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Meaningness's profile
David Chapman
David Chapman
David Chapman
@Meaningness

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David Chapman

@Meaningness

Better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—around problems of meaning and meaninglessness; self and society; ethics, purpose, and value.

meaningness.com/about-my-sites
Joined September 2010

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    1. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      Many disdainful comments re @patrickc/@tylercowen: “Arrogant tech bros ignorant of the existing fields of history & sociology of science & technology, gah” I’d like to point out some broad patterns of academic dysfunction manifesting here (🧵)

      10 replies 51 retweets 235 likes
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    2. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      It’s easy to assume that, if there’s an academic field named after some phenomenon, the people in it are doing whatever can be done to discover things about that phenomenon, and everything known about it is taught in that field. This is rarely true.

      1 reply 24 retweets 173 likes
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    3. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      Academic fields are social clubs operated for the benefit of insiders. Field founders want to claim as much territory as possible, so they name the field after some broad phenomenon. And then… 4/∞

      1 reply 20 retweets 175 likes
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    4. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      Outwardly, an academic field claims as much territory as possible, but inside, it narrows its scope to a particular subset of phenomena, and methods of treating them, which allows it reduce the work to a safe routine of minimal-publishable-units production.

      4 replies 21 retweets 170 likes
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    5. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      An academic field then *must* attack outsiders addressing the broad phenomenon it supposedly covers—because their investigations would reveal the field’s actual narrow scope, limited methods, and dubious foundational assumptions.

      1 reply 15 retweets 129 likes
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    6. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      Linguistics in the second half of the 20th century is an extreme example. It claimed “the study of language,” but narrowed to arguments about notational variants for formal grammars that were supposed to account for the syntactic grammaticality judgements of expert linguists.

      3 replies 5 retweets 98 likes
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    7. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      Linguistics in that era ruthlessly suppressed anyone who dared discuss any form of empirical data, which Chomsky defined out of existence as “performance”; or who wanted to address actual language use.

      4 replies 5 retweets 68 likes
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    8. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      If you wanted to learn anything about language during that period, you had to do it in the psychology or sociology department. But they had their own narrow methodological shibboleths, and there was no field that broadly addressed the phenomenon.

      1 reply 3 retweets 56 likes
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    9. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      “We already have a field explaining sci/tech progress” would be more plausible if advocates cited one of them, rather than eight. It would also be more plausible if those fields advocated practical, concrete actions that would accelerate progress…

      2 replies 10 retweets 123 likes
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    10. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      I am an interested layperson, not an academic, but I’ve read many hundreds of papers in the history & sociology of science, technology, & development economics. It’s fascinating stuff with real insights. It doesn’t seem to have the answers @patrickc & @tylercowen seek.

      3 replies 3 retweets 72 likes
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      David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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      David Chapman Retweeted Ian Welsh

      As @iwelsh points out in a reply 🧵, these fields frequently work to support political agendas, rather than to figure things out. “History of technology” is often just “Technology: horrifying threat or global menace?”https://twitter.com/iwelsh/status/1156979029511159811 …

      David Chapman added,

      Ian Welsh @iwelsh
      Replying to @iwelsh @Meaningness
      I know development economics very well, and I grew up in the development community. They gave concrete actionable plans. They were wrong about essentially everything, and following their plans not only didn't work, it caused catastrophes.
      10:36 AM - 1 Aug 2019
      • 17 Retweets
      • 113 Likes
      • Alberto Albero 🌲 David Crawford David Aikema Benedict Richard Bankole Ian Hines Sid Powell 🥞 Alex Vincent Kabir Brar
      2 replies 17 retweets 113 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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          Realizing, in the mid-20th century, that the Myth of Progress was an eternalistic quasi-religion, and asking pointed questions about “cui bono” and “why should we believe this,” was hugely valuable and necessary. It’s now a lazy trope, suitable for mindless mechanical MPUs.

          2 replies 7 retweets 65 likes
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        3. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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          When people with billions of dollars say “we want more research on problem X,” researchers with something to say about X might think “hooray, new funding source!” rather than “oh hell, they’re probably going to expose the vapidity of our discipline, better shout at them”

          2 replies 13 retweets 85 likes
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        4. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 1 Aug 2019
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          I’m rather skeptical of a new field of Progress Studies, because every “X Studies” field turns into another rote paper generator. Rebooting research on how to do science and technology better, ignoring discipline boundaries—that seems urgent & with huge leverage for benefit.

          10 replies 8 retweets 145 likes
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        5. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. opendna  ⚙️‏ @opendna 2 Aug 2019
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          Replying to @Meaningness @iwelsh

          Regrettably, this entire thread validates the charge that you haven't done even a minimal lit review. Not only do you not know what work has been done, you project the politics of other disciplines onto an interdisciplinary field you inagine but don't know.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. opendna  ⚙️‏ @opendna 2 Aug 2019
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          Replying to @opendna @Meaningness @iwelsh

          The idea that historians could impose boundaries on the research of sociologists, anthropologists and org economists is as absurd as that Harvard can dictate boundaries to Toronto, Paris, Frankfurt, Moscow, Beijin, Stockholm, and J'bourg. This is what you have asserted.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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