“How do we stop the world’s smartest people from realising what we’re doing?”
“Let’s make them fight among themselves and call it a meritocracy; we’ll limit their funding and let them keep themselves busy with political infighting!”
Hero
Submitted 5 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0aeb52e9-9f3e-4578-97d9-e7dca4e530d7.jpeg
Comments
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
Annoyingly insightful.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
This is why good teams are essential. One person to do all the bullshitting, and the rest of the team to actually get stuff done while the bullshitter deflects all the other bullshitters.
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world 5 months ago
PROVIDED the bullshitter doesn’t turn inward. A PM with those skills unleashed in the team is hell.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 months ago
“Bullshitting” is an essential skill, not a distraction. The greatest idea in the world is meaningless if nobody knows about it.
Marketing, scmoozing, etc gets a bad rep. But no matter how good your output, product, research, etc is, it has very little value or impact if people don’t get on board.
If you can’t play the game, team up with someone who can. And don’t forget that while that schmoozer may not have your technical skills, they have a skillset you do not.
It wasn’t Woz or Jobs. It was both.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
It’s funny you use Woz and Jobs as an example when Jobs regularly emotionally manipulated and abused his employees and stole Woz’s money.
I wonder why schmoozers have a bad rep 🤔
quicksand@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Yep. We’ve got me a technical guy who loves deep diving in theory and understanding the why of everything, and a smooth talking ex-Navy guy who is good at thinking on his feet and has great mechanical acumen. Last but not least, we have the guy who uses a sick day whenever there’s work scheduled, and then shows up the next day and goes on some libertarian rant about how any progress we’ve made since the 19th century is a sign of our country going down the toilet. Dream team baby
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 months ago
I often describe the team like we’re doing a heist. There’s the planner, the face, the muscle, and so on. We’ll have a social problem and I’ll tell the face to go talk to the other team for us.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Ok so what happens when the bullshitter gets all the recognition and nobody believes you when you try to prove otherwise? Document and take legal action?
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Seconded. The “face man” gets to be the public face and thereby a lot of the social credit and perhaps most of the work credit as well.
We see people like this all the time in management who take all the credit for the work from those who actually did the work.
samus12345@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This “have to play political games to get ahead” bullshit seems to apply almost everywhere.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, humans are social animals which create social systems everywhere they go. This shouldn’t shock anyone.
samus12345@lemmy.world 5 months ago
They do. However, the quality of a person’s work should be more important than their schmoozing skills. Not a shock, but definitely an annoyance.
Katrisia@lemm.ee 5 months ago
This might sound pedantic, but it isn’t, it was actually naive: I expected a better environment in academia when I was young.
Why? Because academia is supposedly full of bright people, and I assumed they would be bright enough to be cooperative (because academia advances more when we are, and they supposedly love knowledge); unattached from superficiality (like judging people by their looks, money, etc., because they should know an interesting person can come in any “package”); relatively ethical (as bright people should figure out something close to the categorical imperative, although with unique details); a non-dogmatic, eager to learn and correct their ideas —over preferring recognition and pettiness— attitude (again, just because I assumed their intelligence must guide them towards appreciating knowledge and authenticity over much more ephemeral and possibly worthless things such as prizes, fame, etc.).
I was wrong, so wrong. It’s painful to remember how I felt when I realized it…
But I think the premises weren’t entirely off, I just imagined people much wiser and more intelligent than they are, myself included. Anyway, I fully understand why others are shocked too.
meliaesc@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m genuinely confused how everyone is reacting to this. What good is research that no one cares to hear?
dustyData@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Read some Foucault for an explanation, that’s just being human. You don’t stop being human just because you follow scientific ideals. All human endeavors will follow human dynamics.
Alue42@kbin.social 5 months ago
Seriously. I read this and all I could think was "what a dick".
Disclaimer, I have not read the full source material and am only basing this off the quoted image.
I fully understand not being interested in having to attract your own funding, it's awful. But the rest of it is not limited to the academic or scientific pursuits. Being a decent enough person so people want to support you? Developing good work to be invited to conferences? (By the way, you submit your own work to conferences and they are judged to be invited blindly, ie names removed), being able to hold your tongue when you know someone is wrong in order to keep peace? Understanding that hierarchy exists?
