Comment by azalemeth

A system that can’t tolerate occasional coasting is a system that can’t tolerate creative bursts. The trick is detecting “I secretly lost hope but my stream of income is very comfortable” when paying a costly salary; which would be mitigated somewhat by switching the tenure benefit of either pay enough to afford, or outright gift of, a single-family home (looks pointedly at Stanford) to a variation of residence halls, where the salary gift can be much less in exchange for benefits due creativity: reserved whiteboards, option for neighboring private rooms (table/bed/bath/shower) and research office, a couple of quiet floors, 120/240 and ether/fiber in every room, presentation rooms with ‘lives next door’ IT support, etc.

Hell, I’d take that IT job. Keeping projectors working for a bunch of impatient creative types in exchange for getting to listen in on their presentations and earn their confidence enough to discuss their research as an interested peer while I repair their computers? Eating good food in a mess hall as I listen to quantum physics in one ear and mathematical networks in the other?! Onto the dream jobs list it goes, impossible as it might be in today’s academia.

We shouldn't really seek to punish "slacking off" though. Because when the opposite of valuable contribution isn't slacking off it becomes unintentional sabotage. It's a lot less noticeable in jobs that don't have immediate consequences for poor performance, but it really stands out in jobs where it immediately matters like construction. In a lot of cases everyone is getting paid the same but talent stands out and some people work 5x faster, but at thing they are good at. If you aren't the guy that lays 10x tiles perfectly flat and straight per minute then just bring the materials, set out a couple tiles and wait around. You will literally see this play out on most construction projects as it looks like 10 people are standing around while 1 person works, but that's because everyone tends to recognize that it's better to do what you are best at or just don't do anything. And the foreman will tell you that too, when all the dirt has to be moved, the shovel guys are just as important as the guy that can separate two nickels with an excavator.

In the end we have to face that systems have failed to replace competent managers. If there isn't a chain of accountability starting at the top that can manage people without extensive justification in metrics and is properly incentivised to keep the organisation healthy, whatever we are left with will be gamed to the detriment of everyone.

The certainly don't teach you that in business school :)

Why is publishing papers an unreasonable expectation?

Isn't that the primary mechanism for exchanging knowledge and driving discussion among academics?

If not, what should replace it?

This seems good, honestly. A degree from a third-tier college doesn't do anyone any good except the administrators at that college.

Over 99% of students who attempt your "mostly quiet" strategy are managed entirely out of academia long before tenure.

You won the lottery, which is great for you, but it's not a strategy to promote to others as life advice.

It's the money side that applies pressure there. It's great that you're able to make enough money but a lot of people who aspire to the quiet academic life are stuck in the lower tiers making a pittance.

There's a lot of wisdom here.

To get tenure in STEM, you need to publish 1 to 3 papers a year. If you only publish once per year, you'd be on the low end, so you always have to think about your next paper. You always have to try to work on something that would be publishable within the next 6 months to a year, but preferably within 6 months.

presumably in between thinking they're teaching classes, advising grad students, and publishing something -- because it's "publish or perish"

All of the low hanging fruit that could be discovered by self-funded gentlemen scientists has been picked. That doesn't scale to a supercollider or a large RCT. Funding at the whims of rich benefactors is very susceptible to petty politics.

Politics is irreducible from human affairs, privatization doesn't eliminate politics. It relocates it to a different set of actors. That could be a better set, but when it is it's because it's a more local and hands on group of people, not because those people happen not to work for the government. Governments are awkward because they are deep bureaucracies, and deep bureaucracies divorce the decision makers from the impact of their decisions. Weaker feedback leads to worse decision making. Not because there is a magic property of government that makes it uniquely bad. Large corporations, universities, and other deep non-governmental bureaucracies have similar pathologies.

That's something of an exaggeration, they are empowered to do violence and collect taxes and other things that are more problematic when abused, but still, privatization isn't a silver bullet.

> Whenever something gets subsidized by the government it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics.

When younger I've had job in grocery stores and saw petty politics.

There's nothing particular to being subsidized or not: politics is something humans do, and the pettiness is simply a reflection of the people involved.

Have you worked in a corporation? How sane was that corporation? Did it seem to even value its own survival? (Not corporations in general. In general they seem great. Just curious about the ones you actually did time in.)

"Whenever something gets subsidized, it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics."

I think it's just limited resources + the single most natural way for humans to compete for limited resources. This isn't actually an inevitable outcome - just the most likely one.

The "self-funding" regime requires people who are both rich enough to afford to fund science and sharp and driven enough to advance science to exist. That's a high bar. And while there is some correlation between intelligence and wealth, the tails come apart hard. People driven to pursuit wealth above all may not be driven to pursue scientific discovery.

We have plenty of billionaires, and preciously few of them actively pursue pushing the frontiers of science and technology. Even by funding the endeavors - let alone by being in the trenches themselves.

It has crossed my mind that being a scientist is for people who are already financial independent. Same as being an artist. For the rest of us, we need focus on careers where we can make a living. Of course, we can still do science and art as hobbies, but it is rather risky pretending to make a living from it.

> Whenever something gets subsidized by the government it inevitably becomes dominated by exploitive petty politics.

Your US-blend of anti-state brainwashing is showing. There is nothing inherently different in the for-profit status of an organization that prevents the occurrence of "exploitive petty politics". You see those from any organization from homeowners organization to full blown FANGs. I mean, have you ever paid attention to the crap being pushed by the likes of Tesla/SpaceX/Twitter?

The stakes are never higher when the stakes are so low.