[FRIAM] hyperbole (was Re: How democracies die)

[glen]

Right. And Dave agrees that the overwhelming majority of her content is good ... great, even. But take a look at the measures: views, likes, etc. And take a look at the frequency with which the clickbait (thumbnails and titles) changes over time. Steve's slow distancing matches my own, not really because of "the algorithm", but I actively started ignoring her. She's in the pipeline. If she doesn't change her trajectory, I predict she'll be an anti-woke warrior tribe member right up there with JD Vance ... maybe leaning more towards Scott Aaronson or Scott Alexander ... let's hope, anyway.

On 11/11/24 08:28, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The video about how she failed at being an academic I think is informative.   It isn’t a technical video – she has those too –one is not universal, but also not a implausible story about the experience about how it is to raise money to support research.   A grad student might watch that and say to themselves, “Do I really want that life? Do I want to be this bitter?”   “Maybe I should monetize videos of my cat on YouTube?”
> 
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> *Date: *Monday, November 11, 2024 at 8:16 AM
> *To: *friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] hyperbole (was Re: How democracies die)
> 
> 
> glen wrote:
>> ...
> 
>> The complaint against Sabine and many in the wacko pipeline is that 
>> their wacko content gets more views. And more views means more money. 
>> Her boring videos don't get as much traffic as her wacko videos. So 
>> she's incentivized toward the wacko. She's not defying any rules. 
>> She's caught up in the forcing structure, obeying the rule even if she 
>> doesn't want to. And that means she *is* doing her job, profiting off 
>> clickbait and misinformation. It's just not the job of an academic.
> 
> When Sabine blossomed as an entertaining source of parallax on topics I
> was interested in I must have watched at least parts of at least a dozen
> of her pieces and appreciated, well, the *parallax* of it... but in
> fact, the thumbs and the titles and some of the content was in fact
> hyperbolic at least in style... and it got old and I rarely click
> through, though I think I still accept that if Sabine is "going on"
> about something it might mean there is a "there there" even if she isn't
> going to help me understand it straight.
> 
> Which jiggers me sideways (slantweiz?) over to Emily Dickenson's poem:
> "Tell all the truth but tell it slant".
> 
> What is it about language and truth which maybe sometimes needs to be
> "snuck up on"?  Or is that just a romanticized misdirection?
> 
> The various (coupled?) recommenders (Google News, YouTube, Ground News)
> in my world have finally come to marginalize her work with me, only
> tossing it up only when some combination of conditions occur.  I want to
> describe it as the "trajectory of my attention intersecting some
> high-dimensional manifold" but this is even more incomplete in my minds
> eye than many of the things I share here already.   I also want to (and
> therefore apparently am) overlay the idiom of fractality and attractors,
> as if the "sneaking up" has something to do with slowing down and being
> careful about the "trajectory" in this high-dimensional conceptual phase
> space?
> 
> What is the "delta-V" of conceptual space?  Is it a continuum, a metric
> space, or topological?  I suppose I've gone "full slant" here... so I
> have to wonder what *my* forcing rules are?
> 
>>
>> On 11/9/24 14:52, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Ah, she’s a scholar but not an academic.  I think that would make 
>>> DeepMind researchers not academics either, or researchers that work 
>>> for organizations like Petrobras (even though they publish).  That 
>>> just says to me that academics aren’t hyperbolic in informal 
>>> communication not because they fear for their credibility, but 
>>> because they are afraid to antagonize the kind of social network that 
>>> funds them.  Graeme Smith comes to mind as someone that makes 
>>> hyperbolic statements on social media relevant to his field but is an 
>>> academic in the sense you mean.
>>>
>>> Another reason I could see academics don’t speak freely is because 
>>> they risk their rewarding gigs as advisors in the judicial or 
>>> executive activities of government.  Everyone has politics to 
>>> navigate, but I appreciate it when people like Sabine defy the rules.
>>>
>>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of glen 
>>> <gepropella at gmail.com>
>>> *Date: *Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM
>>> *To: *friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject: *[FRIAM] hyperbole (was Re: How democracies die)
>>>
>>> Maybe my use of the word is too constrained. I tend to use it as I 
>>> think Sabine (and Eric Weinstein and maybe Stephan Wolfram) use it. 
>>> I.e. they claim they're not part of it. So why shouldn't I believe 
>>> them? As in the people within the academy, *some* type of institution 
>>> that combines teaching with research. That would include pretty much 
>>> anything with the *.edu on the end. SFI is on the outer edge. 
>>> Heterodox Academy is even closer to the edge ... or perhaps just 
>>> barely outside of it. Something like Prager University is definitely 
>>> outside of it. The *primary* aspect of my conception is 
>>> grantsmanship, which is a hallmark of non-profit activities. If it's 
>>> a for profit enterprise, it's difficult for me to consider it "the 
>>> academy".
>>>
>>> But I suppose I could loosen my definition and consider relatively 
>>> independent science communicators like Sabine or Neil deGrasse Tyson 
>>> as peri-academics (or maybe even para-academics). Then it would be a 
>>> short hop to, say, fossil fuel lobbyists. There's some kind of 
>>> slippery slope, here. And that's why I like to stick to grantsmanship 
>>> for academicy stuff. (It also applies to other non-profits ... or the 
>>> hunt for a sugar momma, even ... patronage. But academics, because 
>>> they're also scholars, have a more sedate and systematic matrix to 
>>> navigate.)
>>>
>>> The other element that separates people like Neil deGrasse Tyson or 
>>> Professor Dave or Angela Collier from people like Sabine is that they 
>>> engage in less hyperbole. My experience with serious academics is 
>>> they don't run around yelling things like "Science is Dying". 
>>> Academics tend to be more measured, restrained, particular, and a bit 
>>> boring. Of course, as they age out, they go a bit batsh¡t. It seems 
>>> to me emeriti engage in more hyperbole than working academics.
>>>
>>> So long story short: Sabine's not an academic because she doesn't 
>>> spend her time writing grants. And she's not an academic because too 
>>> much of her work product is hyperbolic.
>>>
>>> On 11/8/24 22:33, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> I'm still confused why you say Hossenfelder isn't an academic.  
>>>> Scholar.google.com doesn't see it that way:  Cited by 5,426.   She 
>>>> has recent publications.
>>>


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