Posted by chmaynard 2 days ago
... followed by lots more words that don't support this premise.
I scroll a bit — should I really read this? My brain: “No, let ChatGPT analyze it critically.” Conclusion: The same kind of simplistic linear causality is presented without substance — no sources, no data, no valid projections — uncritically carried through. Typical NPC-scripted “science,” representative of much of today’s “NPC academia.” It’s just a patchwork of general knowledge and some combinatorial creativity, pretending to be expertise, seriousness, and understanding — enumerated to suggest strange, subjective, unscientific, and mostly personal goals.
This exact kind of NPC-scripted “science” needs to be exposed and discredited as pseudo. If this is the so-called “defense” of science, then it deserves to be opposed. Simple as that.
PLEASE - for the love of god - spare me with this nonsense!
PS: teasing aside she did write The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths in 2013 on the topic.
- What exactly is the definition of critical thinking they are using?
- Which part of a {computer science, art history, etc} course teaches this?
- How is it assessed?
- If it's a teachable skill, why are there no qualifications in it or researchers studying it specifically?
- If it's something universities teach, why are there so many bad papers full of logical fallacies and obvious fraud?
I know some like to argue philosophy is such a course but very few people do philosophy degrees, so even if that were true it could hardly be generalized to all of university teaching.
https://ways.stanford.edu/about/ways-categories/formal-reaso...
They list a few examples like market design or programming. I thought, OK, formal reasoning maybe, but is that really the same as critical thinking? Then I clicked the "See Formal Reasoning Courses in Explore Courses" link:
https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=all%20courses&v...
143 courses are considered to teach formal reasoning. First on the list is "The Questions of Cloth: Weaving, Pattern Complexity and Structures of Fabric (ARTSINST 100B)" which teaches hand weaving on a loom. A bit further down there is "Introduction to Bioengineering" which teaches "capacities of natural life on Earth" and "how atoms can be organized to make molecules". It goes on like that.
I dunno, this doesn't sound like anyone has to study critical thinking specifically to pass the formal reasoning requirements. It sounds like almost anything connected to science or engineering in any way counts. And that's Stanford!
Here is a state school that has a foundation requirement in critical thinking with several courses:
https://www.csulb.edu/student-records/ge-approved-courses-ca...
If universities really cared about this aspect of their reputation they'd defend it by firing professors who were found to not be thinking critically e.g. by praising or putting their names on papers that are clearly fraudulent. It doesn't happen.
So we're left with your anecdotes. Lots of people have such anecdotes. People saying "I learned critical thinking at university" are a dime a dozen, but their beliefs aren't evidence they really did.
I don't think this is moving the goalposts. Obviously when I meant "no evidence" I meant no evidence that could persuade someone who didn't agree with the proposition. Just saying "yes they do" isn't evidence.
The issues with critical thinking really show up in the other areas of academia, the humanities and natural sciences. But it's hard to get people to do it because often there are strong incentives not to think critically, or to be outright misleading deliberately.
I guess a curriculum focused around finding subtle flaws in arguments would be a reasonable place to start. It could be a lot of work to compile teaching materials that are tough enough. You could take papers that you know contain logic errors and ask students to find them. For instance, a lot of COVID papers work like this:
1. A COVID case is defined as anyone who gets a positive PCR test.
2. A positive PCR test is defined as detecting a COVID case.
When you see it spelled out so simply the problem is obvious but the whole field of public health managed to not see it (there were a few papers that timidly pointed out the circular logic, but it never reached public awareness). Of course maybe it was deliberate. But you could assign students a few relevant papers and ask them to analyze them critically.
I don’t think we’re having the same experiences so I want to know more about yours.
Back when I started out, I was deep in debt, insecure about my skills and being around highly skilled people who had many more years of experience only deepened those insecurities. Luckily, people were kind and patient with me and gave me the apprenticeship I needed. They deeply cared about technical expertise and doing things well, probably like you if I am guessing right. I have my dream job today, and I am in a position to mentor new grads. I continue to pay it forward as the senior engineers did when I started out. Not all my colleagues do this, but I see so much potential around me and I try to grow it. It's one of the most satisfying when I get a note from a new grad/junior engineer on how they've grown after our work together.
Thank you for caring!
