Namedropping one’s most powerful friend makes the namedropper look insecure. It is much more effective to namedrop one’s most powerful enemy
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PSEUDO_EMPIRICISM Another way to look at the problem of BS trying to pass for “empiricism”, or “evidence-based science”.
– When one discusses events related to a casino roulette wheel, one can easily make a distinction between realizations and the property of the roulette wheel. Anyone can see that it is highly irrational to make comments and build theories on past history, except *in their relation to* the properties of the roulette table –otherwise, one is fooled by randomness, or committing the gambler’s fallacy.
– When discussing a given history of gambles and making claims, we know *exactly* whether we are referring to the *outcomes* from the roulette wheel or to the roulette wheel.
– Now in real life, when we talk about *crime*, or incidence of *ebola*, or such things, alas, we use the same word “crime” or “victims” to refer to both the realizations (i.e., the history of the process) and the *generator* or what here is equivalent to the roulette wheel. Verbalistic effects cause us to conflate the two.
– But when we write down things mathematically, we clearly see that one is called “random variable”, the other is called “realization” so mathematically the two are separate. When we discuss series of random variables we talk about “stochastic process”. Analytical claims are always made about the random variable or the process, not the realization.
– What I have just illustrated seems simple. But, alas, many people make fallacies and we have to fight journalistic imbeciles and social scientists conflating past history of, say Ebola with its properties. (More technically, the history of Ebola is NOT an empirical claim about its properties, except that they correspond if and only if the process has thin tails.)
PS- Which brings me to the value of mathematics: its value lies less in the computation, the numbers, than in the use of clear-cut definitions that avoid sloppiness of language. I see mathematics, particularly in probability, close to legal theory, where everything is as explicitly defined as possible. When things are well defined, their relations (or lack of) become immediable visible.
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Success is when not a single one of the people you respect the most thinks of you as a fraud –including yourself.
(More lessons from the UCL episode aside from mob terror.)
One reason to avoid titles, prizes, etc. things not organic: I surmise that it makes people more, not less reputationally fragile and vastly more conscious of it. From my own experience with fights, winners of the Nobel (or rather pseudoNobel) in economics are easy to terrorize, much easier than ordinary academics. I had direct fights with 4 of them and observed/discussed with another 3: total insecurity, loss aversion.
This is not good for the person, and not good for research as people are scared to take risky positions.
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Let us generalize beyond UCL: Arbitrary destruction of reputations turns people into slaves.
A society of administrators and insecure, reputation-vulnerable laborers creates a dystopian society managed by the lowest common denominator, in which all the gains in legal sophistication vanish, turning people into pure slaves, no longer independent, fearful of opening their mouths, terrorized byf the slightest smear and *no due process* in the undoing of reputations.
For a perfect illustration of the process, this is the investigation by Louise Mensch who appears to be one of the very few people in the UK to have both balls and a sense of justice.http://unfashionista.com/…/the-royal-societys-diversity-co…/
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REPOSTED with redaction/Post on spineless cowards
Boycotting UCL, twice and invite anyone who has respect for freedom of expression, disdain for hypocrisy, and feels that intellectual life should not fall prey to Soviet-style arbitrary bureaucrats, to do so.
Please note that UCL, aside from having a campus in Qatar, is penalizing a defenseless old white male while letting hate preachers operate with impunity. And without even any attempt at due process, fact checking, blinded by twiter mobs and loud policing operators. Despicable hypocrites.
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UPDATE: Looks like academics in UK are afraid of speaking too loud as they are afraid of administrators and the thought police giving them a label. I was told that there is no tenure in UK and “performance reviews” can be arbitrary. Spineless slaves; they don’t deserve to do research.
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(Had to delete old post because of problem with cropping phone numbers and we inadvertently lost comments..)
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