“Academic work should get less status than concrete projects.”
This seems like a pretty strong claim and I’m not sure I agree with it. While yeah, sure, I’m guessing people working on theory sometimes end up doing too much of what’s interesting and not enough of what’s the most useful, I’m guessing projects are also mostly things that people find interesting but might not be useful .
Theory = not useful, projects = useful doesn’t seem to exactly hit what I think the problem is. I’m guessing theory researchers specifically gravitate towards the bits of theory that seem the most interesting, projects people gravitate towards the most flashy/interesting projects, and these are the problems.
I didn’t say don’t do academic work, I said that across different areas, there is more emphasis on interesting things, and therefore I think everyone should push the other direction—and one way to do that is less status for academic-style work.
“Academic work should get less status than concrete projects.”
This seems like a pretty strong claim and I’m not sure I agree with it. While yeah, sure, I’m guessing people working on theory sometimes end up doing too much of what’s interesting and not enough of what’s the most useful, I’m guessing projects are also mostly things that people find interesting but might not be useful .
Theory = not useful, projects = useful doesn’t seem to exactly hit what I think the problem is. I’m guessing theory researchers specifically gravitate towards the bits of theory that seem the most interesting, projects people gravitate towards the most flashy/interesting projects, and these are the problems.
I didn’t say don’t do academic work, I said that across different areas, there is more emphasis on interesting things, and therefore I think everyone should push the other direction—and one way to do that is less status for academic-style work.
Although to be clear, I do think it’s probably correct that this tends to happen more with academic work.