Academia is a cult? • Hacker News Board

Re: Academia is a cult?

#51

Post by chmln » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #43

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."

> 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." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not sme…

> you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics

Accurate observations don't get a pass, unless you're generally smearing the white race. Today, you cannot have a conversation about racial differences in crime rates, IQ, etc. You also cannot make any negative generalized statements towards non-white or non-cisgender groups. However, you can hysterically smear white men as much as you want, without significant repercussions, if any at all [1][2][3][4]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/the-soullessne...

[2] https://globalnews.ca/video/4622886/cnn-host-don-lemon-calls...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/can-americ...

[4] https://pjmedia.com/election/former-tv-ceo-says-u-s-should-b...

Re: Academia is a cult?

#52

Post by tnecniv » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:44 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #34

icelancer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you would like to be pedantic, only a small percentage of individuals use the skills taught to them in their major (or any traditional classroom setting really) in their daily job.

The value of a classical education is that the student learns critical thinking and problem solving in a diverse set of frameworks, which allows them to adapt to the requirements of the job.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#53

Post by woodruffw » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #49

woodruffw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not sme…

Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new "power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with racial prejudice. He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the person behaving badly is white and a man. You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is p…

> You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society.

I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you?

Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question. The racial characteristics are only a reminder that these things don't happen in a vacuum, a truism that most people don't have an issue with (including you, insofar as you recognize that historical injustices really do exist). Talking frankly about how bad behavior connects directly to privilege does not a racist attack make.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #43

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."

> 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." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not sme…

[deleted]

Re: Academia is a cult?

#55

Post by daenz » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

chmln wrote: post #51

woodruffw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not sme…

> you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics Accurate observations don't get a pass, unless you're generally smearing the white race. Today, you cannot have a conversation about racial differences in crime rates, IQ, etc. You also cannot make any negative generalized statements towards non-white or non-cisgender groups. However, you can hysterically smear white men as much as you want,…

I think the parent post acknowledges this. When I said "if X is racist with race Y, then it's also racist with race Z," they replied with "No." They sound like the explicitly support a double standard, depending on what identity is being smeared.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#56

Post by flashgordon » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:52 AM UTC

maceurt wrote: post #40

_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 studen…

I don't get this. Why aren't kids taught music just for the sake of it instead of for a career? You most likely have mastery by not doing it "full-time" but at least you will enjoy it and get to a point where yo would be able to play it socially and enjoyably!

Re: Academia is a cult?

#57

Post by electricslpnsld » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

BadassFractal wrote: post #27

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.

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.

> I bet that is much easier to pull off than switching to programming from say, sociology.

Sociology curricula are getting quite quantitative these days — the jump from sociology student to data scientist isn’t that far. I used to live with a bunch of sociologists back in grad school, and they lived and breathed R, Python, and SAS.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#58

Post by daenz » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #53

daenz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new "power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with racial prejudice. He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the person behaving badly is white and a man. You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is p…

> You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society. I'm confus…

>I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you?

I don't feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon me. I feel like it has become acceptable to judge me based on my non-individual characteristics, based on the language in the article, and your defense of that language. There is no contradiction here.

>Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question.

Yes, let's be clear: the negative language is "no surprise," which is being directly applied to those immutable physical characteristics of being white and a man (and one mutable characteristic of being an Ivy League alumnus). Please don't tell me what the author really meant, when their language is quite clear.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#59

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:59 AM UTC

maceurt wrote: post #40

_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 studen…

All academia is riddled with politics and infighting. It's an unavoidable consequence of lifetime employment security (tenure).

Be careful what you wish for!

Re: Academia is a cult?

#60

Post by StanislavPetrov » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 5:01 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #19

I don't agree with this. A cult requires two things: your money and your loyalty. Neither gets your that far in academia. Look at all the people trying to get into Harvard. Many applicants would willingly pay way more than the tuition if to be guaranteed a slot (if Harvard slots were put to auction, I imagine bids would be very high), but so so few are accepted despite being able to pay. Scientology will accept anyon…

You are mistaking, admission to Harvard with a "career in academia". Being admitted to a school has some correlation to your achievements (legacy students and affirmative action aside). Being one of the small percentage of graduate students that gets a paying job in the field has far more to do with your loyalty and your willingness to subjugate yourself to the will of your superiors - as the author of this piece (and anyone else who has come up through the ranks of post-grad education in the last 25 years) rightly points out.