Academic Freedom: Difference between revisions
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1616556159787495425 | |||
|name=Eric Weinstein | |||
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein | |||
|username=EricRWeinstein | |||
|content=Because: | |||
Wuhan involves a Bio-Weapons Convention workaround using @EcoHealthNYC funded by @dtra. | |||
CCP controls a huge market. | |||
We created scientists who all fear for their ability to feed families when we ended true '''academic freedom'''. | |||
[[Science-serfdom]]. | |||
Itās [[Anti-Interesting|anti-interesting]]. | |||
š | |||
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|nameurl=https://x.com/Jason/status/1612905595614658561 | |||
|name=jason | |||
|usernameurl=https://x.com/Jason | |||
|username=Jason | |||
|content=1. Most of us civilians think it's a lab leak. | |||
2. Scientists believe the lab leak theory is worth inquiry | |||
3. Why are we not investigating the origin of covid 19? | |||
Where is the outrage that we haven't gotten to the bottom of this? | |||
2 years of our lives & economic turmoil! | |||
|timestamp=8:13 PM Ā· Jan 20, 2023 | |||
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|timestamp=9:59 PM Ā· Jan 20, 2023 | |||
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Revision as of 22:16, 11 October 2025
On X
2009
New Topic: "Thank you Science" vs. "You're welcome Science"
"let me just say to the funding agencies who have supported me thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!" -@dabacon. This is "Thank you science."
"Thank you Science" is a danger to all of us. Scientists like @dabacon likely need more freedom & acting like street musicians doesn't help.
Oddly, we don't need additional scientists to compete. We need our scientists stronger, richer, and more independent. Con huevos y dinero.
What is "You're welcome science"? It is a vision of science getting off its kness to remind the public of the fantastic deal it has w/ you.
"Dear Suzie Taxpayer: You're most welcome for the 2002 work warning of the coming danger posed by the misvaluation of illiquid assets." -ERW
The value that scientists could bring by debunking market thys alone could save the taxpayer billions upon billions. That's a lot of SSC's.
Bottom Line: If you need more salary, help in the house, security, and academic freedom, remember why we fund. It's *not* as favor to you.
Since basic research is a public good (i.e. inexhausible & inexcludible) markets will fail here: We need to know what you need to take risk.
Q: Cost(Collapse) >> Cost(Protected Dissenting Scientific Elite) ---> Cost(Cheap Academic Life) >> Cost(Expensive Academic Freedom)
How to avoid spending billions bailing out reckless bankers? Spend money on true academic freedom: the world's biggest bargain.
New Topic: "What's your vision of true academic freedom?" [Asks @Philip_Girvan.]
An old joke about the diference between the Soviet and US constitutions. Both give freedom to dissent. The US gives freedom the day after.
Academic freedom is about making secure heroes out of Margot O'toole, Doug Prasher & Nassim Taleb instead of pushing them to the periphery.
Academic freedom is freedom to invite a senior colleague to self-copulate for inserting himself before your name on YOUR paper..and survive.
Academic freedom comes from the academic *obligation* to schedule lectures if you have even the possibility of strong disruptive results.
Academic freedom entails a right for a non-expert theorist of high ability to cross boundaries and live on merit without seeking permission.
Academic freedom is the insulation from threat or want to continue in good standing for *any* and *all* contributions & reasoned dissent.
What few people admit is that opposing "String Theory", "The Great Moderation", "Scientist Shortages" etc...leads to excommunication.
This was best put by @BretWeinstein: "Selection is to be feared only when just individuals are prevented from returning costs."
So @ahaspel asks what institutional reforms are needed (which was where I was headed when a birthday party occured in physical reality).
First of all, I am focused primarily on science. If universities can't provide academic freedom, science needs to move homes.
Next: Basic research in science is a public good (inexhaustible and inexcludible). Therefore we need higher levels of public funding.
To maintain academic freedom we need to move resources from what is falsely called 'scientific training' to the compensation of researchers.
To get strong individuals, our target for researchers should be something like MA by 21-22 PhD by 25-26, permanent job by 26-28 (approx.).
Graduate training is actually much shorter than assumed. Typically one is a graduate 'student' in year 1,2 of a PhD and working thereafter.
Raising PhDs should be Eusocial. Giving students to PI's in a 1 on 1 relationship is like parking choir boys with priests. Better in theory.
We must also fund entirely different sorts of people. Without Huxleys, Grossmans, & Hardys you don't get Darwins, Einsteins, & Ramanujans.
A central point: scientists are supposed to be K-selected but universities are hell bent for leather to r-select PhDs.
Yet that's insane.
