Justified ? Rather embarrassingly ignorant I should think. “You can learn Shakespeare off the internet”? Really? And where does “internet’s” knowledge come from, to the extent it’s actual knowledge and not total bs? Ultimately it comes from experts who are trained in university humanities departments. The author’s argument is the equivalent of saying we don’t need engineers because we can just buy an iPhone. Most people don’t need to be engineers to enjoy tech but we need to have engineers around and professors to train them. Historians and literary scholars are no different. You can’t in fact discover much new and *correct* things or even assess the accuracy of claims about the current state of evidence on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar nor about historical Julius Caesar without experts trained in university English history and classics depts.
Actually - you just read Shakespeare - and if you do that, you are way ahead of most literature students because they do NOT read Shakespeare now; or anything much at all. I'm a sociology professor of 30 years. I would defund pretty much all social science tomorrow. Students come out of most social science degrees knowing less than when they went in....because the ideology they are taught makes them blind and unable even to ask good questions.
As "wonderful" as the humanities are, they have spawned this disaster which threatens to destroy Western Civilization. They are almost EXCLUSIVELY responsible for it, and continue to be so. And they are quite proud of it, and still push it fervently.
I had a young history professor who was working with me. And then he had some sort of "fit" and wrote over 1000 pages attempting to "prove" that every single woman on the planet has a penis, or something equivalent. And anyone disagreeing with him and this incredibly "enlightened" viewpoint should basically bugger off, etc. He was furious about it and ready to fight to the death over it.
I did not know what to do. I did not even respond to the onslaught of nonsense.
In addition, this part of Substack is dedicated to Heterodox STEM. It is sort of an offshoot of the Heterodox Academy. If you want to run around naked screaming incoherently about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, do it over there with those characters.
We are focused on STEM, not worthless irrelevant nonsense that might very well send the world back to a prolonged new Dark Ages.
And calling that crap "knowledge" is quite a stretch. Take it elsewhere.
If you were literate you could actually read and understand Shakespeare without some 'modern prof' misinterpreting the bard. The "current state of evidence" about anything in the Social Sciences or Humanities is DISGUSTING (for the most part) or "demoralizing" at best!
Interesting idea, that. The English of the 18th cent. did not feel quite so literate as that and were grateful to Dr. Johnson for his help clarifying some things. For some reason I doubt very much that the lapse of another couple of centuries has made the Bard's language more self-evident. I say nothing of the fact that these are plays to be performed and their understanding in their historical context is far from self evident from reading the text (in which edition? prepared by whom? etc.).
Might I suggest that your railing against the "DISGUSTING" "Social Sciences or Humanities" is rooted in ignorance? Yes, there are problems with some contemporary currents in both, but your enthusiasm for throwing the baby with the bathwater (or rather - your apparent unawareness of the distinction between the two) suggests you aren't super well informed on this issue...
You seem to root anyone who disagrees with you "in ignorance". But who made Shakespeare's plays popular when they were first performed? Professors or "ignorant" English uneducated folks???
I know the correct answer. It wasn't "profs". I once saw a British Actor do Shakespeare as it was performed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and then do it as it was performed in the bard's time. The bard's time version was ELECTRIC. There is no doubt that "Dr. Johnson" helped people understand the language changes. But the actor was even better at explaining it.
You can "suggest" that my "railing against the humanities" is rooted in ignorance. But I got a B.Sc. in Medical Laboratory Science in 1971 and saw the environment in both science and a few humanities options. I returned to do a philosophy degree in the late 1980's and the entire edifice --- except for STEM --- was corrupt.
I had "kiddies" telling me how to regurgitate the profs non-sense to get a decent mark. My reply was to point out that I had a degree already. I wasn't at school to kiss the prof's butt. So I constantly argued and got middle-low-marks on a Stanine-9 system. Nobody dared flunk me in the philosophy department.
But when I knew I was never going to be allowed into a Master's program, I switched into a B. Ed "after degree" program and continued arguing with the lower "humanities" profs. The Education profs didn't even know the SOURCES OF THEIR ERRORS (which were the philosophy department), let alone that they were teaching --- what was that word I used --- "disgusting" sorts of errors. Those clowns, in the Ed department intentionally tried to kick me out of their faculty. They even sent nasty letters to my teaching supervisors when I did my Junior and Senior High School Practicums.
In short people were trying to CANCEL ME before my Alma Mater went "woke". But the thing about philosophy is that you may learn as much from errors as from truth, since much of obtaining the truth is entirely about learning the errors in order to refute them. So don't tell me that you are an Education professor because that'll only PUT A BIG SMILE ON MY FACE!!!
P.S. They did "kick me out", given that a Communist Chinese Grad Student gave me a "0" on a philosophy of science paper which I took as an Education Option. I think he gave me the "0" because I ridiculed him for saying that "classical philosophy began with Karl Marx". The 0 resulted in a Stanine 3 grade on the option. So they kicked me out of Education. So I went back to the actual Professor and said: You don't have to do this, but could you "weight" your Commie Grad Student's "0" as the lowest percentage (of the course) essay and then use my other essay marks for the higher grade percentages. That way I'll get a 4 on your course and they won't be able to kick me out of the faculty.
This guy was "cool" but really was the sort of "corrupt" about which I sometimes give details. He did well in his first 2 years of a Physics degree, but bombed his 3rd year. So he applied to get into a Philosophy department somewhere and only gave his marks from the first 2 years of his Physics studies and got accepted. I remember my fellow students "laughing" about that admission involving keeping quiet about year 3. My reaction was "uh oh". And I eventually tripped him up on an utterly trivial error with respect to the Semmelweiss case, which is a true non-Humean case of actual SCIENTIFIC INDUCTION. I think that is why he "sicked" his Chi Com grad student on me as an essay marker. I had embarrassed him.
But, he didn't like failures --- neither his own or mine from Education. So he said he was happy to re-weight the essays even though he didn't have to do such a favour for me. I said "Thanks". We shook hands! And the Ed guys had to "unkick" me out of their faculty.
In short and in sum, I am very well educated as well as mis-educated (later) by disgusting modern numb-skulls --- some who are less "numb" than other numbskulls.
This is very long so I’ll start with replying merely to your first point- understanding a contemporary play is very different from understanding one removed by a generation (try a sitcom from a generation before your own time for a demonstration) and the challenge is dramatically greater when encountering a truly historic text. You need experts to do the research that uncovers the linguistic shifts and context we are missing today due to the passage of time. This kind of research is precisely how an actor today can show you how Shakespeare was performed in 1600 or indeed in 1900 for that matter. Absent a Time Machine or a a 400-year old person (with exceptional memory) the only way to know this is through historical research and reconstruction. The people trained to do this kind of work are univeristy professors and the actor you saw is presumably relying on some books written by these scholars.
P.S.
For the rest of your comments: I am sorry you had lousy academic experiences. This is neither here nor there however. Having had a bad experience with a humanities or education department doesn’t prove these fields aren’t needed any more than a lousy experience with a science dept proves we don’t need science.
I commend you for making your point admirably in terms of speculative knowledge in the humanities; e.g. speculative knowledge about Shakespeare; informing practical knowledge made evident by an actor whom you presumed learned his applied knowledge from professors. But you do not know which generation of professors provided him that speculative knowledge which he practically demonstrated. I certainly suspect that it was not learned from your generation of academics because of your response to my argument against the competence of most, if not all, modern academics. Why do I suspect this? Because you are, quote
THPacis: "... sorry you had lousy academic experiences."
What happens to your argument about my criticisms of modern academics being "rooted in ignorance" with that erroneous admission above? You are "Sorry!" that I had a "bad experience". I had great experiences!!!
You really are a modern professor, now, are you not? You read something but you do not understand it. I had a great experience in all of the philosophy department, several humanities courses and in the "education" department --- PROVING IN PUBLIC THAT MODERN PROFESSORS ARE DISGUSTINGLY CLUELESS ----Like yourself!!!
Learning ERRORS is still LEARNING, you disgustingly clueless modern academic. Thank you for making my point.
