Hacker News Reader

Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg is really putting Harvard on a pedestal in the beginning of this article, that along with the unretracted implants[1] story makes me think their newsroom is deeply flawed.

I don't think Ivy Leauge schools are deserving of their current reputations or valuations (in terms of quality), the systemic rot at MIT (having an ice cream social to celebrate Aaron Swartz, happily taking money from convicted criminals), Harvard and nearly every other Ivy League stems from an idolization of money over all else, education and research are only present at these institutions as window dressing.

None of these institutions should qualify as a non-profit, given their abject failure and continuing refusal to act equitably as every other (non-church) non-profit must.

1 - https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloom...

View on HN

> education and research are only present at these institutions as window dressing.

Oh, puh-lease! This is just utter nonsense.

Not that MIT and Ivy League schools don't deserve serious criticism (like just about everything else in the world) but your characterization is either extremely biased or completely uninformed.

What has MIT or Harvard launched recently that has come into as widespread use as the GNU Coreutils?

> What has MIT or Harvard launched recently that has come into as widespread use as the GNU Coreutils?

Even if the answer to that question is nothing, that does not justify the conclusion that "education and research are only present at these institutions as window dressing".

Btw, are you oblivious to the fact that RMS invented the GPL and wrote the GNU C compiler and Emacs and formed the FSF (among other very useful things) while he was employed as a research scientist at MIT. And that, as far as I'm aware, for much of this time he had no other responsibilities than doing these things?

Also, are you aware that his undergraduate education is from Harvard, which certainly must have had some sort of effect on the interests that he chose later to pursue? (He's on record as stating that he enjoyed much of his education there.)

Stallman also maintained the MIT version of Lisp Machine Lisp and the MIT Lisp Machine OS for some of this time. It is working on this and seeing MIT's research "stolen" by Symbolics and other companies that in no small part led to his beliefs about free software.

I was pointing to a time when both institutions were producing valuable tools from their research and development that significantly bettered the world around them.

MIT & Harvard have not been affecting change in the world around them like they did in prior decades.

> I was pointing to a time when both institutions were producing valuable tools from their research and development that significantly bettered the world around them.

And how does this claim translate into "education and research are only present at these institutions as window dressing"?

I currently work at a famous MIT and Harvard-affiliated research institute that aims to eventually cure cancer and other genetically-caused diseases. Or at least find better treatments for them. Is this not important research? Is trying to treat and/or cure terrible diseases merely "window dressing" to you?

Before working on this, I worked at an MIT research lab that developed an X-ray space telescope. Software that I wrote was essential for the publication of about 1,000 peer-reviewed astronomy papers.

Is 1,000 peer-reviewed astronomy papers "window dressing"?

I agree that the Bloomberg newsroom has some serious flaws, but this story didn't come out of their newsroom. Tyler Cowen is an opinion writer (and an economist whose writing for Bloomberg is one of many activities.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com