Recently I posted a quote about academics being mental conformists (which also means mental weaklings… but we all knew that). Specifically referring to academia, their lockstep thought and lemming-like propensity to stampede is all pervasive. It stunts their growth. They learn only so much, and then it’s variations on a theme until they die.
Academics can be fine people individually (it’s the collective that sucks) but even if you’re talking to an individual, you have to be careful. In many, the hive mind resides behind the mask. You have to watch out; if they detect you’re of “the other” (however they define it that particular week) they’ll become cruel and vindictive. They’re not even nice to each other. They’re constantly fighting about internal politics that don’t matter anywhere else. You don’t want to get caught up in their dumb little dramas! They’ll piss and moan for decades about some committee meeting that would bore sane people to death in an hour. They’re fish that can’t see the water in which they swim and therefore deny there’s any such thing as water. Since they’ve never been out of it… they’re right for their own world and wrong for the universe as a whole. This also means if you’ve got a problem that isn’t solved by one of their cookie cutter solutions they’ll be stumped. They’ll continue trying the same approach (whether it works or not) until the money is gone and they’re wheeled out of their office having attained complete geezerhood.
I shudder to remember my time in academia. I went behind enemy lines to get what learning I could. I fled in terror as soon as I’d plundered what was available and no more learning was at hand. I risked becoming incurably dull.
It’s sad what academia does to it’s younger more gullible members. Look at an impoverished adjunct professor slaving in the galleys of the Lotus eaters. Highly credentialed and modestly bright; yet earning slightly more than minimum wage (possibly less) and working huge hours. Trapped by the sunk cost fallacy and too brainwashed to seek a real paycheck elsewhere. A man digging a ditch, makes a ditch and gets paid a fair wage. It’s hard labor but he drinks beer on the weekend and the world needed the ditch. He has an OK life. An adjunct professor makes nothing and gets paid just enough to go broke slowly while his shoulders sag under imaginary stress.
Sometimes that sort of shit happens in the world where the rest of us live. It gets me down. Luckily, I found a cure. I’m sharing it with you; free of charge:
Build a boat.
It doesn’t have to be a big boat. It doesn’t even have to be a boat. But you have to build it and you have to use it. No cheating. Get out your tools and make the damn thing. Then use it.
The thing about a boat (or whatever you choose as an alternative) is you can assess failure the old fashioned way; put it in the water. If it sinks, it sucks. No amount of committee meetings, group hugs, collective brainstorming sessions, votes, whiteboard diagrams, or discussion will make a sunk boat right or make the boat that you built and is bobbing in the waves into an “un-boat”. If it floats and works, it’s right. Nobody else’s opinion matters.
Interface with reality and the group project people flee. They don’t want to hear about your dumb little hobby. It scares them. They can’t make suggestions about rocker curves, epoxy mixes, rigging setups, or weight distribution… because the water will test their theories and that terrifies them.
I found that people who mess with boats are a different breed. They way they assess success or failure is whether the damn thing sinks or not; so they are profoundly confident and deeply humble. If they fuck up they’ll find out in the worst possible way. Nor do they seem overly impressed with degrees in “boat-ology”.
If your craft does well, they’re supportive… even if you’re just a novice and their boat is better. It’s not a zero sum game. There’s plenty of water to float as many boats as there are people. If your boat sucks they don’t have to tell you because you already know. (I was hanging out with small boat builders. It may be very different for big boats. Then again the Titanic was built by the best professionals in the field.)
If you’re feeling awash in a sea of dipshits; build a boat. It will tell you what you need to know. It will encourage you to improve. It will not require meetings. It will tell you what’s important and what’s not. (Hint: the water doesn’t give a shit what color paint you choose but it cares about how you anchored the rudder’s pintle and gudgeon. Don’t argue with the water; it doesn’t speak bullshit.)
It worked for me, if you don’t like boats, choose your own substitute. Leave the academics to their playpens and enjoy using your mind. It’ll be worth it.
Dayum, AC, that’s profound.
I know a school district’s science/math co-ordinator who is also a chemistry teacher. This individual is a smart person with a good heart. Who used an astronomical telescope to focus the light from a far-away star in order to imbue a glass of water with said star’s energy. Also believes in homeopathy. Sigh.
Also, I first read “conformists” as “contortionists”. Must mean something other than me being pre-coffee.
Imbued with the star’s energy?
Great leaping dipshittery! Where do these tools come up with their bullshit?
I’ve met more than one otherwise-rational person who believes in homeopathy despite the fact that the “science” was invented on demand to fulfill a political purpose, never mind that no one other than true believers can produce evidence of efficacy. There is some survival mechanism built into our little lizard brains that makes us believe nonsense sometimes. Sigh.
