Re:Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
by TeMPOraL on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @10:58AM
(#17238246)
Fair point.
The noise bothers me for two reasons. One, because grant-chasing to keep the lights on means you end up having to prioritize busy work over important problems, which wastes lives of researchers and slows the scientific endeavour. Two, because high noise makes it more difficult to find interesting/important results of other people's research.
Maybe I'm just wishing for unachievable perfection in this space.
> I could shit on the state of academic publishing for days, but at the end of the day, there is an overall positive direction in this 'academic endeavor': the creation of knowledge.
That I agree with, and I definitely complain more about the private market than scientific research because of that :).
> I find this direction much lighter on my consciousness than "generate value for the shareholders"
The noise bothers me for two reasons. One, because grant-chasing to keep the lights on means you end up having to prioritize busy work over important problems, which wastes lives of researchers and slows the scientific endeavour. Two, because high noise makes it more difficult to find interesting/important results of other people's research.
Maybe I'm just wishing for unachievable perfection in this space.
> I could shit on the state of academic publishing for days, but at the end of the day, there is an overall positive direction in this 'academic endeavor': the creation of knowledge.
That I agree with, and I definitely complain more about the private market than scientific research because of that :).
> I find this direction much lighter on my consciousness than "generate value for the shareholders"
True, I feel the same.