<story><title>This Thing for Which We Have No Name (2014)</title><url>https://www.edge.org/conversation/rory_sutherland-this-thing-for-which-we-have-no-name</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_emacsomancer_</author><text>I found the beginning of this perplexing:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The strange thing about academics, which always fascinates me, is that they believe they&amp;#x27;re completely immune to status considerations and consider themselves to be more or less monks. In reality, of course, academics are the most status-conscious people in the world. Take away a parking space from an academic and see how long he stays.&lt;p&gt;One, even monks worried about status (though perhaps in different terms). Two, I think academics are generally perfectly self-aware about their relationship with status, and I don&amp;#x27;t think they are significantly different from other professions. I don&amp;#x27;t think it usually hinges on parking spaces though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>s-shellfish</author><text>I think academics are aware that the problem just circles around in a different form. You can&amp;#x27;t escape the cycle of requiring any form of &amp;#x27;validation&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;approval&amp;#x27; from peers, and you have to rely on some &amp;#x27;in-system&amp;#x27; validation mechanic that ultimately comes down to trust.&lt;p&gt;For an academic, you have to trust that both the individual producing the work and the individuals reviewing the work aren&amp;#x27;t getting sucked in by the hype or their own personal biases&amp;#x2F;needs&amp;#x2F;ego. As an academic, one has to trust and assume one&amp;#x27;s own work reflects one&amp;#x27;s own understanding to the highest possible caliber, and that once that work is released, that it will be examined rigorously to the same caliber professionally, academically.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s still a question of &amp;quot;having to trust in things you can&amp;#x27;t test for without changing the functioning of the approval&amp;#x2F;validation mechanic&amp;quot;. Whether that&amp;#x27;s getting lost in the details of your own work (having so much knowledge it feels like you have none), or getting lost in the actual system itself - is the system designed so that bad actors are caught and weeded out - and honestly, it&amp;#x27;s my opinion that one singular mind can not manage all of this. But I think for many academics, the system is designed where, if one singular mind appears to mismanage any of this, they are labeled a bad actor.&lt;p&gt;So self awareness is more, something that just goes unrecognized and unnoticed, because it&amp;#x27;s considered a weakness to show it. The same thing happens in business, same behavior functionally. The way it presents itself is different because, there&amp;#x27;s a different yardstick. Money, quantifiable, measurable. But to the people actually moving large quantities of money around, it has as much potential for greatness or disaster as an enlightened intellect.</text></comment>
<story><title>This Thing for Which We Have No Name (2014)</title><url>https://www.edge.org/conversation/rory_sutherland-this-thing-for-which-we-have-no-name</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_emacsomancer_</author><text>I found the beginning of this perplexing:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The strange thing about academics, which always fascinates me, is that they believe they&amp;#x27;re completely immune to status considerations and consider themselves to be more or less monks. In reality, of course, academics are the most status-conscious people in the world. Take away a parking space from an academic and see how long he stays.&lt;p&gt;One, even monks worried about status (though perhaps in different terms). Two, I think academics are generally perfectly self-aware about their relationship with status, and I don&amp;#x27;t think they are significantly different from other professions. I don&amp;#x27;t think it usually hinges on parking spaces though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jerf</author><text>Have you dealt with academics a lot, in their home University contexts?&lt;p&gt;(I never had to directly, but I&amp;#x27;ve spoken enough with people who have. Nothing about that writing strikes me as strange, or even particularly controversial.)</text></comment>