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

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 204 posts

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#131

Post by oeqa »

oeqa wrote: post #129
silverlake wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a consultant. FYI: It's extremely rare for anyone from academia to make a commercially successful language. Their incentives are different. They want publishable novelty, and they don't care about building a useful suite of libraries and a vibrant community. Jones (Haskell), Syme (F#), and Odersky (Scala) are the only designers w/ academic backgrounds I can think of for marginally popular languages.

Academia might have been the wrong word. Do you know of any other language designer (except Larry Wall) who doesn't have a PhD? Btw, what's the source of that consultant bit?

And before you say "Simon Peyton Jones!", you should know that he got a PhD four days ago – http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~muffy/SPJ_oration.pdf

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#132

Post by InclinedPlane »

Jtsummers wrote: post #65
amerika_blog wrote: post #48

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

> Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Not picking on you, but this comes up a lot about public education as a tool for brainwashing. Often the implication is it's by those "liberal teachers". I must say, based on the voting record in the US, those teachers are incredibly ineffective brainwashers.

Speaking as someone who tends towards analytical, rational, and critical thinking with a background in independent studies from a very diverse background the "brainwashing" aspect of institutional education was blatantly obvious to me.

A good example is the approach towards history, which tends towards typical "revisionism" in attempts towards being "corrective" against narratives which were historically dominant, but in isolation such revisionism becomes indistinguishable from bias. In the '90s when I was in college, for example, we read a lot about things like the horrors of the nuclear bombings of Japan and of the internment of citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII. We didn't read much about the Rape of Nanking or the practice of "comfort women" though. This biased narrative had a predictable outcome. In class discussions it became obvious that a lot of students held the view that Japan was a victim during WWII and America was the "bad guy".

Similar phenomena exist in many other forms throughout the educational establishment. People who have gone through the educational system have a very strong tendency towards a very particular set of view points. Ironically many of them believe that this is because those viewpoints are objectively superior to the alternatives rather than that they've simply been indoctrinated in them over a period of years.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#133

Post by alan_cx »

I think this sort of problem starts at the top, with our time limited democracies. Democratic governments find it hard to implement long term thinking because its unlikely the current government will ever get credit for it. This results in policies which are short term enough to promote re-election. This bleeds down to the rest of society. Where it does happen, it tends to be compromised because one side has to make sure the other side carries the project on. This leads to committee style compromises.

So, in general, from what I can see, long term thinking in western democracies is rare, and where it exists, compromised.

Implication being that Chinese long term strength lies in its ability to plan in the very long term, which they do. I think the west needs to find a way in which we can also effectively and flexibly plan long term.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#134

Post by frabcus »

silverlake wrote: post #117
oeqa wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting link. I always assumed that Rich Hickey came from academia, given that he made a successful programming language. Are there any biographical articles talking about his background?

He was a consultant. FYI: It's extremely rare for anyone from academia to make a commercially successful language. Their incentives are different. They want publishable novelty, and they don't care about building a useful suite of libraries and a vibrant community. Jones (Haskell), Syme (F#), and Odersky (Scala) are the only designers w/ academic backgrounds I can think of for marginally popular languages.

Lua was made by three academics at a university in Brazil. I consider it more than marginally popular (particular in computer games).

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#135

Post by Create »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #67

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop…

http://norvig.com/performance-review.html

http://www.giagia.co.uk/2010/03/23/ada-lovelace-day-2010/

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#136

Post by blister »

judk wrote: post #124
jordanb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quote from a friend of mine: "Arrested development is smart jokes at the expense of stupid people; the Big Bang Theory is stupid jokes at the expense of smart people."

AD is a string of junior high puns and callbacks/inside-jokes. Smart jokes on a teenager scale, I suppose.

What show has smart jokes for adults?

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#137

Post by fargolime »

judk wrote: post #127
fargolime wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need for a center. Take the infinite universe as it is, and steadily decrease all the distances between the galaxies. There you have it: all galaxies moving towards each other with no cosmic center. It's definitely possible in principle.

You are positing infinite mass and energy?

That's generally accepted today.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#138

Post by [deleted] »

RamiK wrote: post #100
ChristianMarks wrote: post #67

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop…

"Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity." Academia has been a force for stagnation well before the 1900s. e.g. Einstein wasn't working in Academia when he released his 1905 General Theory of Relativity paper. He spent 1901-1908 working in the patent office while releasing papers outside of…

[deleted]

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#139

Post by dominotw »

dekhn wrote: post #119

I attended grad school at one of the most prestigious institutions that exists. After I finished my PhD, I mentioned to somebody I had attended there and it had taught me to do science well. THe person I was speaking to looked at me funny and said, "Oh no. You went there to learn how to write grants that get funded, so that you can manage a lab that carries out the next set of experiments, so you can write grants tha…

>i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research

May I ask what you do for living?

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#140

Post by xorbyte »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #67

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop…

von Neumann is 'skirt chasing' but Curie is 'slutty'?
Post reply on HN