I am eagerly waiting for this book I just ordered (no I have no tie ins! I post stuff I like so often I sound like an adbot myself ;-/.
I am not an influencer just a hater)
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tech-billionaires-adam-becker-1235381649/
Fresh off a Ph.D. in astrophysics, science journalist Adam Becker moved to Silicon Valley with an academic’s acclimation to hearing the word “no.” “In academic science, you need to doubt yourself,” he says. “That’s essential to the process.” So it was strange to find himself suddenly surrounded by a culture that branded itself as data-oriented and scientific but where, he soon came to realize, the ideas were more grounded in science fiction than in actual science and the grip on reality was tenuous at best. “What this sort of crystallized for me,” says Becker, “was that these tech guys — who people think of as knowing a lot about science — actually, don’t really know anything about science at all.”
It’s not that there aren’t a few intelligent scientists at places like Stanford, MIT etc, but at this point I think they have and are letting down the rest of science and scientists, by letting these tech guys and defence contracting get away with ignoring a lot of what were implicit assumptions in the scientific contract with society and there will be no reconciliation with (mediocre and failed) scientists like me they have pissed off.
I myself scoff at conspiratorial trash like “lab leak!”. But not at subservience to those creeps at Google and Palantir. Not the MTG batshit crazy version, but what Becker etc point out.
Real scientists should have checked these self-serving, mercenary morons and they didn’t.
I do not consider them colleagues anymore.
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