These are not things that are antithesis to good science, and if no one had ever taught her these things that's a failing on her younger days.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 5 months ago
Miss me with that thought terminating cliche.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No. Science is the only human effort that specifically defines what human is. If we allow that “sure being human is going to mess up science” then we have failed before we even started.
I’m really surprised, although this is becoming kind of common so perhaps I shouldn’t be, to see all the comments saying effectively “yeah, so?”
dustyData@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Science doesn’t define what humans are. Humans are, then science plays catch up to try and define what that even means. Science is a human endeavor, a framework of thought, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it cannot exist without humans thinking, talking about it and doing it.
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not an academic, but this is spot on for how I’ve felt as a top performer getting nowhere. This realization helped me reorient my aspirations to what I find truly matters to me: my family and hobbies. I’m a solid individual contributor. Over the years, my work has saved us millions and been adopted across the country, which is reward enough. The speaking engagements and schmoozing, I’ll leave that to the extroverts in the boys club.
Muffi@programming.dev 5 months ago
Same. It physically hurts to see talentless suck-ups play the bullshit game and climb the hiarchy, whereas you get punished and kept down for pointing out the bullshit. My best decision ever was to escape the hell that is the field of software development, and instead get into teaching. Now my reward for a job well done is seeing my students succeed and I love it so much.
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I know that feeling all too well. Funny enough, I’d thought about going into software dev because I thought it’d let me work alone more comfortably. Along the way I found a way to learn dev but apply it to my job instead, making me pretty unique at what I do. It lets me innovate, do deep research, and work on my own while being pretty openly anti-social. Luckily I have a boss who sees the value in me.
I can’t tell you the number of once-interns and junior managers, stuck-in-a-rut folks, that I’ve quietly influenced to senior or higher positions. It really does feel incredible! I call it “leading from the back.” I’ve been wanting to write a book on it - the introverts and individual-contributors who quietly (and happily) influence without being seen.
thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev 5 months ago
I work as an engineer for a huge financial company, so I relate. I was a scrappy upstart who worked himself through the lowest tiers of my industry towards the top. I’m also neurodivergent.
I can speak on for days about how bosses don’t care who’s doing the work as long as it gets done.
As a top performer, you’re likely to feel that people should perform at the standards you set, and your natural first instinct is probably to try to train and educate your coworkers. You soon realize that they either don’t give a shit or they’re offended that you’re giving them advice. No problem, we live in a hierarchical society, so you tell your boss about the problems you face, they’ll have your back, right? Wrong. You’re rocking the boat, and the boss’ job is to keep the boat afloat.
Now, instead of rocking the boat, you start to wonder if you there’s a way you can change the current of the water so the boat goes in the proper direction. That’s where wisdom and skill meet. There’s an incredible amount of depth involved in influencing people and change. I wish it wasn’t the way of the world, but it is. Being brilliant is only half the battle.
ironchamber@mastodon.esmevane.com 5 months ago
@clearedtoland @fossilesque It makes perfect sense if you consider it. Imagine a closed system with two top performing components, where every other component is contributing to the system’s overall success. If one of these two top performers is able to connect and leverage all the other system components to amplify their work, but the other works in isolation, which is really producing more successful output when you measure the total system?
maniclucky@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s a pretty contrived setup. If the two top components are not factored into the performance of the whole and they are both defined by their ability to improve other components, then the one doing it’s own thing is not, in fact, a top performer. It’s task is to support others and it fails to do so.
And what if the loner’s task is foundational? It doesn’t have much direct output, but if he’s gone and everything else goes to shit? Those ones are very hard to measure. I know, that’s been my job for a good portion of my career. And things like that are common. Expecting a given performer, say an engineer, to also be good at public speaking has always struck me as impractical.
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The fact that this is considered brutally honest is part of the problem. I think it’s just regular honesty. Academia’s standards for honesty are too low.
anarchyrabbit@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is the fucking world. Like it or not it’s about putting yourself out the and networking. Doesn’t matter how bright you are. I wish it wasn’t but it is.
Liz@midwest.social 5 months ago
I’m trying to imagine a job where being a disagreeable antisocial recluse is an advantage and I’m coming up blank.
MadBigote@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That is hardly the idea the author is trying to give…
sigezayaq@startrek.website 5 months ago
Overnight security guard
son_named_bort@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Owner of Twitter?
booly@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
To put it bluntly, science costs money, and persuading people who control money to spend that money is itself a skill.
