domain:pedestrianobservations.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Hirsch's original suggestion was that a "successful scientist" after 20 years would be around 1 annualized, an "outstanding scientist" around 2, and a "truly unique" one around 3.
I'm going to venture a wild guess and say this was before Goodhart's Law had it's way with that measure.
Tanista
1d ago
I mean, not all of them. There are definitely SJWs who believe that SJ doesn't count as politics but indeed "just common fucking decency"*, although there are certainly others who'll yell at anyone who thinks it's possible to be apolitical.
I think the "personal/everything is political" is a better explanation of the mindset than "just common fucking decency". Especially because it's paired with a sort of almost gnostic/mystery cult mentality. The Onion parody of the general mindet of "if only you were educated as I was" is instructive: "just decency" doesn't require induction into a political discipline.
"It's just decency" can be taken as an attempt to build consensus that ran out of control, precisely because of the dynamics you note.
zoink
1d ago
From January 31, 2015 The Parable of the Talents
Every so often an overly kind commenter here praises my intelligence and says they feel intellectually inadequate compared to me, that they wish they could be at my level. But at my level, I spend my time feeling intellectually inadequate compared to Scott Aaronson. Scott Aaronson describes feeling “in awe” of Terence Tao and frequently struggling to understand him. Terence Tao – well, I don’t know if he’s religious, but maybe he feels intellectually inadequate compared to God. And God feels intellectually inadequate compared to John von Neumann.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
As I said, they failed, utterly. Their protests fell on deaf ears and the academy became more and more exclusive of any opposing views. It turns out that a key part of enforcing ones free speech rights is force.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Yeah, I think most people complaining about this now were either directly participating in the censorship, approving of it, or at most not all that bothered by it.
Sure, there were some pro-free speech groups, I think FIRE is the most prominent. Libertarians are non-entities though, and it would be an odd one if they complained about government grants being cut.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
This is the culture war thread, not the random hypothetical thread.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
This really does seem to be the basic "it's ok when I do it, crazy when the enemy does it" statement. Not uncommon, but as a principled person who has fought against censorship from all directions I disagree with it.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
I'm not a free speech absolutist, but I care about fairness and equality before the law. Unilateral disarmament of letting one side do whatever and the other side only gets to wag the finger and say tut-tut does not improve the status of the principle at hand.
Then don't go for unilateral disarmament, use your power to enact fair rules for government. Groups like FIRE, and in the past stuff like the Free Speech League, the First Amendment coalition and other groups protect our rights by fighting for them legally in all cases.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
Don't confuse not having perfect and permanent success with a failure, or you'll let your free speech rights keep slipping further and further away.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
It appears nobody has attempted to deport Tom Macdonald for that video.
Yes it's a hypothetical. Would it be ok if the future Dems declared him to not have first amendment rights as a legal residents in the US and deport him based off political speech they find insulting?
TheDemonRazgriz
1d ago
Every time I hear this kind of shit from my colleagues I want to shake them: you are burning political capital for short-term gain.
I think in most cases it’s much worse than that: they are burning political capital for no gain at all (well, except in their own personal/social lives, perhaps). Was anyone, any single solitary person, actually convinced by the argument that “the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus”? I highly doubt it. On the other hand, did people who read things like that lose their faith in the fields of science and medicine? Quite plainly yes, by the hundreds of thousands.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
It's been winning for a long time in the US! We have slip ups but don't confuse not attaining a permanent perfection with a complete failure. Each time a would be censor is prevented from censoring, a win is had. Sometimes it will fail, but when no one tries to fight for what is right then nothing good will come.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
They did these things not even for such a good reason as revenge, but instead out of pure will-to-power.
Is revenge a good reason to do things you find immoral? I think a lot of us more principled folk would disagree.
thejdizzler
1d ago
The gender question is interesting, especially since the trilogy does seem to be very concerned with sex (the various relationships between the first 100, Hiroko's weird sex cult, the loose sexual relationships between the children in the hidden colony). 2312, a later work with many similarities to the Mars Trilogy, also extensively deals with the trans question, although kind of in a background way (everyone is just implied to be trans because why not). This does make me think a lot less of KSR as a thinker: there's a lot more kowtowing to current thing going on than I would like to think.
07mk
1d ago
Do you expect demands of political loyalty to result in better science when they are coming from the nationalist right rather than the woke left? What would it even mean for academia to place America first?
