Conversation

Genuine question: what exactly are the major contributions of MIT media lab? I will admit my priors might be unfair,y hostile and my reaction to current travails a little too schadenfreude-ish.
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Back in ~2001-2 one of my own mentors at U. Michigan went on a rant against Media Lab in one of our sessions. Among other things calling Negroponte “a fool” (not the full insult... the source would be too guessable if I quoted exactly).
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Another mentor went on a (IMO less well-founded) rant against the robotics lab, calling Rod Brooks a “charlatan” (this was before Taleb copyrighted that particular insult).
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Something you may not know if you haven’t been in academia. Many highly reputed non-MIT academics at other top univs hate MIT for a very specific reason: their tendency to hire their own PhD alumni, often right after they finish. This inbreeding explicitly flouts a strong norm.
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Most univs have a policy of not hiring their own grads until they’ve worked elsewhere first. There’s a bias in favor of cross-pollination. Though there’s lots of mutual respect between star academics at MIT and other univs, as an institution, it’s in the doghouse for this.
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Mentioning this for context. With other univs in trouble, there will at least be gestures at wagon-circling by all peer univs, even as they move to poach stars. With MIT, the knives may be out more openly. I do think the inbreeding culture helped create the Epstein shitshow.
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Also doesn’t help that MIT has had a history of dismissing external criticism of its culture as mere envy 🤔 Well, I hope there’s no lasting damage from this or genuine talented innocents with no complicity having careers ruined because the Media Lab brand is tarnished
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I've been periodically involved (unofficially) with the Media Lab for a couple of years and honestly have been blown away at what has brought to it. His ideals of focusing on making technology that improves humanity as a whole has been so crucial to tech/MIT growing well.
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For a glimpse at what brought to the Media Lab, watch this deeply important discussion he and some other techies had about the future and how we want to use technology to improve life for all. (wherein I get +1 from :-)