[FRIAM] Science Commits Suicide

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Jochen, 

 

When I joined the academic world, it was in the last days of the ill-paid, odd-ball, professor, entangled in ivy, cloaked in moth-eaten tweeds, harboring dreams of making The Great Discovery.  That’s the life I bought into.   The deal I accepted was that I would not be paid much money, and, in return, I could think about pretty much whatever I wanted to think about.  Slow summers in some shack in the Appalachians, pondering the great unknowns.  

 

First there was Sputnik, which made professors think of themselves as celebrities.  And then there was Academic Reaganism, that enforced a production metaphor on us.  I mourn the loss of the Jimmy Stewart professor. 

 

Nick  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 9:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Science Commits Suicide

 

In a sense globalism is a Ponzi scheme for exploitation of workers which has now started to reache its limits. Companies outsource the production to eastern European countries which outsource it to China which outsource it to the Uighurs and North Korea and so on and so forth. But the number of countries is finite, and for the Uighurs in the concentration camps it is hell.

 

The Jeffrey Epstein system was a kind of sex offender Ponzi scheme from all I have heard so far (which involved Mar-a-Lago too as recruiting pool).

 

Maybe science is sometimes a kind of Ponzi scheme for academics? A professor needs staff to make publications, and all of the junior academics in this staff need staff as well to become a professor. But you can only discover America or Quantum Mechanics once. 

 

What happens then as an unintended consequence is that people start to learn how to play the game. They produce scientific papers that look like papers and feel like papers but which do not contain real scientific insights. I believe we all know these papers well. People produce them because they have to it if they want to keep their job.

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com <mailto:jonzingale at gmail.com> > 

Date: 6/2/20 16:43 (GMT+01:00) 

To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>  

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Science Commits Suicide 

 

Jochen,

 

I tend to agree with your analysis of Eric, Bret, and the DISC.
The hat of Roger Penrose that I am most interested in, and
that I am thankful to Eric for accessing, is Penrose as Geometer.
It is a take and a history that doesn't get the same air time that
more pop-science oriented ideas get. Sometimes I feel that this is
how the DISC, or perhaps a an economic variant, operates in the
public sphere of youtube and social media. There are these very
interesting minds, capable of offering very rich historical insight,
doing the pop-intellectual circuit lecturing on something else
altogether. I am thankful for this interview because it shows that
the commons need not be tragic.

 

Jon

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