these claims are completely ridiculous", and maybe they chat about it with the other folks in the office or something, but mostly this critique just goes into the void.
Now, if you publish a paper where you show some results, say your results are better, and say some other paper is ridiculous, then the academics will pay attention. But a critic who is just pointing out that your reasoning is bad, or something like, "You say that you published the code to do X, but you have not published any code at all." This sort of critique just gets ignored.
I think the gatekeeping is mostly in the "channel". Published papers that contain critiques are considered an important critique. But a paper that is *only* a critique of another paper will never get published. So the only real critiques are ones that are taken as "pot shots" at competing researchers. Having a PhD doesn't really help you give critiques, it only has any effect in publications.
This could all be specific to the traditions around publication in a particular field, though.
Ohh yes, I 100% agree with this as a problem. I just don't think it's resistance to criticism so much as structural issues with the incentive/publication system. I've been pushing the idea for awhile that every journal article come with a slot that publishes the best critique submitted within 2 months (of some minimum quality) and maybe for experimental sciences first pre-registered replication of similar power.
Note that it isn't always in an academic's best interest to go public with their critique of a given piece of work, because that might be the germ of an idea they can develop and publish themselves. Quite a bit of knowledge hoarding goes on in academia, which stubbornly resists reasonable proposals like publishing datasets and analysis codes. It's an outcome of the incentive structure.
That is changing. Funding agencies like NIH and NSF now require applications to state their data sharing plan. The data sharing includes files with meta data, statistical analysis plans, code shared on GitHub, etc.
Note that the system I propose mostly solves that problem in that it effectively gives them a publication (maybe not counted as a full publication) in exchange for submitting the criticism. I think it would reverse that concern.
Rhetorical tricks, intentional or not, like "I just don't think it is" and "so much as [something else]" are great techniques for directing attention away from considering legitimate shortcomings.
How do you train a neural network?
How do you train a human?
Also note that in my experience with theoretical physics it's not uncommon to find papers which are purely takedowns on other papers. Usually those are called "Comment on ..." and admittedly are not usually published so much as dumped on arXiv (but still cited!). If you're lucky you might even find a "Comment on Comment on ...". And most times even where they wrote nothing you will find these people criticising these papers at conferences. And those discussions can get very detailed and very brutal.
But also where the things being criticised are consequential for popular lines of investigation, it's the most common thing in the world for these critiques to be incorporated in larger constructive papers.
Where can one object to physics' Theory of "Everything", and be taken seriously?
I see papers on arxiv suggesting modifications or raising issues with the standard model all the time -- some of them published in decent journals. You can't really object to a theory of everything because we don't have a plausible one yet.
True, you can't get taken seriously with your objections without showing you have a good understanding of how the existing physics works and a familiarity with why various alternatives proved difficult. But, at least in the case of physics, that's reasonably justified in most cases. You can worry that physics has been too credulous re: string theory and the like but that concern is taken seriously.
> I see papers on arxiv suggesting modifications or raising issues with the standard model all the time -- some of them published in decent journals.
My complaint is not with the standard model, it is with it being advertised as a Theory of Everything.
> You can't really object to a theory of everything because we don't have a plausible one yet.
Yes you can - science's coverage of the metaphysical realm is minuscule, and it is part of Everything (the actual one).
> True, you can't get taken seriously with your objections without showing you have a good understanding of how the existing physics works and a familiarity with why various alternatives proved difficult.
Demonstrating how insular, reductive, untruthful, etc the culture of science is.
> But, at least in the case of physics, that's reasonably justified in most cases. You can worry that physics has been too credulous re: string theory and the like but that concern is taken seriously.
I worry much like Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". Now here we are with numerous issues on our hands with science playing a crucial role in their causality, and while they loooove accepting compliments for their deeds, when the topic of responsibility comes up.....well then, well, they had nothing to do with it you see!
1. Nobody has ever advertised the Standard Model as a Theory of Everything. It does successfully get you 75% of the way there, which makes the possibility of covering the remaining 25% seem plausible to reasonable people.
2. Understanding of existing theories and arguments as a prerequisite for taking your objections seriously is not a sign of insularity, reductionism, or untruth. Rather, it is commonsense epistemic hygiene. Why take seriously someone who clearly lacks basic understanding of what he criticises?
> 1. Nobody has ever advertised the Standard Model as a Theory of Everything.
What is the scope of this claim? What is your method for resolving the truth? Are you saying not one scientist has literally stated that sequence of words?
I have a feeling the word "pedantic" would be used as a weapon in any such conversations.
> It does successfully get you 75% of the way there, which makes the possibility of covering the remaining 25% seem plausible to reasonable people.
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Where did these numbers come from? Where (or *what*) is "there"? How can you make finite claims about an unknown phenomenon, in an epistemically sound manner?
> 2. Understanding of existing theories and arguments as a prerequisite for taking your objections seriously is not a sign of insularity, reductionism, or untruth.
Perceiving that superior knowledge in those fields makes one's opinion necessarily correct in an argument happens from time to time, and some other things. The Hindus warned us about Maya. For a more Western take on the idea, see Edmund Gettier.
> Rather, it is commonsense epistemic hygiene.
Yes, *common* sense, which even at its best is highly constrained by current cultural norms. Take online arguments like this for example.
> Why take seriously someone who clearly lacks basic understanding of what he criticises?
Perhaps one has an appreciation of the relevance of things like ontology, set theory, self-reference, etc have to the point of contention here, *and thus one would naturally take them seriously*. You are referencing a realm beyond understanding, putting finite numbers on it, *and then asking me why you should take me seriously*.
Sir: are we having a laugh?
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.
Yeah, the incentives of prestige are often really bad. For example, someone starts a multi year project, then gets recruited away to a different institution. Now no academic wants to work on this half complete project. The originator can't, because they left, but nobody else can get "full credit" for it according to the academic prestige system. In general it is really hard to share prestige among a larger group, or to incentivize critical but uninteresting parts of a larger project. Money (or stock options) do a much better job of incentivizing group work.
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.