Well, I wouldn't have put it in such harsh terms, but bravo. I've sometimes fantasized about winning the lottery and establishing a rigorous STEM-emphasis college. Back in reality, I was chilled when Clinton (Bill, that is--remember him?) pretty much said everyone should go to college. Everyone in his right mind knows that when the supply of something (in this case college graduates) becomes abundant, the value goes down; in other words, the salary payoff for having a degree would decrease (except in STEM). I knew right then and there that college would be increasingly dumbed down. No further comment required. Even while I was still a professor (and later, dean), I was encouraging my colleagues to think forward a bit to how higher education must change in the light of the democratization of knowledge, but the conviction that they must be gatekeepers was too strong. I have also been dismayed at how that dumbing down, which has been going on a long time now, has affected research rigor even in STEM (my discipline is in STEM). It used to be that even colleagues who were making just incremental advances in their fields could recognize breakthrough scholarship when they saw it; now, I'm not so sure. Having said that, though....I'm also retired, but I endowed a small award for graduate students at the school I retired from. Yesterday I attended the PhD defense of the first student to win that award. I was greatly heartened because his dissertation was excellent. There is hope yet. At least in STEM.
Failures of knowledge in those domains have led to big problems. One (mistaken) reaction is “don’t study them.” A better approach is to study them better. Bringing back meritocracy and battling DEI ideology will help.
Great insights, put simply. Well done. We need merit-based advancement for STEM education and encouragement for careers in the trades. We also need to bolster K-12 education for all children, including after-school creative activities.
In addition to better entrance requirements, STEM programs need testing requirements and processes that identify students who can do their own work, not just use AI. Otherwise, those degrees will (as we've already seen with Computer Science) lose value.
AI is a great tool. But it is just that, a tool. It is increasingly obvious that this current iteration of AI cannot replace humans in any significant way.
That said, I do have hopes for later refinements of AI.
Nope. The reason physics has been so richly funded is that, as perhaps best put by Cixin Liu in The Three-Body Problem, without advanced physics there is no advanced weaponry.
And without advanced weaponry, there is no survival of civilization.
Therefore, supercollider is an existential imperative. One ignores it at one's own peril.
Well, yes. But I hate to be quite so blunt about it.
The reason that certain fields get the lion's share of the funding, and always have, is because they are useful instruments of state power. Military and intelligence needs are very easy to justify to those with the checkbooks.
Other stuff, not so much.
I could go on at great lengths, even characterizing what components of STEM are useful for what particular parts of Military and Intelligence that are favored. But, that gets pretty detailed.
Part I. Theres a lot here that I want to take on. But let me start with sharing something I learned from the internet. In spring of 2024, 140 college/university campuses had protests around the Middle East conflict, and I am using the generic term deliberately, to be more inclusive of protests that were distinctly "anti-Israel" and/or "pro-Palestinian" and those that were not clearly "on a side". Of these 140, "some significantly disrupted normal operations, scheduling, and safety". From the same ChatGPT dialog, I learned that there are nearly 6000 post-secondary institutions in the US. Some of these don't have a campus, of course. But this number "comprises 1,892 public institutions, 1,754 private nonprofit institutions, and 2,270 private for-profit institutions".
My campus is one of the approximately (~6000-140) that did not have any flavor of disruptive activity. The one where I pay ungodly sums of money for my child's education/experience/degree was another of the (~6000-140). Anyone whose primary understanding of what was happening on college campuses from the news will have a very different picture than those of us who work or study at any of the several-thousands of quite, non-disrupted campuses that exist all over the US.
This is not to say what happened didn't matter. One of the 140 is my grad alma mater. I remain shocked, saddened, disgusted, grief-stricken, and deeply ambivalent about all that happened there. But my day-to-day reality as an (evil, clueless, airheaded, whatever) administrator and as a parent/ATM is very different from what I read in this article. And according to the internet/ChatGPT, my experience was the norm.
I have a lot to say about the disruptions, the violence, the casual and deliberate anti-semitism, and when I say it out loud I open myself to being called a fascist or a secret Republican or genocidal or whatever (I am none of these....). But mostly that does not happen. Not at work and not in my social circles. Because mostly, people I know are not like that.
I'm not going to defend the picture painted here of wokeness or DEI. I'm not going to tell you it is all justified or represents the morally superior position. I am also not going to tell you that it is the subject of right wing fever dreams and doesn't really exist. But I am going to say that the view from many actual campuses does not match the caricature that makes the worst cases the norm. Even on my ultra-STEM campus, we fight daily or at least weekly battles with woke bullshit, with DEI gone awry, with students who can't look a professor in the eye to advocate for themselves and prefer anonymous reports that go directly to faceless "administrators" who they then expect to rain down holy hell on the accused (and yes, usually of unsufficient wokeness but almost as often of giving a B+ where an A was "deserved"), without due process. But mostly we go about the business of promoting learning and the free exchange of ideas. And keeping the lights on. Which has now become nearly impossible.
What pisses me off with most protests at schools is that on the most part they don't understand huge aspects of the topics and freaking-life for that matter. Most are F-ing children still, because Fatherhood destroying self-centered Feminizing man-hating Vagina-focused Feelie-thinkie Divorce-Raping baby-murdering lying unJust disOrdering back-stabbing dishonorable screeching Devouring-Mother retarding delusional psycho female-ape that mentally repressing maturity and likely would still be breast-feeding and diaper changing her adult children if possible. ..
.. So, if this was a sane reality and not a feminizing vile Hellhole, then at each utterance of some Programmed "Climate Change!" "Gender Gap!" "Systematic Racism" "Open all the borders!", a Loving-Correction might be a slap on face and "Shut-up you stupid cnt!"
Similar to voting for Offices when they don't know the positions people running hold, and even what range of responsibilities any particular Office has. Voters should know when they can make a good choice for each Office, and when they are incompetent and not vote in those Offices. A Canadian poll of women voters years ago replied that she voted for JustinT because he was hansom, God have Mercy - why did we give those society workplaces poisoning Sick psychotic women the vote? Why should we limit the Vote and all power-abilities only to virtuous Service earned graduates?!
--
If I were President of a University, what would I do that would Transform Education?
1. First, create a department of Religious Apologetics with all significant Sects as sub-departments, finding well respected Theologians in each and have them suggest people able to be a goodness for the Department.
Apologetics using modern Science Theory as should have been started by Catholic Church in Galileo Galilei time. Galileo is superficially right; the Church is fully Right.
The soul and all Man's senses define the Center of the Universe, and those senses revel Divine Natures through Intellect, those Senses, Memory and other faculties that present Reality as Sun as Center of Universe as R. Descartes' stick in water presents a sudden bending of the Stick to senses.
Perhaps Simulation Theory would be more formally defined than R. Descartes 'Evil Spirit' mind-in-box thought experiment.
2. Accept and prefer applicants 14 yo and older. Define a K-8th grade course material list for each year, focus on basics subject taught in upper-class English boarding school in 1800s and Latin Language, how to critically think, how to self-direct learning, perhaps others.
Graduates will be young enough to marry and start family by early 20s, once earning enough to support a family. No more of this Sick Satanic Baby-murdering insane womanhood and motherhood and this vile feminized white Christian genocidal infantizing our [adult] children societies, you Sick horrors.
Teachers will be men that will move things along and every year or more often the struggling failing students will have returned to feminized poisonous sexual-mutilating abusive women-pedo 'devouring mother' Witches as today that suck the souls and life from their students while 'getting-off' and how some will surely suicide from the mind-raping self-loathing demonic internal torture those Witched inject.
3. Perhaps refuse to accept any Federal or State Dollar that has conditions attached with the clear message that they have the heart of a rabid dog and mind of a skin-warm-parasite and soul of a demonic pedophilic cannable, and dead in grave (if not repented) after swinging at end of rope in public over the corpses of the adults in their entire bloodline seems like a good future for nation and world.
Lots more, but that should start others thinking of how they would Serve God, Man, Nation, and Family if given this position.
