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

So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 223 posts

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#141

Post by throwphoton »

dba7dba wrote: post #80
vivekd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this was the opinion I came here to post, certainly my own profession of law is like this, at least where I practice in Toronto Canada but I can't imagine other places being much different. I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. This is not the case in other fields li…

I know friend of friend who went to Harvard Law like 15 years ago and she told me there is SO MUCH butt kissing going on there. You'd think people who got that far would be confident enough to rely on their own skills/study to get ahead BUT even at that level, there is a lot of butt kissing to get ahead.

It's the correct asses though.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#142

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

giantDinosaur wrote: post #78
vivekd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this was the opinion I came here to post, certainly my own profession of law is like this, at least where I practice in Toronto Canada but I can't imagine other places being much different. I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. This is not the case in other fields li…

I don't think it's true that computers are great at exposing this. Software ranges from the concrete (does this button do anything) to the abstract (does this statistical program have an off by one error that's invisible to customers other than returning somewhat wrong results?). I think there's two competing definitions of 'work' in software - 'it works' as in 'allows for use' which can compete with the 'implements…

I don't buy your arguments - at all. At the end of the day people have strong expectation about what software should do. If it doesn't do that, they will quickly notice. If they don't notice (now or in the future) things like your "off by one" errors, then that requirement wasn't likely that important to begin with.

Now, I've seen plenty of "demo-ware" software that has been presented as something that was much more than it actually was, but again, stuff like that always falls over, riddled with bugs and crumbling under load, when it gets substantial use.

Some things you really can't fake, and software engineering is one of them.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#143

Post by andi999 »

throwlaplace wrote: post #128
Myrmornis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that's right. That was my initial impression also, but what's going on is that people are ridiculing the academic advisor who is working at the Council of Economic Advisors at the Whitehouse because his agency (a) released a tweet about Covid with childishly absurd mistakes in it and then (b) he vigorously defended it in a follow-up tweet. The problem they are ridiculing is mainly that an observed t…

>Secondarily, the fact that the polynomial is described as cubic, when it appears to be quadratic. wut. a quadratic only has one inflection point. that plotted curve clearly has 2.

Yes the curve has 2 inflection points, so if it were a polynomial is would have to be quartic. (Cubic polynomials have 1 inflection point at most). Buz I dont think this is a polynomial.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#144

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

Very difficult to understand what's going here, through the snark, personal abuse, name calling, and political bias. Everyone's trying to communicate through increasingly scathing Tweets and declaring each time that the previous Tweet is yet another new low point. Not a useful way for anyone to get a point across. Everyone should be embarrassed.

I totally disagree, and the "everyone should be embarrassed" is "fine people on both sides" nonsense.

The original graph showing the "cubic" curve is just - pathetic and sad. It's the equivalent of using a sharpie to change hurricane trajectories. And then Philipson defending this nonsense by calling someone else an "economist turned political hack"????

How the hell can so many of these people have no shame? I totally agree with a follow-up tweet - doesn't matter what Philipson did in his whole career, he will be remembered for completely abdicating any decent sense of professional ethics.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#145

Post by giantDinosaur »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #142
giantDinosaur wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's true that computers are great at exposing this. Software ranges from the concrete (does this button do anything) to the abstract (does this statistical program have an off by one error that's invisible to customers other than returning somewhat wrong results?). I think there's two competing definitions of 'work' in software - 'it works' as in 'allows for use' which can compete with the 'implements…

I don't buy your arguments - at all. At the end of the day people have strong expectation about what software should do. If it doesn't do that, they will quickly notice. If they don't notice (now or in the future) things like your "off by one" errors, then that requirement wasn't likely that important to begin with. Now, I've seen plenty of "demo-ware" software that has been presented as something that was much more…

Perhaps we have different conceptions of 'fraudulent'. I don't think it necessarily implies 'fake', but something more along the lines of using inferior building material. Perhaps it 'wasn't important all along' or perhaps it'll lead to catastrophic failure in 25 years, who knows? Software 'engineering' may be hard to fake, but that's because you're probably defining it as the proper way to develop software. A lot of software is certainly not built in a way familiar to an engineer.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#146

Post by CrazyStat »

dnautics wrote: post #125
CrazyStat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Taylor approximations can lose accuracy very quickly as you move away from the point they are centered around. There are available epidemiological models that are actually grounded in a scientific understanding of the problem. "Why not a cubic polynomial?" is a stupid question.