Of course you can imbue the water with the star’s energy. It’s just that the amount you’ll imbue is probably measurable in zeptowatts or yattowatts – 10^-21 or 10^24 W – or less. >20 orders of magnitude less energy than the thermal input from the bottle sitting there at more 0 Kelvin.
Oh sure, but you’re forgetting the catalytic effect of putting it in a pyramid during the process. This multiplies the effect by 3.645 Mega-unicorns. It all makes sense if you don’t know any science. Here… have a toke and then lets talk about tax policies in California.
🙂
SiG: Now I know you’re a radio guy. Yotta and Zepto are real QRP.
Mega-Unicorns are a unit unfamiliar to me, AC and I’m stealing that nomenclature.
The under-ice boat means your corpse will be well preserved until the lakes turn over.
And Newton is correct- the stars do foretell our future. On an extremely long time scale.
ETA and on a tangent: one of the local repeaters used to report the time in UTC (Zulu time for the veterans) and the temperature in Kelvin. Hey, it’s a university town.
Not so hard to believe when you realize Isaac Newton was a rabid astrologer and believed the stars revealed humanity’s fate.
If the boat sinks, it is not necessarily a failure. As long as you are able to refloat it afterward.
Feel free to discuss that with a submariner at your convenience…
}:-]
Another twist… if you can build your own boat you find yourself absolutely unconcerned with “breaking” it. You just float the biggest remaining part back to shore and think up a new “improvement”. A cracked mast step or twisted rudder is just a fun chance to “do it better”. Sailing your own boat makes you far more confident than buying. I’m sure the same is true of people who “build” their race car or for that matter folks that build their home.
BTW: I love stories of coastal “submersibles” hand build by drug runners. Some are shit and others are clever (probably all of them are unsafe). I’m a sucker for innovation, no matter where it comes from, so they’re fun to read about. I’d love to build a “submersible” myself but I sail back and forth on waters bounding Canada. I’m pretty sure I’d get my ass “red flagged” in a heartbeat for that kind of crap. “No, honest officer, I’ve got nothing in here but a fishing pole and a bottle of bourbon… I’m going camping! Isn’t my snorkel design cool? Also check out my repurposed jet ski motor system; I’m a genius! Why am I handcuffed? What do you mean Guantanamo?!? Help!” I’d better not do that. 🙂
Oh, man, go for it! But make it a challenge: build yer underseaboat for when the water is iced-over. Minimizes the chance of colliding with another craft, y’see.
Oh man! That sounds so fun. “This here is my Steam Powered Under-ice Device ‘SPUD’; it’s ugly as one. I use it to terrorize ice fishermen, catch Pike in their habitat using a grapple, and freak out border patrol.” I was going to buy a snowmobile but I don’t like payments; so I do this… there’s only a 10% chance I’ll asphyxiate.
“because the water will test their theories and that terrifies them. ”
Yeah, water is wet.
I learned a similar lesson building the mighty Ferguson (a ton of welded steel and sex appeal!). For all my years in college, years of physics and materials and more math than I thought possible, a welder with a GED knew a helluva lot more than I did. Thing is, he had 50 years of experience, seeing what held up and had to fix what didn’t. I had, “Assume a piece of 4130 steel with a tensile strength of X supporting a beam of length Y…” Academia lacks the addendum, “now assume the operator is a complete muppet and the steel is melted down automobiles from Pakistan.” There’s a reason engineers apprentice for three years before being allowed to put that hallowed “P.E.” behind their name (which I never did and do not claim), and that is solely because an education truly only starts once you encounter the real world.
I hit several colleges when I was younger. I CLEP’d my ass through at lightning speed and never looked back.
Idiots gotta idiot and I wanted no part of the ‘intelligentsia”
Good move! CLEP wasn’t something I knew about (if it existed back then). But there’s always a way to avoid being a lemming in a 300 person lecture hall doing “Extended High School Bullshit 101”. The “intelligentsia” might have once been a cool thing but it was watered down by the time I got to the fringes. By then it was mostly a class thing.
I’ve socked away a significant sum to pay for the kids’ college. The more I hear about colleges, and remembering my own knowing it’s only become worse, I’m honestly wondering if paying for them to attend college isn’t a form of child abuse? Now it may be the middle-aged acreage-owner in me, but I’m beginning to think a heated shop and having them help me wrench during the winter would be a better education and instead of college tuition I’ll buy them trade school and a truck full of whatever is needed to start their own business.
– Max
You’re thinking well. A skilled trade, any skilled trade, is better ROI than a university degree in bullshit.