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I'm going to say bogus is too kind a word many times. There was a famous academic troll[1] that revealed some of these humanities for the make believe they are.

by eloff 6y ago

I'm going to say bogus is too kind a word many times. There was a famous academic troll[1] that revealed some of these humanities for the make believe they are. These people basically made up garbage papers that sounded like these feminist, gender studies, and critical race disciplines and published them in peer reviewed journals. Even the people in these disciplines can't tell satire from seriousness - and that's damning. They even published a rewrite of mein kampf. Why should my tax dollars go towards that? These people should get a real job and contribute to society. Bogus is being too charitable. It made for one of my all time favorite episodes of Joe Rogan though. Worth a listen. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/9l1lzs/three_academics_write_hoax_articles_for_peer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/9l1lzs/three_acad...

literallycancer 6y ago
Why should any tax dollars go towards academic research? >These people should get a real job and contribute to society Careful with this reasoning. Commies said the same thing when they sent people they didn't like to uranium mine labor camps.
- eloff 6y ago
  > Why should any tax dollars go towards academic research? Research is a process through which we unlock various technological orchards to harvest for the betterment of all mankind. The problem we have today is we're running low on new orchards. It's a crying shame how little we spend on research - compared to e.g. weapons. > Careful with this reasoning. Commies said the same thing when they sent people they didn't like to uranium mine labor camps. Do I dignify that with a reply? That's got nothing to do with what I said.
woodruffw 6y ago
> Why should my tax dollars go towards that? Why should your tax dollars go towards CS research, when nearly half of all sampled papers (circa 2015) can't be reproduced [1]? As a society, we delegate funding based on perceptions of expertise: someone who knows more than you or I about these specific fields decided that they deserved some amount of funding (probably significantly less than you think). Sometimes that means that junk and fraud[2] gets through; that's the cost of doing business in every field. These kinds of embarrassing mistakes should be read as an indictment of academic culture and the failures of the peer review system as a whole, not a "gotcha" against a field that you or I aren't qualified to evaluate. Which, again, is why nobody asked for my opinion or yours about which things to fund. [1]: http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ [2]: https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-acm-ieee-computer-architecture-conferences-ccd61169370d https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-ac...
- eloff 6y ago
  I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able to make a clear judgment. These kinds of people are dangerous - they advocate for tearing down the system we have that works pretty well - with no coherent idea of what to replace it with. If they ever got into power we'd all be screwed. It's my opinion that these fields are a net negative to society as a whole, having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. They are merely thinly disguised political ideologies. It's sad what academia has come to.
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    > having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. It's the humanities. It's not supposed to be "scientific," with whatever weight you decide to place on that adjective. Our government (and every government) funds thousands of things, academic and not, that aren't themselves scientific: parks, libraries, public arts, aesthetic programs intended to motivate the public towards some policy goal[1]. Most people think these things should receive some amount of funding, and recognize that they themselves are not immediately qualified to distinguish worthy endeavours from un-worthy ones. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/documerica.html https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/d...
    - eloff 6y ago
      Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method. History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis in reality, and little grounding of any kind in facts and logic. You could call it a religion of sorts, but it would be insulting to religions which at least have a richness of tradition and culture and philosophy behind them.

by eloff 6y ago

literallycancer 6y ago

Why should any tax dollars go towards academic research? >These people should get a real job and contribute to society Careful with this reasoning. Commies said the same thing when they sent people they didn't like to uranium mine labor camps.

eloff 6y ago
> Why should any tax dollars go towards academic research? Research is a process through which we unlock various technological orchards to harvest for the betterment of all mankind. The problem we have today is we're running low on new orchards. It's a crying shame how little we spend on research - compared to e.g. weapons. > Careful with this reasoning. Commies said the same thing when they sent people they didn't like to uranium mine labor camps. Do I dignify that with a reply? That's got nothing to do with what I said.

woodruffw 6y ago

> Why should my tax dollars go towards that? Why should your tax dollars go towards CS research, when nearly half of all sampled papers (circa 2015) can't be reproduced [1]? As a society, we delegate funding based on perceptions of expertise: someone who knows more than you or I about these specific fields decided that they deserved some amount of funding (probably significantly less than you think). Sometimes that means that junk and fraud[2] gets through; that's the cost of doing business in every field. These kinds of embarrassing mistakes should be read as an indictment of academic culture and the failures of the peer review system as a whole, not a "gotcha" against a field that you or I aren't qualified to evaluate. Which, again, is why nobody asked for my opinion or yours about which things to fund. [1]: http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/ [2]: https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-acm-ieee-computer-architecture-conferences-ccd61169370d https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-ac...

eloff 6y ago
I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able to make a clear judgment. These kinds of people are dangerous - they advocate for tearing down the system we have that works pretty well - with no coherent idea of what to replace it with. If they ever got into power we'd all be screwed. It's my opinion that these fields are a net negative to society as a whole, having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. They are merely thinly disguised political ideologies. It's sad what academia has come to.
- woodruffw 6y ago
  > having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. It's the humanities. It's not supposed to be "scientific," with whatever weight you decide to place on that adjective. Our government (and every government) funds thousands of things, academic and not, that aren't themselves scientific: parks, libraries, public arts, aesthetic programs intended to motivate the public towards some policy goal[1]. Most people think these things should receive some amount of funding, and recognize that they themselves are not immediately qualified to distinguish worthy endeavours from un-worthy ones. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/documerica.html https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/d...
  - eloff 6y ago
    Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method. History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis in reality, and little grounding of any kind in facts and logic. You could call it a religion of sorts, but it would be insulting to religions which at least have a richness of tradition and culture and philosophy behind them.