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Academics, we need to talk

matt-welsh.blogspot.com

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Re: Academics, we need to talk

#131

Post by mdwelsh »

hackbinary wrote: post #96
mdwelsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

I also care that academics are well-aligned with the problems we care about. That is not the point of academia, and indeed not the point of why academics are offered tenure with their institutions. Please consider Galileo and Copernicus and the Church of the 15th and 16th centuries. Please consider history. Google as a business may care about research being aligned with its business, or what 'society' or certain segm…

I'm sorry, but I think this perspective is fairly naive and ignores the reality of how applied science and engineering work in universities today. You're talking about 17th century scientists, but the reality is that in the middle of the 20th century there was a tremendous shift to applied sciences -- computer science being one of those fields -- with the goal of producing useful innovations.

The whole point of my blog post is this: Most academics are trying to do work that is relevant to industry, but many of them are going about it the wrong way. Nobody is saying you have to work on industry-relevant research, but if you're going to try, at least do it right.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#132

Post by eli_gottlieb »

PaulHoule wrote: post #94
hackbinary wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn't designed well enough to deliver to industry. This +1, er +1,000,000. I would firmly state that academia by definition is not supposed to 'deliver to industry', and not even to society. The whole point of academia is to give the very smartest people (whatever that means) the freedom to explore ideas, so…

There is an attitude of entitlement here. Students spend their money and time to learn something and frequently they get worked like a racehorse and nobody cares about if what they learn is transferable after the academic system no longer needs them. If you are not going to be relevant to society the only thing I can do is vote for somebody who is going to cut your research budget.

Cutting the research budget only makes academia more cutthroat and exploitative. We need to fundamentally get rid of the pyramidal academic job structure.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#133

Post by mdwelsh »

gradstudent wrote: post #115
mdwelsh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point. I'm trying to draw a distinction between "speculative" research (which might pan out long term) and "industry-focused" research (which tries to solve problems we have today). My concern is not with speculative research -- that's great -- but rather flawed industry-focused research: making incorrect assumptions, failing to deal with the general case, not considering real-world constraints.

> but rather flawed industry-focused research: making incorrect assumptions, failing to deal with the general case, not considering real-world constraints. I find this point rather condescending. What you term "incorrect assumptions" are often necessary simplifications that reveal the core of the problem at hand. The point is to try and understand what makes problems hard and to develop new ways of solving them; not…

No, I mean incorrect assumptions. It doesn't matter if we're talking research in industry or academia; doing research based on flawed (not simplifying) assumptions is bad science.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#134

Post by mdwelsh »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #63
mdwelsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

As someone that spent seven years in industry as an engineer and is now three years into a PhD, I lament the failure of industry to adopt old crypto research that has clear immediate application. I like your post because I think it is the duty of academics to communicate their results for maximum positive effect and to represent real world impact accurately, but I also have to ask what can industry do to expose itsel…

Just like it's not fair for me to conflate all of academia together in my post, it's difficult to lump all of industry together. Places like Google have a pretty good track record of leveraging the latest innovations from academia when it makes sense to do so. Not all companies work this way. You need people who are aware of the research, and willing to put the extra effort in to make it practical.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#135

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mdwelsh wrote: post #131
hackbinary wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also care that academics are well-aligned with the problems we care about. That is not the point of academia, and indeed not the point of why academics are offered tenure with their institutions. Please consider Galileo and Copernicus and the Church of the 15th and 16th centuries. Please consider history. Google as a business may care about research being aligned with its business, or what 'society' or certain segm…

I'm sorry, but I think this perspective is fairly naive and ignores the reality of how applied science and engineering work in universities today. You're talking about 17th century scientists, but the reality is that in the middle of the 20th century there was a tremendous shift to applied sciences -- computer science being one of those fields -- with the goal of producing useful innovations. The whole point of my bl…

>Most academics are trying to do work that is relevant to industry,

That is certainly not what most academics think.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#136

