5 ms·
Academia is the most relevant, toxic example that I can think of. Be horrible to others on a short term contract (grad students, postdocs) and break them whilst
by azalemeth 4mo ago
Academia is the most relevant, toxic example that I can think of. Be horrible to others on a short term contract (grad students, postdocs) and break them whilst extracting maximum value -- get more papers, more grants written -- more money -- success.
Be nice, think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute -- be labelled an underperforming academic and managed into obscurity.
A great example of this is Peter Higgs, who famously said that he'd be unemployed pretty quickly in the academia of 2013. [0]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
- zozbot234 4mo ago[flagged]
- jadar 4mo agoThe stakes are never higher when the stakes are so low.
- locknitpicker 4mo ago> Whenever something gets subsidized by the government it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics. Your US-blend of anti-state brainwashing is showing. There is nothing inherently different in the for-profit status of an organization that prevents the occurrence of "exploitive petty politics". You see those from any organization from homeowners organization to full blown FANGs. I mean, have you ever paid attention to the crap being pushed by the likes of Tesla/SpaceX/Twitter?
- saidnooneever 4mo agothe only ingredient needed is humans
- ACCount37 4mo ago"Whenever something gets subsidized, it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics." I think it's just limited resources + the single most natural way for humans to compete for limited resources. This isn't actually an inevitable outcome - just the most likely one. The "self-funding" regime requires people who are both rich enough to afford to fund science and sharp and driven enough to advance science to exist. That's a high bar. And while there is some correlation between intelligence and wealth, the tails come apart hard. People driven to pursuit wealth above all may not be driven to pursue scientific discovery. We have plenty of billionaires, and preciously few of them actively pursue pushing the frontiers of science and technology. Even by funding the endeavors - let alone by being in the trenches themselves.
- maxbond 4mo agoAll of the low hanging fruit that could be discovered by self-funded gentlemen scientists has been picked. That doesn't scale to a supercollider or a large RCT. Funding at the whims of rich benefactors is very susceptible to petty politics. Politics is irreducible from human affairs, privatization doesn't eliminate politics. It relocates it to a different set of actors. That could be a better set, but when it is it's because it's a more local and hands on group of people, not because those people happen not to work for the government. Governments are awkward because they are deep bureaucracies, and deep bureaucracies divorce the decision makers from the impact of their decisions. Weaker feedback leads to worse decision making. Not because there is a magic property of government that makes it uniquely bad. Large corporations, universities, and other deep non-governmental bureaucracies have similar pathologies. That's something of an exaggeration, they are empowered to do violence and collect taxes and other things that are more problematic when abused, but still, privatization isn't a silver bullet.
- BoxOfRain 4mo ago>Politics is irreducible from human affairs, privatization doesn't eliminate politics. It relocates it to a different set of actors. We ideologically privatised the water sector into regional private monopolies in the UK, and anyone who's had experience with the water monopolies knows this is the truth.
- Avicebron 4mo agoWe in the US did the same with PG&E (gas and electric utility) out in California. It goes as well as expected, which is to say poorly.
- cameronbrown 4mo agoIn the UK, gas & electric is also privatised and in a poor state too :) Almost like private investment generates return for investors, not customers. Sometimes those align.
- FractalParadigm 4mo ago
- throw0101c 4mo ago> Whenever something gets subsidized by the government it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics. When younger I've had job in grocery stores and saw petty politics. There's nothing particular to being subsidized or not: politics is something humans do, and the pettiness is simply a reflection of the people involved.
- nyeah 4mo agoHave you worked in a corporation? How sane was that corporation? Did it seem to even value its own survival? (Not corporations in general. In general they seem great. Just curious about the ones you actually did time in.)
- MyHonestOpinon 4mo agoIt has crossed my mind that being a scientist is for people who are already financial independent. Same as being an artist. For the rest of us, we need focus on careers where we can make a living. Of course, we can still do science and art as hobbies, but it is rather risky pretending to make a living from it.
- nradov 4mo agoAnd academia will become even more toxic as opportunities shrink along with declining student enrollment. A lot of the third-tier colleges will close entirely.
- pc86 4mo agoThis seems good, honestly. A degree from a third-tier college doesn't do anyone any good except the administrators at that college.
- lacunary 4mo agoI feel great about my degree from my third tier college. I learned a lot I didn't expect to, got into a top tier grad school afterwards, and came away with no debt. Maybe me and the millions of other third tier college students are too dumb to know what's good for us, though.
- delusional 4mo agoI have been to a "third tier" college, but do you learn nothing there?
- musicale 4mo agoThe competition for faculty jobs at any college is typically fierce, which means you can find excellent faculty almost anywhere.
- nathan_compton 4mo ago> Be nice, think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute -- be labelled an underperforming academic and managed into obscurity. I'm in academy and I'm mostly quiet and seek to contribute honestly and I've been managed into obscurity but I'm also quite happy, pay the bills, and more or less enjoy the work. If you want glory you have to deal with bullshit. If you don't want glory, life provides many opportunities to live a modest but productive life.