Seems like most student protestors are still unfunctionally spoiled Fatherless Devouring-Mother's perpetual children. What they think they know is often spoon-fed by mind-rapers and Golem-Tool programmers that would groom them to some narrative and send them blind-folded across a 4-lane superhighway to profit from their splattering screaming death as well as the multi-vehicle pile-up.
"Well, too bad, I will need to mind-rape and program another gentile, I suppose."
--
But "Why are the Protesting!?" Can you even try to wonder?
Maybe if it was not illegal in many political regions to research, question, debate, and behave as you would to any historical event that seems incredible, maybe also if Zionists Boots were not threating or really kicking our faces, for all our lives.
Makes people wonder what 'truth' needs so much violence to protect.
“What is so compelling and intensely disturbing about the Holocaust is that it happened over days, over weeks, over months, over years of planning. Of humans planning the deaths of others, of putting in place systems, infrastructure to basically treat human beings like we would cattle, ..”
Sounds exactly like Zionists Supremacists'' States, 17 months of daily war-crimes, advancing goal, genociding gentiles again, in Gaza.
Since Zionists is mass murdering everyday openly on Television for all to burn more for Justice, Death, Death, Death, they like a recurring baby-torture powered demonic death machine from Hell gushed from the poisonous Satanic Anus on Earth, israel.
I can't imagine why people might start thinking that maybe, just maybe those 107 countries and Nazi Germany might have had some reasons hidden from us, most of those Nation's souls may be filled with Evil, Sickness, Death, and Hell, and we were too mind-raped and psychotically crippled to realize.
I guess I missed the part of my comment that would trigger this question. But I think I understand. You are making an assumption that my "shocked, saddened, disgusted...." response to "all that happened" indicates that I "had a problem" with a particular political orientation or stance. There should be nothing in my comment that suggests this. I would "have a problem with" a pro-chocolate chip, anti-oatmeal raisin protest (or vice versa, though I am generally Team Oatmeal Raisin) if it became disruptive, involved harassment and trespassing, and were endorsed by vocal groups of faculty despite the violence, harassment, disruption, and trespassing. During the unrest I was very much bothered by the coverage that talked about police or administration "shutting down pro-Palestinian protesters", because the problem was not that they were pro-Palestinian, or even that they were protesting. The problem was that on about 140 campuses, the activity became disruptive and in some cases violent. And even when physical violence was not involved, the targeting of individuals and specific groups for harassment and threats because of identity was unacceptable. So to answer your question, I would not have "had a problem" with a pro-Israel demonstration if it were not disruptive and if individuals or groups were not targeted for harassment because of identity, or if no punches were thrown, or if no property lines were crossed, or if no classes or quiet spaces were disrupted.
Funding experimental Physics leads to serendipitous discoveries that advance not only our understanding of the universe we live in, but sometimes our welfare as humans and our daily lives. Restricting all STEM funding to commercial enterprises forecloses those fortuitous discoveries and halts our progress in understanding our world.
I apologize if they are still in a somewhat crude form. They need some polishing and rewriting and editing. So they are works in progress, let's say.
Although I do mathematical physics, what I do is comparatively pretty inexpensive, for the most part. However, my colleagues who perform empirical science, in the lab and the field, require massive funding. That is just the nature of the beast, I am afraid. But, there are lots of potential spinoffs and benefits from this activity.
Also, if we are too restrictive in what we pursue, and limit it to commercial or military ends, we will miss lots of stuff. I am in favor of "blue sky" research, since you can never quite predict what will be useful, and where, and how and when.
I write this as someone principally interested in applications. However, that does not mean that I am blind to the lure of pure STEM projects of various kinds.
I'll check out your essays. My Dad took early retirement from Bell Labs as a pure research Physicist when they were letting go all of their non-commercial scientists. They were so uninterested in his projects that they let him take his whole lab with all the equipment with him, so he moved to Rutgers and continued his experiments for another 20 years. Then he got invited to be a guest researcher at Japan's national nuclear physics lab so he spent another six years out there, continuing the same research and collaborating with other scientists from all over the world. They made new findings that advanced our understanding of his corner of Physics. Not like String Theory at all ;-)
I was at Bell Labs in Area 11 in the Math Center. And I knew plenty of people in physics and computer science and other parts of Area 11. I am still in touch with some and working with them.
You are correct. We had no String Theory there (at least not as far as I am aware, anyway). I am not even sure if we had any Particle Physics. We had lots of other types of physics.
String Theory is not necessarily bad. And neither is Particle Physics or Fusion. But one has to be very careful about these areas that have, at least temporarily, become infertile. They will not necessarily remain stagnant. But Particle Physics and Fusion consume immense sums of money. And String Theory consumes some of our best and brightest talents, all without producing much, now for an extended period.
Nothing wrong with them, I agree, but they did consume a lot of resources. My point is that on a priority list for funding I wouldn't put String Theory that high up.
I don't know what Area 11 is. I'll ask my Dad if he knows. He did low temperature superconductivity.
Part II. Reading Great Books and learning stuff on the internet and saving STEM. I
I have no doubt that Ayn can read Shakespeare and learned to write without a college writing class. I can also read Shakespeare, and I also never had a college writing class. I learned to do both in high school. And in college, though I never had a writing class, I had a lot of writing assignments. I never took a Shakespeare class but read two or three plays in other classes. Reading Shakespeare is hard, and getting the most out of what you are reading is harder. It helps to be guided through it by someone who knows the value of choosing this word over that word, or that it helps to think about Romeo and Juliet in the context of expanding literacy and print culture.
We read a lot of Great Books in college, and even some in my crappy high school. I'm guessing I am five to ten years younger than Ayn. I was planning to retire in five years but if my 401K does not recover I will be fighting the youngs for that job at Starbucks. But anyway, even though I was a STEM major, I had access to the humanities and social sciences back before, maybe just before, they were transformed into postmodernism and then wokeness, as you all seem to think they are now.
We don't need to get rid of the humanities and social sciences. We need to rescue them.
The humanities and the social sciences are about ideas that are difficult and not accessible to most of us without passionate, well-read experts to guide us. And I don't think the kids today have this. I'm still reeling from that article in Atlantic about how faculty at elite universities are dumbfounded to learn that their overachieving freshman have never read a whole book.
Ten years ago I got reported for a microaggression because a student didn't like an idea in a book that was required for a course. It wasn't my course, but I was the administrator, and therefore the embodiment of "the school", and we "forced" the student to read a book that had an idea she didn't like and she missed the whole point of the book because she thought that "the school" (me) "believed" that idea, because I guess she had never read a whole book before, or never was required to read something that was NOT intended to be a whole-ass endorsement of "the school's" "beliefs".
I had never even heard of a microaggression until I was reported for one. Just like that grad student had never read a whole book.
In my STEM major, only twice did I have to write anything like a sustained argument. But at my liberal arts college I had to read and to write a lot in History, English, Poli Sci, Sociology, Religion, Western Civ, etc. When I got to grad school, I learned how to write for science-grant proposals, how to organize a primary report, how to write a review, not by having classes in this, but by doing it. And I could learn scientific writing by doing it because I already knew how to write.
I'm shocked at the huge variability in my grad students' writing abilities. Some are as good as I was, some are OK with room to grow. Some have no idea how to structure a paragraph or how to organize evidence to support a hypothesis, or that it is not a sentence if it does not have a verb. And these are very smart people with a solid STEM background.
We won't save STEM if the scientists never learned to read or write or encounter difficult ideas or consider other perspectives or not just perform facts.
Of course we need to rescue basic literacy and numeracy. Obviously.
However, I am reminded of a great aphorism someone related to me, based on a paraphrasing of a flight attendant's instructions;
"Put on your own mask first".
If we do not save ourselves FIRST, all the rest of the twaddle and worthless claptrap of marginal utility is irrelevant. We will not be in a position to do ANYTHING.
And these buffoons who are chock-a-block throughout academia are like anchors that will drag us all to the bottom. As well as the administrative leeches.
