Lmao, very interesting that there are absolutely no details about the
content of these arguments. Just “blogs bad science good”. Also,
The academic, stereotypically feminine view of “truth” is overloaded
with social status and approval. You can’t convince someone like this to
evaluate a claim independent of an authority. They lack separation of
the entertaining of an idea, with belief in or approval of that idea.
They don’t have the part of the programmer brain that does speculative
execution and ponders hypotheticals without committing them to
memory.
That comment is quite special. What the hell does
>stereotypically feminine view of "truth"
even mean? Is there a competing, stereotypically masculine view on "truth"? If so, what's the difference? Is there some secret code in STEM papers to show whether the results should be considered masc or fem? Or is this just a random display of misogyny because OOP specified that the friend is a woman?
> overloaded with social status and approval
It's feminine to seek consensus and masculine to homestead truth from first principles, on account of ~~sexism~~ high decoupling.
EDIT: This could also neatly explain the constant push for prediction markets: it removes the democratic nature of scientific consensus and replaces it with Great Men "winning" debates by being chip bullies.
Ah, that makes sense, for a limited meaning of "sense". I guess the "truth" that consensus-seeking is feminine was also derived from first principles, rather than any sort of, I don't know, evidence.
A real "fellas, is it gay to collaborate?" moment.
I guess this is the same idea that leads people to whine about "virtue signaling." Because, you know, no one would ever actually care about trying to do better, like some kind of *girl* -- they must just be trying to score social points!
I think it might be the same sort of thing indeed. But using Rationalist plausible deniability don't talk about virtue signaling directly, just talk about social status.
It’s made up misogyny
the centralized nature of scientific methods has been critiqued as masculine/patriarchal for decades. feminists use phrase like “ways of knowing” because science (at least how it is often practiced) discounts truth/knowledge from women and minorities. Plus the prioritization of gaining knowledge over research ethics.
(I personally think these criticisms were wholly valid for much of 20th Century research, idk to what extant it holds now)
It's a common trope among these circles that women as a group care more about feels than reals and don't want to hurt anybody, so we will take on convenient lies rather than face ugly truths. This is why affirmative action for women has been a disaster for academia which relies on cultivating the rules-breaking orthodoxy-overturning genius. Or something.
Yeah, everyone knows [women are bad at programming!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)#MIT_Instrumentation_Laboratory_and_the_Apollo_Guidance_Computer) (/s)
Yeah all those cooties make you a worse coder. Give me a sec, my code didn't compile, time to hit my pc with my massive penis.
Missed.
Missed again.
(unrelated, you messed up the link, gotta escape the ) )
These people managed to reach the conclusion that you should always question information, even if it's given by a position of authority, but are then too damn dumb to realize that the level of scrutiny you should apply depends on the expertise of the person making the claims.
Doctors just look up checklists of symptoms. Lawyers just look up case law. Accountants just plug some numbers into a spreadsheet. Software engineers? Geniuses who can do any of those jobs better because of how smart they are. I Learned Python the Hard Way and now I'm that guy from Limitless.
It's rather common online slang. It means, like, someone just being a fucking moron, but with the connotation that whatever you just said is so stupid that you have something physically wrong with your brain, like parasitic worms eating it.
They're ideas, attitudes, perspectives, ideologies, etc that rot people's minds from the inside out and are contagious.
They're memes that turn people's brains into mush.
Oh gods yes. And "winning" online debate by presenting good sources supporting one side of a wide-open question as the "last word" on the subject, because nobody outside of the actual specialty really understands how wide-open the question actually is...
Find some things to make bets on. If your epistemology is really
better than hers, you’ll win more bets and eventually she will see you
have a point and wonder how you win so many bets. If you can’t find
anything suitable to bet on, it’s likely your arguments with them didn’t
matter very much in the first place.
No it's about predictions. If they were in ancient Rome they'd be the guys claiming that their sheep livers were better than the other guys chicken entrails at predicting earthquakes. Bayesian sheep livers.
The people in that thread saying they attended grad programs at
prestigious universities and that they are all full of shit are the
people that failed out most likely. God they are the fucking worst.
Reminds me of that asshole James Damore. He claimed an academic
background and from what I understood he left with just a Masters and I
and sure he just would not put he ego aside and that’s why he left.
