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Of course national politics would be represented by the media as vicious and high-stakes: the media needs vicious and high-stakes messages to keep up viewership

Of course national politics would be represented by the media as vicious and high-stakes: the media needs vicious and high-stakes messages to keep up viewership as its lifeline. Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline.

ModernMech 3y ago
Do you have any first-hand knowledge of academic politics, or can you offer any examples that demonstrate they are particularly "vicious"? When I think of vicious politics, I think of violence, which we see on the national stage. Would you say academic politics are violent, or no? > Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline. Can you support this statement?
- psychomugs 3y ago
  I have a PhD. Students are shackled to dead-end projects, uprooted from their communities by careerist mentors, and generally fucked over - in at least one case, literally - by their PIs. Scooping - having work similar to yours get published by another party - is a pervasive enough fear that reviewers can block publications to guard their own moats. Publication venues choose arbitrary selectiveness criteria, e.g. conference acceptance rates around 24.3%, to maintain an aura of high quality despite most papers being useless apart from bolstering citation metrics. Large projects that require many person-years of effort can only be done by already-established hype-leading "paper mill" labs where several grad students rotate who gets first author credit - the main measure for graduating. All of this accumulates into student depression and academic burnout that leaves academics alienated from each other, let alone other departments. As my advisor put it, academia is a pyramid scheme.
  - ModernMech 3y ago
    I appreciate your strife, but at the same time this doesn’t really speak to your original assertion, that academic politics are particularly “vicious”. Moreover, you haven’t linked the purported viciousness to the stakes being low. Actually, your post seems to argue the opposite; that academics hold in their hands the lives and futures of students. How are the stakes low?
    - psychomugs 3y ago
      I’m not sure that strife is something to “appreciate,” but, thanks(?) Peer-to-peer politics is vicious because of the incentive to compete for citations in a publish-or-perish milieu were big players block little players with few alternatives apart from favor currying. Mentor-mentee politics is vicious because the institutional power dynamics are skewed overwhelmingly towards the former with little recourse for the latter. The stakes - publications read by and impacting very small fractions of very small research fields and whose individual contributions are further diluted by the modern diarrhea of least-publishable units - are low.
      - ModernMech 3y ago
        Again, you are making conclusory statements. You haven’t brought anything to back your statements. The original claim was that: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." First, you haven’t shown academic politics are more vicious and bitter than other forms of politics, let alone the most. I’ve already shown that national politics in America is violent in another thread, so to show that academic politics is a more vicious form, I think you need to demonstrate it is at least as violent. Your examples of “viciousness” in academia seem more like pettiness. Maybe you could argue it’s more bitter, but you’re not arguing that. The second part of your original claim was that the politics are this way because the stakes are low. Insofar that you think the stakes are low, you still haven’t linked the two casually. There are other alternative explanations for viciousness, like the stakes being high, a position which you’ve accidentally argued in your prior post. Finally, I believe your perspective is colored by your former status as a PhD student; there’s a lot more to academic politics than paper politics, and I understand maybe you don’t have the full picture. Nonetheless, you still should have the tools to argue your position cogently, and you haven’t yet provided such an argument. Can you make a better one?
        psychomugs 3y ago
        The statement isn't mine [1] and employs the literary device of hyperbole (noun - extravagant exaggeration) in the use of "most." Definitions of key words from the original statement from Merriam-Webster: - politics (noun) - ...; the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, or policies - vicious (adjective) - dangerously aggressive; marked by violence or ferocity - bitter (adjective) - ...; distasteful or distressing to the mind - stake (noun) - ...; something that is staked for gain or loss The primary _stake_ (something gained or lost) in academics is not the individual academics' wellbeing, but publication and research output, which is often only relevant to very few within siloed fields. The politics (actions, practices, policies) behind this process - e.g. papers that receive positive reviews but are rejected to protect research moats, or otherwise receive undeservedly _vicious_ (aggressive) comments because peer review operates on a volunteer system that overworks at best and nepotistically gatkeeps at worst - are _bitter_ (distressing to the mind) to the authors who receive mixed feedback as the process is out of their locus of control, yet it is the measure by which academics advance (e.g. graduation, promotion). In (anti-)academic fashion, I'll bow out of this conversation because the stakes are so low. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  Do we see violence on the national stage? I don't think we've seen a fist fight in the US senate or house in quite a while, using flimsy recording in this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... it's been 6 years. I think I'd put some money in for some fights. Maybe some pay per view ones like AOC vs MTG, attack of the acronyms.
  - ModernMech 3y ago
    Last week, several people were convicted of seditious conspiracy relating to the violent coup attempt on 1/6. So yes, there is violence in American national politics.

