Beobachter

Be the yourself you want to be

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@Philosophi_Cat An individual holding a particular idea he wants to spread out, makes use of any expression issued by others as a platform to plant on it his message, be it political, religious, moral or self promoting, not needing to interpret the original declaration.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@fotohistoriacl @rafa_cavada ¿Y cuál es el propósito de tu publicación? ¿Que deseas mostrar?

[Gerardo L. Munck @GerardoMunck]

El nuevo informe del @el_BID se enfoca en un tema Schumpeteriano: la competencia y la destrucción creativa.

Usa una nueva base de datos para mostrar que en América Latina los mercados están concentrados, lo que frena la competencia.

Acceso abierto: https://t.co/7kqJRuCWVD

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

https://t.co/jjQ1IrDMcP

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

I spoke with @LaulPatricia about Marxism:

One is: What’s remarkable is that Marxism has been tried. Now, of course, defenders of Marxism say it hasn’t really been tried anywhere, but certainly the people who implemented it claimed they were implementing Marxism.

And this is a massive experiment—a global experiment—with a very clear outcome. Namely, the Soviet Union was a disaster. The imposition of communism on Eastern Europe was a disaster. The imposition of communism in Venezuela was a disaster. The imposition of communism in Maoist China was a disaster. Disaster in terms of both poverty and oppression and genocide and stupid wars. So the world has told us what happens under communism, and it’s a sign of how out of touch intellectuals can be that there are still people who defend it despite the entire world giving a very clear-cut answer.

One more is: would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea? Would you rather live in the old East Germany or West Germany? We have an experimental group and a matched control group in terms of culture, language, and geography, and the answer is crystal clear. So this is a sign of, I think, the pathology of intellectual life—that Marxism can persist.

The other is, you did call attention to one of the appeals of Marxism, though, and more generally of heavy, strong influence of government guided by intellectuals, which is that there are certain kinds of reforms that you can state as principles. You can articulate them verbally as propositions—like equality, human rights, democracy—but there’s other kinds of progress that take place in massive distributed networks of millions of people, none of whom implements some policy. But collectively, there is an order, an organization that’s beneficial.

So that can happen organically through, for example, the development of a language. No one designed the English language. It’s just hundreds of millions of English speakers. They coin new words. They forget old words. They try to make themselves clear. And we get the English language and the other 5,000 languages spoken on earth.

Likewise, a market economy is something where knowledge is distributed. You don’t have a central planner deciding how many shoes of size 8 will be needed in a particular city, but rather information is conveyed by prices, which are adjusted according to supply and demand. And you’ve got a distributed network of exchange of information that can result in an emergent benefit.

Now, intellectuals tend to hate that. They like rules of language—of correct grammar. They like top-down economic planning. They like cultural change that satisfies particular ideals described by intellectuals. And so rival sources of organization, like commerce, like culture—traditional culture—tend to be downplayed by intellectuals.

And this can be magnified by the fact that many dictatorships give a privileged role to intellectuals, which may be why, over the course of the 20th century, and probably continuing to the present, there has not been a dictator that has not had fans among intellectuals—including the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran, but also the communist dictators: Mao and Castro, even Stalin in his day. And every other dictator has had, actually, often fawning praise from Western intellectuals.

[César A. Hidalgo @cesifoti]

There is an ongoing discussion involving Harvard and MIT, two institutions where I spent plenty of time during the past 20 years. I first came to Harvard as a visiting PhD student in 2005, then joined the Kennedy School as a postdoc in 2008, and in 2010 I joined the MIT faculty, where I was until 2019. Personally, I don’t have much to add to the current discussion (eg about DEI, plagiarism, etc.) except some notes on the social context of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because like all drama, what we are seeing today is unfolding on a social backdrop that may be difficult to understand. After all, I know for a fact that most Americans do not know how society works in and around these institutions. For most, even people from the north and south shores of Massachusetts, Harvard and MIT are mythical places that we hear mentioned in sitcoms and movies. And while the reality is different, it is still interesting. They are a reflection of a segment of society, not only of the United States but of the world, as these institutions are effective at attracting global elites.

I will first start with a few positive notes from the 2000s. I remember vividly being thrown head-first into a tough-love environment. If you brought a half-baked idea to a professor or colleague they would destroy it, and kick you while you are down. You had to learn to change your mind, defend yourself, or go home crying. At that time I hated it, but in hindsight, I’ve come to appreciate it. That’s how I learned to think and write, and also, came to understand that the best you can get as a junior scholar from a senior scholar is unvarnished feedback because the other option is for them to simply ignore you.

You need to keep in mind that academia is a game of social acceptance since all hiring, funding, and publication decisions come from secret peer recommendations. In many institutions, what that leads to is not excellence, but clubbiness. People form implicit support groups with others with whom they agree to approve each other’s work. These challenge-free environments lead to a lot of half-baked work that is usually ignored by the larger academic community. That was not how these institutions were in the mid-2000s. They were tough pressure cookers that did not care about you or your feelings. They cared about whether you really had something important to say, and could figure out how to say it and show it. It was tough, but the focus was on the quality of the work. And that is why their prestige is well deserved. There is a lot of great work and great people in them. Brilliant people pushing themselves and their teams to the limit, and in the process, generating new knowledge, technologies, and scientific leaders.