Research & Teaching in Universities are as perfectly linked as Skiing & Shooting in the Biathalon: tenuously for all but Professors / Finns.
Last point for now: Freedom for academics is precisely freedom from academics. A real marketplace of ideas beats the pants off peer review.
Something occurs to me. If you've never had reason to test your own academic freedom, you may have absolutely no idea what animated me.
On May 23, 2003 an extraordinary talk at NAS called āExactly Backwards: Scientific Manpower Theoryā was given.There is no record of this.
The talk was so extraordinary that it was repeated again at NAS 11 days later on June 3, 2003. Again there is no meaningful record of this.
The talk presented evidence to the National Academy of Sciences that NAS & @NSF partnered to manipulate markets over scientist salaries.
Now ask yourself why would @NSF be trying to weaken American scientists? Why would NAS help? How would NSF dependent scientists self-defend?
Gauge theoretic economics interest has come recently from @mathpunk @dabacon @diffeomacx @riemanmzeta @tylercowen @ahaspel etc... Loving it.
I should say that Gauge theoretic economics is also all about academic freedom, quashed as it was by the rennegade Boskin Commission idiocy.
An email from Twitter overnight said: "National Science Fdn (@NSF) is now following your tweets on Twitter." Yet, now @NSF is gone. But why?
As we can obviously see each other @NSF, I propose public dialogue on whether NSF should be strengthening scientists (ergo raising wages).
If you would like to see a dialogue with @NSF on academic freedom, compensation, shortage canards, etc... retweet and star.
An excellent test of our President is whether the Obama era @NSF can undo catastrophic damage to US scientists begun by the Reagan era NSF.
2010
How about Coasian markets in 'academic freedom'? Cap&Gown -> Cap&Trade? Or fractional ownership: Zip-Tenure! Anything but scientific silence
New Topic: Targeted killings of scientists & their families or "just what are you saving your academic freedom to protest?"
Let's skip the foreplay: nobody outside Iran wants to see a nuclear theocracy. Does that allow us to assassinate scientists & their kin? No.
As an American PhD I have every right & intention to strengthen & guide my country militarily..as do fellow scientists of hostile nations.
If N. Korea slips polonium into the sushi of a US Prof. for sharing her knowledge of elliptic curves w/ NSA cryptographers will you protest?
If you follow scientists on twitter, you will notice an absence of strong opinion on targeted killings of Iranian academic families.
Bottom line, if you lack the huevos to engage Iran at the state level, you have no right to target physicists, their wives & their children.
The father of Israel's Nuclear Program, Yuval Ne'eman eulogizes Abdus Salam, the father of Pakistan's http://bit.ly/fAMNda (from the Arabic)
2017
Proud of my brother, Biologist Prof. @BretWeinstein for standing up to racial divisiveness & for academic freedom. https://www.cooperpointjournal.com/2017/04/10/dl-on-the-faculty-dl-update-on-the-email-chain/
Within a university, the sound of silence is tenure without real academic freedom to speak our obvious truth. If you listen, it's deafening.
We're standing up to mob rule to fight for universal civil rights, academic freedom, science & free speech. Safety NOT guaranteed.
Want in?
Many have urged me to follow @jordanbpeterson's lead these last 2 weeks--friends, students, strangers. I'm listening https://www.patreon.com/bretweinstein
The Postmodernist threat to the sciences is now confirmed & fully capable of making work unsafe for professors requiring academic freedom.
Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying just settled with Evergreen for $500,000 and resigned. Enrollment is... https://archive.kuow.org/news/2017-08-31/enrollment-drops-at-evergreen-state-college-hiring-freeze-coming
2020
This is the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex or DISC in action.
A hyper specific allegation that the @NSF and GUIRR inside the @theNASEM in 1986 directed an internal economic analysis to figure out how much they would have to pay STEM workers in the future.
The study is economically competent using both supply & demand, and then found new US graduates would have to be paid 6 figures shortly. They termed this the āpessimistic scenarioā, and then (and Iām not making this up) faked an *incompetent* DEMOGRAPHIC study by removing demand!
The *competent* ECONOMIC study was protected and buried by never releasing it and removing the date and author from it. The author is still attached to NSF. To be clear: our @NSF is faking incompetence. The mainstream media is faking disinterest. Why? To not reveal the reasoning.
The reason we have sky high STEM immigration is wage tampering. The @NSF & @theNASEM undermined our own model of scientific independence, academic freedom & irreverent science that was the envy of the word by flooding US markets with pliable STEM labor. And over what? Just wages.
