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ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

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Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#241

Post by vkou »

DANmode wrote: post #217
bonoboTP wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently a kind of rule of thumb is that a PhD student can graduate after approximately 3 papers published in a good peer reviewed venue. If peer review were to go away, this whole academic system would get into a crisis. It's dysfunctional and has many problems but it's kinda load bearing for the system to chug along.

No hard rule, no crisis. Maybe we can go back to very opinionated “true” academia, where there are institutional gatekeepers, but they mostly get it right on who to award (and not), vs the current game of “whoever plays ball with funding sources the best = the best academic”, which is obviously bullshit.

You'll still need to convince the purseholders to pay you, and they'll want some objective metric to measure your output, and whatever metric they pick will be gamed.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#242

Post by spiralcoaster »

ACCount37 wrote: post #92

Frankly, the only beef I have with arXiv as is: its insistence on blocking AI access. I had to tell my AI to set up an MCP for "fetch while bypassing arXiv's rate limit" so that it doesn't burn 40k tokens looking for workarounds every time it wants to look at a paper and gets hit with a "sorry, meatbags only" wall. Very annoying, given how relevant arXiv papers are for ML specifically, and how many of papers there ar…

I hope they ramp up their blocking of AI access. The last thing we need is providers like this getting hammered by AI

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#243

Post by awesome_dude »

budman1 wrote: post #132
ChrisGreenHeur wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science reduced to people with a phd?

not a bad first order filter. can you think of a better one?

The whole point of the scientific method was that we could ignore the source of the information, and were instead expected to focus on the value of the information based on supporting evidence (data).

If we go back to "Only people that have been inducted into the community can publish science" we're effectively saying that only the high priests can accrue knowledge.

I say this knowing full well that we have a massive problem in science on sorting the wheat from the chaff, have had so for a VERY long time, and AI is flooding the zone (thank you political commentator I despise) with absolute dross.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#244

Post by spiralcoaster »

davnicwil wrote: post #19

Very unrelated to the article, but I think 'arXiv' as a brand is bad, and really detrimental to what the institution aims to accomplish. That is, it's not readily parseable, it really gives an insider term vibe - like this isn't for you if you don't already know what it means or how you should read or say it. It sort of reminds me of the overuse of latin and latinate terms generally in the old professions and, well,…

You're right. The name is just classic gatekeeping and elitist, clearly. I am 100% certain that's why they chose it. If they really cared about inclusion, they would have called it research.io

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#245

Post by DANmode »

vkou wrote: post #241
DANmode wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No hard rule, no crisis. Maybe we can go back to very opinionated “true” academia, where there are institutional gatekeepers, but they mostly get it right on who to award (and not), vs the current game of “whoever plays ball with funding sources the best = the best academic”, which is obviously bullshit.

You'll still need to convince the purseholders to pay you, and they'll want some objective metric to measure your output, and whatever metric they pick will be gamed.

The point of my comment was,

in much earlier institutions of knowledge and excellence,

the only transparent metric was whether or not they approved you.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#246

Post by taormina »

peyton wrote: post #201
taormina wrote: post #150

Given that Cornell charges what, $50k a year as an Ivy League, $300k feels like almost nothing.

Heh, you might want to look up what they’re charging young people now.

$71k?! Well, that’s 4, 4.5 students worth of tuition then.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#247

Post by vkou »

DANmode wrote: post #245
vkou wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll still need to convince the purseholders to pay you, and they'll want some objective metric to measure your output, and whatever metric they pick will be gamed.

The point of my comment was, in much earlier institutions of knowledge and excellence, the only transparent metric was whether or not they approved you.

That ossifies intellectual monocultures, though. (Or, heaven forbid, if someone has a financial conflict of interest in the private sphere...)

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#248

Post by supern0va »

justin66 wrote: post #206
supern0va wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is entirely some sort of widespread bad behavior. Many non-profit boards conduct research on salaries and essentially size their organization and pay something akin to a market rate for the given size and scope. However, even a small percentage of bad actors finding a way to inflate their salaries will, as a side effect, inflate salaries across the board because it influences the…

I suspect abuse is more prevalent at the low end, among nonprofits that don’t do much. I stand by the point of my original post: People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves. These are figures you can look up and quiz your friends to test the hypothesis, if they’re into that sort of thing. For a good time include some nonprofit hospitals.

Outside of manipulating the board, they do not pay themselves, though. The board decides their comp package.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#249

Post by godelski »

lokar wrote: post #236
godelski wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is really how it should be. Honestly the only thing I want arxiv to do is become more like open review. Allow comments by peers and some better linking to data and project pages. It works for physics because physicists are very rigorous. So papers don't change very much. It also works for ML because everyone is moving very fast that it's closer to doing open research. Sloppier, but as long as the readers are…

You could imagine separating the "publishing" part, which really should just be open with minimal anti-spam etc, from the "this was reviewed by a trusted group of people so you should give it more consideration" part. You could do the second without it being attached to the publishing.

I think your phrasing was good. A lot of people conflate a work being published is equivalent to peer reviewed and that "peer reviewed" means "correct".

I think when you think about publishing as what it actually is, researchers communicating to researchers, what I said makes much more sense. I do think formal review does help reduce slop but I think anyone who has published anything is also very aware of how noisy the system is and how good works get rejected or delayed because they aren't "novel" enough.

Honestly, my ideal system is journals with low bars. We forget this prestige bullshit and silliness of novelty (often it's novel to niche experts but not to others) and basically check if it looks like due diligence was done, there's not things obviously wrong, no obvious plagiarism, and then maybe a little back and forth to help communicate. But I think we've gotten too lost in this idea of needing to punish fast and that it has to be important. Important to who? Tons of stuff is only considered important later, we've got a long track record of not being so great at that. But we have a long track record of at least some people working on what we later find out is important.

Re: ArXiv declares independence from Cornell

#250

Post by justin66 »

supern0va wrote: post #248
justin66 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect abuse is more prevalent at the low end, among nonprofits that don’t do much. I stand by the point of my original post: People often underestimate how much the leaders of nonprofits pay themselves. These are figures you can look up and quiz your friends to test the hypothesis, if they’re into that sort of thing. For a good time include some nonprofit hospitals.

Outside of manipulating the board, they do not pay themselves, though. The board decides their comp package.

That's fair, but the boards of nonprofits are as corruptible (I'm reluctant to use that word since we're talking about fairly standard practices, not outright crime, but whatever) as those in the corporate world. But I wouldn't want to keep talking about this situation as if it's all theoretical. In contrast with a lot of the corporate world, with nonprofits you can just go and look at what their officers are paid (it's public record) and decide for yourself what you feel about the figures.
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