This essay is a bit brutal, but perhaps it is necessary. I abandoned academia years ago, in sorrow, because of some of these very issues. Things have only become worse in the last few decades, but they were plenty bad before.
Research and development in hard STEM is critical to our survival as a species, and for the survival of Western culture. There is way too much fluff that has accumulated, from leeching administrators and assorted pseudoscience pretenders and other nonsense.
We know how to do STEM R&D. We have done it before. And we are losing our edge.
The defunding we are currently observing was bound to happen sooner or later. I personally am surprised it took this long.
This moment is a wake-up call, that should not be ignored. STEM has to be reformed, drastically. We must return to what worked in the past.
As I have hinted, and communicated to Dorian in private, I have been working on reform efforts. Our underpinnings in STEM are rotten. The system has been decaying for a long time.
We can do better. And we must do better. I intend to make an attempt to improve things.
"Big Science is of questionable utility and can be safely defunded. Like String Theory, high-energy supercolliders, and almost all of the so-called social sciences. "
Those physics studies are very valuable. The social sciences not so much.
Some of the tools that physics spins off, even in these sort of temporarily stagnant areas, are immensely valuable. Should we spend that much money on them? That is another issue, I think.
The reason physics is so richly funded is that it has, historically, almost invariably created tools that are of value in other places in STEM.
No they are not. Most of them are money pits eructating mass media brain candy for those who swoon at the sound of the phonemes "quantum." Most of them are fantasies written in the key of Math that bear zero relationship to anything observable or demonstrable--and at odds with what can be explained through much simpler concepts. Most of them are the mutually sustained grift of a cartel of cultists.
String theory is a massive grift that fails basic tests of falsifiability. Supercolliders are part of that grift. Physics would actually do better if you took nearly all the money out of it.
But I am still doing stuff; potentially REALLY important stuff. So I would rather not have my identity in real work connected with my somewhat controversial opinions and activism here.
I have been on the internet since the mid-70s, always anonymous, since my work is critical to the survival of Western Civilization itself. All my colleagues agree with me on that topic.
You probably think that claim is an exaggeration, but there are some of us in STEM who really are protecting this sorry mess we have created. At one of my positions, we all had to call in every 24 hours to a central location so they knew we had not yet been kidnapped. And that is INSIDE the US.
I know lots of people hate anonymity. For some of us, it is critical, even required.
So, I apologize if anonymity offends you. But some of us are doing the heavy lifting. And we are in STEM.
Anyone who is "offended by" anonymity isn't worth talking to, never mind worrying about their opinion, because they either live in denial of the culture (and other) wars, or know they exist and want to see their enemies destroyed.
If I were still in my academic fields of the '80s to '00s there's no way I'd feel secure today, offering open opinions as I did then. Even then, I had the experience of being followed, surveilled, attacked, etc., by...those who didn't want to see my and my colleagues' work come to fruition. And citizens we worked with--they called on us, we answered--were similarly attacked..
A lot of academia is ego, confetti, and unicorn flatulence, but there are also terrains where real battles are being fought, with real consequences.
Are you one of those Boomers who thinks that it's only war if it looks like something directed a la Steven Spielberg--LSTs with the fashionably multicultural platoon making a landing/beachhead into machine gun fire, etc?
I know retired academics who've had their municipal and county deep state unleashed on them for publishing dissenting views on mandatory Pharma stabs, forced mask policy, lockdowns, etc. The neighbor who whispers to the assessor that the home/land owner didn't pull a permit for self-contracted work in an outbuilding. The former colleague who doxxes the writer to a bunch of troughsnout purplehairs with spray and gas cans.
Bailey, J. M. (2003). The man who would be queen. Washington DC: The Joseph Henry Press.
Chivers, M. C., Rieger, G., Latty, E. A., & Bailey, J. M. (2004). A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal. Psychological Science, 15, 736-744.
Safron, A., Barch, B., Bailey, J. M., Gitelman, D. R., Parrish, T. B., & Reber, P. J. (2007). Neural correlates of sexual arousal in homosexual and heterosexual men. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 237-248.
Rieger, G., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., Gygax, L., & Bailey J. M. (2008). Sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity: Evidence from home videos. Developmental Psychology, 44, 46-58.
Bailey, J. M. (2009). What is sexual orientation and do women have one? In D. A. Hope (Ed.). The 54th Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Contemporary perspectives on gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities, 54, 43-63.
Have you ever considered that YOU and your discipline, as currently practiced, are part of the problem? Not even really part of STEM at all, in a lot of ways.
Sure the stuff you want to study is difficult. And it is important, at least potentially. But the people currently "studying" it are probably NOT who should be undertaking this task. And the topics pursued...well, I am underwhelmed, let's say. And I am not the only one, by any means.
I even had an essay prepared about this topic for Heterodox STEM. But because of the perceived status of some of these "fringe areas", it was decided that it was better not to publish it.
If I were President of a University, what would I do that would Transform Education?
1. First, create a department of Religious Apologetics with all significant Sects as sub-departments, finding well respected Theologians in each and have them suggest people able to be a goodness for the Department.
Apologetics using modern Science Theory as should have been started by Catholic Church in Galileo Galilei time. Galileo is superficially right; the Church is fully Right.
The soul and all Man's senses define the Center of the Universe, and those senses revel Divine Natures through Intellect, those Senses, Memory and other faculties that present Reality as Sun as Center of Universe as R. Descartes' stick in water presents a sudden bending of the Stick to senses.
Perhaps Simulation Theory would be more formally defined than R. Descartes 'Evil Spirit' mind-in-box thought experiment.
2. Accept and prefer applicants 14 yo and older. Define a K-8th grade course material list for each year, focus on basics subject taught in upper-class English boarding school in 1800s and Latin Language, how to critically think, how to self-direct learning, perhaps others.
Graduates will be young enough to marry and start family by early 20s, once earning enough to support a family. No more of this Sick Satanic Baby-murdering insane womanhood and motherhood and this vile feminized white Christian genocidal infantizing our [adult] children societies, you Sick horrors.
Teachers will be men that will move things along and every year or more often the struggling failing students will have returned to feminized poisonous sexual-mutilating abusive women-pedo 'devouring mother' Witches as today that suck the souls and life from their students while 'getting-off' and how some will surely suicide from the mind-raping self-loathing demonic internal torture those Witched inject.
3. Perhaps refuse to accept any Federal or State Dollar that has conditions attached with the clear message that they have the heart of a rabid dog and mind of a skin-warm-parasite and soul of a demonic pedophilic cannable, and dead in grave (if not repented) after swinging at end of rope in public over the corpses of the adults in their entire bloodline seems like a good future for nation and world.
Lots more, but that should start others thinking of how they would Serve God, Man, Nation, and Family if given this position.
Harsh but well justified. And yes -- we must save STEM from the lunatics.
Justified ? Rather embarrassingly ignorant I should think. “You can learn Shakespeare off the internet”? Really? And where does “internet’s” knowledge come from, to the extent it’s actual knowledge and not total bs? Ultimately it comes from experts who are trained in university humanities departments. The author’s argument is the equivalent of saying we don’t need engineers because we can just buy an iPhone. Most people don’t need to be engineers to enjoy tech but we need to have engineers around and professors to train them. Historians and literary scholars are no different. You can’t in fact discover much new and *correct* things or even assess the accuracy of claims about the current state of evidence on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar nor about historical Julius Caesar without experts trained in university English history and classics depts.
Actually - you just read Shakespeare - and if you do that, you are way ahead of most literature students because they do NOT read Shakespeare now; or anything much at all. I'm a sociology professor of 30 years. I would defund pretty much all social science tomorrow. Students come out of most social science degrees knowing less than when they went in....because the ideology they are taught makes them blind and unable even to ask good questions.
Really?
How else? Do you think our knowledge grows on trees? That hasn't been the case for quite some time...
As "wonderful" as the humanities are, they have spawned this disaster which threatens to destroy Western Civilization. They are almost EXCLUSIVELY responsible for it, and continue to be so. And they are quite proud of it, and still push it fervently.
