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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny, I think a lot of us who didn’t come through high-level academia or post-graduate education activities have this perspective that those in higher education are amazing figures, above reproach, who do amazing works in society.

As I’ve gotten older, and had more of an opportunity to interact with these players, and read articles such as these, I now have the perspective that a lot of these folks are monsters and are some of the craziest, narcissistic, abusive people on the face of the earth. They run fiefdoms and hold power over money and prestige and those under them and because they are brilliant people, they have the ability to damage so many more people around them as they do their work.

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It kind of depends on how prestigious and competitive the field is.

There are plenty of fields that are "boring" and "unattractive", where work and community is very chill and by-the-numbers.

On the other hand you have very hot and competitive fields, that will attract a certain kind of people.

And plenty of toxic / abrasive scientists get to reign free, if it just happens that they're producing the desired results.

If it helps to hear it, there definitely are amazing figures, including ones that not only do brilliant work, but are exceptionally great as fellow humans (especially humble, thoughtful, altruistic, etc.).

I don't have a complete perspective, but have heard from people at many universities. (Including from someone who'd made their way up one university, and remarked they weren't impressed by recent faculty hires there, "but I'd take a bullet for" a particular all-around great professor there.)

I think most academics are closer to the normal distributions of just people. Better educated (at least in a niche, and possibly generally) than your average person, and maybe smarter than average in some regards, but probably not a superhuman intelligence, and AFAICT not any more likely to be saintly than any other human.

There's also a lot of hustle required of many professors, so they have less time, energy, and power, for the benevolent and wise elder citizen of the university model society role, which I once imagined professors would tend to embrace.

There are also some more unfortunate dynamics going on, some places, and with some individuals especially. And there are facets of some universities that behave like maybe the most internally toxic corporation you can imagine -- except arguably worse, because the institution or individuals tend to be held less to account.

> are monsters and are some of the craziest, narcissistic, abusive people on the face of the earth

With what might be, I am sure, obvious exceptions, I have reached the personal conclusion that academia, universities, colleges, are cespits of the absolute worst, most treachearous, most cunning worst that human nature has to offer. Far from being a meritocracy, scum "floats" to the top in these environments.-

I am really curious how this fact ties into the - recently discussed here - lack of value that people more and more perceive in college degrees.-

I've spent 15 years in academia and 10 in industry. Academia isn't worse on a per capita basis. Leaders' flaws are rawer, mainly because hardly anyone gets leadership training. And they often have more severe consequences, especially for grad students who are put in a subordinate, dependent position for an extended period of time. But IME you're at least equally likely to find psychopaths at the top of businesses.

You’re right. Plenty of research has shown C-suite execs tend to have psychopathic tendencies.

The thing about academia, though, is that there is no escape. Not only is this behavior everywhere in the academy, economics dictates with very few exceptions you are stuck in the system and have to become part of it just to subsist and participate in research.

Meanwhile in the business world it’s relatively a simple matter to quit and work elsewhere when you end up with a psycho boss, and if you’re clever it is relatively simple to be compensated in a way that makes it possible to split away and start your own business or otherwise attain a significant level of control over your own livelihood and career goals.

As the saying goes, “the only way to win is not to play” when it comes to academia. Unfortunately that just further concentrates the worst characteristics. As someone who escaped academia it isn’t lost on me that academics almost universally love communism, a system that rigidly enforces equality such that it’s impossible to excel and break away from the system. One of the wonderful things about business is you can earn enough to eventually step away.

Academia is much less centralized. My lab is basically unconstrained as long as I bring in enough funding, and although I have a department chair he has limited power to make me do things. Similarly I have almost no power over my fellow faculty members, aside from bugging them to do things. A bad PI can make their students’ and post-docs’ lives miserable, and can irritate their colleagues. But they have nothing near the power that a C-suite executive (or hell a VP) in a corporation does, simply because they don’t have the same number of people under them.

And no, you don’t see maniacal behavior everywhere. You hear a lot about the 5% who behave terribly because they draw a lot of complaints and make up approximately 100% of the reports you see on sites like RetractionWatch.

I've found that to be true of practically every human endeavor. The ones who achieve the most prominent positions are the ones who work the system to their advantage.

It's not merely that cheaters win. It's that they are selected for it: people want them to cheat on their behalf. And they may not even be wrong about that.

I used to be a scientist back in USSR. Can't talk about it in general but where I've worked and visited I did not encounter anything that fits your description. Sure there was dirt here and there but nothing approaching the level.

Modern corporations however from my experience are quite fitting.

I suspect you'll find at the top of all self-styled "meritocracies" are people who have socially engineered the definition of "merit" to be them and their empire. And this is the profound problem with all "meritocratic" structures. They might start out on a small scale selecting for some genuine skill, but measuring humans can be easily gamed.

A game which narcissists win and reinforces their narcissism by telling them what they want to hear about themselves.

Any time there is power to be had, the worst people are the most incentivized to seize it. It is the nature of power and of humans.

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