This was better than I expected.
I thought this episode was pretty good talking about Wall Street investment stuff. This stood out to me:
12:31
We’re at the mercy.
12:33
Of greed.
12:35
Like flat out greed.
12:37
Presented as free market capitalism.
12:39
It is not a free market.
12:42
I don’t even know if it’s capitalism.
12:43
It’s certainly “crony something.”
When Jon Stewart said “free market capitalism” I wanted to deny it. And then he, a leftist, actually himself said it isn’t a free market and maybe not even capitalism, and said it’s a crony system – he said my point for me. I did not expect but appreciated that. The other guy (a former SEC commissioner) then responded by emphasizing that it’s not a free market.
I also agreed with Stewart’s earlier comments that the SEC is too rigid and by the book. What he didn’t say is that, when the leadership is poor like that, more money won’t fix it. It’s not a money problem. (This applies to school and teacher quality too btw. It’s not primarily a money problem.) He only said that given the lack of SEC budget, they need to deal with the situation and change strategies, which is reasonable.
Is academic philosophy really a discipline?
Yes it is, by any reasonable standard. But we tolerate behaviour, such as the visitor’s behaviour described above, that makes a mockery of our aspirations to be a discipline. Can you imagine any other discipline in a university where someone might agree to give a presentation on their research, while happily admitting that they knew none of the existing literature on the topic?
He says, without negative comment, that early-career people want to publish academic philosophy papers in order to get a job. He’s an academic philosopher (who teaches at a university position and has published a bunch of papers) who is familiar with this stuff, and the video is based on a talk he gave.
That is a corrupt motivation for writing a philosophy paper. It’s not about having an idea worth publishing. And he’s just open about it, like he doesn’t see the problem.
1:59
the main reason I guess is it’s
2:02
something to have on the CV which means
2:05
you can get a job or be in a good
2:07
position to apply for a job at the end
2:10
of the PhD end of the postdoc
and
2:50
I’m gonna focus in on what’s going to be
2:52
what I think is gonna be most useful for
2:55
somebody around about the PhD thinking
2:59
about getting towards the end of the PhD
3:01
and using a publication to goal the CV
3:06
and try and get you a job
oh my god. that’s horrible. (the rehoming runway modeling)
I recognized the narrator voice – it’s from an Australian program called 60 minutes that does investigative type stuff (the quality varies). If anyone is interested, here’s the original program – from 3 yrs ago – 'Re-homing': America's shocking trade in unwanted children | 60 Minutes Australia - YouTube. Not sure if it’s the complete episode or not. I haven’t watched it.
1 Like
wow there are over 200 retracted papers listed just for COVID:
i guess for every retracted paper there is at least one more that should be retracted but isn’t. maybe ten more. i don’t know how many.
looking only at retractions is a little like looking only at divorces or at covid deaths. there are also a lot of bad marriages that don’t divorce and bad covid outcomes that aren’t death.
Superstition in a bunch of the top level comments, encouraged/modeled by streamers, and confusing newbies who don’t know what’s real.
Multiple top chess players lost today in the final pre-knockout round of the 3rd and last phase of the tournament that determines two qualifications for the 8-player candidates tournament, the winner of which plays a 1 vs. 1 match against the world champion to potentially become world champion.
April Fools Day is bad. Pranks in general are often bad.
1 Like