Now who is willing to get the @NSF on the record denial? Only the right leaning @BreitbartNews here! And US Instutional media treats anything that appears there as automatically beneath discussion. This is the logic of the Gated Institutional Narrative:
I donāt exist. Breitbart doesnāt exist. The secret study doesnāt have an author, a date or publication. All restrictionists are automatically racists. Blah blah..
But then why not call a liar @nsf? Why invite me to the National Academy 4 separate times to present this @theNASEM?
Ask yourself why your trusted media wonāt put this story to rest. Just deny it @NSF. I triple-dirty-dog dare you. I would love the pleasure of having your spokespeople on The Portal to use your superior access to documents to explain.
Welcome to the DISC. Letās do this thing.
When the story of the modern research university transformation is finally told, it will become clear that almost everyone with āacademic freedomā refused to use it.
Almost isnāt everyone though. One of the only professors who spoke out: @matloff. A brave man. Follow him.
This is why we have academic freedom. It is wasted on almost all who have it. It is, however, essential for the *tiny* minority of people who use it.
In a polarized š, Iām delighted to see a well respected Academic scientist like Prof. @DrBrianKeating w the courage to interview a prominent conservative Orthodox Jew after interviewing Radical Lefty atheist Prof Noam Chomsky.
If you believe in tolerance & free thought: listen.
UNCENSORED: @benshapiro. On Science Fiction, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, & the one guest he most wants to interview! http://youtu.be/rQVf8gKwLHQ
Brian is doing something bold given what academics in his world mostly believe. But what heās really doing is bringing perspectives together. Iāve done two programs with him with guests I respect but with whom I disagree (@skdh, @stephen_wolfram). Heās bringing back what we lost.
If you believe in academic freedom, tolerance, free exchange of ideas, getting rid of academic siloing, and raising the level of the discourse, pay attention to Brianās podcast. Itās still small compared to where itās headed. Heās getting great guests & great answers. #Subscribed
While Loops & Resource Leaks.
These mindless death spirals are found in nature. They have nothing to do with coding computers but are an ever present danger of filling the world with humans robbed of agency and the capacity to dissent from hive logic.
Itās difficult to explain to practical folks or Market and/or Democracy fundamentalists, that what you build into the rules will not necessarily remotely produce what you thought youād get. All coders/biologists, unlike politicians/voters, know this:
Neglecting political economy, capture of media/institutions, market failure, inequality, danger of critical theory, structural inequality, gerontocracy, academic freedom, scientific independence, etc as if these are negligible, dooms us to chase each other around an āant millā.
Moral: We appear to be caught in loops of our own creation. If so, conventional moves will continue to produce this cycling around the drain. It is time to consider more exotic moves to pull ourselves out.
We can no longer afford to fill the world w/ sheep, NPCs & followers. š
I know of no 11 or now 12 figure billionaires endowing the independence of institutional sense-making.
In a highly unequal world widely agreed as having gone mad, securing Academic Freedom for Sense-making has now become of zero interest to anyone who has true financial freedom.
This claim about mask efficacy is disputed.
[By me, at a minimum, In March of 2020. Against Twitter policy of not contradicting health experts and risking my account.] https://x.com/Surgeon_Genera/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160
Why are we pretending that our authorities are authorities? That our experts are experts? Why are we listening to @vijaya, @realDonaldTrump, @WHO, @Twitter, @DrAnthonyF, @SpeakerPelosi, @BilldeBlasio, @MayorOfLA, @GavinNewsom.
Who made people who canāt think straight, the elite?
Here is my question: why am I and others like me forced to worry about how @twitter, @vijaya, @Facebook, @sundarpichai, @Google, etc. feel when they get up in the morning? No one elected this class of overlords.
We need a tech form of āacademic freedomā for who get things right.
I am watching people who have never both had and expressed a single correct independent thought in their life with their hands around the throat of everyone who has risked his/her reputation in public to get things right.
Why are these people our gatekeepers? This is madness. š
Sir: Why do you have a job while I fear for the ability to remain employed and continue to have a social media account???? Who are you? Do you have magical qualifications? If so: what are they that allowed you to *directly* contradict your earlier equal confident pronouncement?
Say it with me, America: #COVIDStopsWithMe.
#COVID19
My explanation for Wokeness taking over our world:
Out institutions select specifically for hierarchical game playing and intrigue and against anyone who thinks from first principles and is willing to stand up for something she/he believes in to the point of self-sacrifice.
In essence the story of "Woke", "Critical Theory", etc... is really the story of the 50 years it took to clear out every last soul that understood the pivotal importance of "Academic Freedom" over "Quality Control", "Radical Inlusion", "Safety Culture", "Cancel Culture" etc.