But there is also an underbelly to this society. A society that is not immune to prestige and its addiction. People always went to these institutions looking for prestige. But over the last few decades, the prestige machine was supercharged with social media, displacing in part the culture of excellence. And this brings me to some of the saddest stories.

I remember a colleague and friend who joined the MIT faculty in the mid-2010s. He came from abroad with his wife who had to quit her job to move there. And he was killing it in academic terms. But still, he was not happy. During a Saturday lunch, he explained to me why. He told me that when they socialized people would turn around and start talking to someone else as soon as his wife told them that she was in between jobs. That behavior was wearing them out. People in Cambridge were not there to make friends. I know this is a cliché, but I remember being told those same exact words by a senior colleague who made a habit of walking past me without acknowledging me every morning after I said hello, even though his office was a few doors away. My friend eventually left Cambridge as well.

I also remember one of the most bizarre parties I’ve ever attended. I don’t know how else to call it other than a well-organized “braggathon.” About 200 people were invited to the house of a person who had made a fortune in finance. After everyone arrived, we were brought to a large library where one of the hosts got the party going. He started calling people, who would respond with their prepared pitches. “Hey Jennifer, I know you are revolutionizing the cancer industry..” and Jennifer would deliver her pitch. “And that reminds me of Brandon, who is doing amazing work on aerospace,” and Brandon would jump into action. That went on for about 2 hours. It is a strange prestige-driven society that is hard to fathom from the outside.

And eventually, you get used to it. Because prestige is a powerful drug, a master of puppets that can take over your life. When you are affiliated to those institutions you get treated like royalty around the world. Saying you are a professor there provides a strong 'in' with the elites of the world. Many people don’t know how to evaluate ideas, so they rely on where these ideas come from. Prestige shapes the world. But there is another side to that coin. The crudest example of prestige addiction is the blighted and chronically addicted, those who at MIT are called lifers. These are people who joined the institute as an undergraduate, and 30 years later, continue doing odd jobs for a big professor because they understand that being low in the ranks of the castle is better than trying to survive outside its walls. They are in some ways, the most loyal members of the institutions, knowing that there is a parade of visitors that will give them for ten minutes the respect they otherwise never get inside.

The north bank of the river Charles is a peculiar place. A place with many stories, that because of this prestige addiction, will never see the light of day. Today I can talk because I have been sober for a few years, after not being granted tenure at MIT (link to this story below). I uprooted my life and moved to Europe during covid, where I have been playing a different game: helping build research institutions instead of climbing them. And I do appreciate my time in Cambridge. It helped me become a better thinker, writer, and scientist. It also opened my eyes to the world. But I know many colleagues who will never share their stories as long as they keep a weak link to these institutions. Quitting the prestige drug is difficult. Still, slowly but surely, the drama will keep on trickling as the cracks in the levy continue to spread. There is certainly a Morning Show-type drama series or movie waiting to be made about Cambridge MA, if only screenwriters were not so focused on New York and California.

https://t.co/pFKlqa5u9S

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@entel #desidia #incomunicacion

ENTEL Chile desconoce mejores prácticas, pierde su plata y el tiempo clientes. Comercial aprueba factibilidad y no sabe distancia a caja conexión que puede determinar imposibilidad. En gestión se llama trabajar en silos. Vean mapas antes.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@JumboChile otra lamentación: portal lreina - pollo pavo cordero congelados guardados x reparación modulo. Paguen + hras xtra o módulos alternativos. Optaron x perjudicar cltes, x pocas Lucas

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@FalabellaAyuda Compré un par de pernos plásticos con tuerca, entregaron sólo uno y la tuerca no era de la medida. Cómo no controlan los que venden en su market place?

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

https://t.co/MLaPtK2YDQ

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

There may be no better lens through which to examine the future of management than the most oversubscribed courses on Stanford University’s MBA programme https://t.co/iyY68DReif

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@fedexnacif @Jou_Kaiser La palabra masacre la pones tú. Al hacerlo introduces la falacia del hombre de paja y vuelves a relativizar el Holocausto.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@SylviaEyzaguirr @latercera Analistas afirman que mala post venta se funda en que es factor de mayores utilidades

[Centro de Estudios Europeos @ceeudeconce]

Este jueves 4 en SANTIAGO!🤩
Realizaremos este evento en el marco del proyecto @jeanMonnet @EUErasmusPlus junto a @Minrel_Chile @UEenChile @juridicysocudec y Facultad de Gobierno de la U. de Chile.
Cupos limitados. Inscripción por código QR ¿Que esperas? 😱
@PaulinaAstrozaS

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@gonzalomartner Variables dependientes?

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@ricgreene Simplista

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@alainmizrahi Fundamentalismo cristiano anti judíos fue la manera de incitar al pueblo para perseguir y matar judíos. Los motivos de las asonadas fueron regularmente económicos para destruir las redes comerciales de los judíos.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@alainmizrahi Persecuciones de judíos no fueron permanentes. Hubo largos periodos tranquilos. Se agudizaron post cruzadas.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@alainmizrahi Interesante. Edicto de Granada es inclusivo: judios y judías.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

@maria_mimia Me gustó la analogía. El libro no adquiere vida sin un lector que lo lea. Entonces es como un virus que requiere el DNA de un humano para adquirir vida y propagarse.

[Beobachter @ramaloff]

Pura corrección política en este show del avatar de Darwin