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Academia is a cult?

washingtonpost.com

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Academia is a cult?

#71

A cult with levels that you literally have to pay for is also a pyramid scheme.

To be honest, it's the publishers that are to blame. I believe most scientist dont really care how it's published as long it is. The publishers run a pyramid scheme.

are you joking? the only reason publishers have any power is academia is full of a areoagance and people chasing “prestige” and getting into good journals

Re: Academia is a cult?

#72
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.

i actually do believe the washington post and the entire media establishment is a cult. it worhships on the altar of neoliberalism and globalism

Re: Academia is a cult?

#73
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Well, if you want to teach kids music that they actually enjoy and that will be more applicable to this generation, focus on pop music, rap music, hip hop, any popular music genre. Hip hop and R&B are the most popular genres of music in the US [1], classical music and jazz are the least popular genres of music [2]. Why are we still teaching classical and jazz over genres more popular, enjoyable, and accessible? It is not a good career path, it is not popular with kids or with the masses, and it is a lot more expensive than any other genre of music.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/07/17/hip-hop...

[2] https://news.jazzline.com/news/jazz-least-popular-music-genr...

Re: Academia is a cult?

#74

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.

i actually do believe the washington post and the entire media establishment is a cult. it worhships on the altar of neoliberalism and globalism

Thank you for putting it so clearly. I'm afraid there are too many lost souls who think the 4th Estate still exists. Except for a few truth tellers here and there on the internet, it no longer does.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (an…

your loyalty and your willingness to subjugate yourself to the will of your superiors no it does not because even among the loyal not all are guaranteed tenure, whereas cults induct anyone who pays and is loyal, with no cap.

How true is the no cap part? Genuinely curious, because I can't imagine some cults where if you're at the bottom of the ladder, the cult will do everything it takes to retain you if you give the cult little money and unrelenting loyalty because the loyalty itself will take care of retaining oneself to the cult. Hence, willingness to subjugate oneself to the will of the superiors with no end. Hopefully that makes sense.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Well, if you want to teach kids music that they actually enjoy and that will be more applicable to this generation, focus on pop music, rap music, hip hop, any popular music genre. Hip hop and R&B are the most popular genres of music in the US [1], classical music and jazz are the least popular genres of music [2]. Why are we still teaching classical and jazz over genres more popular, enjoyable, and accessible? It is…

I try to imagine a high school band playing rap music... this is not easy. I think you'd have to assign the rap itself to the percussion section, and there wouldn't be much left for the rest of the band to play.

Copyright makes that idea rough anyway. Classical music is far easier to get. Sousa marches and the national anthem are also easy to get.

I mostly don't see how any of this relates to a career path. We teach kids music because they enjoy the teamwork and accomplishment.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#77

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.

Other people mention software engineering in comments, but last time I heard, investment bankers would hire mathematicians, then physicists, and only then software people.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#78
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."

This comment breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to take threads on extraneous flamewar tangents. Especially a doozy like this one, which has burned and been picked over incessantly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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