Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Academia is a cult?

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 135 posts

Re: Academia is a cult?

#31

Post by pkaye »

closeparen wrote: post #25
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #14

Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them, you're probably delusional in some form. I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair porti…

Science and math are as unemployable as the humanities. When people use "STEM" in this way they really only mean engineering.

Engineering is more immediately applicable. For science and math you need to go much further in your education if you want to pursue a career in the their fields.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#32

Post by icelancer »

closeparen wrote: post #25
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #14

Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them, you're probably delusional in some form. I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair porti…

Science and math are as unemployable as the humanities. When people use "STEM" in this way they really only mean engineering.

If you mean within academia, I agree. If you mean in the private sector, absolutely not. Mathematics and physics majors have a ton of opportunity in CS-related fields. I hired a lot of them when I ran a data science team. Their understanding of software development from first principles usually seriously outranks CS graduates at the cost of not knowing how to program in advanced languages.

I find it a lot easier to develop a Math/Physics graduate's coding skills than a CS graduate's underlying understanding of the physical world and formulaic thinking.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#33

Post by BadassFractal »

closeparen wrote: post #28
BadassFractal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen math / physics majors make an easy transition into software development. I bet that is much easier to pull off than switching to programming from say, sociology.

Okay, but the employable activity there is still software development and not science or mathematics.

That is true.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#34

Post by closeparen »

icelancer wrote: post #32
closeparen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science and math are as unemployable as the humanities. When people use "STEM" in this way they really only mean engineering.

If you mean within academia, I agree. If you mean in the private sector, absolutely not. Mathematics and physics majors have a ton of opportunity in CS-related fields. I hired a lot of them when I ran a data science team. Their understanding of software development from first principles usually seriously outranks CS graduates at the cost of not knowing how to program in advanced languages. I find it a lot easier to d…

Okay, people trained in science can more easily transition to software engineering. They are still not getting paid to do science.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#35

Post by milesvp »

sn41 wrote: post #11

I would really like to respectfully listen to the points of view of the author, but I do not like myself manipulated by this excessive over the top clickbait headings. I hope that we can all return to a more civil discourse without resorting always to the most extreme polarised positions that go by the phrases "influence" and "persuasion" these days.

FYI the story writer almost never comes up with the headline in a traditional newspaper story pipeline (which most likely still includes wapo). Usually it’s one of the editors that has final say on the headline (and control of A/B testing online). Often the reporter will even have to push back when the editor tries to use too strong a word that may be technically incorrect based on the reporter’s more in depth knowledge of the topic.

Now I’m not trying to say that the story writer isn’t also writing sensational stories, with their own agendas, only that you would do well not to judge a story by its headline. Otherwise, I agree sensational headlines turn me off as well.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#36

Post by ixtli »

SeanLuke wrote: post #30
ixtli wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re gonna get downvoted because this is HN but really this article is clickbait designed to exploit a growing epistemological crisis in the west. The author is just describing a group with a history and traditions. While cults are also groups with tradition and sometimes history it’s well disingenuous to say THAT is their defining feature. EDIT: I’d just like to be clear that Academia has definitely got serious is…

> You’re gonna get downvoted because this is HN I think he's getting downvoted because the Washington Post is, almost unquestionably, not a cult. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and he provided none.

While what you’re saying is clearly factually true, what he’s done was apply a very common style of sarcastic dismissal. I think it’s rather obvious he didn’t mean to imply WaPo was actually an organization similar to Om Shinrikyo. In all honesty I think if he’d have written some long form comment we’d all get the same point but have wasted far more time.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#37

Post by BadassFractal »

daenz wrote: post #24

>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a working-class background. I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

Looks like someone here has a case of white fragility. Please recall that reverse racism does not exist: the oppressed cannot be racist towards the oppressor.

I jest. That's another one of those concepts that came out of the humanities academia recently, which is relevant to the article: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10774

Re: Academia is a cult?

#39

Post by SeanLuke »

ixtli wrote: post #36
SeanLuke wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re gonna get downvoted because this is HN I think he's getting downvoted because the Washington Post is, almost unquestionably, not a cult. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and he provided none.

While what you’re saying is clearly factually true, what he’s done was apply a very common style of sarcastic dismissal. I think it’s rather obvious he didn’t mean to imply WaPo was actually an organization similar to Om Shinrikyo. In all honesty I think if he’d have written some long form comment we’d all get the same point but have wasted far more time.

> what he’s done was apply a very common style of sarcastic dismissal

Perhaps common on Youtube comments.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#40

Post by maceurt »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #14

Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them, you're probably delusional in some form. I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair porti…

Music academia is terrible and riddled with politics and infighting from my experience also. The number of actual livable jobs for classical musicians are very low. It makes me pissed off how public schools will still spend hundred of thousands of dollars and push kids into classical music when it is such a dead end, and competition is so high. It is a ponzi scheme where the students pay the teachers, then the students become teachers and the cycle starts over again. Barely anybody who does not play an instrument ever listens to classical music it is a joke. The least selling genre of music in the United States behind jazz.
Post reply on HN