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by tene80i 454 days ago
Jesus… are you this judgmental about everyone in society? Some people just value the university environment. It doesn’t mean they’re incompetent and had no other options. Not everyone values money above all else, nor does choosing to opt out of the private sector mean people are “remnants”.
2 comments
WhyOhWhyQ 454 days ago
From my perspective it's almost exactly opposite. Almost all of the people I consider exceptionally talented are vying for positions in academia (I'm in mathematics), and the people who don't make it begrudgingly accept jobs at the software houses / research labs.

I'm frequently and sadly reminded when I visit this website that lot of (smart) people can't seem imagine any form of success that doesn't include common social praise and monetary gain.

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rhubarbtree 453 days ago
Point 10:

https://www.ettf.land/p/30-reflections

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aleph_minus_one 453 days ago
"Academia is an absolute fucking cesspool of political corruption, soul crushing metrics gaming and outright fraud functioning mostly as a jobs program for nerds that only produces valuable science completely in spite of itself, not thanks to it, because it manages to trap some genuinely smart and hard working people there like a venus fly trap its prey and keeps them alive to suck more “citations” and “grants” out of them."

This is not my experience with academia. Rather, my experience was that a lot of very idealistic people tried to make their best out of the complicated situation set up by incompetent politicians.

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rhubarbtree 449 days ago
> This is not my experience with academia

Glad to hear that. I shared this with my former academic friends and every one of them groaned in agreement.

Henry Kissinger said that academic politics were worse than White House politics.

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