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MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

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Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#131

Post by fnovd »

ptero wrote: post #66
mcphage wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will notice that they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. That's how life is, though—a jumble of rules that don't all agree and aren't all consistent. So you get used to juggling them all, making them work together as well as you can, so you can get your job done and move on.

Yes, but to me this (the contradictory nature of a large set of rules in life) is a nuisance, not a feature to be welcomed. Sometimes it is unavoidable or very expensive to clean, but we should discourage adding complex rules contradicting our existing set if possible. My 2c.

Light behaves as both a wave and a particle. This goes well beyond human eccentricities. The universe does not care that our simple brains want to model it simply.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#134

Post by toomuchtodo »

webmaven wrote: post #129
toomuchtodo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it from another angle: would people work bullshit jobs if they didn't have to? Fix the incentives, pay people a minimum income where they don't have to work, and if you absolutely need labor you're going to have to pay someone who doesn't have to be there if they don't want to. If people's basic needs were met, I think you'd see a lot of labor shift to work that is valuable, but currently not compensated for.…

> You need to use a one way policy ratchet to ratchet down the hours per week worked as productivity has increased, otherwise workers will never see productivity gains and society will be stuck on the 40 hour labor work week forever. The feasibility of this (in the US) is strongly dependent on health insurance not being tied to having a full-time job (often defined as just under 40 hours a week). Plenty of employers…

I agree. Healthcare must no longer be tied to employment.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#136

Post by marksbrown »

fnovd wrote: post #131
ptero wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but to me this (the contradictory nature of a large set of rules in life) is a nuisance, not a feature to be welcomed. Sometimes it is unavoidable or very expensive to clean, but we should discourage adding complex rules contradicting our existing set if possible. My 2c.

Light behaves as both a wave and a particle. This goes well beyond human eccentricities. The universe does not care that our simple brains want to model it simply.

The wave and particle models are our own. They don't necessarily respect the true nature of reality. A bit like the old anecdote about blindfolded people feeling an elephant.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#137

Post by dbuder »

wegs wrote: post #27
obiefernandez wrote: post #5

Further indications that Aaron Swartz didn't die completely in vain...

Let's not get carried away here. MIT administrators still use Swartz as an example to threaten potential whistleblowers. Faced with that, people back down. For all the public repentance, this was intentional and malicious by at least parts of the Central Admin. MIT has good guys and bad guys. The good guys won here, rejecting Elsevier. The bad players on the Swartz front are still there, and still making decision sim…

Sounds like MIT needs a new statue right outside the main admin offices.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#138

Post by wolfd »

JackFr wrote: post #57
Nextgrid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules This is caused by managers' and middle-managers' performance metrics being tied to the wrong outcomes. The top layer of management's target is the desired outcome. The bottom layer's (the worker) target is also clear, it's to do whatever their manager says to do. In the middle is where it often breaks down; their objectives are short-sighted a…

> At best, it introduces a large inefficiency, waste of resources and unnecessary busywork ("bullshit jobs" becomes relevant here) If the COVID-19 lockdown has taught us anything, it's that probably a full third of our economy is bullshit jobs. We're at best self-perpetuating economic 'nice-to-haves', at worst parasitic rent seekers, probably somewhere in between, whose real role is simply to distribute GDP more wide…

The current losses in public education will be felt on the decades timescale. I think the perspective here on HN is probably shifted due to the tech demographic, where VC and ads have provided a buffer.

Systems have inertia, stuff continues working until it hits a wall. The unemployment systems written in COBOL kept churning until now, for example.

I think the cuts in jobs might give the impression that "we never needed them in the first place," and maybe that's true in some cases, but it's hard to distinguish right now from the effects that take years to surface.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#139

Post by fnovd »

marksbrown wrote: post #136
fnovd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light behaves as both a wave and a particle. This goes well beyond human eccentricities. The universe does not care that our simple brains want to model it simply.

The wave and particle models are our own. They don't necessarily respect the true nature of reality. A bit like the old anecdote about blindfolded people feeling an elephant.

The dual, contradictory model predicts reality better than a unified one can. A set of contradictory rules might create better outcomes than a set of straightforward rules.

Re: MIT Ends Elsevier Negotiations

#140

Post by buboard »

pfortuny wrote: post #43
underdeserver wrote: post #22

I honestly don't understand why JSTOR, Elsevier and others like them still need to exist. Top universities should just found a non-profit, per subject, with a single paid facilitator and a single paid editor (per journal) to find peer reviewers and edit the papers into a monthly journal. Modern tech has made it ridiculously easy to type, edit and publish such a thing if the inputs are LaTeX, Word, Markdown files or a…

Oh dear, the burden of organizing peer-review and of consolidating some sort of "quality" stamp (I said "some sort of") is much more expensive than "nothing". I am not pro-Elsevier, I am just stating a fact.

Wikipedia editing doesn't cost much. Open, public review is free anyway. We would need a prestige-setting institution, i m sure we can come up with a substitute.
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