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Comment by onesandofgrain | Hacker News Reader

Have seen this myself in practise. Just like in this case it didnt end well. But this «lesson» so to speak is just the same concept in everyday life applied to work. You should generally never argue with authorities publically. It never ends well. Perhaps some free speech fanatics mean otherwise, but free speech doesn’t really exist.

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> You should generally never argue with authorities publically. It never ends well. Perhaps some free speech fanatics mean otherwise, but free speech doesn’t really exist.

This is not so much about free speech (because if it was, the problem wouldn't exist so much in countries that have a different concept of free speech from the USA), but rather that a scientific education strongly nudges you into becoming a "truth-seeker", and in pursuit of this argue for your point.

This is why in particular geeks/nerds love to argue with their boss when they believe he isn't correct.

So, I rather fault employees that they look for employees with a university degree, while in reality they want employees that don't want to start scientific disputes with their boss ( exactly what the scientific education at a university drills you towards).

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Addendum: In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48918117 silentmafia writes down a related observation:

> In academia arguing is sort of your job, or at least part of it.

If unis main job was to argue for truth you would have a quite different world. Unis main role these days is to make sure you regurgitate whatever they preach and that's it. That's why most politicians are actors informally and formally.

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