1. You have effectively attempted to straw man all possible suggestions and conversation around modifying STEM-based progress by using a few anecdotes as a basis. This is not 'a point'. These are only a handful of observations.
2. You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. And this comment being at the top (currently) really diverts so many other possible enriching discussions around this topic. As another comment pointed out progress in chemistry during the 20th century that effectively donated as much to human progress as physics even though it goes mostly unnoticed by a larger audience.
3. Your argument only mentions how citations have allowed for better filtering of true-negative papers/authors, but it does not explain away overly citated papers/authors which are essentially false-positives as to being progressive.
4. It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this?
> It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this?
I have seen similar defenses of various things in academia over the years. It's very easy for someone who is successful in a particular system to think that system must be generally good. I can recall going to a talk nominally about writing good grant proposals where the speaker would add random comments about how the current funding system is the most effective known to man, etc. The speaker was a tenured professor. They're going to be inclined to think that whatever system they succeed in must be fundamentally good. After all, it recognized their brilliance!
Similarly, knzhou is a graduate student at Stanford on a NSF fellowship. He seems like a very smart guy. But his experiences are not representative of science as a whole. It seems obvious that his opinions are going to differ from someone like me. I was rejected by Stanford, MIT, and Caltech and also rejected from every graduate fellowship I applied to. (Don't read too much into the schools: Later I decided that those schools would not have been a good fit for me, so I'm glad to have been rejected from them.) I think I do good quality research that isn't recognized by the current system. To do my research I've had to take whatever scraps of funding were available or work as a TA. This doesn't strike me as optimal. People like knzhou haven't had these experiences. This is triply true because I've been in grad school for about 9 years now, but knzhou has only been in grad school for about 3. Maybe in a couple of years, knzhou's opinions will sour? After 3 years I didn't have the same opinions I do now.
You are right. I missed this. It was mostly disappointing that the top comment was practically a diversion from a much richer discussion on the topic.
> Maybe in a couple of years, knzhou's opinions will sour
Is his opinion "allowed" to sour (publicly) until he is a Tenured professor? I am genuinely asking as I believe the incentives of academia have become in some ways (and perhaps in many) entirely anti-science. It feels more like students are filtered for higher positions within a large religion e.g., Catholicism. And we really should not be surprised by this phenomenon because game theory tells us there are tendencies of these dynamic systems to evolve towards similar outcomes/structures. So, science becoming more socially popular over the last 100-200 years and people behaving religiously around it (with the similarity being between the structuring of a religion and modern academia) seems inevitable and actually needs to be proactively addressed and corrected.
> Is his opinion "allowed" to sour (publicly) until he is a Tenured professor?
I don't think getting a negative opinion of the status quo would help. If an assistant professor is not vocal about their opinions then the tenure committee might not notice or care.
But don't get the impression that tenure provides much protection for unorthodox views. If the higher ups want to get rid of you, they'll find a way. They might not be able to outright fire you but they could (for example) increase your workload to the point where staying as a professor is untenable.
And note that the tenure process itself filters out people who would challenge the status quo. It's a protection that tends to go unused.
I'm not following your analogy with religion. If you mean that to advance requires unquestioning belief then I would largely agree.
> But don't get the impression that tenure provides much protection for unorthodox views.
I understand. I just think every degree of security/authority is a degree of "flexibility" (not quite "freedom") within the institutional structure of academia. Which is on par with totalitarian-oriented structures.
> If the higher ups want to get rid of you, they'll find a way
I am very curious who are the "higher-ups" in an institution dedicated to the production and enrichment of intelligence within humanity? If you are a brilliant professor exercising scientific thinking against your own establishment, then who really is considered "higher" than you? Are these higher ups objectively more intelligent? Perhaps, sometimes. But, my guess is the vast majority of the time these higher ups are just politically-savvy administrators who are just in it for the prestige and money. Science has become adulterated by the same incentive structures as religion e.g., endowments, donations, etc. It is not run for the promotion and of intelligence but rather for the optimization of the clerical. Administrator is practically synonymous with clergy.
> If you mean that to advance requires unquestioning belief then I would largely agree.
I am not even attempting to argue anything with regards to belief or faith. I am simply trying to make obvious the simple observation that structurally things tend to converge towards a certain status-quo (equilibrium) in almost everything. Academia is not free of this reality even if many within like to (naively or blindly) believe they are. But, it is most frightening that science itself (almost the epitome of which is to question) has converged towards these exact same structures (as religion and government often do) almost without any hindrance to becoming such. It is actually scary.
I am genuinely hoping the younger generation changes this dramatically. But, I am not seeing it. Most millennial academics are either supportive or entirely silent towards the status-quo.
> I am very curious who are the "higher-ups" in an institution dedicated to the production and enrichment of intelligence within humanity?
I was thinking about both university and department administration, though for the latter I'm thinking only about faculty members with administrative positions. Also included are committee members.
> But, my guess is the vast majority of the time these higher ups are just politically-savvy administrators who are just in it for the prestige and money.
I think most genuinely believe they are doing what is in the best interest of science in general, perhaps limited by their own capabilities as they see it, i.e., they can't do everything and need to follow their bosses and incentives. But these people aren't always helping.
> I am genuinely hoping the younger generation changes this dramatically. But, I am not seeing it. Most millennial academics are either supportive or entirely silent towards the status-quo.
I would tend to agree that the younger generations don't seem any better in these respects than the older. But there is a growing independent science movement, and I'm hoping eventually they'll move the needle. Many of them are here: https://forum.igdore.org/
2. You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. And this comment being at the top (currently) really diverts so many other possible enriching discussions around this topic. As another comment pointed out progress in chemistry during the 20th century that effectively donated as much to human progress as physics even though it goes mostly unnoticed by a larger audience.
3. Your argument only mentions how citations have allowed for better filtering of true-negative papers/authors, but it does not explain away overly citated papers/authors which are essentially false-positives as to being progressive.
4. It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this?