I'm sorry that you have not encountered much good scientific writing. I am delighted to report that there is a lot of good writing in computer science and linguistics, which I know well. When I started in the 1980s, there was a fair bit of less good writing by authors writing in their second language. But even with a hugely increased number of papers that we have today, and the resulting pressure to publish fast, this difference is mostly gone,
How is this missing the point? Your claim is that some combination of Darwin and bureacracy conspires to make scientific writing less interesting than before. My experience is that this is field-dependent. Medical and biological sciences are very regimented. The fields that I care about are much less so, to their benefit. And this extends beyond people who are in the luxury position of being first language speakers. There's some really stylish and enjoyable stuff coming through.
Yea I mean obviously I'm talking in generalities here and there are exceptions and qualifications but these are just proving the rule. I'm very clearly talking about a long time horizon here, like hundreds of years and major changes happening between 1920s-1960s; you are talking about post 1980s and computer science which barely even existed then. Thanks for chiming in, buddy.
It's true that the glorious "Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity" was written 50 years ago, and might not be acceptable nowadays. You'll love it, I think.
I'm curious if the decline in science writing, especially recently, has been related to the decline in the importance of humanities and overall rounded education for scientists?
Seems like back in the day to be a scientist you had to be a real renaissance man, or at least know your way around literature and poetry. Most scientists nowadays just kind of snooze through a psych 101 class and call it a day to get the credit, I would imagine. Overall universities produce far less well rounded people.
I'll admit to the fact that modern humanities programs... don't exactly inspire confidence that they're producing well read graduates either though.
My ug and postgraduate studies were mainly in social sciences and some computing. The journals are a little more colourful, but it's very clear that groupthink is better rewarded than any real attempts to go off in interesting directions. Utterly formulaic with few exceptions. Older papers are definitely better written, and papers written by older researchers who don't have to chase around for grants anymore.
I know quite well a Reader in Psychology. When I asked about the extent to which Freud was still influential he admitted to little familiarity and that "...we don't teach him". Well, sure, time has passed, but wtf? Since then they have opened up a Foundation course, like a Year Zero before you enter First Year. There they deign to explain some fundamentals.
His research papers are kind of readable but mainly explain how a bunch of numbers were input to MATLAB and another bunch were spat out, indicating that further research is needed. (His main research interest is meditation and whether it's benefits can be measured.)
The change in psychology writing/thinking over the last century has been dramatic and not for the better. In its rush to be perceived as a harder science, psychology rushed into experimental research without laying the proper foundation (hence replication crisis). We would do well to recognize that there is still room for important contributions to be made in the vein of people like Freud (yes he was wrong about a lot, but he was also right about some important things and his thought drove the field forward even when it was wrong) and particularly William James (a beautiful writer) - theorization based on careful observation of self and others. James wrote over a century ago and I would contend that you can still learn more about actual human psychology by reading his work than by reading all of the research articles produced in last ~30 years.
> The way that we write is inseparable from the way that we think, and restrictions in one necessarily lead to restrictions in the other.
I have two problems with this sentence. The first is that it is false, and the second is that you bolded it.
My oldest child is dyslexic, and writes only with difficulty and discomfort. But once every week or so this person approaches me with a "You know, I was thinking" that surpasses the level of insight I encounter on most blog posts.
It isn't that I'm trying to be dismissive here; this subject is something I've turned around in my mind for a long time. I'm told that, as a child of around seven, I asked my mother, "How can [our pet rabbit] think without language?" I was only seven, right, so I was a bit slow to realize the question wasn't very sensible. When you perform a mental rotation in your head, or ride a bicycle, are you thinking about it out loud? For me solutions to problems in math and physics simply come to mind, and I only mutter about them after the fact.
I think this is (part of) why politics is so awful: people reach conclusions nonverbally, and then make up stories about how their thought processes came together after the fact. One of the best scales for measuring conservatism is the Wilson-Patterson: it gives subjects a phrase like "computer music" and the option to immediately answer "yes" "?" or "no." This scale correlates r > 0.7 with Altemeyer's bloated RWA scale which is full of questions like "Once our government leaders give us the go ahead, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within." Are you sure what's going on here is significantly different from somebody saying "research style" and your clicking "yes" over and over again?
Fair enough. I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at - I don't see how any of this invalidates the statement. I'm certainly not saying that all thought reduces to verbal expression or something like that - probably something more like "the dominant modalities and norms through which we express thought in turn shape the manner and form in which we think".
If you're not sure what I'm getting at, I've learned that arguing over the Internet is a ticklish business. I may be confident of 100%, but there's no way I'm getting that, so here I'm pushing for 20%, and you just gave me 10%, which I will take!
Stating my opinion in words, I do agree that current conventions are stuffy, but overall they work very well. Granted, the Discussion section does not *often* contain much in the way of speculation or witty turns of phrase, but in principle it can - and dry humor often finds its way into the Introduction and Results sections. I can also think of a very good reason why style should be mostly kept to a minimum: many researchers, particularly in the hard sciences, are stodgy, verbally awkward, and literal-minded. If style is given free reign, soon enough it becomes the norm; when good science is associated with beautiful and entertaining writing, important results may find themselves relegated to low-impact journals or even the file drawer.
Those are definitely the counterarguments here - the hope would be we can find a better middle ground and scientists can open up to the important of style/aesthetics over time.
