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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26436 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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I do lament that the vast majority of what gets published is totally worthless, but I'm wishy-washy on whether the fundamental driver is that less capable people are getting into these positions or if it's almost purely a result of incentive structure. In the end, I think it's probably both, but let me sketch it out. This is basically an attempt to steelman the possibility that, say, the 85th percentile of folks who could have even plausibly thought about pursuing a career in academia actually has gotten to be a lot better than they were in the past. Then, since total faculty numbers are stagnant, it wasn't as easy to just look at traditional measures and pick out the highest quality folks (akin to how you can't necessarily just look at OTB chess rating nowadays), but since you couldn't just wait and let the rating system self-correct over time, because, uh, you don't have a self-correcting rating system like ELO for academics, they had to go hard in on shit like just making some number or other go up.

I had a longer post written, but I just don't have the heart to argue about wokeness anymore. So here's an abridged version: I've been through two biotech companies at this point, so I've had exposure to maybe 60-70 young scientists who should be at the peak of their idealist phases. PhD and postdoc at some premier institutions in the USA. I've asked around, and a grand total of zero people at either company have read any serious amount of science fiction. A couple fellow PhD students did, the CSO at the second company mentioned having read Dune and a Game of Thrones in high school, I doubt any of the faculty I interacted with did. Most people don't read at all. All of this makes me sad, and lonely.

There are plenty of highly profitable activities given the existing incentive structure that do virtually nothing to move the needle scientifically or in terms of actual benefit to society - go make another monoclonal antibody to some target people haven't tried yet, or shuffle around different combinations of checkpoint blockade, or make another oncology small molecule that extends mean progression-free survival by three months. You'll probably make a boatload of money if you get a lucky pull of the slot machine lever.

So, yes. Definitely agree that we've lost the ability to dream big and be ambitious in the right ways. Don't know how to fix it when I need 7-8 figure investments to do even basic projects.

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