Post by barry-cotter »

dluan wrote: post #117
hackbinary wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, academic research is a punt in the dark. Much of it will not yield all that much, but some of it will. It is kind of similar to what YC and VC's do: give a little bit of funding to a small number of businesses, but hope a (very) small number will pay off big. Academia is a small investment to a number of ideas, with the hopes of big pay-offs in a very small number. The technology behind the Web was in…

That's not true that they come from the brightest people, I'd say that's very much a bias. Much like how YC often says that the best startup founders aren't necessarily the smartest people in a room. Occasionally, being the very brightest can even be counter-productive because in the end the people who are less smart and realize it will strive to work harder. And that's what research really is, really hard laborious…

> That's not true that they come from the brightest people, I'd say that's very much a bias.

[Citation needed]

There are such things as talent, insight and experience but intelligence makes everything easier, from learning new fields and tools to evaluating and formulating new ideas. Ceteris Paribus more intelligence is better.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#137

Post by nickpsecurity »

mcguire wrote: post #130
nickpsecurity wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and samth seem to be missing the point: academic research is often built using methods that will ensure no real-world success while aiming to achieve real-world success. Factoring in real-world constraints, best practices, and existing work-arounds will let academics achieve better results on average. Baseline of practicality goes up. And again, these are all academic projects that aim at being practical. The poi…

You have read the hair shirt paper, right?

The what?

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#138

Post by mcguire »

mdwelsh wrote: post #34
irremediable wrote: post #24

I agree with some of this, but I wonder... > It drives me insane to see papers that claim that some problem is "unsolved" when most of the industry players have already solved it, but they didn't happen to write an NSDI or SIGCOMM paper about it. I've seen many examples of industry "solutions" that aren't documented, aren't published, and aren't even validated. There's a place for papers like these. I'm not quite you…

That's a fair point. The issue is that many of these papers don't seem to acknowledge that industry has (unpublished) solutions, and are somewhat naive as a result.

It's unfortunate that, in science, if it isn't written down, it doesn't exist.

Having been bitten by the 'but we already know how to do that' comments, I find this particular aspect of industry to be very irritating. There are 3 possibilities:

The unpublished solution is brilliant.

The solution fits for very limited constraints applicable only to that situation.

The solution is a half-assed hack that only looks like it works.

In only one of those situations is the 'naive' comment valid.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#139

Post by gluggymug »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #127
gluggymug wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I was a bit harsh with the "almost no tests". They have some tests. Someone name fmarch asked on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831601 about verification against the ISA model. It possibly can be done via a torture tester apparently, https://github.com/ucb-bar/riscv-torture , but taking a quick look I don't think it handles loops, interrupts, floating point instructions etc.

There didn't seem to be a lot in there but I don't know Scala. I wish it was scripted in Lua or something with the Scala doing execution and analysis. Make it easier for others to follow. Doesn't seem nearly as thorough as what I've read in ASIC papers on verification. They did (co-simulation?), equivalence, gate-level testing, all kinds of stuff. Plus, you did it for a living so I take your word there. I do hope the…

Interesting paper. It sounds good until you look for the actual work. With a possibly limited amount of testing, you can't be sure of anything. In verification, you can never just trust the tools. With no code coverage numbers, how do I know how thorough the existing tests are? The tests themselves have no docs.

The torture test page said it still needed support for floating point instructions. That kinda says, they did no torture tests of floating point instructions. I wouldn't be happy with that. Same goes for loops. Etc.

You have to think about physical failures as well: the paper mentions various RAMs in the 45 nm processor. You should have BIST for those and Design For Test module/s. Otherwise you have no way to test for defects.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#140

Post by [deleted] »

mdwelsh wrote: post #12
forgottenpass wrote: post #9

Now, I don't think all academic research has to be relevant to industry. I'm getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn't designed well enough to deliver to industry. If authors of articles like this didn't care about the efficiency of academia to deliver them research, what's the big deal if there are a bunch of people somewhere running around in ci…

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

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