> The people in that thread saying they attended grad programs at prestigious universities and that they are all full of shit are the people that failed out most likely.
literally Moldbug, btw. This is why he put academia as part of the Cathedral.
**edit** Yarvin failing out of grad school is the source of these rants about how it all sucked akhully [[1]](https://archive.is/8HtyA) [[2]](https://archive.is/dVfQ5)
Tangent: it took me a moment to parse the phrase "left with just a master's", because in my part of the world getting a master's is almost always required before you can *enroll* in a PhD program. If I tell Americans I have a master's, will they assume I started a PhD and flanked midway?
In general that isn't the assumption. The number of Americans with a master's degree is still relatively low and it's considered an achievement by default.
In some fields, a master's degree is (more or less) terminal (MBA, MFA, etc.). In other fields, such as engineering, Ph.D.s are rare and not considered the "working degree," so it would be safer to assume the person was targeting a master's all along, and that master's degree would be a rational choice for their career progression.
However, in some other fields, such as biology (which happens to be my field), it works differently: 1) a large number of people are trying to get a PhD, 2) it is considered the terminal/"working degree," and 3) people who leave a doctoral program with a master's *usually* do so because they can't handle the program -- i.e., there's no career advantage in leaving early, unlike some cases in software engineering for example.
James Damore happens to have been studying systems biology, and we also *know* that he started as a doctoral student, so it is safe to say something went wrong in the process. While some biology students pursue a master's degree directly, starting in a doctoral program and then dropping out is both common and not a good indication of the student's performance.
> If I tell Americans I have a master's, will they assume I started a PhD and flanked midway?
In your case I'd still not worry about it, personally. When I was doing a Ph.D in astronomy in the US, it was pretty well known that the way that we do it (enroll straight in a Ph.D program from undergrad, with the Master's as essentially a formality) is pretty unusual and not how things are done in academia elsewhere.
So if you mention what region your master's comes from, anyone with the knowledge of how the Ph.D system works in the US should also know that it wouldn't apply in your case.
Probably not IME, in the US the unqualified "master's" usually implies terminal master's.
Most US PhD programs do allow direct admission from undergrad and include the academic requirements for a master's along the way - some do give students an option to convert to a terminal master's if they look unlikely to finish. The specifics really just vary by institution, in the usual American way.
Even German universities (still very traditional and conservative) are now allowing direct admission without a masters now through 4 + 4 programs. I get the impression this is being done to try make admissions more attractive for foreign students, many of the professors and PIs I've talked to seem to be quite concerned about enticing good candidates to go with them over groups in the USA or UK
Where in the thread are there people claiming they attended prestigious programs and that they're full of shit? I see someone who attended one and say the post doc friend is full of shit, and another one currently enrolled who had a pretty reasonable response.
> just a Masters
Does that render his intellect deficient in regard to his critique?
Is he a failure due to his failure to conform to the ideological programming at Google?
I agree with his friend. After I finished my studies I basically came
to the conclusion that the quality of knowledge is inversely
proportional to how chronically online it is. Like you want to learn
something useful and insightful, read an actual book. You want to learn
something written by content generators, read medium. You want to learn
something confidently incorrect read stackexchange
> You want to learn something confidently incorrect read stackexchange
StackExchange banned people from using ChatGPT to answer questions because people were framing karma by copypasting answers from ChatGPT and getting tons of updates even if the answers were completely wrong. That's the standard of academic integrity that the users expect and uphold, lol.
There's at the moment one user who goes on every single physics post about photons and "corrects" people with his incredibly idiosyncratic and extreme views on what photons actually are, but since he says it so confidently lots of the new users don't realise he's being weird lol. But you can't really correct him cos it starts a fight and they'll ban you for it lmfao
Hahaha, nah its more like, when you're still at undergrad level the shit you're learning is still roughly the same level of quality as what you find on the internet (mainly because most blog level and pop sci stuff is basically plagiarised from textbooks). It's after you really get to an expert understanding of your field that you know enough that you don't just believe something because Feynman and Dirac gave their hot take about it once
Foucault really was a prophet. What holds us back perhaps even more
than repression of intelligent thought, per se, is the relentless
production of actively, positively stupid people.
[don’t interact with them] and if you’re forced to interact with them
- crack jokes. Fuck with them and enjoy yourself. You gain nothing by
trying to squeeze blood from a stone.