I had a young history professor who was working with me. And then he had some sort of "fit" and wrote over 1000 pages attempting to "prove" that every single woman on the planet has a penis, or something equivalent. And anyone disagreeing with him and this incredibly "enlightened" viewpoint should basically bugger off, etc. He was furious about it and ready to fight to the death over it.
I did not know what to do. I did not even respond to the onslaught of nonsense.
In addition, this part of Substack is dedicated to Heterodox STEM. It is sort of an offshoot of the Heterodox Academy. If you want to run around naked screaming incoherently about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, do it over there with those characters.
We are focused on STEM, not worthless irrelevant nonsense that might very well send the world back to a prolonged new Dark Ages.
And calling that crap "knowledge" is quite a stretch. Take it elsewhere.
If you were literate you could actually read and understand Shakespeare without some 'modern prof' misinterpreting the bard. The "current state of evidence" about anything in the Social Sciences or Humanities is DISGUSTING (for the most part) or "demoralizing" at best!
Interesting idea, that. The English of the 18th cent. did not feel quite so literate as that and were grateful to Dr. Johnson for his help clarifying some things. For some reason I doubt very much that the lapse of another couple of centuries has made the Bard's language more self-evident. I say nothing of the fact that these are plays to be performed and their understanding in their historical context is far from self evident from reading the text (in which edition? prepared by whom? etc.).
Might I suggest that your railing against the "DISGUSTING" "Social Sciences or Humanities" is rooted in ignorance? Yes, there are problems with some contemporary currents in both, but your enthusiasm for throwing the baby with the bathwater (or rather - your apparent unawareness of the distinction between the two) suggests you aren't super well informed on this issue...
You seem to root anyone who disagrees with you "in ignorance". But who made Shakespeare's plays popular when they were first performed? Professors or "ignorant" English uneducated folks???
I know the correct answer. It wasn't "profs". I once saw a British Actor do Shakespeare as it was performed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and then do it as it was performed in the bard's time. The bard's time version was ELECTRIC. There is no doubt that "Dr. Johnson" helped people understand the language changes. But the actor was even better at explaining it.
You can "suggest" that my "railing against the humanities" is rooted in ignorance. But I got a B.Sc. in Medical Laboratory Science in 1971 and saw the environment in both science and a few humanities options. I returned to do a philosophy degree in the late 1980's and the entire edifice --- except for STEM --- was corrupt.
I had "kiddies" telling me how to regurgitate the profs non-sense to get a decent mark. My reply was to point out that I had a degree already. I wasn't at school to kiss the prof's butt. So I constantly argued and got middle-low-marks on a Stanine-9 system. Nobody dared flunk me in the philosophy department.
But when I knew I was never going to be allowed into a Master's program, I switched into a B. Ed "after degree" program and continued arguing with the lower "humanities" profs. The Education profs didn't even know the SOURCES OF THEIR ERRORS (which were the philosophy department), let alone that they were teaching --- what was that word I used --- "disgusting" sorts of errors. Those clowns, in the Ed department intentionally tried to kick me out of their faculty. They even sent nasty letters to my teaching supervisors when I did my Junior and Senior High School Practicums.
In short people were trying to CANCEL ME before my Alma Mater went "woke". But the thing about philosophy is that you may learn as much from errors as from truth, since much of obtaining the truth is entirely about learning the errors in order to refute them. So don't tell me that you are an Education professor because that'll only PUT A BIG SMILE ON MY FACE!!!
P.S. They did "kick me out", given that a Communist Chinese Grad Student gave me a "0" on a philosophy of science paper which I took as an Education Option. I think he gave me the "0" because I ridiculed him for saying that "classical philosophy began with Karl Marx". The 0 resulted in a Stanine 3 grade on the option. So they kicked me out of Education. So I went back to the actual Professor and said: You don't have to do this, but could you "weight" your Commie Grad Student's "0" as the lowest percentage (of the course) essay and then use my other essay marks for the higher grade percentages. That way I'll get a 4 on your course and they won't be able to kick me out of the faculty.
This guy was "cool" but really was the sort of "corrupt" about which I sometimes give details. He did well in his first 2 years of a Physics degree, but bombed his 3rd year. So he applied to get into a Philosophy department somewhere and only gave his marks from the first 2 years of his Physics studies and got accepted. I remember my fellow students "laughing" about that admission involving keeping quiet about year 3. My reaction was "uh oh". And I eventually tripped him up on an utterly trivial error with respect to the Semmelweiss case, which is a true non-Humean case of actual SCIENTIFIC INDUCTION. I think that is why he "sicked" his Chi Com grad student on me as an essay marker. I had embarrassed him.
But, he didn't like failures --- neither his own or mine from Education. So he said he was happy to re-weight the essays even though he didn't have to do such a favour for me. I said "Thanks". We shook hands! And the Ed guys had to "unkick" me out of their faculty.
In short and in sum, I am very well educated as well as mis-educated (later) by disgusting modern numb-skulls --- some who are less "numb" than other numbskulls.
Kevin
This is very long so I’ll start with replying merely to your first point- understanding a contemporary play is very different from understanding one removed by a generation (try a sitcom from a generation before your own time for a demonstration) and the challenge is dramatically greater when encountering a truly historic text. You need experts to do the research that uncovers the linguistic shifts and context we are missing today due to the passage of time. This kind of research is precisely how an actor today can show you how Shakespeare was performed in 1600 or indeed in 1900 for that matter. Absent a Time Machine or a a 400-year old person (with exceptional memory) the only way to know this is through historical research and reconstruction. The people trained to do this kind of work are univeristy professors and the actor you saw is presumably relying on some books written by these scholars.
P.S.
For the rest of your comments: I am sorry you had lousy academic experiences. This is neither here nor there however. Having had a bad experience with a humanities or education department doesn’t prove these fields aren’t needed any more than a lousy experience with a science dept proves we don’t need science.
I commend you for making your point admirably in terms of speculative knowledge in the humanities; e.g. speculative knowledge about Shakespeare; informing practical knowledge made evident by an actor whom you presumed learned his applied knowledge from professors. But you do not know which generation of professors provided him that speculative knowledge which he practically demonstrated. I certainly suspect that it was not learned from your generation of academics because of your response to my argument against the competence of most, if not all, modern academics. Why do I suspect this? Because you are, quote
THPacis: "... sorry you had lousy academic experiences."
What happens to your argument about my criticisms of modern academics being "rooted in ignorance" with that erroneous admission above? You are "Sorry!" that I had a "bad experience". I had great experiences!!!
You really are a modern professor, now, are you not? You read something but you do not understand it. I had a great experience in all of the philosophy department, several humanities courses and in the "education" department --- PROVING IN PUBLIC THAT MODERN PROFESSORS ARE DISGUSTINGLY CLUELESS ----Like yourself!!!
Learning ERRORS is still LEARNING, you disgustingly clueless modern academic. Thank you for making my point.
Kevin James "Joseph" Byrne
Well, I wouldn't have put it in such harsh terms, but bravo. I've sometimes fantasized about winning the lottery and establishing a rigorous STEM-emphasis college. Back in reality, I was chilled when Clinton (Bill, that is--remember him?) pretty much said everyone should go to college. Everyone in his right mind knows that when the supply of something (in this case college graduates) becomes abundant, the value goes down; in other words, the salary payoff for having a degree would decrease (except in STEM). I knew right then and there that college would be increasingly dumbed down. No further comment required. Even while I was still a professor (and later, dean), I was encouraging my colleagues to think forward a bit to how higher education must change in the light of the democratization of knowledge, but the conviction that they must be gatekeepers was too strong. I have also been dismayed at how that dumbing down, which has been going on a long time now, has affected research rigor even in STEM (my discipline is in STEM). It used to be that even colleagues who were making just incremental advances in their fields could recognize breakthrough scholarship when they saw it; now, I'm not so sure. Having said that, though....I'm also retired, but I endowed a small award for graduate students at the school I retired from. Yesterday I attended the PhD defense of the first student to win that award. I was greatly heartened because his dissertation was excellent. There is hope yet. At least in STEM.
