Luke’s response excellently explains why many of these remarks don’t make sense in the context of SI, but I would like to add that many of these remarks are misrepresentations of the academic process.
On (published) papers as discussion objects: this is why we have preprint servers and discussion lists. Common practice is to discuss draft papers, and to distribute them to interested parties. Publishing is a canonicalization process. It is really the minimum that needs to happen so that discussion does not get mired in draft invalidation problems.
Academic papers are hard to get statistics on, but eg., I was a math major in undergrad, and I can’t even understand the titles of most new math papers.
Is this even a surprise? The vast majority of math research doesn’t happen at anything resembling the undergrad level. Most undergraduate maths is at least a century old.
Papers don’t have prestige outside a narrow subset of society.
Everyone outside a narrow subset of society lacks the ability to give meaningful input on the content of most papers.
The whole point of tenure is to avoid selecting for conformity.
As far as I can tell, this was never true. Preventing financial interests from interfering in academic hiring processes is closer to the mark, but that’s different from avoiding conformity. It’s safe to say that most arguments on academic freedom are little more than political signalling.
I understand it’s in vogue to criticize academia (usually under the guise of Traditional Rationality), but the system, as it is, actually exists and actually produces results. It currently has a virtual monopoly on the production of highly educated researchers—the alternative, becoming an epic-level autodidact, is fraught with failure modes and lost opportunity costs. Neglecting academia merely because it has its own inconveniences and inefficiencies would be a large mistake.
On (published) papers as discussion objects: this is why we have preprint servers and discussion lists. Common practice is to discuss draft papers, and to distribute them to interested parties. Publishing is a canonicalization process
Luke’s response excellently explains why many of these remarks don’t make sense in the context of SI, but I would like to add that many of these remarks are misrepresentations of the academic process.
On (published) papers as discussion objects: this is why we have preprint servers and discussion lists. Common practice is to discuss draft papers, and to distribute them to interested parties. Publishing is a canonicalization process. It is really the minimum that needs to happen so that discussion does not get mired in draft invalidation problems.
Is this even a surprise? The vast majority of math research doesn’t happen at anything resembling the undergrad level. Most undergraduate maths is at least a century old.
Everyone outside a narrow subset of society lacks the ability to give meaningful input on the content of most papers.
As far as I can tell, this was never true. Preventing financial interests from interfering in academic hiring processes is closer to the mark, but that’s different from avoiding conformity. It’s safe to say that most arguments on academic freedom are little more than political signalling.
I understand it’s in vogue to criticize academia (usually under the guise of Traditional Rationality), but the system, as it is, actually exists and actually produces results. It currently has a virtual monopoly on the production of highly educated researchers—the alternative, becoming an epic-level autodidact, is fraught with failure modes and lost opportunity costs. Neglecting academia merely because it has its own inconveniences and inefficiencies would be a large mistake.
Yes, exactly.