- afavour 4mo agoIt's the money side that applies pressure there. It's great that you're able to make enough money but a lot of people who aspire to the quiet academic life are stuck in the lower tiers making a pittance.
- nathan_compton 4mo agoThere are pittances and then there are pittances. I make a bit more than a typical adjunct or whatever because I have very specialized skills, but its ok not to make a lot of money. I mean this is a place where the founder just wrote a blog post about being a billionaire. I'll never be a billionaire, thats for sure. But I genuinely believe that pursuing that goal is vanity, bad for people mentally and "spiritually" and bad for the world.
- jimbokun 4mo agoThis is because there are far more people wanting a quiet academic life than there are jobs providing a quiet academic life with a livable wage. And this is likely to become even more out of balance as college enrollment declines and there are smaller and smaller cohorts of freshmen as fertility continues to decline.
- rdbl27 4mo agoOver 99% of students who attempt your "mostly quiet" strategy are managed entirely out of academia long before tenure. You won the lottery, which is great for you, but it's not a strategy to promote to others as life advice.
- initramfs 4mo agoAnd the Xerox Alto had a budget for 10 years. Unthinkable in today's "What did you publish?? Publish or it didn't happen. No R01 for you! (2 year funding)" culture.
- jimbokun 4mo agoWhy is publishing papers an unreasonable expectation? Isn't that the primary mechanism for exchanging knowledge and driving discussion among academics? If not, what should replace it?
- initramfs 4mo agoI have published all my papers since 2023 on the web. None were peer reviewed, but on pre-print servers. Einstein's 1905 papers were published without peer review. I still get spam emails asking me to pay for papers I've already uploaded to public servers years ago. Here's one from this morning- already deleted by Google's spam filter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h8YVu5-DEx-1mOibiLpfJHrErvXApAGr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h8YVu5-DEx-1mOibiLpfJHrErvX... The actual article was intended as a joke: https://vixra.org/abs/2405.0051 https://vixra.org/abs/2405.0051 yet fraudulent publishers continue to treat it as a serious article. It would be nice if publishing a fake paper every now and then could serve like a sinkhole for scammers, but I would be too optimistic or naive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_sinkhole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_sinkhole
- alsetmusic 4mo ago> A writer who is able to break free from the belief that his being is at his core, a writer, can break writer's block. He may also discover how to be a better waiter during his night shift. Fantastic!
- initramfs 4mo agoThanks!
- 4mo ago
- willXare 4mo ago[flagged]
- snek_case 4mo agoTo get tenure in STEM, you need to publish 1 to 3 papers a year. If you only publish once per year, you'd be on the low end, so you always have to think about your next paper. You always have to try to work on something that would be publishable within the next 6 months to a year, but preferably within 6 months.
- red-iron-pine 4mo agopresumably in between thinking they're teaching classes, advising grad students, and publishing something -- because it's "publish or perish"
- vidarh 4mo agoThe challenge is to distinguish "think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute" from slacking. I am not arguing for bullshit metrics - I personally love working on things that may or may not pay off on a 10 year+ horizon and wish I could do more of that. But at the same time I've seen enough people coast to accept that most places that either isn't - or won't be seen as - tenable, at least not until/unless you've established a stellar track-record first.
- zemvpferreira 4mo agoIn the end we have to face that systems have failed to replace competent managers. If there isn't a chain of accountability starting at the top that can manage people without extensive justification in metrics and is properly incentivised to keep the organisation healthy, whatever we are left with will be gamed to the detriment of everyone.
- joquarky 4mo agoAnyone relying on metrics should know about Goodhart's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- hattmall 4mo agoWe shouldn't really seek to punish "slacking off" though. Because when the opposite of valuable contribution isn't slacking off it becomes unintentional sabotage. It's a lot less noticeable in jobs that don't have immediate consequences for poor performance, but it really stands out in jobs where it immediately matters like construction. In a lot of cases everyone is getting paid the same but talent stands out and some people work 5x faster, but at thing they are good at. If you aren't the guy that lays 10x tiles perfectly flat and straight per minute then just bring the materials, set out a couple tiles and wait around. You will literally see this play out on most construction projects as it looks like 10 people are standing around while 1 person works, but that's because everyone tends to recognize that it's better to do what you are best at or just don't do anything. And the foreman will tell you that too, when all the dirt has to be moved, the shovel guys are just as important as the guy that can separate two nickels with an excavator.
- TremendousJudge 4mo agoGreat little article. 12 years later, he is still right on every count. Who would have thought that Peter Higgs was a very clever, clear-thinking man
- impendia 4mo agoI'm an academic mathematician in a US research-oriented department. I'm happy to report that I've observed very little of what you describe.