I have no problem being on the list myself but tremble to think how this will affect the practice of our science, especially its effect on young mathematicians."
By now I'm positive that whatever Topaz/QSIDE were trying to achieve with that list (whether it's stirring up grad students against a bourgeois "elite", threatening people en masse, or just gathering evidence to prove his points) has failed. Almost no follow-up discussion, let alone (to my knowledge) personnel consequences. AMS has gone semi-woke unfortunately, but that's in line with its bureaucratizing and calcifying tendencies over the last decades. Good news is, we have AMR now with several well-known people on their masthead ( https://amathr.org/books/ ).
That said, I wish you had put a "..." between two of the sentences you quoted from me, as they were answering different questions. As you quoted me, it looks like I've brought Topaz up for no reason in the context of AMS (to my knowledge, the AMS has not gone crazy to the point of having Topaz speak for them).
"A noble idea in theory, but due to human hypocrisy it worked poorly in practice.”
This common formulation strikes me as incredibly strange, even though I know several advocates of "communism" well and believe they have noble motives. That's because I see the fundamental problem as being the labor theory of value, a scientific hypothesis on par with the phlogiston theory of heat. Not human hypocrisy so much as human sincerity in believing economic nonsense.
"Unlike many dissenting professors, he isn’t complaining about his own mistreatment. He’s standing up for the principles of academic freedom and intellectual meritocracy."
I think this distinction is less meaning than it might sound, at least under current conditions, because the mistreatment is *foreseeable*. If you *know* that dissenting views are punished, and you dissent *anyway*, it would kinda misleading to say that you're complaining about your own mistreatment rather than defending the principle of free discussion.
As it stands, people with principles get disproportionately targeted by the reigning orthodoxy. So "John is angry about his own mistreatment" and "John is angry because he has principles" are very likely to be complements rather than substitutes.
Sorry, I simply can't take anyone seriously who defends TFG, who has done more to rend this country apart than anyone since Newt Gingrich (probably moreso).
Alas, the link to the podcast leads to a 404. The correct link is:
https://salemcenter.org/podcast/policy-at-mccombs/bryan-caplan-interviews-princeton-dissident-sergiu-klainerman-2/
HTH!
Ayyy he gave me a quote 6 months ago for my article, "Woke Mathematicians Are Putting Their Enemies On A Surveillance List"
https://karlstack.substack.com/p/woke-mathematicians-are-putting-their
"Sergiu Klainerman, math professor at Princeton:
I have no problem being on the list myself but tremble to think how this will affect the practice of our science, especially its effect on young mathematicians."
By now I'm positive that whatever Topaz/QSIDE were trying to achieve with that list (whether it's stirring up grad students against a bourgeois "elite", threatening people en masse, or just gathering evidence to prove his points) has failed. Almost no follow-up discussion, let alone (to my knowledge) personnel consequences. AMS has gone semi-woke unfortunately, but that's in line with its bureaucratizing and calcifying tendencies over the last decades. Good news is, we have AMR now with several well-known people on their masthead ( https://amathr.org/books/ ).
That said, I wish you had put a "..." between two of the sentences you quoted from me, as they were answering different questions. As you quoted me, it looks like I've brought Topaz up for no reason in the context of AMS (to my knowledge, the AMS has not gone crazy to the point of having Topaz speak for them).
"A noble idea in theory, but due to human hypocrisy it worked poorly in practice.”
This common formulation strikes me as incredibly strange, even though I know several advocates of "communism" well and believe they have noble motives. That's because I see the fundamental problem as being the labor theory of value, a scientific hypothesis on par with the phlogiston theory of heat. Not human hypocrisy so much as human sincerity in believing economic nonsense.
"Unlike many dissenting professors, he isn’t complaining about his own mistreatment. He’s standing up for the principles of academic freedom and intellectual meritocracy."
I think this distinction is less meaning than it might sound, at least under current conditions, because the mistreatment is *foreseeable*. If you *know* that dissenting views are punished, and you dissent *anyway*, it would kinda misleading to say that you're complaining about your own mistreatment rather than defending the principle of free discussion.
As it stands, people with principles get disproportionately targeted by the reigning orthodoxy. So "John is angry about his own mistreatment" and "John is angry because he has principles" are very likely to be complements rather than substitutes.
Pulling out "The Big Lebowski" quote, Bryan - nice!
Sorry, I simply can't take anyone seriously who defends TFG, who has done more to rend this country apart than anyone since Newt Gingrich (probably moreso).
Well done and thanks!