ModernMech 3y ago

Do you have any first-hand knowledge of academic politics, or can you offer any examples that demonstrate they are particularly "vicious"? When I think of vicious politics, I think of violence, which we see on the national stage. Would you say academic politics are violent, or no? > Not even academics are interested in academic politics beyond their own immediate purview of the next publication or deadline. Can you support this statement?

psychomugs 3y ago
I have a PhD. Students are shackled to dead-end projects, uprooted from their communities by careerist mentors, and generally fucked over - in at least one case, literally - by their PIs. Scooping - having work similar to yours get published by another party - is a pervasive enough fear that reviewers can block publications to guard their own moats. Publication venues choose arbitrary selectiveness criteria, e.g. conference acceptance rates around 24.3%, to maintain an aura of high quality despite most papers being useless apart from bolstering citation metrics. Large projects that require many person-years of effort can only be done by already-established hype-leading "paper mill" labs where several grad students rotate who gets first author credit - the main measure for graduating. All of this accumulates into student depression and academic burnout that leaves academics alienated from each other, let alone other departments. As my advisor put it, academia is a pyramid scheme.
- ModernMech 3y ago
  I appreciate your strife, but at the same time this doesn’t really speak to your original assertion, that academic politics are particularly “vicious”. Moreover, you haven’t linked the purported viciousness to the stakes being low. Actually, your post seems to argue the opposite; that academics hold in their hands the lives and futures of students. How are the stakes low?
  - psychomugs 3y ago
    I’m not sure that strife is something to “appreciate,” but, thanks(?) Peer-to-peer politics is vicious because of the incentive to compete for citations in a publish-or-perish milieu were big players block little players with few alternatives apart from favor currying. Mentor-mentee politics is vicious because the institutional power dynamics are skewed overwhelmingly towards the former with little recourse for the latter. The stakes - publications read by and impacting very small fractions of very small research fields and whose individual contributions are further diluted by the modern diarrhea of least-publishable units - are low.
    - ModernMech 3y ago
      Again, you are making conclusory statements. You haven’t brought anything to back your statements. The original claim was that: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." First, you haven’t shown academic politics are more vicious and bitter than other forms of politics, let alone the most. I’ve already shown that national politics in America is violent in another thread, so to show that academic politics is a more vicious form, I think you need to demonstrate it is at least as violent. Your examples of “viciousness” in academia seem more like pettiness. Maybe you could argue it’s more bitter, but you’re not arguing that. The second part of your original claim was that the politics are this way because the stakes are low. Insofar that you think the stakes are low, you still haven’t linked the two casually. There are other alternative explanations for viciousness, like the stakes being high, a position which you’ve accidentally argued in your prior post. Finally, I believe your perspective is colored by your former status as a PhD student; there’s a lot more to academic politics than paper politics, and I understand maybe you don’t have the full picture. Nonetheless, you still should have the tools to argue your position cogently, and you haven’t yet provided such an argument. Can you make a better one?
      - psychomugs 3y ago
        The statement isn't mine [1] and employs the literary device of hyperbole (noun - extravagant exaggeration) in the use of "most." Definitions of key words from the original statement from Merriam-Webster: - politics (noun) - ...; the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, or policies - vicious (adjective) - dangerously aggressive; marked by violence or ferocity - bitter (adjective) - ...; distasteful or distressing to the mind - stake (noun) - ...; something that is staked for gain or loss The primary _stake_ (something gained or lost) in academics is not the individual academics' wellbeing, but publication and research output, which is often only relevant to very few within siloed fields. The politics (actions, practices, policies) behind this process - e.g. papers that receive positive reviews but are rejected to protect research moats, or otherwise receive undeservedly _vicious_ (aggressive) comments because peer review operates on a volunteer system that overworks at best and nepotistically gatkeeps at worst - are _bitter_ (distressing to the mind) to the authors who receive mixed feedback as the process is out of their locus of control, yet it is the measure by which academics advance (e.g. graduation, promotion). In (anti-)academic fashion, I'll bow out of this conversation because the stakes are so low. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
latency-guy2 3y ago
Do we see violence on the national stage? I don't think we've seen a fist fight in the US senate or house in quite a while, using flimsy recording in this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St... it's been 6 years. I think I'd put some money in for some fights. Maybe some pay per view ones like AOC vs MTG, attack of the acronyms.
- ModernMech 3y ago
  Last week, several people were convicted of seditious conspiracy relating to the violent coup attempt on 1/6. So yes, there is violence in American national politics.