Ansuz

Scarcity, abundance, and lost careers

How should institutions make hiring and promotion decisions, in theory? How do institutions make such decisions, in actual practice? What happens, and what should happen, when someone's career is interrupted? Is it possible to restore an interrupted career, and should that be done? What happens to institutions when society overproduces, or underproduces, elite individuals? This article looks at ways to understand these questions, starting from an historical episode.

A palindrome

From roughly 1999, when I completed a Bachelor's degree and started a Master's, until 2016, when I left academia at the postdoctoral research level, I regularly received solicitations from recruiters trying to interest me in work in the computing industry. I generally ignored and rejected these solicitations - mostly because I wanted an academic career instead, and also partly because the recruiters steadfastly refused to use ever email as a first-class communications medium, instead trying to "set up a phone call" for any substantive communication. More about the telephone thing another time.

For now, the point I'd like to highlight is that as soon as I left the academic path and updated my LinkedIn profile to say I no longer worked at a university, I stopped hearing from these people. My qualifications are the same or better now; it would seem (since I now have some business experience, and I'm no longer committed to research as a career) that I might be a better prospect, with more freedom and possible interest to listen to what they have to say; but the solicitations have just dried up. It's almost like they only want the one that they can't get.

Eight of Cups

Summer 2019 marks eleven years since I completed my PhD, and three since I decided to stop looking for an academic job. I want to write about that but it's hard to do so. I've written and thrown away many drafts of comments on my own experience, what was promised, what I found instead, and where I stand now.

The garden of cosmic horror and delight

I'm very interested in cognitive deficits: tasks it may seem human brains ought to be able to perform, but that at least some brains cannot. This time around I'd like to say a few words about mathematical foundations and the ability to understand them. The fact is that there are some questions - and they're very simple ones - that neither a human brain nor anything that functions like a human brain can answer. And understanding that fact is itself a problem that may be challenging for at least some brains.

Ad stramineum hominem

Sometimes I find myself on the receiving end of false accusations of "straw man" argumentation, and it feels like this happens abnormally often to me in particular. It's baffling because when it happens, it doesn't make any sense.