Reece Barlow

This is: a great idea

You're damn right I use commas incorrectly. That's how you know this wasn't written, by AI

#academicsky

Truer words have never been spoken. There's not much intelligence and lots of artificial

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

again, not having an interest in becoming "academically trained" is not a problem in and of itself.

but it doesn't surprise me that we expect young people who get a degree for its ROI to behave like aspiring academics and they don't give a shit.

5/5

if we were all required to play pro level sports to get a high paying job, surely doping would be sky high.

not everyone "loves learning" and that's okay.

what causes the problem is needing a degree, but not having a desire to develop "academically".

4/5

We don’t expect most young people to become semi-pro athletes, ranked chess players, or classically trained musicians.

so this expectation to complete a degree that was traditionally the first step toward an academic career seems a little odd.

3/5

been seeing a lot of hand-wringing about how university students are not developing the skills to succeed in their academic pursuits thanks to AI.

"what happened to the love of learning!?"

but should everyone "love" the specific flavor of learning that universities provide?

no.

2/5

it seems elitist to say something like "not everyone should go to university".

but honestly, the high numbers of quasi-academics graduating every year who only go to university to boost their earning prospects is the reason why everyone writes their essays using ChatGPT

#academicsky

1/5

we don’t expect so many young people to become semi-pro athletes, ranked chess players, or classically trained musicians.

so this expectation to complete a degree that was traditionally the first step taken toward an academic career seems a little odd.

3/5

been seeing a lot of hand-wringing about how university students are not developing the skills to succeed in thier academic pursuits thanks to AI.

"what happened to the love of learning!?"

but should everyone "love" the specific flavor of learning that universities provide?

I think no.

2/5

A scholar did suffer obsession
With promotions and career progression
Perhaps ChatGPT
Could let them be free?
From the rat race within their profession

#academicsky
#philsky

the temp folder seems to have died the same death as the documents it was designed to store

My downloads folder is just the place where pdfs go to die.

Trying to talk about scholarly stuff on algorithm driven platforms low-key feels quite dangerous. like you're never far away from someone who thinks that science is all a sham or that the only thing worth researching is physics and maths twisting the message to match their view.
#academicsky

I'm not familiar with Kantian ethics at all but this book looks super interesting

The Tyranny Of Written Knowledge With the ever-growing emphasis on communicating knowledge through written publications, we are increasingly experiencing a transactional relationship with knowledge: one that prioritises storage, circ...

In @scholarlyletter.bsky.social, we propose a counter-balance to written communication’s dominance on knowledge.

Balance can be achieved not by reducing the role of the written word, but by (re)adding something that has been lost:

thescholarlyletter.scholar-square.com/p/the-tyrann...

Academic publishing is the epitome of this: the publication of “new” research papers with the goal for these papers to ‘reach’ - that is, be read, consumed, and most importantly, cited - more widely than ever before.

These articles have maybe 5 years before becoming "out-of-date".

4/5

The durability of writing means knowledge persists through time, but innovations in writing media (especially digital media) have increasingly favored the spread of knowledge across space (distance).

Knowledge's spread and reach have increased at the expense of it's durability through time.

3/5

First, the obvious before we move on to more interesting ground:

Writing that counts as "knowledge" requires professional training i.e. academic writing.

Writing makes thought visible, which in turn makes abstraction and conceptualization possible.

Writing makes knowledge durable.

2/5

For information to count as knowledge, it must be written down.

You can't cite a conversation with a colleague, but you can cite a journal article that you talked about. The unchecked power of the written word has shaped how we know and also what we count as knowing: a thread.

1/5
#academicsky

The Value of Useless Knowledge And trusting that curiosity will lead somewhere meaningful.

Flexner believed that curiosity can be trusted to lead us somewhere meaningful. His view offers a compelling alternative to utility-obsessed research culture and inspired an essay a few weeks ago in The Scholarly Letter. Check it out here:

thescholarlyletter.scholar-square.com/p/the-value-...

If we aim to produce knowledge that is useful (that has "value") then it logically follows that there is some knowledge which has less value, or perhaps no value at all.

This is what Flexner addresses in his essay "The Value of Useless Knowledge".

3/4

If curiosity has indeed been replaced in our way of doing research, then what has taken it’s place?

The reality today is science, research, and knowledge are viewed as tools for maximizing utility.

Instead of being curiosity-driven, research is now utility-driven.

2/4

What knowledge is the most worthy?

In a 1939 essay, Flexner passionately argued for the value of curiosity driven research. As I read it, two things occurred to me:

1. of course research is driven by curiosity
2. “curiosity” seems to have vanished from the discourse on research.

#academicsky 1/4

Things need to change but greater financialization ain't it bro

Ideas on how to improve scientific research Bridging the gap from scientific discovery to new products.

"Academia exists in a weird alternate reality where money and traditional market incentives don’t seem to matter" LOL what?

"incentives" like publications and citations are already exchanged for real money if you think about it and do enough damage.

tinyurl.com/4vnd4up7

#academicsky

All theories are false, so pick a theory because it's useful instead of worrying about whether it's 'true'.

Currently a little obsessed with Mintzberg's 'Developing Theory About the Development of Theory' (which is an essay disguised as a book chapter).

tinyurl.com/yusr59b6

#academicsky

Paywalled articles suck but it sucks more when the article was published in 1973 it's been 50 years get over it

#academicsky

My exceedingly talented co-editor writes about how 'our scientific culture, which claims to be fully objective, constantly relies on creativity and interpretation' in one of the best 🍏 Sunday Reads the @scholarlyletter.bsky.social has published so far.

It's worth 10 mins of your time.

#academicsky