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> Franklin believed that the various academic societies in Europe were increasingly pretentious and concerned with the impractical. Oh wow I wonder what he wou

> Franklin believed that the various academic societies in Europe were increasingly pretentious and concerned with the impractical. Oh wow I wonder what he would think of it now. People spend their whole lives studying the tiniest most minuscule thing that is published in some obscure journal and forgotten like the ark at the end of Raiders. Maybe I’m just too bitter about academia in this point in my career but it seems like we’ve run out of things to study and/or have too many people doing it. The creepy professor/grad student pyramid scheme couldn’t go on forever.

notthemessiah 3y ago
> Maybe I’m just too bitter about academia in this point in my career but it seems like we’ve run out of things to study and/or have too many people doing it. We have certainly not run out of things to study, but I think we've hit the limit on what can effectively be communicated through traditional science journals [1], and we need to address the reproducibility crisis through open source science and reconsider the incentive structures around academia [2]. We need to oppose initiatives from people like Bill Gates who wish to privatize science through his various non-profits, as knowledge works better as as commons (we were unable to deal with the pandemic partly because Bill Gates prevented Oxford from open sourcing their work on COVID [3]). We need software that can compose scientific models [4], and organizations that can facilitate greater coordination among scientists. Science will become all the more important in an increasingly uncertain world, but are we up to the task? [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/frustrated-science-student-behind-sci-hub https://www.science.org/content/article/frustrated-science-s... [1] https://numfocus.org/open-source-science-initiative-ossci https://numfocus.org/open-source-science-initiative-ossci [2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi... [3] https://www.algebraicjulia.org/ https://www.algebraicjulia.org/

notthemessiah 3y ago

> Maybe I’m just too bitter about academia in this point in my career but it seems like we’ve run out of things to study and/or have too many people doing it. We have certainly not run out of things to study, but I think we've hit the limit on what can effectively be communicated through traditional science journals [1], and we need to address the reproducibility crisis through open source science and reconsider the incentive structures around academia [2]. We need to oppose initiatives from people like Bill Gates who wish to privatize science through his various non-profits, as knowledge works better as as commons (we were unable to deal with the pandemic partly because Bill Gates prevented Oxford from open sourcing their work on COVID [3]). We need software that can compose scientific models [4], and organizations that can facilitate greater coordination among scientists. Science will become all the more important in an increasingly uncertain world, but are we up to the task? [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/frustrated-science-student-behind-sci-hub https://www.science.org/content/article/frustrated-science-s... [1] https://numfocus.org/open-source-science-initiative-ossci https://numfocus.org/open-source-science-initiative-ossci [2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi... [3] https://www.algebraicjulia.org/ https://www.algebraicjulia.org/