3 ms·

One of George Orwell's essays (I forget which) talks about how writing only suits people who feel compelled to do it, even to the point of starvation if it does

by n4r9 1y ago

One of George Orwell's essays (I forget which) talks about how writing only suits people who feel compelled to do it, even to the point of starvation if it doesn't reap an income. When I left academia in the mid 2010's I had a similar feeling about it. > The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals are judged by your competitors you cannot follow your curiosity, but must spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather than on solving the important scientific problems. I've always wondered how far this contributes to the apparent slowdown of fundamental breakthroughs in theoretical physics.

gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
>Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention --EAB, Why I Write (The trick could be for some of us amateurs to preferentially attend to the preternaturally funny babies)
- n4r9 1y ago
  That may be what I was thinking of. An AI-assisted search suggests I may have conflated that passage with this one from Keep the Aspidistra flying: > Over and over again he tried, quite vainly, to explain to them why he would not yield himself to the servitude of a ‘good’ job. ‘But what are you going to live on? What are you going to live on?’ was what they all wailed at him. He refused to think seriously about it. Of course, he still harboured the notion that he could make a living of sorts by ‘writing’ ... The next seven months were devastating. They scared him and almost broke his spirit. He learned what it means to live for weeks on end on bread and margarine, to try to ‘write’ when you are half starved And there's also this other passage from Why I Write: > The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.
godelski 1y ago
I defended my PhD this year and I think a lot of people in my department expected me to stay in academia. When they asked why I didn't want to go be a professor I've always responded "I want to do research." It seems everyone immediately understood usually responded a somber nod. I feel the contract of academia has been broken. I'll give up high pay and gladly teach students if I am given the freedom to explore and define my own research path. But that is not the job of a professor. They spend all their days writing grants, doing service, mentoring grad students in how to write works that get the most citations, and build their connections. Little time is usually left for students and rarely is there time for research on their own. Why would I want to do all that when I can make 3x as much in industry, work fewer hours, and have access to better tools to do my own research? While industry will also not give me much freedom there's no doubt that I will actually have time to do research if I find the energy. We fucked up. We let the bureaucrats take over. They care about metrics but not for what the metrics measure. Unfortunately this isn't unique to academia. But we lost sight of the whole purpose of academia. Academia was always supposed to be different. Not about profits. Research is high risk, but results in massive rewards. It research creates the foundation for trillion dollar industries. Sometimes it takes decades to see that reward, but the research is cheap.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]

by n4r9 1y ago

gsf_emergency_2 1y ago

>Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention --EAB, Why I Write (The trick could be for some of us amateurs to preferentially attend to the preternaturally funny babies)

n4r9 1y ago
That may be what I was thinking of. An AI-assisted search suggests I may have conflated that passage with this one from Keep the Aspidistra flying: > Over and over again he tried, quite vainly, to explain to them why he would not yield himself to the servitude of a ‘good’ job. ‘But what are you going to live on? What are you going to live on?’ was what they all wailed at him. He refused to think seriously about it. Of course, he still harboured the notion that he could make a living of sorts by ‘writing’ ... The next seven months were devastating. They scared him and almost broke his spirit. He learned what it means to live for weeks on end on bread and margarine, to try to ‘write’ when you are half starved And there's also this other passage from Why I Write: > The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.

godelski 1y ago

I defended my PhD this year and I think a lot of people in my department expected me to stay in academia. When they asked why I didn't want to go be a professor I've always responded "I want to do research." It seems everyone immediately understood usually responded a somber nod. I feel the contract of academia has been broken. I'll give up high pay and gladly teach students if I am given the freedom to explore and define my own research path. But that is not the job of a professor. They spend all their days writing grants, doing service, mentoring grad students in how to write works that get the most citations, and build their connections. Little time is usually left for students and rarely is there time for research on their own. Why would I want to do all that when I can make 3x as much in industry, work fewer hours, and have access to better tools to do my own research? While industry will also not give me much freedom there's no doubt that I will actually have time to do research if I find the energy. We fucked up. We let the bureaucrats take over. They care about metrics but not for what the metrics measure. Unfortunately this isn't unique to academia. But we lost sight of the whole purpose of academia. Academia was always supposed to be different. Not about profits. Research is high risk, but results in massive rewards. It research creates the foundation for trillion dollar industries. Sometimes it takes decades to see that reward, but the research is cheap.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]