I found this essay inspiring and important. The pace of progress in science and technology has slowed, for reasons we partly understand. We also know some factors that appear to accelerate them. Learning more, and applying it, is urgent.https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1156261933202325504 …
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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 (
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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.
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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/∞
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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.
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Replying to @Meaningness
Especially true of physics, which can be construed as the study of _all_ natural phenomena but really restricts itself to phenomena simplest to analyze with the tools that physicists learn
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Replying to @The_Lagrangian @Meaningness
The same holds for so-called "complex systems*". It claims itself as "the science, maths and engineering of systems with simple components but complex overall behavior", but in reality, what goes under the name is ·Cellular automata ·Dynamics on networks *https://www.complex-systems.com/
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Yeah, this makes me SO MAD. Massive scam imo
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