I'm sorry that you have not encountered much good scientific writing. I am delighted to report that there is a lot of good writing in computer science and linguistics, which I know well. When I started in the 1980s, there was a fair bit of less good writing by authors writing in their second language. But even with a hugely increased number of papers that we have today, and the resulting pressure to publish fast, this difference is mostly gone,
Not sure what definition of good science writing you are working with, but you might be missing the point here buddy
How is this missing the point? Your claim is that some combination of Darwin and bureacracy conspires to make scientific writing less interesting than before. My experience is that this is field-dependent. Medical and biological sciences are very regimented. The fields that I care about are much less so, to their benefit. And this extends beyond people who are in the luxury position of being first language speakers. There's some really stylish and enjoyable stuff coming through.
Yea I mean obviously I'm talking in generalities here and there are exceptions and qualifications but these are just proving the rule. I'm very clearly talking about a long time horizon here, like hundreds of years and major changes happening between 1920s-1960s; you are talking about post 1980s and computer science which barely even existed then. Thanks for chiming in, buddy.
It's true that the glorious "Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity" was written 50 years ago, and might not be acceptable nowadays. You'll love it, I think.
@article{McDermott1976ArtificialIM,
title={Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity},
author={Drew McDermott},
journal={SIGART Newsl.},
year={1976},
volume={57},
pages={4-9},
url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:28619965}
}
Thanks for the citation, poindexter. I meant computer science ~pre-1950s but who gives a shit.
Why the sarcasm and aggression?
I'm curious if the decline in science writing, especially recently, has been related to the decline in the importance of humanities and overall rounded education for scientists?
Seems like back in the day to be a scientist you had to be a real renaissance man, or at least know your way around literature and poetry. Most scientists nowadays just kind of snooze through a psych 101 class and call it a day to get the credit, I would imagine. Overall universities produce far less well rounded people.
I'll admit to the fact that modern humanities programs... don't exactly inspire confidence that they're producing well read graduates either though.
It's a great point and seems like it undoubtedly has to be a contributing factor (wish I had mentioned it).
My ug and postgraduate studies were mainly in social sciences and some computing. The journals are a little more colourful, but it's very clear that groupthink is better rewarded than any real attempts to go off in interesting directions. Utterly formulaic with few exceptions. Older papers are definitely better written, and papers written by older researchers who don't have to chase around for grants anymore.
I know quite well a Reader in Psychology. When I asked about the extent to which Freud was still influential he admitted to little familiarity and that "...we don't teach him". Well, sure, time has passed, but wtf? Since then they have opened up a Foundation course, like a Year Zero before you enter First Year. There they deign to explain some fundamentals.
His research papers are kind of readable but mainly explain how a bunch of numbers were input to MATLAB and another bunch were spat out, indicating that further research is needed. (His main research interest is meditation and whether it's benefits can be measured.)
The change in psychology writing/thinking over the last century has been dramatic and not for the better. In its rush to be perceived as a harder science, psychology rushed into experimental research without laying the proper foundation (hence replication crisis). We would do well to recognize that there is still room for important contributions to be made in the vein of people like Freud (yes he was wrong about a lot, but he was also right about some important things and his thought drove the field forward even when it was wrong) and particularly William James (a beautiful writer) - theorization based on careful observation of self and others. James wrote over a century ago and I would contend that you can still learn more about actual human psychology by reading his work than by reading all of the research articles produced in last ~30 years.
> The way that we write is inseparable from the way that we think, and restrictions in one necessarily lead to restrictions in the other.
I have two problems with this sentence. The first is that it is false, and the second is that you bolded it.
My oldest child is dyslexic, and writes only with difficulty and discomfort. But once every week or so this person approaches me with a "You know, I was thinking" that surpasses the level of insight I encounter on most blog posts.
It isn't that I'm trying to be dismissive here; this subject is something I've turned around in my mind for a long time. I'm told that, as a child of around seven, I asked my mother, "How can [our pet rabbit] think without language?" I was only seven, right, so I was a bit slow to realize the question wasn't very sensible. When you perform a mental rotation in your head, or ride a bicycle, are you thinking about it out loud? For me solutions to problems in math and physics simply come to mind, and I only mutter about them after the fact.
I think this is (part of) why politics is so awful: people reach conclusions nonverbally, and then make up stories about how their thought processes came together after the fact. One of the best scales for measuring conservatism is the Wilson-Patterson: it gives subjects a phrase like "computer music" and the option to immediately answer "yes" "?" or "no." This scale correlates r > 0.7 with Altemeyer's bloated RWA scale which is full of questions like "Once our government leaders give us the go ahead, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within." Are you sure what's going on here is significantly different from somebody saying "research style" and your clicking "yes" over and over again?
Fair enough. I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at - I don't see how any of this invalidates the statement. I'm certainly not saying that all thought reduces to verbal expression or something like that - probably something more like "the dominant modalities and norms through which we express thought in turn shape the manner and form in which we think".
If you're not sure what I'm getting at, I've learned that arguing over the Internet is a ticklish business. I may be confident of 100%, but there's no way I'm getting that, so here I'm pushing for 20%, and you just gave me 10%, which I will take!
Stating my opinion in words, I do agree that current conventions are stuffy, but overall they work very well. Granted, the Discussion section does not *often* contain much in the way of speculation or witty turns of phrase, but in principle it can - and dry humor often finds its way into the Introduction and Results sections. I can also think of a very good reason why style should be mostly kept to a minimum: many researchers, particularly in the hard sciences, are stodgy, verbally awkward, and literal-minded. If style is given free reign, soon enough it becomes the norm; when good science is associated with beautiful and entertaining writing, important results may find themselves relegated to low-impact journals or even the file drawer.
Those are definitely the counterarguments here - the hope would be we can find a better middle ground and scientists can open up to the important of style/aesthetics over time.