Play the Game...
...which is busily generating bullshit and staying quiet about the problems you see
“…most of the academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit” - Sabine Hossenfelder
“..unlike academic research [producing content for YouTube] is an honest trade” - Sabine Hossenfelder
“I began to understand what you need to do to get a grant or get hired. You have to work on topics that are mainstream enough but not too mainstream. You want them to be a little bit edgy… but not too edgy, noo. It needs to be something that fits into the existing machinery and, since most grants are 3 years or 5 years at most, it also needs to be something that can be wrapped up quickly….
The more I saw of the foundations of physics, the more I became convinced that most of the research there wasn’t based on sound scientific principles.”
There are a lot of examples of the perverse incentives of large organizations (cowardice, status games, profit-seeking, careerism, social aggression) and I've been hearing for some time (from Eric Weinstein, for one) that physics is in trouble: boxed into a self-referential corner by its lame grant practices and the academic inertia that seems to have so many disciplines stuck.
I listen to this and I think of the millions of people out there, working to get research grants or tenure or city contracts or government bids-not on the basis of the actual quality of their output but because they are chasing the bizarre metrics of their area of focus. They have learned how to look good according to some important number, and they have learned how to constrain their behavior to conform to the outlines demanded by the organization... but they're not actually generating anything (at least no value). They're playing some kafkaesque game in order to satisfy the requirements of a bureaucracy and keep the money trough full.
The people who are willing to criticize or expose (or even question) these structures are NEVER popular it seems. You think a society which puts so much emphasis on flexible ethics and tolerance and individual initiative (and which celebrates progress and-even more-progressivism) would welcome these kinds of discussions but those values are reserved for demonstrative and symbolic issues and beliefs. Anyone who REALLY wants to change things or really examine the machinery of our civilization is going to have a rough time of it.
The video below is a personal testimonial by Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist who makes educational videos on YouTube (which I’ve loved for years… I have a strange fascination with cosmology & theoretical physics). I won’t describe it since it’s less then 14 minutes and I want you to watch it.
Sabine's video:
Watching this makes me think of the several large and international academic disciplines which are, frankly, complete bullshit (sociology, gender studies, race & ethnic studies, FAT STUDIES).
It also makes me reflect upon the massive institutional failures during COVID.
How did a ludicrous Gender ID law pass in Scotland? Why can’t California solve its ‘homeless crisis’? Who in Germany EVER thought it might be wise to decommission their nuclear power plants? How has corruption and fake ‘equity’ concerns and the inherent failures of democratic governance made it so that most of South Africa spends weeks each year without power (and it’s steadily getting worse)? How did educators in California justify limiting Algebra education for 8th graders and Calculus instruction for high schoolers?
I could ask these questions all day but they all have answers pulled from a similar short list of primary causes:
Institutional inertia
Bad incentives
Leadership cowardice
Groupthink and irrational (emotional) decision-making
Our institutions seem to be losing credibility by the day.. which should worry you, because we need them. I hope that they mostly ‘wither away’ (like private property was supposed to under the dictatorship of the proletariat) and are replaced with smaller, more rational, less acquisitive organizations, closer to the people who staff them and the purposes they exist to serve. Alternatives are already emerging but the old guard will not go down without a fight. We’re going to see a lot more debates about misinformation and witness many more pleas for government funding of journalism or non-profits or academic institutions… and we will see many more courageous and independent thinkers punished by the people who have made expertise and tolerance and progress their north stars. Strange times indeed.