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The non-white foreigner and attendant social status thing is hopelessly confounded with the "developing countries have extremely corrupt academia" thing. Outsid

The non-white foreigner and attendant social status thing is hopelessly confounded with the "developing countries have extremely corrupt academia" thing. Outside of certain edge cases, it doesn't matter in the West that you have a Ph.D. and some papers if you got them in e.g. China or India. Read a little about those systems: exam results are routinely bought and sold, papers fabricated, whole journals completely made-up. edit And I should be crystal clear because finding opportunities to perform being offended is extremely popular these days: many of these people are actually brilliant and capable, the problem is the credentials do not provide a signal.

bovermyer 5y ago
I'm aware of that. My dad's a university professor. In this case, though, the gentleman was from Japan, which is hardly a "developing" country.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Ah, that changes things. Japanese credentials can be a little inscrutable sometimes, at least in my field. Their connections with the outside world's academics aren't as strong for us. I know that's not true in e.g. math. Wonder what's going on.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I suspect it's largely a cultural issue. Japan isn't as outwards-facing as most countries, certainly most large countries. It's one thing to export pop culture, which it does very successfully, quite another to export academic products from such a different system. A system so different it probably doesn't descend from the original Academia at all, unlike most modern instantiations of scholarship.
    - MichaelZuo 5y ago
      What? The pursuit of knowledge does not require any intellectual hereditary descent from ancient Greece last time I checked. And the capacities of an academic culture is not correlated with closeness to the ideals of the ancient Greeks either. They rise or fail on their own merits.
      - imbnwa 5y ago
        Modern academia doesn't even descend from any ancient Greek institution since schooling in Greco-Roman antiquity was far more of a personal engagement, universities were extensions of Christian monasteries and modern formal logic and 'rational debate' developed out of the practices of those monks communications with one another across distances. Moreover it was the Muslim Caliphates and Eastern Romans who inherited and further developed the wealth of surviving antique knowledge between the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and Northwest Africa and the renaissance, but since Hegel Europe has had this lasting fascination with a direct link to antiquity. Edit: An aside - People of Descartes' and Locke's generation were amongst the first waves of a secular break of this sacred academic tradition that was commensurate with similar breaks in politics. It is this sacred origin of secular thought that John Locke is referring to in The Essay on Human Understanding in the form of "the schoolmen" he references as his constant opponent: these are the Christian scholastics, from Peter Abelard down to Aquinas, who developed the prototypical notions of universality/causation as we understand them today, but these were conflated things from the scholastics all the way down to Kant rather than how we now consider the former distinctly as an exhaustive, inclusive set of things in some category, e.g. being human. The categorical imperative doesn't mean "act as if everybody else had to also do as you do", it means "act as if your decision was inextricable from any other necessary, causal law we observe of nature, like gravity (does the Earth decide to pull you back down when you jump up?). Morality based on pain/pleasure is a BIG NO-NO for Kant and Kant's minimalist definition of being human excludes being able to be recognized empathically/sympathetically.
      - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        I'm not talking about capabilities at all. I'm talking about difficulty exchanging ideas when cultures are very different.
baybal2 5y ago
Very true, but this still doesn't diminish the fact that India, and China still produce megatons of engineers, and scientists. India, and China also provide much more opportunities for "natural selection" to weed out bad workers. On other hand, the West has degree mills which will give one, and workplaces which will not test your abilities even to the minimum. And it will be the person's first serious job where the surprise will come.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Overall a good point I think. I would say that selection in the West happens at the university admission level, not really in university (they do everything they can to get you to graduate once you're admitted). But admissions are still, for now, a fairly good and informative filter. Some workplaces, canonically software engineering, do test your abilities (I assume you mean in interviews?). There are plenty of logic games and practical tests. I agree most jobs don't do anything like this, and it's a shame.

bovermyer 5y ago

I'm aware of that. My dad's a university professor. In this case, though, the gentleman was from Japan, which is hardly a "developing" country.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Ah, that changes things. Japanese credentials can be a little inscrutable sometimes, at least in my field. Their connections with the outside world's academics aren't as strong for us. I know that's not true in e.g. math. Wonder what's going on.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I suspect it's largely a cultural issue. Japan isn't as outwards-facing as most countries, certainly most large countries. It's one thing to export pop culture, which it does very successfully, quite another to export academic products from such a different system. A system so different it probably doesn't descend from the original Academia at all, unlike most modern instantiations of scholarship.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    What? The pursuit of knowledge does not require any intellectual hereditary descent from ancient Greece last time I checked. And the capacities of an academic culture is not correlated with closeness to the ideals of the ancient Greeks either. They rise or fail on their own merits.
    - imbnwa 5y ago
      Modern academia doesn't even descend from any ancient Greek institution since schooling in Greco-Roman antiquity was far more of a personal engagement, universities were extensions of Christian monasteries and modern formal logic and 'rational debate' developed out of the practices of those monks communications with one another across distances. Moreover it was the Muslim Caliphates and Eastern Romans who inherited and further developed the wealth of surviving antique knowledge between the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and Northwest Africa and the renaissance, but since Hegel Europe has had this lasting fascination with a direct link to antiquity. Edit: An aside - People of Descartes' and Locke's generation were amongst the first waves of a secular break of this sacred academic tradition that was commensurate with similar breaks in politics. It is this sacred origin of secular thought that John Locke is referring to in The Essay on Human Understanding in the form of "the schoolmen" he references as his constant opponent: these are the Christian scholastics, from Peter Abelard down to Aquinas, who developed the prototypical notions of universality/causation as we understand them today, but these were conflated things from the scholastics all the way down to Kant rather than how we now consider the former distinctly as an exhaustive, inclusive set of things in some category, e.g. being human. The categorical imperative doesn't mean "act as if everybody else had to also do as you do", it means "act as if your decision was inextricable from any other necessary, causal law we observe of nature, like gravity (does the Earth decide to pull you back down when you jump up?). Morality based on pain/pleasure is a BIG NO-NO for Kant and Kant's minimalist definition of being human excludes being able to be recognized empathically/sympathetically.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      I'm not talking about capabilities at all. I'm talking about difficulty exchanging ideas when cultures are very different.

baybal2 5y ago

Very true, but this still doesn't diminish the fact that India, and China still produce megatons of engineers, and scientists. India, and China also provide much more opportunities for "natural selection" to weed out bad workers. On other hand, the West has degree mills which will give one, and workplaces which will not test your abilities even to the minimum. And it will be the person's first serious job where the surprise will come.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Overall a good point I think. I would say that selection in the West happens at the university admission level, not really in university (they do everything they can to get you to graduate once you're admitted). But admissions are still, for now, a fairly good and informative filter. Some workplaces, canonically software engineering, do test your abilities (I assume you mean in interviews?). There are plenty of logic games and practical tests. I agree most jobs don't do anything like this, and it's a shame.