Yes, and until you do the correct analysis and estimate just how bad the estimate is going to be (off by 10%? Off by 50%? An order of magnitude?) You can't just dismiss it out of hand. So how far off will it be?

The cubic is going to go to either +infinity or -infinity, so it will eventually be of by infinity%. Or infinity orders of magnitude.

I feel like I can dismiss it now.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#147

Post by dnautics »

CrazyStat wrote: post #146
dnautics wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and until you do the correct analysis and estimate just how bad the estimate is going to be (off by 10%? Off by 50%? An order of magnitude?) You can't just dismiss it out of hand. So how far off will it be?

The cubic is going to go to either +infinity or -infinity, so it will eventually be of by infinity%. Or infinity orders of magnitude. I feel like I can dismiss it now.

There's such thing as a convergence interval and your flippant comment betrays your ignorance.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#148

Post by Gatsky »

tqi wrote: post #112
chrisseaton wrote: post #4

Very difficult to understand what's going here, through the snark, personal abuse, name calling, and political bias. Everyone's trying to communicate through increasingly scathing Tweets and declaring each time that the previous Tweet is yet another new low point. Not a useful way for anyone to get a point across. Everyone should be embarrassed.

Definitely agree, this whole affair has a real rashamon vibe to it. it feels like everyone involved (the article, philipson, and furman) are talking past each other. As far as I can tell, everyone agrees forecasting and curve fitting are different things, and that a cubic fit (red line, allegedly) would be a bad representation of what the future will hold. The disagreement seems to be: - furman believes (or claims to…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon

"Rashomon (羅生門, Rashōmon) is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed by Akira Kurosawa...

The film is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, self-serving, and contradictory versions of the same incident."

Now that is an esoteric reference!

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#149

Post by mettamage »

kbos87 wrote: post #40

So much of everything is about connections and reputation. Tech in particular holds up a guise that people are chosen and ascend because they are “good”, meaning, they are good at what they do. That’s part of it, but it’s an insufficient part, and you can do pretty well in a career being solidly average at what you do. The real currency in my experience is one thing - relationships. Do I think this person likes, resp…

I've noticed this when applying to FAANG. The online resume site doesn't cut it. You need to know people to get past the resume screening, even if you have a bachelor + master in CS, TA experience and some work experience. Someone did reach out via HN recently, which I am really grateful of [0]. I'm curious to see how that works out.

It's only FAANG, I've also seen this everywhere in The Netherlands. I've been looking for a job for 18 months -- I've been picky as I was very ambitious during my uni (yep, my mistake, ambition can be very detrimental to one's career as it can make someone quite picky, aka only big corporations). The irony is that a couple of months ago, I walked into my old university, met an old colleague that had a startup and wanted to hire me straight away after the most relaxed interview I've ever seen. They wanted me to read some code and explain what was happening, it was about some caching system.

So yea, it's all about people.

From my perspective, there is little meritocracy to be found in the tech world [1]. Maybe past the resume screening? Definitely not before it.

[0] Next to my own gratefulness, what I always find amazing to see is how some people in really dire situations get completely picked up by HN and sorted out, in some cases. I really feel for the homeless people in the tech industry, because it's a relatively rare issue, but it does exist! And those people tend to be able to find help here.

[1] Maybe there's a lot of it by comparison to other industries, but if a house has been burned to the ground and other houses are starting to catch fire, while in other cases entire city blocks are on fire, then I wouldn't call it a good situation in both cases.

Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

#150

Post by Myrmornis »

throwlaplace wrote: post #128
Myrmornis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that's right. That was my initial impression also, but what's going on is that people are ridiculing the academic advisor who is working at the Council of Economic Advisors at the Whitehouse because his agency (a) released a tweet about Covid with childishly absurd mistakes in it and then (b) he vigorously defended it in a follow-up tweet. The problem they are ridiculing is mainly that an observed t…

>Secondarily, the fact that the polynomial is described as cubic, when it appears to be quadratic. wut. a quadratic only has one inflection point. that plotted curve clearly has 2.

Yep you’re right, I said something daft. It looks pretty much like a Gaussian doesn’t it?
Post reply on HN