3 ms·

The thing is those ivory tower conventions serve a purpose. They make it easier for others to evaluate (and credit!) your work. Obviously some of these conven

The thing is those ivory tower conventions serve a purpose. They make it easier for others to evaluate (and credit!) your work. Obviously some of these conventions might be pedantic, and criticizing an argument's form doesn't invalidate its essence, but I don't think it's a bad idea to insist on standards, even somewhat arbitrary ones. It seems like you're wishing for a world in which every citation is equivalent to "Anonymous 4chan User". I don't think that would improve things.

nbardy 6y ago
They used to serve a purpose, but now it's turned our academy into a dog and pony show. Where publish or perish reigns supreme. Everyone rushs paper, suicide rates in Academia are sky rocketing and most smart young people opt for tech or startups instead.
- omginternets 6y ago
  I don't disagree with the pathologies you're pointing out, but I don't agree that this was caused by the mere act of imposing standards and practices. And even if publishing conventions are part of the problem, doing away with all convention is likely to make things worse, not better. It would amount to throwing the baby away with the bathwater.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Exactly. That's how we got academia's version of the minimal viable product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit
- ryan93 6y ago
  You are claiming it’s fine for physicists to publish YouTube videos for world changing claims and nothing else.
xondono 6y ago
I’d disagree. They only help you trace political connections on academia. Trading citations and authorship is such a common practice nowadays that I don’t trust that metric for pretty much anything.
- omginternets 6y ago
  >They only help you trace political connections on academia. Assuming that's actually true (and it's not, in my experience), that alone is a valuable thing. Do you prefer doing research in a place where political connections cannot be traced? I don't. It's bad enough as it is. Here's the other -- really obvious -- thing it achieves: it helps you find more information about a given subject. It helps you understand precisely what a given publication is referring to. Just because a system is abused doesn't make it a bad system. And if you want to dismantle a system, you must at least replace it with something that isn't worse.

nbardy 6y ago

They used to serve a purpose, but now it's turned our academy into a dog and pony show. Where publish or perish reigns supreme. Everyone rushs paper, suicide rates in Academia are sky rocketing and most smart young people opt for tech or startups instead.

omginternets 6y ago
I don't disagree with the pathologies you're pointing out, but I don't agree that this was caused by the mere act of imposing standards and practices. And even if publishing conventions are part of the problem, doing away with all convention is likely to make things worse, not better. It would amount to throwing the baby away with the bathwater.
pmiller2 6y ago
Exactly. That's how we got academia's version of the minimal viable product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit
ryan93 6y ago
You are claiming it’s fine for physicists to publish YouTube videos for world changing claims and nothing else.

xondono 6y ago

I’d disagree. They only help you trace political connections on academia. Trading citations and authorship is such a common practice nowadays that I don’t trust that metric for pretty much anything.

omginternets 6y ago
>They only help you trace political connections on academia. Assuming that's actually true (and it's not, in my experience), that alone is a valuable thing. Do you prefer doing research in a place where political connections cannot be traced? I don't. It's bad enough as it is. Here's the other -- really obvious -- thing it achieves: it helps you find more information about a given subject. It helps you understand precisely what a given publication is referring to. Just because a system is abused doesn't make it a bad system. And if you want to dismantle a system, you must at least replace it with something that isn't worse.