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Comment by Arun2009 | Hacker News Reader

Arun2009

I think what we need today are competent generalists - super-teachers if you will - who have deep (i.e., at least post-graduate level) proficiency in what are currently considered separate fields such as Physics, Philosophy, Mathematics or Biology. There's a goldmine of new breakthroughs waiting to happen at the intersection of disparate areas of knowledge. Generalist teachers/professors at the first/second year university levels can help the next generation be more adept at recognizing the connections between fields of study. Currently unfortunately you are not recognized at higher-rungs of academia unless you super-specialize and churn out papers. We really need to acknowledge generalization as well, even when it happens at the cost of any original contributions.

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This.

This is also an argument against doing a PhD where you are expected to focus on a very narrow field. The problem is that we want to measure academic progress by numbers in form of papers so scientists need to publish a lot otherwise they run out of funding. But if there is always this pressure to publish there is less time to step back to see the big picture.

The scientists who do that are lazy then. Publish less, but high quality papers, reflect a lot more. Ya, it's tricky, but then why are we doing this anyways?

Wow ... this is so off the mark, it is hard to come up with a coherent response. Scientists don't operate in a vacuum - if everyone around you publishes two strong papers a year and you don't ... well, you aren't going to last very long. How do you judge quality? I've had friends who are far smarter than me, worked on more important problems, yet failed out of academia just because idiotic reviewers didn't appreciate their work. Science has fads, and scientists as a whole act worse than high schoolers. The publish early and often mentality that is prevalent today is the same as how aspiring high schoolers compete for spots in the Ivy League. Seriously ... 16-17 year olds writing books? founding international charity organizations? All this is great stuff but really ... what is the motivation behind it if not to have a great college essay? If a high school student were to merely focus on his course work, study diligently and try to have a balanced life, would that kid get into an Ivy League school? That is the bar that academics must deal with. The difference is that if you don't get into an Ivy League university, life isn't over. You go some place else and keep up the good work. When you fail out of academia, it is far more challenging to integrate into the regular work force. Some of my friends who are thinking about getting out of CS research are mortified ... the technology landscape seems very alien to someone who did their undergrads during the late 90s-early 00s. sigh.

Your response definitely isn't very coherent. If that is my fault, I apologize.

As an almost-academic who did his undergrad in the mid 90s, I'm not too afraid of getting out of research, though it's a nice place to be since we have so much freedom. It helps to be in a less theoretical field.

The reality of academia, especially in computer science, is that the system encourages a lot of bad behavior like crap publications. It is the job of the scientist to work around this bad behavior and still try to do good...tough yes, but necessary. If you can't juggle this, then failing out is more honorable than degenerating to fit the system, which would be a quite pointless existence.

Apology accepted.

<quote>If you can't juggle this, then failing out is more honorable than degenerating to fit the system<quote>

Science isn't what you think, or I think. Rather, it is what the community thinks to be true at any given point in time. If the community as a whole judges by quantity instead of quality, that's what most scientists will conform to. It is important to understand why this is the case. I believe the primary reason is that quality is extremely hard to judge. Most conference program committees will tell you this. You can easily spot the diamonds and the turds. How do you sort out amongst the rest?

I also disagree with your overall attitude in which you consider academics dealing with their reality to be a "pointless existence". However, you are certainly entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to disagree with it :)

The established part of a community wants a system that protects their best interests. "Dealing with reality" is not a pointless existence, but just pandering to and playing the system is. The system must be worked or worked around for good (whatever you think that is). This makes me happy at least, but to each their own rationalizations.

I have been on enough PCs to know how it works. Sometime that diamond is just a well written turd, and sometimes there is a diamond hiding inside the turd. Reviewing is much more than just sorting the rest.

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