On a side note, I can't imagine the anxiety they must go through now between the economy being what it is and AI exacerbating the gaps in technical skills. Seems like a scarier time than when I graduated. It's harder to mentor in this environment, but it's a fun challenge to learn how to mentor in this environment.
I also wouldn't say Congress allocating this or that block grants toward broad areas is planning the economy either. Usually planned economies are bad because it's one guy or one committee doing the planning, and they're really just a dysfunctional and doesn't incorporate evidence to make decisions. You get better decisions when you spread the planning across groups of loosely affiliated experts in their field.
Academic funding is absolutely a planned economy. No way around that. It's literally committees of people allocating money requisitioned through tax and deciding what to spend it on, whilst having no skin in the game themselves.
In an unplanned economy, people make decisions about how to allocate their own resources, in the hope of earning a profit. There are not institutes setting policy frameworks that they have to follow, or committees arguing about how to give away money that they didn't earn to begin with.
> In an unplanned economy, people make decisions about how to allocate their own resources
Okay but we are not talking about allocating private dollars for profit, we're talking about allocating public dollars for science. People are still free to allocate their private dollars as they see fit. Notably, given the freedom to do so, most people do not allocate their private dollars for public science, making public science funding all the more necessary.
The grant committees didn't earn the money, but as practicing scientists of some renown they have earned the right to weigh in on how public dollars should be spent.
No. They have not. They haven't earned anything. If they did, they would have had a connection to a company and thru their technical expertise, chosen exactly what to develop next, with their own (or investor's) dollars at stake.
You can't claim the best at a subject and purport to demonstrate it by writing a book. Say, risk management. Real risk managers open hedge funds. Academics write about other's hedge funds.
One has battle scars. The other is soft. Soft people don't get to make decisions on how to allocate anything. No cowards for leaders, since time immemorial.
If you have $0 you can't accept any risk and can't make any decisions correctly. But if you have like $4 million you also have no reason to make any decisions correctly because risk no longer matters to you. So it relies on them having expensive tastes such that they can't just retire?
We are talking about fundamental research here. Most investors are not interested in funding fundamental science, evidenced by the fact they have all the power to currently fund such work, but they choose not to.
> You can't claim the best at a subject and purport to demonstrate it by writing a book
They don't, they do it by doing science and building a reputation in their field for doing good work. People who work at the NSF and NIH are vouched for by others in their field.
> Real risk managers open hedge funds. Academics write about other's hedge funds.
The interests of private equity and hedge fund managers are well represented. They have plenty of say on public policy and how resources are allocated. It's good to give other people with different perspectives a say as well. Again, the total amount of money allocated for public research is very tiny compared to the rest of the federal budget, private research dollars, total hedge fund wealth, etc.
The existence of diversity statements reflect institutional goals -- namely that the NIH funds science from a diverse set of researchers, to benefit a nation made up of a diverse population, who are funding all of this research.
The only partisans in the picture are the MAGA political actors who are going around saying that the NIH can't do these things for political reasons.
Ok, then why do they get affected by funding? The truth is, today there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding. The era for curiosity-driven science is was over a long time ago.
The direction of research or science is all driven by funding.
Less snarky: getting funding and making a living in academia, which is the most accessible way to be a scientist, has been cutthroat since long before this administration. If it were more accessible, or if staying alive weren't so damn expensive, I think we'd see more curiosity-driven science being performed.
Also, I don't believe one negates the other. As an engineer, my work satisfies my curiosity / desire to build, and I would do it for $50k, but I'm not gonna take a pay cut to prove how curious I am.
Anybody doing science at a University is definitely doing it at a significant discount to their salary (phds are paid ~$50K at the high end) at a private company.
But your original statement was far too broad:
> there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding.
There are absolutely members from every one of those subsets driven by curiousity.
(In my own life, I have reached out to labs in completely different fields than my own to help publish out of nothing more than pure curiosity.)
Unfortunately, we've created a system that wears them down to being driven largely by self-preservation.
Many people eager to better the world come of age every second. It's just that once they've amassed enough power to make a dent, most of them have been worn down.
What pays for your leisure time so you can be alive and not starve? Money. Nobody on the face of the earth can just be curious and do science and not starve.