glen wrote:
...
The complaint against Sabine and many in the wacko pipeline is that
their wacko content gets more views. And more views means more money.
Her boring videos don't get as much traffic as her wacko videos. So
she's incentivized toward the wacko. She's not defying any rules.
She's caught up in the forcing structure, obeying the rule even if she
doesn't want to. And that means she *is* doing her job, profiting off
clickbait and misinformation. It's just not the job of an academic.
When Sabine blossomed as an entertaining source of parallax on topics I
was interested in I must have watched at least parts of at least a dozen
of her pieces and appreciated, well, the *parallax* of it... but in
fact, the thumbs and the titles and some of the content was in fact
hyperbolic at least in style... and it got old and I rarely click
through, though I think I still accept that if Sabine is "going on"
about something it might mean there is a "there there" even if she isn't
going to help me understand it straight.
Which jiggers me sideways (slantweiz?) over to Emily Dickenson's poem:
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant".
What is it about language and truth which maybe sometimes needs to be
"snuck up on"? Or is that just a romanticized misdirection?
The various (coupled?) recommenders (Google News, YouTube, Ground News)
in my world have finally come to marginalize her work with me, only
tossing it up only when some combination of conditions occur. I want to
describe it as the "trajectory of my attention intersecting some
high-dimensional manifold" but this is even more incomplete in my minds
eye than many of the things I share here already. I also want to (and
therefore apparently am) overlay the idiom of fractality and attractors,
as if the "sneaking up" has something to do with slowing down and being
careful about the "trajectory" in this high-dimensional conceptual phase
space?
What is the "delta-V" of conceptual space? Is it a continuum, a metric
space, or topological? I suppose I've gone "full slant" here... so I
have to wonder what *my* forcing rules are?
On 11/9/24 14:52, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Ah, she’s a scholar but not an academic. I think that would make
DeepMind researchers not academics either, or researchers that work
for organizations like Petrobras (even though they publish). That
just says to me that academics aren’t hyperbolic in informal
communication not because they fear for their credibility, but
because they are afraid to antagonize the kind of social network that
funds them. Graeme Smith comes to mind as someone that makes
hyperbolic statements on social media relevant to his field but is an
academic in the sense you mean.
Another reason I could see academics don’t speak freely is because
they risk their rewarding gigs as advisors in the judicial or
executive activities of government. Everyone has politics to
navigate, but I appreciate it when people like Sabine defy the rules.
*From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of glen
<geprope...@gmail.com>
*Date: *Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM
*To: *friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com>
*Subject: *[FRIAM] hyperbole (was Re: How democracies die)
Maybe my use of the word is too constrained. I tend to use it as I
think Sabine (and Eric Weinstein and maybe Stephan Wolfram) use it.
I.e. they claim they're not part of it. So why shouldn't I believe
them? As in the people within the academy, *some* type of institution
that combines teaching with research. That would include pretty much
anything with the *.edu on the end. SFI is on the outer edge.
Heterodox Academy is even closer to the edge ... or perhaps just
barely outside of it. Something like Prager University is definitely
outside of it. The *primary* aspect of my conception is
grantsmanship, which is a hallmark of non-profit activities. If it's
a for profit enterprise, it's difficult for me to consider it "the
academy".
But I suppose I could loosen my definition and consider relatively
independent science communicators like Sabine or Neil deGrasse Tyson
as peri-academics (or maybe even para-academics). Then it would be a
short hop to, say, fossil fuel lobbyists. There's some kind of
slippery slope, here. And that's why I like to stick to grantsmanship
for academicy stuff. (It also applies to other non-profits ... or the
hunt for a sugar momma, even ... patronage. But academics, because
they're also scholars, have a more sedate and systematic matrix to
navigate.)
The other element that separates people like Neil deGrasse Tyson or
Professor Dave or Angela Collier from people like Sabine is that they
engage in less hyperbole. My experience with serious academics is
they don't run around yelling things like "Science is Dying".
Academics tend to be more measured, restrained, particular, and a bit
boring. Of course, as they age out, they go a bit batsh¡t. It seems
to me emeriti engage in more hyperbole than working academics.
So long story short: Sabine's not an academic because she doesn't
spend her time writing grants. And she's not an academic because too
much of her work product is hyperbolic.
On 11/8/24 22:33, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I'm still confused why you say Hossenfelder isn't an academic.
Scholar.google.com doesn't see it that way: Cited by 5,426. She
has recent publications.
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