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

Academia is a cult?

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–135 of 135 posts

Re: Academia is a cult?

#131

Post by kiriakasis »

liftbigweights wrote: post #92
scandox wrote: post #83

I don't know the source but I first read the following useful distinction here in HN: The difference between a cult and a religion: a cult wants it all, a religion just wants its cut.

All religions started out as a cult. Christianity was a cult until it won. The difference between a cult and religion is the same as the difference between a molehill and a hill. It's hard to say exactly when a molehill turns into a hill, but you'll know it when it does.

> All religions started out as a cult. Beware of survivor bias. Even assuming that all religion were once cult it still does not follow that all cults could become viable religions.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#132

Post by shawn »

dang wrote: post #78
daenz wrote: 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

I see no flamewar here. In fact, the only one who seems to have a problem with this discussion is you.

There are a few low-quality comments, true. But these are mostly high-quality comments, relative to internet discourse on other websites.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#133

Post by therealdrag0 »

guachesuedehack wrote: post #130
LanceH wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't blame the publishers for schools which are training people to be professors and little else at a rate 10x actually needed.

As far as i know, the publishers keep the bulk of the fees

You two are not talking about the same thing. You are talking about publishers, OP is talking about university students vs employment. Universities accept paying students knowing that there is only a job for 1/10 of those students.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#134

Post by tobylane »

repolfx wrote: post #112
village-idiot wrote: post #8

Something that David Graeber said that opened my eyes. Until the 1970s or so, Universities were actually a guild for academics geared towards the production of knowledge. They had self rules, titles, apprenticeship systems, and to some degree the backing and protection of the state. Plus like a true medieval guild, they were run by the masters of the guild itself. Sure, they did not call themselves guilds, but in for…

exactly why is left as an exercise for the reader. Because for a long time politicians in all western countries have been pushing the idea that attending university shouldn't be a rare or elite thing, that instead nearly everyone should go to university and get a degree. Scaling up changes things fundamentally. Numbers of students graduating with degrees has been showing a clear exponential growth curve over the last…

>the USA and Europe were dominated by left wing parties (arguably Europe still is).

Not by European standards. France has a centrist leader. UK, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain and others have right wing parties in power.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#135

Post by ixtli »

oculusthrift wrote: post #72
SeanLuke wrote: post #30

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

(((Globalism)))
Post reply on HN