Or, zooming out, science requires resources: physical commodities, equipment, the skilled labor of entire teams. The most effective way to marshal those resources is with money, and management/sales skills are necessary to get those resources working together in concert.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world 5 months ago
notes down: “capitalism is the problem”
👍
D61@hexbear.net 5 months ago
Meritocracy? In my academics?
No thank you!
I’m all about the bureaucratic fiefdoms and intrapersonal drama politicking!
Empricorn@feddit.nl 5 months ago
Sorry, unless you start your own sovereign country, you have to participate in society. Not everyone likes promoting themselves, disagreeing diplomatically, etc. Still, we play the game, even though I wish we didn’t all have to…
GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 5 months ago
Participating in society =/= social climbing
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That is true it is a big part of society and how to get along, and you would think that because this is one of the foundations of this society it would be a bigger part of someone’s education. This shouldn’t be something people should have to figure out on their own in order to feed themselves and their family
henfredemars@infosec.pub 5 months ago
I prefer to say that humans are not very efficient at organizing. We’re just the most efficient so far for general problems.
nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 5 months ago
your comment reminds me of a text I read a long time ago, comparing humans to ants and pointing that we’re incredibly intelligent when alone, but we become less and less intelligent when in bigger groups, while ants seem not very intelligent when alone, but when in groups, they seem amazingly intelligent
dustyData@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Well there are two alternatives to not doing it. We either die of starvation alone and isolated, never cooperating with anyone. Or we club and bomb each other away in endless fight and war over resources. I like the being diplomatic, political and deliberative way much better than either of these.
7bicycles@hexbear.net 5 months ago
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 months ago
You may be qualitatively correct, but I still disagree. Living in a society is not the same thing as one specific set of rules to play by. The author isn’t saying that we shouldn’t be coordinating or discussing with each other. As I understand it, they are arguing against valuing people based on their social capital instead of their actual knowledge. Because what is science’s worth if it isn’t based on knowledge but how well you can lick boots? How often is science inhibited by some old dude abusing his power until he dies. Science progresses one funeral at a time. Does it necessarily have to be that way or could we possibly find a better way to organize ourselves?
Arietty@jlai.lu 5 months ago
This world is very difficult for people like me who are a little on the spectrum, since moving and shaking is what gets you places
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yes but didn’t we all know that at some point before choosing that career? How do you get roughly 22 years into it - a PhD - and not know that academia is essentially a political rodeo and your research is going to be affected heavily by it? Didn’t anyone whisper it to you confidentially in the back of some elective?
It most definitely shouldn’t be, it’s clearly poisonous to the idea of science, but it wasn’t like a secret either. Like, it’s “not ok” that that’s the case, it’s not something we should wave away as “just human things” - it should be addressed, it should be fixed. But it wasn’t unknown.
ZMoney@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There is no alternative if you actually want to do science and don’t have millions of dollars to buy labs and materials and instruments. Science gets done in spite of everything she is describing.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fair, but how does someone take on that career and not know that?
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Many people I know get into it because of their idealism and desire to change the academic system for the better. They invest into this career, year after year, because it’s always one more step until they can finally use their influence to change the system from the inside.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So they’ve agreed, as it were, to the politics, the metrics, etc that come with it. Hopefully they can in fact change it, or part of it anyway.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s definitely unknown to the vast majority of the tens of thousands of college freshmen who sign up to be STEM majors. Usually by the time they figure it out it’s already far too late to change their majors without rearranging their entire lives
howrar@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
It’s also the only viable route to doing science for most people. So even if you’re aware of the problem, you just have to grit your teeth and play the game if you want to pursue your passion.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Well, hopefully this will help change things then. It’s definitely not new.
zaph@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
it should be addressed
I think that’s what she’s trying to do.
mineralfellow@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Depends on the program you are in. The view from being a doctoral student to being a postdoc to being research/lecturing staff is very different. Not all advisors expose their students to the realities of higher levels of academia. And when a woman or minority is being mentored by a white man, they may not be aware of biases that can affect the student’s later career.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I mean, maybe I had a different view, but that was known to myself and the people I was in school with as early as highschool. As a part of the landscape, like, yes you can pursue a career in academia but. Publish or perish, etc.
SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Isn’t it great when the social institutions regulating people who want to do science promote people with the skills of salesmen over people with the skills for doing science.
yboutros@infosec.pub 5 months ago
Unfortunately, it’s for the best. If you’re serious about research you have to present yourself. Especially if you’re the first person to discover it, you’re the most - possibly only - qualified person to talk about that thing.
Part of scientific communication is giving elevator talks. You have to be able to argue for funding.
Not to mention, if you never develop those skills, you’re just opening yourself up to getting a worse financial incentive for the same amount of work
Snowclone@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s politics, not sales, even highly productive sales people struggle with the politics of moving up. I could sell hot sauce in hell, but getting my bro dawg boss to like me enough to promote my into his weird club of bro dawgs and not use me as a scape goat for his own mismanagement and incompetence is not a cross over skill from getting someone to spend $15.99 on a neck pillow with the cost of $0.17.
Zink@programming.dev 5 months ago
Yet another flawed system run by humans. Humans always ruining nice things.
Zess@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The system was literally invented by humans and follows our shitty nature perfectly.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Isn’t this true for all jobs? Specially corporate jobs? It’s still horrible, but that’s capitalism for you.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The same problem exists in socialism
You need to convince people what you’re doing is worth doing. Whether that is economically or societally
can@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
why underline the whole thing
InternetPerson@lemmings.world 5 months ago
Sadly not just the USA.
Sixth0795@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I wanna do a PhD so bad I even started publishing during my undergrad But the publishing fees is too much just too much 100$ in a third world nation is a lot even after that the research is kept under a paywall, so disgusting
heavy@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I’m arguably good at a lot of those things but didn’t want to persue a PhD because you can see the writing on the wall when you’re deep enough into academia. There’s a system in place and boy it can get dark and shitty in a hurry.
Subverb@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on this problem.
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 5 months ago
“bUt PaRtIcIpAtInG iN sOcIeTy!”, people with imposter syndrome who don’t believe enough in their own abilities to be comfortable with the idea of merit alone judging advancement.
austin@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Seeing this, it applies everywhere including something as trivial as a retail job. I wonder if that’s why I too dislike that sort of backroom politicking so much.
_sideffect@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And this is actually a good thing that it’s taught at Penn, as it doesn’t lie to you and say, “just get high grades and you’ll be the best in the world!”
Would have been nice if my university taught us that
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Lucky, not hero.
This is a person saying they don’t like what everyone else on the planet deals with daily.
Fortunately they were published enough to not have to care.
lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml 5 months ago
This is why socialism is the answer.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’ve got bad news about…pretty much every career path.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
My supervisor talked of Barnum and Bailey. He wasn’t wrong, but glad I got out,
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Underline tip
Throw a [ in the margin
For highlighting, highlight the tldr of each [ section, skipping over words deemed unnecessary to understanding it
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 5 months ago
Sheldon Cooper?
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 5 months ago
Not a scientist but I have been reasonably successful by proving my worth to the ladder climbers and then they pull me up behind them.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It doesn’t matter the industry you’re in the
Schmooze classwill be there to make sure you have to bow to them.Empricorn@feddit.nl 5 months ago
I choose you, Shyentist!
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Shyentist used Facts and Data
…
It’s not very effective.
Kroxx@lemm.ee 5 months ago
It’s a lot different in academia vs industry for hard sciences. I currently work in industry, we have no options in the things we research but we are funded to the Moon. There is of course some amount of bowing we have to do in order to keep them quiet but that’s about it.
In academia you have to secure your own funding constantly or your project just ends essentially. Academic institutions also look at metrics like impact factor and papers published/time that also effects the availability of funding. I know that people have had to stop pursuing doctorates due to funding issues. Politics in academia is notoriously horrendous.
ameancow@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I did this when I was a manager with the people who wanted opportunity for advancement. I prepared them and told them that getting comfortable public speaking and being around strangers and selling yourself are all critical components of being seen and respected by upper management when the time comes for me to fight for a raise or advancement.
Because the harsh truth is that you don’t climb without being seen, and you’re not seen unless you can speak publically and feel comfortable in your own skin. I’ve seen some deeply introverted people climb to great success but this is because they had a strange combination of extremely sharp skills in critical fields in the company, and they weren’t shy, they were just quiet, when they did talk they shot back zingers and deadpan one-liners that made the people over them either laugh or shrivel.
So whatever “personality type” you think you have, you simply do not rise without playing SOME aspect of the social game, it will always be like this as long as we live in a capitalist society.