Mimetic Traps
briantimar.github.io
Mimetic Traps
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Re: Mimetic Traps
#2Meanwhile, I am trying to move out from the industry into the academia (physics), as what I am curious about is not satisfied by the industry jobs. To each their own, I guess.
Re: Mimetic Traps
#3Re: Mimetic Traps
#4Meanwhile, I am trying to move out from the industry into the academia (physics), as what I am curious about is not satisfied by the industry jobs. To each their own, I guess.
To be fair, it sounds like you haven't experienced what it is like to be a full-time academic yet. Anecdotally I hear many more complaints from friends who are in academia than in industry. Low pay, bureaucracy, and rocky path to tenure come to mind...
Re: Mimetic Traps
#5Can’t say I’ve ever thought of Twitter as a way to avoid mimetic traps.
Re: Mimetic Traps
#6Can’t say I’ve ever thought of Twitter as a way to avoid mimetic traps.
Yeah, I liked the read but the two tips I somewhat disagree with is the twitter tip (because honestly, even if you use twitter right, there is a low signal to noise ratio) and the price signals for failure/success. Sometimes its better to to accept a title change to create the illusion of a meteoric rise even if the compensation doesn't immediately follow. Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Re: Mimetic Traps
#7This is a really mature introspective thought to articulate...
> Academics have uniformly rather low salaries, increasing our tendency to focus on social status as a measure of success. Salary gradations are useful for disrupting mimetic effects because they tie effort expended directly to units of universal economic value — convertible to kilos of rice, oil, and stuff in the physical world. A price is a lifeline to reality: all else being equal, the job with the lower wage is probably less valuable. Without this signal, the goals of a peer group are easily decoupled from the outside world, making it easy to drift into time-wasting pursuits.
What a concept, endeavors detached from price signals and the specific distortions he faced in his academic “market” if you will.
Re: Mimetic Traps
#8Meanwhile, I am trying to move out from the industry into the academia (physics), as what I am curious about is not satisfied by the industry jobs. To each their own, I guess.
To be fair, it sounds like you haven't experienced what it is like to be a full-time academic yet. Anecdotally I hear many more complaints from friends who are in academia than in industry. Low pay, bureaucracy, and rocky path to tenure come to mind...
It’s about the same everywhere.
Re: Mimetic Traps
#9This is a really mature introspective thought to articulate... > Academics have uniformly rather low salaries, increasing our tendency to focus on social status as a measure of success. Salary gradations are useful for disrupting mimetic effects because they tie effort expended directly to units of universal economic value — convertible to kilos of rice, oil, and stuff in the physical world. A price is a lifeline to…
Sure, but how many jobs have you had where everyone needed to make quarterly numbers, to the detriment of building something for something for future generations? Money shouldn't be the sole signal of success in society. We have enough (too much of) that already.
Re: Mimetic Traps
#10This is a really mature introspective thought to articulate... > Academics have uniformly rather low salaries, increasing our tendency to focus on social status as a measure of success. Salary gradations are useful for disrupting mimetic effects because they tie effort expended directly to units of universal economic value — convertible to kilos of rice, oil, and stuff in the physical world. A price is a lifeline to…
Sure, but how many jobs have you had where everyone needed to make quarterly numbers, to the detriment of building something for something for future generations? Money shouldn't be the sole signal of success in society. We have enough (too much of) that already.
I think there's a larger issue of flawed heuristics for progress. The kind of memetics this article is talking about is one such heuristic. Going for the money is another.
They are both potentially flawed in their core if the expectation is that they will solve our societal issues. They are both memes in that they are evolved to propagate themselves. And that's what they do best.