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Please commit more blatant academic fraud

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Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#341

Post by earleybird »

zpeti wrote: post #216
wpietri wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful. Jokes…

Unpopular Opinion: people making these sexist jokes do actually think they are jokes. They aren't using them to push people down. Most people are nice people and don't realise they are being assholes and pushing people down. On the other hand it's completely fair that people feel pushed down by them. HOWEVER - this entire social justice movement is being used to outsource getting into conflict, and standing up for yo…

The phrase "outsource getting into conflict" caught my eye. To me, that is an interesting take/observation. I've been trying to sort out when a disagreement or argument becomes harassment and the closest I can come to is when there is a power imbalance between the parties. I'm inclined to agree that taking your grievance to the mob doesn't solve the real issue.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#342

Post by missedthecue »

b3morales wrote: post #297
missedthecue wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feelings of love are notoriously hard to "manage". This is the plot line of most Rom-Coms for instance.

Romantic comedies are fiction, though, intentionally exaggerated for entertainment. I don't deny there's a kernel of truth to that kind of story -- or else they wouldn't be interesting at all -- but I hope we're not taking them as a model of workplace behavior.

Right but my point is that love is something you fall into, not a conscious choice (as opposed to making inappropriate comments or non-consensually touching a colleague where you shouldnt. These are things professionals are reasonably expected to manage in the workplace)

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#343

Post by helloworld11 »

throwaway45209 wrote: post #46
berndi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible that professors with impeccable academic credentials get fired for jokes nearly instantly [1], yet this student's professor was allowed to carry on until he resigned two years later [2]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_contro... [2] https://eu.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021/...

At a lunch for female journalists and scientists, Hunt gave a speech... "It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, ser…

One ambiguously offensive comment during a speech by an aging professor isn't something I'd particularly detest. Outraged cancel culture social media mobs screaming for someone's head at the slightest supposed provocation, on the other hand are thoroughly detestable.

The balance of the problem here isn't this professor, who otherwise spent a large part of his own career helping many women (many of who defended him after his speech) with their own scientific careers. Instead the much more insidious problem is a hysterical social tendency of people with influence in their support for an increasingly dominant social norm then mobbing together under said social banners to destroy entire careers and lives at even minuscule transgressions of their ideas of correct thinking.

The point of these attacks often isn't even about genuine justice for marginalized people. Instead it's about establishing dominance while virtue signalling as aggressively and righteously as possible.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#344

Post by newswasboring »

missedthecue wrote: post #342
b3morales wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romantic comedies are fiction, though, intentionally exaggerated for entertainment. I don't deny there's a kernel of truth to that kind of story -- or else they wouldn't be interesting at all -- but I hope we're not taking them as a model of workplace behavior.

Right but my point is that love is something you fall into, not a conscious choice (as opposed to making inappropriate comments or non-consensually touching a colleague where you shouldnt. These are things professionals are reasonably expected to manage in the workplace)

Yeah but only women cry when they are criticized, right? Why is everyone glossing over the blatant sexism and discussing something else entirely?

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#345

Post by soco »

rscho wrote: post #154
zaphod12 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to be this guy, but it's "tenure"

Getting tenure means (ideally) that the system considers you have proven yourself as a competent researcher and therefore accepts to release a bit of pressure on publishing to allow you to pursue more exploratory objectives. It does not mean you're allowed to behave badly and (officially) does not protect oneself from the consequences of such behaviour. Remove tenure and you remove the last bastion of real research w…

Where do you draw the line for tenure? So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it. How about hitting them with a baseball bat? How much tenure we need for that? Should Einstein be allowed to kill physicists because he's a genius? If we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff, let's make it official and negotiate the legal borders.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#346

Post by fighterpilot »

cryptica wrote: post #331
fighterpilot wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see opportunities tending towards the most competent foremost, with psychopathy potentially helping but in many cases hurting. I've seen many people fired for being assholes, as an example of cases where these traits have hurt. All the psychopaths I've met have had pretty pathetic and lonely lives. People figure them out and they get sidelined. Politicians, quantum healers, fraudster psychics, snake oil salesmen, e…

Only the least intelligent psychopaths get caught. The really smart ones are masters of PR; they can make themselves look more altruistic than actual altruists. They only show their true face once they no longer have a use for you. They are excellent actors. If the best manipulator in your local community is talented, think of how talented the best manipulator in your country is... Then compare that to how talented t…

It's true that smart psychopaths can do way outsized damage in today's world. The flip side is also true though, the genuinely good and competent can also have an outsized positive impact.

I think this speaks more to the scale people can access through modern society (technology, capital, large orgs, and so on).

I hope you're wrong. If not, we're in trouble.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#347

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #186
thaumasiotes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that reflects negatively on the paper. There is no additional caution warranted when reading papers. That's just a question of "are you happy with the state of the world?". You can think about that question any time.

>> None of that reflects negatively on the paper. I think it does. Good papers are written by people who care about doing good research, whose primary motivation is to do good research. Such people will not accept to collude or commit academic fraud to get their papers published, because they are idealistic and are in research because they want to do useful work. To such people, committing fraud is anathema, for pers…

Actually, today an article was posted to HN (not by me) that points to Basquiat's parable of the broken window:

The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" ("That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

I think this is relevant to our discussion, in particular the concept of "opportunity costs":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

In microeconomic theory, opportunity cost is the loss of the benefit that could have been enjoyed if the best alternative choice was chosen instead.[1]

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#348

Post by rscho »

soco wrote: post #345
rscho wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting tenure means (ideally) that the system considers you have proven yourself as a competent researcher and therefore accepts to release a bit of pressure on publishing to allow you to pursue more exploratory objectives. It does not mean you're allowed to behave badly and (officially) does not protect oneself from the consequences of such behaviour. Remove tenure and you remove the last bastion of real research w…

Where do you draw the line for tenure? So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it. How about hitting them with a baseball bat? How much tenure we need for that? Should Einstein be allowed to kill physicists because he's a genius? If we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff, let's make it official and negotiate the legal borders.

> So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it

> we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff

Re-read my above comment. Never said that. I said removing tenure entirely is a very bad idea for the health of western science.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#349

Post by dalbasal »

Aperocky wrote: post #210
dalbasal wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In politics and other areas, the concept is known as "accelerationism." It tends to be associated with political extremism... "bring on the revolution/war/etc." As an angry or disillusioned response, I think it's a close relative of nihilism. Cover for being destructive. That's not to say "worse before better" isn't a thing... it's just not a thing we can do usually.

I have the opposite view. Is AI as a field not destined for destruction? There were good stuff, but it's been out for a while and now it's just mountains upon mountains of crap. What does society stand to lose?

I suppose everything is headed for destruction.

In any case, I wasn't arguing that accelerationism is incorrect... just that it tends to be associated with angry feelings, political, professional or otherwise. Also, while I can think of many things that got worse and then better... I can't think of any cases where it happened deliberately.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#350

Post by curtainsforus »

toss1 wrote: post #206
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what part of falling in love with people in the lab, people in the lab falling in love with you, and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired? Sorry, honest question. Being from a different culture, I honestly fail to get this kind of outrage. For me it's just a description of humans being human...

“Human nature, is what we are put on earth to overcome.” --Katherine Hepburn, in The African Queen A few of the good words to live by

Should you try to overcome your survival instinct?
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