Both would result (has resulted) in worse science than no political tests, but almost certainly some sort of jingoistic nationalist right America-first political test would result in better science than the woke left. The woke left has, as its basis, a rejection of concepts like "objectivity" and "logic," which are pretty fundamental to doing science. I expect that testing for nationalist right would filter out more intelligent people, but filtering for the woke left filters for more people who are willing and able to reject the fundamental basis of science. Filtering for scientists based on their commitment to the woke left is like a straight guy going to a lesbian bar to hit on women. You've pre-filtered specifically for people who have made visible commitments to behavior that is specifically antithetical to the role they're supposed to fill.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
This may be low-effort but... why do so many people glaze Terrance Tao...!?
Prior to this discussion, I don't think I had heard of him. But I don't work in a STEM field.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
Thank you for the clarification!
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
1d ago
You seem to think that there is a tit for tat MAD argument to be made for restraint. Uh, no, there isn't. A politician promising to punish the hicks for having the audacity to touch the academy is less a political platform and more the hysterical overreaction of a crazy person. There's a popular thread of argument that goes 'but imagine if it was happening to you'. In this case, I don't have to imagine: conservatives have been driven out of everything from literature to knitting to table-top RPG games. Your consequences have already happened. Deterrence doesn't work if the opposing side uses the imagined bad end as a frequently-executed goal that often succeeds.
So yes, we are justified. Oderint dum metuant.
johnfabian
1d ago
I about wrote some of my reflections on the trilogy here last year.
07mk
1d ago
If the main observable action when in power is to further the downward trend against academic freedom, why should anyone trust the claims being made? Actions speak louder than words after all.
If. Notably, that is not the main observable action, since academic freedom isn't being suppressed by defunding academic organizations that violate civil liberties law or by defunding academics that support explicitly anti-academic ideologies. Even if academic freedom were being suppressed, most people don't observe academic freedom as some sort of scalar value that increases when the sum of all academics practicing their academic freedom goes up or something. These are vectors where the specifics matter, and, as such, to say that this is the "main observable action" - even presuming that it were an observable action in the first place, which it isn't - is wrong.
If we want academic freedom we should make moves towards academic freedom, not be indistinguishable from the censors
I don't think most people have a difficult distinguishing between the behavior of Trump and his ilk in this context and the behavior of the censors that have been running roughshod throughout academia's veins. Notably, this does make moves towards academic freedom, by punishing organizations and people who have demonstrated and/or made commitments to suppressing academic freedom. If we want academic freedom, we should punish such people so as to provide an incentive not to do it further.
And empirically, one method that has absolutely not worked at all for increasing academic freedom - in fact, it has only resulted in things getting worse and worse over time until today, when academics not being free has become so common knowledge that academia has substantially discredited itself as a source for truth - is to not punish these people when you have power.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
The ACLU shit the bed ages ago and their top lawyer is in favor of burning books.
FIRE exists and has expanded their purview, yes. I am glad there is one organization that actually has principles.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
So how do you feel about a situation like this?
Face tattoos, white guy dreds, mediocre taste in music... are there any examples that aren't quite so literal regarding the old maxim about defending scoundrels?
Do you believe the left would be justified with removing Tom Macdonald for his "the devil is a democrat" speech because the right wing started with saying legal residents don't have protections?
"Legal resident" is an extremely broad category. It's not clear to me under what policy Macdonald resides in the US, but if there are Congressionally-approved restrictions on the speech of certain categories, then yes, this applies under "your rules, applied fairly."
I'm not a free speech absolutist, but I care about fairness and equality before the law. Unilateral disarmament of letting one side do whatever and the other side only gets to wag the finger and say tut-tut does not improve the status of the principle at hand.
thejdizzler
1d ago
The this I refer to is thus: science's inability to think in terms of political solutions and general narrow specialization that leaves them pretty useless at anything the real world. I think this used to be less true in the past, and is probably a result of pedagogical choices that have been made by the university system. Learning another language for example, which used to be the standard for science because not everything was published in English, forces you to realize that there isn't one way of doing things (because different languages make different choices).
I can't really argue with what you said in the first half of your response. However, I would suggest that these problems also are the result of the myopically applied science that I complain about. Global warming was the result of using combustion to make shit and get us places without thinking about the production of greenhouse gases, obesity was the result of food science creating hyperpalitability without thinking about wether it was a good idea, ditto for birth control.
My quest to the 200 54# Kettlebell Snatch goal is taking some detours. I seem to have plateaued at around 160 where my exhaustion hits a point where the fatigue overwhelmed my form and injuries happen. Nothing major, torn calluses, back gets a little tweaked, etc. I think I'm going to start trying to do 2-5 sets of 100, since knocking out 100 in a row has gotten fairly easy. Did two sets today as a try out and it seems promising. Might add a 3rd set of 100 next week. Fingers crossed. I'm hoping after stacking enough of those sets, once day I can just drop the rest period and go for 200 straight.
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