Failures of knowledge in those domains have led to big problems. One (mistaken) reaction is “don’t study them.” A better approach is to study them better. Bringing back meritocracy and battling DEI ideology will help.
Great insights, put simply. Well done. We need merit-based advancement for STEM education and encouragement for careers in the trades. We also need to bolster K-12 education for all children, including after-school creative activities.
Well said...though I do like German opera...gravel barking and all!
Do you like the barking and gravel of Immanuel Kant, as well? (Just kidding.)
In addition to better entrance requirements, STEM programs need testing requirements and processes that identify students who can do their own work, not just use AI. Otherwise, those degrees will (as we've already seen with Computer Science) lose value.
AI is a great tool. But it is just that, a tool. It is increasingly obvious that this current iteration of AI cannot replace humans in any significant way.
That said, I do have hopes for later refinements of AI.
Nope. The reason physics has been so richly funded is that, as perhaps best put by Cixin Liu in The Three-Body Problem, without advanced physics there is no advanced weaponry.
And without advanced weaponry, there is no survival of civilization.
Therefore, supercollider is an existential imperative. One ignores it at one's own peril.
How are more advanced weapons going to "save" civilization, with modern noodle headed politicians in charge of such weapons???
Well, yes. But I hate to be quite so blunt about it.
The reason that certain fields get the lion's share of the funding, and always have, is because they are useful instruments of state power. Military and intelligence needs are very easy to justify to those with the checkbooks.
Other stuff, not so much.
I could go on at great lengths, even characterizing what components of STEM are useful for what particular parts of Military and Intelligence that are favored. But, that gets pretty detailed.
Part I. Theres a lot here that I want to take on. But let me start with sharing something I learned from the internet. In spring of 2024, 140 college/university campuses had protests around the Middle East conflict, and I am using the generic term deliberately, to be more inclusive of protests that were distinctly "anti-Israel" and/or "pro-Palestinian" and those that were not clearly "on a side". Of these 140, "some significantly disrupted normal operations, scheduling, and safety". From the same ChatGPT dialog, I learned that there are nearly 6000 post-secondary institutions in the US. Some of these don't have a campus, of course. But this number "comprises 1,892 public institutions, 1,754 private nonprofit institutions, and 2,270 private for-profit institutions".
My campus is one of the approximately (~6000-140) that did not have any flavor of disruptive activity. The one where I pay ungodly sums of money for my child's education/experience/degree was another of the (~6000-140). Anyone whose primary understanding of what was happening on college campuses from the news will have a very different picture than those of us who work or study at any of the several-thousands of quite, non-disrupted campuses that exist all over the US.
This is not to say what happened didn't matter. One of the 140 is my grad alma mater. I remain shocked, saddened, disgusted, grief-stricken, and deeply ambivalent about all that happened there. But my day-to-day reality as an (evil, clueless, airheaded, whatever) administrator and as a parent/ATM is very different from what I read in this article. And according to the internet/ChatGPT, my experience was the norm.
I have a lot to say about the disruptions, the violence, the casual and deliberate anti-semitism, and when I say it out loud I open myself to being called a fascist or a secret Republican or genocidal or whatever (I am none of these....). But mostly that does not happen. Not at work and not in my social circles. Because mostly, people I know are not like that.
I'm not going to defend the picture painted here of wokeness or DEI. I'm not going to tell you it is all justified or represents the morally superior position. I am also not going to tell you that it is the subject of right wing fever dreams and doesn't really exist. But I am going to say that the view from many actual campuses does not match the caricature that makes the worst cases the norm. Even on my ultra-STEM campus, we fight daily or at least weekly battles with woke bullshit, with DEI gone awry, with students who can't look a professor in the eye to advocate for themselves and prefer anonymous reports that go directly to faceless "administrators" who they then expect to rain down holy hell on the accused (and yes, usually of unsufficient wokeness but almost as often of giving a B+ where an A was "deserved"), without due process. But mostly we go about the business of promoting learning and the free exchange of ideas. And keeping the lights on. Which has now become nearly impossible.
More to come.
What pisses me off with most protests at schools is that on the most part they don't understand huge aspects of the topics and freaking-life for that matter. Most are F-ing children still, because Fatherhood destroying self-centered Feminizing man-hating Vagina-focused Feelie-thinkie Divorce-Raping baby-murdering lying unJust disOrdering back-stabbing dishonorable screeching Devouring-Mother retarding delusional psycho female-ape that mentally repressing maturity and likely would still be breast-feeding and diaper changing her adult children if possible. ..
.. So, if this was a sane reality and not a feminizing vile Hellhole, then at each utterance of some Programmed "Climate Change!" "Gender Gap!" "Systematic Racism" "Open all the borders!", a Loving-Correction might be a slap on face and "Shut-up you stupid cnt!"
Similar to voting for Offices when they don't know the positions people running hold, and even what range of responsibilities any particular Office has. Voters should know when they can make a good choice for each Office, and when they are incompetent and not vote in those Offices. A Canadian poll of women voters years ago replied that she voted for JustinT because he was hansom, God have Mercy - why did we give those society workplaces poisoning Sick psychotic women the vote? Why should we limit the Vote and all power-abilities only to virtuous Service earned graduates?!
--
If I were President of a University, what would I do that would Transform Education?
1. First, create a department of Religious Apologetics with all significant Sects as sub-departments, finding well respected Theologians in each and have them suggest people able to be a goodness for the Department.
Apologetics using modern Science Theory as should have been started by Catholic Church in Galileo Galilei time. Galileo is superficially right; the Church is fully Right.
The soul and all Man's senses define the Center of the Universe, and those senses revel Divine Natures through Intellect, those Senses, Memory and other faculties that present Reality as Sun as Center of Universe as R. Descartes' stick in water presents a sudden bending of the Stick to senses.
Perhaps Simulation Theory would be more formally defined than R. Descartes 'Evil Spirit' mind-in-box thought experiment.
2. Accept and prefer applicants 14 yo and older. Define a K-8th grade course material list for each year, focus on basics subject taught in upper-class English boarding school in 1800s and Latin Language, how to critically think, how to self-direct learning, perhaps others.
Graduates will be young enough to marry and start family by early 20s, once earning enough to support a family. No more of this Sick Satanic Baby-murdering insane womanhood and motherhood and this vile feminized white Christian genocidal infantizing our [adult] children societies, you Sick horrors.
Teachers will be men that will move things along and every year or more often the struggling failing students will have returned to feminized poisonous sexual-mutilating abusive women-pedo 'devouring mother' Witches as today that suck the souls and life from their students while 'getting-off' and how some will surely suicide from the mind-raping self-loathing demonic internal torture those Witched inject.
3. Perhaps refuse to accept any Federal or State Dollar that has conditions attached with the clear message that they have the heart of a rabid dog and mind of a skin-warm-parasite and soul of a demonic pedophilic cannable, and dead in grave (if not repented) after swinging at end of rope in public over the corpses of the adults in their entire bloodline seems like a good future for nation and world.
Lots more, but that should start others thinking of how they would Serve God, Man, Nation, and Family if given this position.
Are you ok? Is there someone I can call to help you?
Would you have had a problem with pro-Israel demonstrations?
Seems like most student protestors are still unfunctionally spoiled Fatherless Devouring-Mother's perpetual children. What they think they know is often spoon-fed by mind-rapers and Golem-Tool programmers that would groom them to some narrative and send them blind-folded across a 4-lane superhighway to profit from their splattering screaming death as well as the multi-vehicle pile-up.
"Well, too bad, I will need to mind-rape and program another gentile, I suppose."
--
But "Why are the Protesting!?" Can you even try to wonder?
Maybe if it was not illegal in many political regions to research, question, debate, and behave as you would to any historical event that seems incredible, maybe also if Zionists Boots were not threating or really kicking our faces, for all our lives.
