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I truly believe that there is an ideal point of efficiency for every human process. Make something too easy and too mechanical, and it loses its charm because i
by vouaobrasil 2y ago
I truly believe that there is an ideal point of efficiency for every human process. Make something too easy and too mechanical, and it loses its charm because it is lost in a sea of mediocrity. Publishing and producing work is like that these days. Yes, in absolute number, more work might be done, but is that worth the overall decline in the attraction of a discipline?
Personally, I believe the world would be a better place if scientific research weren't a race for citations.
- ykonstant 2y agoA few decades ago, pure mathematics was a genuine exception to the "race for citations". Hiring committees were more interested in the profundity of results than their number. For various understandable reasons, this last bastion fell and now PhD students and postdocs are expected to have many on top of ground-breaking results. It is important to emphasize to young researchers that the vision of getting tenure after a few ground-breaking results is a relic of the past (exceptions always exist). Sadly, I was enraptured by the romanticism of the old style research loop as a PhD student, and being not-very-savvy to say the least, I missed the bullet train by mistaking it for a horse carriage.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoYes, that is a very interesting point. You are very right though, that the trend has changed and there's a pressure now. I don't think your own experience is necessarily a bad thing. It's best to stick with your own ideals rather than bend to the will of others.
- spectral_vinny 2y agoThis ideal point of efficiency, is it computable ;)?
- vouaobrasil 2y agohaha. Maybe not, if our instinct-for-efficiency brains are the computers.