What we have now is an institutional culture that is uniformly, to a leader, hostile to letting subject matter choose our experts and leaders for us and reward them with deep academic freedom and protection from targeted harrasment by administrators and the bureaucratic class.
At all turns we have muderous zealots eager to remove threats from within by pushing the 5 following ideas:
A) All research is collaborative.
B) Transparency trumps achievement.
C) Diversity trumps achievement.
D) EQ>IQ
E) All academic fields are equally scholarly.
All false.
2021
I have come to the conclusion that @jack needs to look at scientists who have been successfully threading the needles on this platform for a decade and give them academic freedom from the arbitrary application and selective enforcement of vague mercurial rules by @TwitterSafety.
Wow. The really bad guys are congratulating themselves for successfully conspiring and gaslighting against the even worse guys?
For America? Clearly Iāve lost this storyline...
Can @jack please restore the accounts of people who were saying this last summer and November and more recently? Thank you.
Actually, more generally, can we get a version of academic freedom on this platform @jack? Some of us take risks to speak against lying authorities. Iām sick of relitigating. One of the things that keeps even @TwitterSafety in check is folks who refuse authoritarian coordination.
Things I don't believe we can't conclusively resolve:
A) COVID's origin.
B) The Jeffrey Epstein story.
C) UAP.
D) JFK assassination.
E) Vegas Shooting.
F) Extent of 'Democracy Fortifying' in 2020.
G) Efficacy of Non-Vaccines.
H) Mysterious WEF 'Build Back Better' mantra.
I) Negative impacts of Trade known to have been suppressed.
J) Adulteration of BLS CPI measure of inflation.
K) Negative economic impacts of Immigration.
L) Sudden spike in fake 'Objective Third Party Fact Checking'.
M) Sudden "Diversity Equity Inclusion" explosion.
Q) Joe Biden's state of cognitive decline.
R) Nature of MSNBC campagin against Andrew Yang.
S) Nature of Dean Scream, Anti-Ron Paul and other interference in democracy by Mainstream media News.
T) Impact of loss of mandatory retirement on young people seeking work.
U) Rex84.
V) Collusion between National Academy and National Science foundation division of Policy Research and Analysis to fake demographic crisis in mid 1980s.
W) Lack on anyone building the significant & desperately needed new non-profit institutions despite skyhigh wealth inequality.
X) Loss of Academic Freedom across the board in Academe.
Y) Loss of the Lancet and other publications as trusted non-political sources of fact.
Z) The true nature of @EcoHealthNYC w its relationship to @doddtra & Dr A. Fauci.
Moral: much of this 'ambiguity' is serving the few.
2022
Freedom of movement.
Freedom to hold property.
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of bodily self-determination.
Academic Freedom.
Freedom to information.
Freedom from Seigniorage.
Freedom of assembly.
Freedom to dissent.
Free and fair elections.
Q: How are we doing here?
Having been both in Academe and the private sector, I have learned something I cannot communicate:
A) The more you push science towards markets, the more it fails.
B) The more marketization makes science fail, the more capitalists want to starve it.
https://jacobin.com/2018/07/capitalism-science-research-academia-funding-publishing
Increasingly, the solution to every science problem is seen through markets.
X-prizes for science. Science DAOs. Crowdfunding for science. Micro grants. Science as a startup.
Anything *other* than recognizing our previous wisdom of insulating science & scientists from markets.
The answer to getting science to work again is a smaller scientific community with the ability to hold minority positions for decades if necessary.
Academic freedom was a lot less expensive when it was guaranteed by institutions. Now it requires FU money from which itās starved.
2023
Because:
Wuhan involves a Bio-Weapons Convention workaround using @EcoHealthNYC funded by @dtra.
CCP controls a huge market.
We created scientists who all fear for their ability to feed families when we ended true academic freedom.
Itās anti-interesting.
š
2024
For me, this has little to do w/ Kamala. It's:
Democracy vs TheDemocracyā¢
Science vs TheScienceā¢
Privacy vs TheTermsOfServicePrivacyPolicyā¢
Free Speech vs OurFreeSpeechā¢
Academic Freedom vs USAcademicFreedomā¢
Diversity vs DEIā¢
Professional Agreement vs TheExpertConsensusā¢
I stopped at 240 Characters on this one, just so that it would all be displayed. Feel free to add your own kayfabrication examples. Many of us can finish each otherās thoughts at this point and would come up with the same basic lists:
Facts vs FactCheckersā¢
Truth vs TheNarrativeā¢
Elite Achievement vs Elitesā¢