3 ms·

Software-Generated Paper Accepted At IEEE Conference

19 points by naish 18y ago

raheemm 18y ago
"In this work we better understand how digital-to-analog converters can be applied to the development of e-commerce." LOL :)
rtw 18y ago
It was actually accepted as a "poster" which is not a rigorous thing. I still think it's an embarrassment. This has been done before, and accepted as a full CS paper (search for "scigen"). The best example is the "Sokal affair" (search for "Alan Sokal") which is awesome because it doesn't just demonstrate sheer negligence with a randomly generated paper: it was carefully crafted to sound like it made sense.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
asciilifeform 18y ago
Computer science has failed the pseudoscience test: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-wrong-with-cs-research.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-w...
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Very interesting article. Should be a submission here.
  - gcv 18y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43074 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43074
jackowayed 18y ago
people don't like admitting that they don't know something. Especially that they don't know something when they're supposed to be very knowledgeable about it. But come on! They could have rejected it as "incomprehensible" or "needing to explain what it was talking about better" or "not staying on one topic". The abstract started talking about the Internet and OOP and ended up talking about digital-to-analog converters and e-commerce. Just because you're smart and you can't understand it doesn't mean that it's smarter.
kwamenum86 18y ago
The abstract was craptastic but it is no different from the craptastic abstracts of several human-generated papers. I think part of the problem is the people expect academic papers to be complicated/cutting edge/forward thinking, and therefore not immediately comprehensible. Now I have to admit, the first sentence of the abstract sounded really good but it was all downhill from there. Again though, it was downhill in the same way as many other abstracts I have read. Maybe this means that academics need to stop trying to sound so smart in their papers and just get the point across...or maybe it just exposes one (or several) of the reviewers as utterly incompetent.
- fgimenez 18y ago
  When I was writing my first paper, I legitimately tried to write it so anybody could understand. My test was to have my girlfriend read it and tell me what she thought it was about (not that my girlfriend isn't smart, but she had absolutely no clue what I was working on). When I showed it to the PI, he said I had to revise it all because it was "too juicy." More specifically, he said there were two reasons against understandable writing: 1) Scientists are lazy, and do not want to read long passages. Coupled with the fact that they are usually pretty smart, they can understand the terse language. 2) Scientific (read: incomprehensible) writing removes all biases. There is no room to interpret something incorrectly if the precise words are used. I agree though, it's not a very inviting culture that promotes these ideals.
  - kwamenum86 18y ago
    That's my point though. Even extremely smart people can stumble on a dense abstract. It is the nature of language- just because I know what I mean does not mean that you do. Even if you write something that can only be interpreted correctly in one way, there is still room for misinterpretation or total lack of understanding. I was really trying to say that if a paper with no meaning made it through screening (no matter how light) then maybe the papers are too dense. In response to 1), I have always found that scientific papers provide more verbose explanations for even simple concepts. I have reread entire paragraphs three times only to discover that I already have a firm grasp of the concept being discussed and can explain it in a single sentence. But it probably just depends on the author and the verbosity could be explained by your 2): removing all uncertainty by explaining exactly what you mean.
gcv 18y ago
So it was post-modern cultural studies first with Alan Sokal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), then theoretical physics with the Bogdanov brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair), and now it's the turn of computer science. As good CS people, the meta-authors of this article used a random generator rather than faking the text themselves. I guess the discipline is growing up. :)

19 points by naish 18y ago

"In this work we better understand how digital-to-analog converters can be applied to the development of e-commerce." LOL :)

rtw 18y ago

It was actually accepted as a "poster" which is not a rigorous thing. I still think it's an embarrassment. This has been done before, and accepted as a full CS paper (search for "scigen"). The best example is the "Sokal affair" (search for "Alan Sokal") which is awesome because it doesn't just demonstrate sheer negligence with a randomly generated paper: it was carefully crafted to sound like it made sense.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

asciilifeform 18y ago

Computer science has failed the pseudoscience test: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-wrong-with-cs-research.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-w...

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Very interesting article. Should be a submission here.
- gcv 18y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43074 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43074

jackowayed 18y ago

people don't like admitting that they don't know something. Especially that they don't know something when they're supposed to be very knowledgeable about it. But come on! They could have rejected it as "incomprehensible" or "needing to explain what it was talking about better" or "not staying on one topic". The abstract started talking about the Internet and OOP and ended up talking about digital-to-analog converters and e-commerce. Just because you're smart and you can't understand it doesn't mean that it's smarter.

kwamenum86 18y ago

The abstract was craptastic but it is no different from the craptastic abstracts of several human-generated papers. I think part of the problem is the people expect academic papers to be complicated/cutting edge/forward thinking, and therefore not immediately comprehensible. Now I have to admit, the first sentence of the abstract sounded really good but it was all downhill from there. Again though, it was downhill in the same way as many other abstracts I have read. Maybe this means that academics need to stop trying to sound so smart in their papers and just get the point across...or maybe it just exposes one (or several) of the reviewers as utterly incompetent.

fgimenez 18y ago
When I was writing my first paper, I legitimately tried to write it so anybody could understand. My test was to have my girlfriend read it and tell me what she thought it was about (not that my girlfriend isn't smart, but she had absolutely no clue what I was working on). When I showed it to the PI, he said I had to revise it all because it was "too juicy." More specifically, he said there were two reasons against understandable writing: 1) Scientists are lazy, and do not want to read long passages. Coupled with the fact that they are usually pretty smart, they can understand the terse language. 2) Scientific (read: incomprehensible) writing removes all biases. There is no room to interpret something incorrectly if the precise words are used. I agree though, it's not a very inviting culture that promotes these ideals.
- kwamenum86 18y ago
  That's my point though. Even extremely smart people can stumble on a dense abstract. It is the nature of language- just because I know what I mean does not mean that you do. Even if you write something that can only be interpreted correctly in one way, there is still room for misinterpretation or total lack of understanding. I was really trying to say that if a paper with no meaning made it through screening (no matter how light) then maybe the papers are too dense. In response to 1), I have always found that scientific papers provide more verbose explanations for even simple concepts. I have reread entire paragraphs three times only to discover that I already have a firm grasp of the concept being discussed and can explain it in a single sentence. But it probably just depends on the author and the verbosity could be explained by your 2): removing all uncertainty by explaining exactly what you mean.

gcv 18y ago

So it was post-modern cultural studies first with Alan Sokal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), then theoretical physics with the Bogdanov brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair), and now it's the turn of computer science. As good CS people, the meta-authors of this article used a random generator rather than faking the text themselves. I guess the discipline is growing up. :)