[HN Gopher] So much of academia is about connections and reputat...
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So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
Author : luu
Score : 73 points
Date : 2020-05-15 08:02 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu)
| a0w49tjaw4jrt wrote:
| Headline and article content don't line up very well. Actual
| (short) body of article makes the point that when people in
| positions of power don't have significant training in statistics,
| it isn't surprising that they don't understand statistics. But
| that they do need to understand how much they don't understand.
| The article says next to nothing about gaming of professional
| achievement in academia.
| [deleted]
| mcnamaratw wrote:
| It's not clear what technical content this post has. A cubic
| polynomial vs time would be a terrible idea, but the dashed
| and/or dotted red line (that people seem upset about) is
| obviously not a cubic polynomial vs time.
|
| At that point I run out of guesses about exactly what's being
| said by anybody.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think there's actually two things going on here. There's what
| this post is talking about, which is a general lack of
| understanding of statistics, which is likely true and correct,
| and likely for both reasons that are explored here.
|
| Then there's the reason to actually even talk about this
| specific instance, which is that there is a complete lack of
| operating on the assumption of good faith and clarifying intent
| before making assertions as to other peoples intentions which
| is rampant currently. Whether it's rampant on twitter and
| between political parties or has spilled into other areas such
| that it's harder to have coherent discussions in general now
| than it was in years past I'm not sure.
|
| There are a lot of assumptions in that reply to the tweet in
| question that's shown. It's not even a novel set of
| assumptions, it's the standard twitter fare of "I assume he
| means X and this thing doesn't _explicitly_ show X therefore he
| must not understand what he 's talking about." Any nuance such
| as using a secondary aspect of something to outline a potion of
| what you mean is immediately ignored, and if pointed out later
| assumed to be covering up after the fact.
| smnthermes wrote:
| The article may not have technical content, but the title
| certainly is true: http://pseudoexpertise.com/
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Well the flame is saying it's a misunderstanding of the
| difference between data smoothing and model-based
| forecasting.
|
| To which I'd say that just begs the question of if there's a
| difference to begin with, and what criteria you would use to
| distinguish them if they are.
| mcnamaratw wrote:
| Of course there's a difference between smoothing and
| forecasting. It's the difference between interpolation and
| extrapolation.
|
| But I can't figure out what anyone in the original
| discussion is really saying, if anything.
| dunkelheit wrote:
| To begin, if the curve doesn't extend into the future, it
| can't forecast anything.
| dasudasu wrote:
| This is seen even in very technical fields, such as physics. As
| the saying goes in poker, if you are in academia and can't spot
| this person, then it's probably you. It's also a slightly cynical
| take on imposter's syndrome, in a way.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| Could you elaborate on this latter point further? I guess maybe
| I have impostor's syndrome but I have a hard time understanding
| how you could ever tell if you are that person or not. Imagine
| the following that I saw on a poker video recently:
|
| You have a table full of top-tier poker players and you have a
| rookie who won a contest to be in a game alongside them. The
| rookie is playing absolutely terrible, the commentators are
| cringing at the moves the rookie is making. The other players
| are clearly doing things to take advantage of the rookies
| playing style. Yet at the same time, the rookie comes out in
| 3rd place, up 50k from their buy in at the start of the night.
| 3 seasoned award winning professionals are all net-negative for
| the night, some of which are -150k from where they started
| after 150 hands played.
|
| Is this rookie an impostor or not? Does it matter that the
| rookie is an impostor if he is still beating people who
| verifiably are not impostors over the average of 150 separate
| hands?
|
| I guess all this is to say that I don't get what value using
| the impostor's syndrome framing gives us.
| dasudasu wrote:
| Poker is still a game of chance with beginner's luck being a
| thing. It's a quote from Buffet, relayed from poker folklore:
| As they say in poker, "If you've been in the game 30 minutes
| and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."
| User23 wrote:
| It's difficult for me to take any discussion of imposter
| syndrome seriously that doesn't consider the possibility the
| subject feels like an imposter because he is. Having been
| personally acquainted with several such imposters and having
| never seen such a discussion I'm left to conclude the entire
| concept is deeply unserious.
|
| Edit: sibling is making much the same point. The concept is
| only useful if actual imposters can be identified.
| oneiftwo wrote:
| > which is the general level of mediocrity, even at the top
| levels of academia
|
| This is not unique to academia. Our entire society has gradually
| degenerated over the last few decades for a number of
| constructively interfering reasons:
|
| 1. We told two+ generations of children that everyone was capable
| of anything, gave them all awards after every "competition", and
| that kind of upbringing makes it difficult to recognize merit.
|
| 2. We've lowered the bar for standards across education, in an
| attempt to bring our lowest up, failing to realize that the
| primary result was bringing our best down. That hurts merit at
| professional levels especially, where the pipeline effectively
| shrinks.
|
| 3. Our media has regressed to the lowest common denominator. The
| most popular sources of influence in our society are
| uncredentialed hacks who spread misinformation ("Dr." Phil, "Dr."
| Oz, Oprah, etc). Even our official "news" sources are primarily
| entertainment venues and are fully editorialized. This makes it
| extremely difficult for the average person to recognize merit.
|
| It's like our entire culture has been consumed by charisma, such
| that incompetence permeates every sector of our economy and
| society. Things were too easy for too long, and now we face a
| reckoning - either we fix things or our nation collapses. There's
| no room for popularity contests, crony capitalism, or diversity
| initiatives during times of crisis.
| ahelwer wrote:
| What is with this ridiculous fixation people have on
| participation trophies? I'm serious, where is this idea coming
| from? Was it an object of moral concern in the media before I
| was old enough to remember or something?
|
| Getting a stupid ribbon in third grade is not going to
| radically inform your approach to life.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Very difficult to understand what's going here, through the
| snark, personal abuse, name calling, and political bias.
| Everyone's trying to communicate through increasingly scathing
| Tweets and declaring each time that the previous Tweet is yet
| another new low point. Not a useful way for anyone to get a point
| across. Everyone should be embarrassed.
| chadlavi wrote:
| s/academia/every career/g
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