Belligerence and joke-cracking is a valid form of "debate" (and fun!). Problem is they're applying it to people they shouldn't (and should actually try to learn from). If anything she should be cracking jokes at him
Idk like having a friend who isn't that smart or is definitely smarter than you doesn't seem like a problem to me. We all have our own strengths and if you can connect to someone and enjoy their company then friendship seems possible to me at least.
I have a friend who is doing a post doc in physics at a very
prestigious university.
She’s pretty great most of the time. The problem is that she is
insanely annoying about the superiority of academia for matters of truth
finding. She is condescending against blogs, declaring that only
published articles are true and Real Science, no matter how much I point
out that everything is the blog post is factually true and that it cites
its sources. She seems to think that all knowledge workers are
unintelligent morons.
I am a software engineer and nowhere as dumb as she thinks I am. Data
is data no matter who is crunching it, and truth is truth as well.
I replied to that person in the nicest way that I can:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/12mfto0/how_to_argue_with_smug_academic_friend/jgdj7ox/
I’ve seen how some research gets done in the humanities, and I’ve
read a lot of peer reviewed nonsense… Therefore, I encourage others to
take everything with a grain of salt and to try to understand things
before quoting them.
Unsurprisingly, the rats are some of the most stubborn people when
defending their blogs and LW posts as absolute truth. Even if they don’t
understand the reasoning behind the arguments they quote or, if said
assertions don’t have any sense of reality behind them. It’s
particularly annoying when they state things that are impossible to
prove.
We ask the gentlesneers to refrain from touching the poop. Please don’t post in that thread.
Lmao, very interesting that there are absolutely no details about the content of these arguments. Just “blogs bad science good”. Also,
lmao
This is the best distillation of the software engineer superiority complex that I’ve ever seen.
Best answer in there
Said with no mention or thought to the strength of said blog’s conclusions.
It is always fucking gambling with these people
Very powerful “I don’t know how to talk to people” energy.
The people in that thread saying they attended grad programs at prestigious universities and that they are all full of shit are the people that failed out most likely. God they are the fucking worst. Reminds me of that asshole James Damore. He claimed an academic background and from what I understood he left with just a Masters and I and sure he just would not put he ego aside and that’s why he left.
I agree with his friend. After I finished my studies I basically came to the conclusion that the quality of knowledge is inversely proportional to how chronically online it is. Like you want to learn something useful and insightful, read an actual book. You want to learn something written by content generators, read medium. You want to learn something confidently incorrect read stackexchange
“This blog post cites its sources! The Bell Curve, page 1; The Bell Curve, page 3…”
His friend should learn to fight. She should give him a Nuclear Noogie
E: I accidentally touched the shit. Please don’t ban me
Foucault really was a prophet. What holds us back perhaps even more than repression of intelligent thought, per se, is the relentless production of actively, positively stupid people.
Satre_on_anti-semites.jpg
The most alien part of this to me is why you’d be friends with someone who thinks you’re dumb.
I think the top comment is pretty reasonable honestly. Disengaging from someone conversations you aren’t enjoying is better than fighting.
lol he’s deleted
here’s the original text:
Curious how this group would handle this.
I have a friend who is doing a post doc in physics at a very prestigious university.
She’s pretty great most of the time. The problem is that she is insanely annoying about the superiority of academia for matters of truth finding. She is condescending against blogs, declaring that only published articles are true and Real Science, no matter how much I point out that everything is the blog post is factually true and that it cites its sources. She seems to think that all knowledge workers are unintelligent morons.
I am a software engineer and nowhere as dumb as she thinks I am. Data is data no matter who is crunching it, and truth is truth as well.
How would you counter argue someone like this?
I replied to that person in the nicest way that I can: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/12mfto0/how_to_argue_with_smug_academic_friend/jgdj7ox/
I’ve seen how some research gets done in the humanities, and I’ve read a lot of peer reviewed nonsense… Therefore, I encourage others to take everything with a grain of salt and to try to understand things before quoting them.
Unsurprisingly, the rats are some of the most stubborn people when defending their blogs and LW posts as absolute truth. Even if they don’t understand the reasoning behind the arguments they quote or, if said assertions don’t have any sense of reality behind them. It’s particularly annoying when they state things that are impossible to prove.
But I guess that pretentious people will pretend…
Wow, knowledge workers!