It's often been remarked on that Gen Z is the first generation to come of age on the internet, but I think a lot of what explains this backlash from the "Republic of Letters" as you call it is that Gen X is the first generation to get old on the internet. Previous "intellectuals" that saw themselves as members of this republic got old surrounded by yes men and ass-kissers. Now via Twitter/other social media people can just call them dilettantes with outdated ideas to their faces and they just can't psychologically cope.
Completely with you on this. It drives me nuts that someone like Pamela Paul can champion an essay like this that she plainly hasn't read, without having any idea what the basic standard of quality and rigor is in scholarly publishing. The article is profoundly shabby--the authors declare their loyalty to a vision of science that they don't even remotely enact in the essay itself. Here's my dissection of the essay. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-sleight-of-hand
Excellent. These advocates of "meritocracy" have no clue about how much social pressures & subjective choices have to do with their own success or the entire culture of science & academia as a whole.
"There are probably more meritorious projects out there than my middle-aged-white-dude-reads-a-gigantic-stack-of-magazines-and-thinks-lots-of-thoughts proposal." LOL.
I hadn't heard about the Haidt thing. That being said, I am a bit skeptical about requiring DEI statements (even if the statement is "no DEI impact") for academic work. What's the material impact there?
The thing is that few scholars (besidesPinker etc..) from the left is taking on the job to clean up the mess off the left. They all go with the present iinstitutionalist ideology or bow their heads and think it will pass. Of cours we have to oppose the Trumpists and the re-election of him. But we have to do to clean the ideological woke stuff because it will radicalize the right and create more polarization ending up in civil war.
Shame on you ! this is a terrible post misrepresenting our article. Look on the authors they are not cranks, and you have among them leading scientists. Many of us are concerned about the future of the left ! Look on Susan Neiman’s recent book « the left is not woke »!
We are aware that Trumpists try to get hold about the whole issue of wokism. I am despising them as you would. But first we need to clean our own house ! The issue of right wing identerianism will also be addressed in a future article.
"Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. I was first made aware of this during an accounting class. We were discussing the subject of accounting for stock options at technology companies. There was a live debate on this subject at the time. One side (mainly technology companies and their lobbyists) held that stock option grants should not be treated as an expense on public policy grounds; treating them as an expense would discourage companies from granting them, and stock options were a vital compensation tool that incentivised performance, rewarded dynamism and innovation and created vast amounts of value for America and the world. The other side (mainly people like Warren Buffet) held that stock options looked awfully like a massive blag carried out my management at the expense of shareholders, and that the proper place to record such blags was the P&L account.
Our lecturer, in summing up the debate, made the not unreasonable point that if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were. Since the tech companies' point of view appeared to be that if they were ever forced to account honestly for their option grants, they would quickly stop making them, this offered decent prima facie evidence that they weren't, really, all that fantastic."
"There is much made by people who long for the days of their fourth form debating society about the fallacy of "argumentum ad hominem". There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of "giving known liars the benefit of the doubt", but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world. "
It's often been remarked on that Gen Z is the first generation to come of age on the internet, but I think a lot of what explains this backlash from the "Republic of Letters" as you call it is that Gen X is the first generation to get old on the internet. Previous "intellectuals" that saw themselves as members of this republic got old surrounded by yes men and ass-kissers. Now via Twitter/other social media people can just call them dilettantes with outdated ideas to their faces and they just can't psychologically cope.
Completely with you on this. It drives me nuts that someone like Pamela Paul can champion an essay like this that she plainly hasn't read, without having any idea what the basic standard of quality and rigor is in scholarly publishing. The article is profoundly shabby--the authors declare their loyalty to a vision of science that they don't even remotely enact in the essay itself. Here's my dissection of the essay. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-sleight-of-hand
Excellent. These advocates of "meritocracy" have no clue about how much social pressures & subjective choices have to do with their own success or the entire culture of science & academia as a whole.
Terrific column...
"There are probably more meritorious projects out there than my middle-aged-white-dude-reads-a-gigantic-stack-of-magazines-and-thinks-lots-of-thoughts proposal." LOL.
Writers like Pamela Paul would never survive having her material peer-reviewed, like academics do.
I hadn't heard about the Haidt thing. That being said, I am a bit skeptical about requiring DEI statements (even if the statement is "no DEI impact") for academic work. What's the material impact there?
The thing is that few scholars (besidesPinker etc..) from the left is taking on the job to clean up the mess off the left. They all go with the present iinstitutionalist ideology or bow their heads and think it will pass. Of cours we have to oppose the Trumpists and the re-election of him. But we have to do to clean the ideological woke stuff because it will radicalize the right and create more polarization ending up in civil war.
Shame on you ! this is a terrible post misrepresenting our article. Look on the authors they are not cranks, and you have among them leading scientists. Many of us are concerned about the future of the left ! Look on Susan Neiman’s recent book « the left is not woke »!
We are aware that Trumpists try to get hold about the whole issue of wokism. I am despising them as you would. But first we need to clean our own house ! The issue of right wing identerianism will also be addressed in a future article.
Someone is feeling guilty for being white. Curse God for NOT creating you as a black woman.
"Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. I was first made aware of this during an accounting class. We were discussing the subject of accounting for stock options at technology companies. There was a live debate on this subject at the time. One side (mainly technology companies and their lobbyists) held that stock option grants should not be treated as an expense on public policy grounds; treating them as an expense would discourage companies from granting them, and stock options were a vital compensation tool that incentivised performance, rewarded dynamism and innovation and created vast amounts of value for America and the world. The other side (mainly people like Warren Buffet) held that stock options looked awfully like a massive blag carried out my management at the expense of shareholders, and that the proper place to record such blags was the P&L account.
Our lecturer, in summing up the debate, made the not unreasonable point that if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were. Since the tech companies' point of view appeared to be that if they were ever forced to account honestly for their option grants, they would quickly stop making them, this offered decent prima facie evidence that they weren't, really, all that fantastic."
"There is much made by people who long for the days of their fourth form debating society about the fallacy of "argumentum ad hominem". There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of "giving known liars the benefit of the doubt", but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world. "
https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html?m=1