Makes people wonder what 'truth' needs so much violence to protect.
“What is so compelling and intensely disturbing about the Holocaust is that it happened over days, over weeks, over months, over years of planning. Of humans planning the deaths of others, of putting in place systems, infrastructure to basically treat human beings like we would cattle, ..”
Sounds exactly like Zionists Supremacists'' States, 17 months of daily war-crimes, advancing goal, genociding gentiles again, in Gaza.
Since Zionists is mass murdering everyday openly on Television for all to burn more for Justice, Death, Death, Death, they like a recurring baby-torture powered demonic death machine from Hell gushed from the poisonous Satanic Anus on Earth, israel.
I can't imagine why people might start thinking that maybe, just maybe those 107 countries and Nazi Germany might have had some reasons hidden from us, most of those Nation's souls may be filled with Evil, Sickness, Death, and Hell, and we were too mind-raped and psychotically crippled to realize.
Maybe?
I guess I missed the part of my comment that would trigger this question. But I think I understand. You are making an assumption that my "shocked, saddened, disgusted...." response to "all that happened" indicates that I "had a problem" with a particular political orientation or stance. There should be nothing in my comment that suggests this. I would "have a problem with" a pro-chocolate chip, anti-oatmeal raisin protest (or vice versa, though I am generally Team Oatmeal Raisin) if it became disruptive, involved harassment and trespassing, and were endorsed by vocal groups of faculty despite the violence, harassment, disruption, and trespassing. During the unrest I was very much bothered by the coverage that talked about police or administration "shutting down pro-Palestinian protesters", because the problem was not that they were pro-Palestinian, or even that they were protesting. The problem was that on about 140 campuses, the activity became disruptive and in some cases violent. And even when physical violence was not involved, the targeting of individuals and specific groups for harassment and threats because of identity was unacceptable. So to answer your question, I would not have "had a problem" with a pro-Israel demonstration if it were not disruptive and if individuals or groups were not targeted for harassment because of identity, or if no punches were thrown, or if no property lines were crossed, or if no classes or quiet spaces were disrupted.
Years ago, Smith College was proud of its engineering program—now it’s proud of its social engineering program:
https://open.substack.com/pub/ma4women/p/letter-from-a-smith-college-alumna
Funding experimental Physics leads to serendipitous discoveries that advance not only our understanding of the universe we live in, but sometimes our welfare as humans and our daily lives. Restricting all STEM funding to commercial enterprises forecloses those fortuitous discoveries and halts our progress in understanding our world.
Very true. I am writing essays with this very theme. I have posted preliminary versions under my username Octaveoctave on Thinkspot at:
https://thinkspot.com/forum_type/octaveoctave/author/mJt1YJm/author/mJt1YJm?view_as=yes
I apologize if they are still in a somewhat crude form. They need some polishing and rewriting and editing. So they are works in progress, let's say.
Although I do mathematical physics, what I do is comparatively pretty inexpensive, for the most part. However, my colleagues who perform empirical science, in the lab and the field, require massive funding. That is just the nature of the beast, I am afraid. But, there are lots of potential spinoffs and benefits from this activity.
Also, if we are too restrictive in what we pursue, and limit it to commercial or military ends, we will miss lots of stuff. I am in favor of "blue sky" research, since you can never quite predict what will be useful, and where, and how and when.
I write this as someone principally interested in applications. However, that does not mean that I am blind to the lure of pure STEM projects of various kinds.
I'll check out your essays. My Dad took early retirement from Bell Labs as a pure research Physicist when they were letting go all of their non-commercial scientists. They were so uninterested in his projects that they let him take his whole lab with all the equipment with him, so he moved to Rutgers and continued his experiments for another 20 years. Then he got invited to be a guest researcher at Japan's national nuclear physics lab so he spent another six years out there, continuing the same research and collaborating with other scientists from all over the world. They made new findings that advanced our understanding of his corner of Physics. Not like String Theory at all ;-)
I was at Bell Labs in Area 11 in the Math Center. And I knew plenty of people in physics and computer science and other parts of Area 11. I am still in touch with some and working with them.
You are correct. We had no String Theory there (at least not as far as I am aware, anyway). I am not even sure if we had any Particle Physics. We had lots of other types of physics.
String Theory is not necessarily bad. And neither is Particle Physics or Fusion. But one has to be very careful about these areas that have, at least temporarily, become infertile. They will not necessarily remain stagnant. But Particle Physics and Fusion consume immense sums of money. And String Theory consumes some of our best and brightest talents, all without producing much, now for an extended period.
Nothing wrong with them, I agree, but they did consume a lot of resources. My point is that on a priority list for funding I wouldn't put String Theory that high up.
I don't know what Area 11 is. I'll ask my Dad if he knows. He did low temperature superconductivity.
I guarantee that your Dad knows Area 11. He probably was in 111. I was in 112.
Part II. Reading Great Books and learning stuff on the internet and saving STEM. I
I have no doubt that Ayn can read Shakespeare and learned to write without a college writing class. I can also read Shakespeare, and I also never had a college writing class. I learned to do both in high school. And in college, though I never had a writing class, I had a lot of writing assignments. I never took a Shakespeare class but read two or three plays in other classes. Reading Shakespeare is hard, and getting the most out of what you are reading is harder. It helps to be guided through it by someone who knows the value of choosing this word over that word, or that it helps to think about Romeo and Juliet in the context of expanding literacy and print culture.
We read a lot of Great Books in college, and even some in my crappy high school. I'm guessing I am five to ten years younger than Ayn. I was planning to retire in five years but if my 401K does not recover I will be fighting the youngs for that job at Starbucks. But anyway, even though I was a STEM major, I had access to the humanities and social sciences back before, maybe just before, they were transformed into postmodernism and then wokeness, as you all seem to think they are now.
We don't need to get rid of the humanities and social sciences. We need to rescue them.
The humanities and the social sciences are about ideas that are difficult and not accessible to most of us without passionate, well-read experts to guide us. And I don't think the kids today have this. I'm still reeling from that article in Atlantic about how faculty at elite universities are dumbfounded to learn that their overachieving freshman have never read a whole book.
Ten years ago I got reported for a microaggression because a student didn't like an idea in a book that was required for a course. It wasn't my course, but I was the administrator, and therefore the embodiment of "the school", and we "forced" the student to read a book that had an idea she didn't like and she missed the whole point of the book because she thought that "the school" (me) "believed" that idea, because I guess she had never read a whole book before, or never was required to read something that was NOT intended to be a whole-ass endorsement of "the school's" "beliefs".
I had never even heard of a microaggression until I was reported for one. Just like that grad student had never read a whole book.
In my STEM major, only twice did I have to write anything like a sustained argument. But at my liberal arts college I had to read and to write a lot in History, English, Poli Sci, Sociology, Religion, Western Civ, etc. When I got to grad school, I learned how to write for science-grant proposals, how to organize a primary report, how to write a review, not by having classes in this, but by doing it. And I could learn scientific writing by doing it because I already knew how to write.
I'm shocked at the huge variability in my grad students' writing abilities. Some are as good as I was, some are OK with room to grow. Some have no idea how to structure a paragraph or how to organize evidence to support a hypothesis, or that it is not a sentence if it does not have a verb. And these are very smart people with a solid STEM background.
We won't save STEM if the scientists never learned to read or write or encounter difficult ideas or consider other perspectives or not just perform facts.
Of course we need to rescue basic literacy and numeracy. Obviously.
However, I am reminded of a great aphorism someone related to me, based on a paraphrasing of a flight attendant's instructions;
"Put on your own mask first".
If we do not save ourselves FIRST, all the rest of the twaddle and worthless claptrap of marginal utility is irrelevant. We will not be in a position to do ANYTHING.
And these buffoons who are chock-a-block throughout academia are like anchors that will drag us all to the bottom. As well as the administrative leeches.
This essay is a bit brutal, but perhaps it is necessary. I abandoned academia years ago, in sorrow, because of some of these very issues. Things have only become worse in the last few decades, but they were plenty bad before.
