Ahhh, epistemology... Does any academic researcher even care about these things anymore?

If you're in academia, you've probably noticed a major shift recently. Research production at an industrial scale through AI.

Grants have "always" been awarded to professors based on quantity multiplied by quality. Now, some professors are churning out 1–3 papers a month with the same group of co-authors. All the grant money goes to them. Grant givers are just only counting the numbers of papers being published.

The Industrial Revolution has hit academia, and some academics are busy arguing for the artisanal value of research while some are creating factories for research.

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Loquebantur 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, true scientists do care about epistemology.

The problem is the systemic disincentivation of true science, the pursuit of truth and knowledge unencumbered by greed.

When you speak favorably of "factories for research", you adopt the position of a mindless consumer, relishing the prospect of "abundant" products of science.

You fail to notice, livestock lives in abundance as well.

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wqtz an hour ago | parent [-]

Nobody will speak favourably about the factorization of anything.

The "publish or perish" culture is going through what is essentially the same transformation brought by the invention of the assembly line. Academia, "as an industry", is experiencing what the automobile industry went through a century ago.

Grant approvals are public. Just go through them, and you will see a pattern emerge.

The argument I keep hearing is, "AI is good in the hands of a good researcher."

5–7 papers based on the same dataset? 5–7 papers on the same core topic, published within a six-month period?

They tell me that this is their core specialization and that I simply don't understand how science works.

Science is a self-governed, self-serving, and artificially defined concept.

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Loquebantur 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You conflate a host of different issues and ultimately miss the point.

Science is an ideal, the pursuit for knowledge for its own sake. Science is a boon for humanity because it provides an unparalleled degree of prediction and control of the natural world.

But it doesn't tell you what to do with that.

A "capitalist" will seek personal, short-sighted gain from it, socializing repercussions, no matter how devastating. They will gladly poison society and the planet and sell it to you as "your own fault". Their life-span is limited still, so what do they care?

Technological capability exceeding human wisdom is the core issue here.

You need scientific understanding on your own side in order to know and judge the alternatives beyond what vested interests feel obliged to tell you.

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wqtz 21 minutes ago | parent [-]

As you said, "Science is an ideal." I think you and I have fundamentally different views of science. You are an idealist, whereas I am a practical person who has seen how the sausage of science is actually made.

	▲	redwood 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Still there's something to the notion of people who prefer Academia to Industry. As much as I tend to agree with your broader points that it's a game and people love the prestige game and they now can pull levers to accelerate their winning in that Prestige game.. still they chose a path that is less about money and more about ideals than industry. It may be less and less ideal driven and less and less of a cloistered monastery but it's still a place for people who chose against industry. I say that as an industry guy who can just feel when I speak to academics that they are driven by something different than those of us industry. And to be clear those resident industry are not only driven by money we're also driven by building and changing the world but it's still different

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lirolero 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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totetsu 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Which is why there is this disorientating feeling. We are all facing now with an ongoing challenge to epistemological trust, like Someone suffering a mental disorder.