It’s not just a self-reinforcing spiral. There is also a driver, namely since social science has more political implications and there is a lot of political control over science funding, social science selects for people willing to reach the “correct” conclusions even if they have to torture logic and the evidence to do so.
Well that’s a self-reinforcing spiral of a different type. In general, I see a number of forces pushing newcomers to a group towards being similar to whoever the folks already in the group are:
Self-segregation. It’s less aversive to interact with people who agree with you and are similar to you, which nudges people towards forming social circles of similar others.
Reputation effects. If Google has a reputation for having great programmers, other great programmers will want to work there so they can have great coworkers.
This is why it took someone like Snowden to expose NSA spying. The NSA was the butt of jokes in the crypto community for probably doing illicit spying long before Snowden… which meant people who cared about civil liberties didn’t apply for jobs there (who wants to work for the evil empire?) (Note: just my guess as someone outside crypto; could be totally wrong on this one.)
Edit: evaporative cooling should probably be considered related to the bullet points above.
It’s not just a self-reinforcing spiral. There is also a driver, namely since social science has more political implications and there is a lot of political control over science funding, social science selects for people willing to reach the “correct” conclusions even if they have to torture logic and the evidence to do so.
Well that’s a self-reinforcing spiral of a different type. In general, I see a number of forces pushing newcomers to a group towards being similar to whoever the folks already in the group are:
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy, insofar as it’s accurate.
Self-segregation. It’s less aversive to interact with people who agree with you and are similar to you, which nudges people towards forming social circles of similar others.
Reputation effects. If Google has a reputation for having great programmers, other great programmers will want to work there so they can have great coworkers.
This is why it took someone like Snowden to expose NSA spying. The NSA was the butt of jokes in the crypto community for probably doing illicit spying long before Snowden… which meant people who cared about civil liberties didn’t apply for jobs there (who wants to work for the evil empire?) (Note: just my guess as someone outside crypto; could be totally wrong on this one.)
Edit: evaporative cooling should probably be considered related to the bullet points above.