Research and development in hard STEM is critical to our survival as a species, and for the survival of Western culture. There is way too much fluff that has accumulated, from leeching administrators and assorted pseudoscience pretenders and other nonsense.
We know how to do STEM R&D. We have done it before. And we are losing our edge.
The defunding we are currently observing was bound to happen sooner or later. I personally am surprised it took this long.
This moment is a wake-up call, that should not be ignored. STEM has to be reformed, drastically. We must return to what worked in the past.
As I have hinted, and communicated to Dorian in private, I have been working on reform efforts. Our underpinnings in STEM are rotten. The system has been decaying for a long time.
We can do better. And we must do better. I intend to make an attempt to improve things.
AMEN!
:-D
"Big Science is of questionable utility and can be safely defunded. Like String Theory, high-energy supercolliders, and almost all of the so-called social sciences. "
Those physics studies are very valuable. The social sciences not so much.
Some of the tools that physics spins off, even in these sort of temporarily stagnant areas, are immensely valuable. Should we spend that much money on them? That is another issue, I think.
The reason physics is so richly funded is that it has, historically, almost invariably created tools that are of value in other places in STEM.
> Those physics studies are very valuable.
No they are not. Most of them are money pits eructating mass media brain candy for those who swoon at the sound of the phonemes "quantum." Most of them are fantasies written in the key of Math that bear zero relationship to anything observable or demonstrable--and at odds with what can be explained through much simpler concepts. Most of them are the mutually sustained grift of a cartel of cultists.
String theory is a massive grift that fails basic tests of falsifiability. Supercolliders are part of that grift. Physics would actually do better if you took nearly all the money out of it.
Yes, and no.
There are some issues with some parts of physics, to be sure. Field Theory is one of them. Particle physics also has problems.
Lots of other parts of physics are thriving. So perhaps some re-apportionment is called for.
I have my own views about what I think are potentially fruitful investments in STEM. But no one listens to me, basically.
So, I have to try to change that.
Why anonymous if retired? Also, we need unfettered and competent social/behavioral science studying race, gender, etc.
Ayn has offspring in business .
I am anonymous. And semi-retired.
But I am still doing stuff; potentially REALLY important stuff. So I would rather not have my identity in real work connected with my somewhat controversial opinions and activism here.
I have been on the internet since the mid-70s, always anonymous, since my work is critical to the survival of Western Civilization itself. All my colleagues agree with me on that topic.
You probably think that claim is an exaggeration, but there are some of us in STEM who really are protecting this sorry mess we have created. At one of my positions, we all had to call in every 24 hours to a central location so they knew we had not yet been kidnapped. And that is INSIDE the US.
I know lots of people hate anonymity. For some of us, it is critical, even required.
So, I apologize if anonymity offends you. But some of us are doing the heavy lifting. And we are in STEM.
You shouldn't apologize.
Anyone who is "offended by" anonymity isn't worth talking to, never mind worrying about their opinion, because they either live in denial of the culture (and other) wars, or know they exist and want to see their enemies destroyed.
If I were still in my academic fields of the '80s to '00s there's no way I'd feel secure today, offering open opinions as I did then. Even then, I had the experience of being followed, surveilled, attacked, etc., by...those who didn't want to see my and my colleagues' work come to fruition. And citizens we worked with--they called on us, we answered--were similarly attacked..
A lot of academia is ego, confetti, and unicorn flatulence, but there are also terrains where real battles are being fought, with real consequences.
Why?
> Why anonymous if retired?
Are you one of those Boomers who thinks that it's only war if it looks like something directed a la Steven Spielberg--LSTs with the fashionably multicultural platoon making a landing/beachhead into machine gun fire, etc?
I know retired academics who've had their municipal and county deep state unleashed on them for publishing dissenting views on mandatory Pharma stabs, forced mask policy, lockdowns, etc. The neighbor who whispers to the assessor that the home/land owner didn't pull a permit for self-contracted work in an outbuilding. The former colleague who doxxes the writer to a bunch of troughsnout purplehairs with spray and gas cans.
"Why anonymous if retired." Good gravy. Wake up.
1. I was asking a question not passing a judgment.
2. I am sure I have suffered more attacks in academia than you have or than Mr. Snodgrass has or than the original poster has.
Right. Bailey, you have no idea who I am or what I have experienced. Maybe it would be better if you did not assume anything.
> I have suffered more attacks
> Professor of psychology (kek) at a university where the law school is named Pritzker
Thanks for the laugh of the morning, Boomer.
Thanks for demonstrating your intellect.
> psychologist
kek
Bailey, J. M. (2003). The man who would be queen. Washington DC: The Joseph Henry Press.
Chivers, M. C., Rieger, G., Latty, E. A., & Bailey, J. M. (2004). A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal. Psychological Science, 15, 736-744.
Safron, A., Barch, B., Bailey, J. M., Gitelman, D. R., Parrish, T. B., & Reber, P. J. (2007). Neural correlates of sexual arousal in homosexual and heterosexual men. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 237-248.
Rieger, G., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., Gygax, L., & Bailey J. M. (2008). Sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity: Evidence from home videos. Developmental Psychology, 44, 46-58.
Bailey, J. M. (2009). What is sexual orientation and do women have one? In D. A. Hope (Ed.). The 54th Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Contemporary perspectives on gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities, 54, 43-63.
Because those are important issues and we need to know things.
Hilarious. *You* need to "know" things? Wow. Who are "you", exactly? And yes, why?
He's a professor of sex at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
Your reactions are unnecessarily hostile.
Your inquiries are...well, I will not bother to characterize them.
Just because I wanted to know why someone was choosing to be anonymous?
Have you ever considered that YOU and your discipline, as currently practiced, are part of the problem? Not even really part of STEM at all, in a lot of ways.
Sure the stuff you want to study is difficult. And it is important, at least potentially. But the people currently "studying" it are probably NOT who should be undertaking this task. And the topics pursued...well, I am underwhelmed, let's say. And I am not the only one, by any means.
I even had an essay prepared about this topic for Heterodox STEM. But because of the perceived status of some of these "fringe areas", it was decided that it was better not to publish it.
If I were President of a University, what would I do that would Transform Education?
1. First, create a department of Religious Apologetics with all significant Sects as sub-departments, finding well respected Theologians in each and have them suggest people able to be a goodness for the Department.
Apologetics using modern Science Theory as should have been started by Catholic Church in Galileo Galilei time. Galileo is superficially right; the Church is fully Right.
The soul and all Man's senses define the Center of the Universe, and those senses revel Divine Natures through Intellect, those Senses, Memory and other faculties that present Reality as Sun as Center of Universe as R. Descartes' stick in water presents a sudden bending of the Stick to senses.
Perhaps Simulation Theory would be more formally defined than R. Descartes 'Evil Spirit' mind-in-box thought experiment.
2. Accept and prefer applicants 14 yo and older. Define a K-8th grade course material list for each year, focus on basics subject taught in upper-class English boarding school in 1800s and Latin Language, how to critically think, how to self-direct learning, perhaps others.
Graduates will be young enough to marry and start family by early 20s, once earning enough to support a family. No more of this Sick Satanic Baby-murdering insane womanhood and motherhood and this vile feminized white Christian genocidal infantizing our [adult] children societies, you Sick horrors.
Teachers will be men that will move things along and every year or more often the struggling failing students will have returned to feminized poisonous sexual-mutilating abusive women-pedo 'devouring mother' Witches as today that suck the souls and life from their students while 'getting-off' and how some will surely suicide from the mind-raping self-loathing demonic internal torture those Witched inject.
3. Perhaps refuse to accept any Federal or State Dollar that has conditions attached with the clear message that they have the heart of a rabid dog and mind of a skin-warm-parasite and soul of a demonic pedophilic cannable, and dead in grave (if not repented) after swinging at end of rope in public over the corpses of the adults in their entire bloodline seems like a good future for nation and world.
Lots more, but that should start others thinking of how they would Serve God, Man, Nation, and Family if given this position.