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@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@[email protected]

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe
@academicchatter

May 30

10 min

The discipline that made academic life Hell. They're pretty good at destroying everything they touch.

https://youtu.be/BCzUU_pbLaM

meganL , to disability
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Again, I state:

Compare the speed with which businesses & institutions are adopting AI (despite its inaccuracy and lack of ethical provenance) to the footdragging that makes businesses & institutions inaccessible even 34 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.

I don't want to hear a fucking word about accessibility being an "undue hardship" ever again.

@disability

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@meganL @disability

I look at AI and think it’s going even bigger than the dot.com crash. Since everyone is already laid off, I can only hope it means big platforms simply implodes

figstick , to academicsunite
@figstick@mas.to avatar

They're rounding up the historians now.

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1790874217828827473?s=48

@histodons @academicchatter @academiccommunity @academicsunite @israel @palestine

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@figstick @histodons @academicchatter @academiccommunity @academicsunite @israel @palestine

shit. :ablobcatknitsweats:

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to random
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

“ One look at this chart should be sufficient to understand why the Great Crash of 1929 was both great, and a major cause of the Great Depression which followed it, and why levered speculation, rather than rational calculation, dominates the behaviour of asset markets.”

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/your-margin-and-your-life

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe
@academicchatter

“ Sharpe continued with a half-hearted defence of these manifestly false assumptions, using a distorted rendition of Friedman's methodological claim that a theory cannot be tested by its assumptions (Friedman 1953):

.. However, since the proper test of a theory is not the realism of its assumptions but the acceptability of its implications,..”

really, wrap your heads around mainstream economics dept. They count themselves scientific

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

“ Finance, and banking, and macroeconomics, are therefore integrated topics: they cannot be treated as separate domains, as Neoclassical treats them. My focus in this book is on how macroeconomics and the theory of banking need to be overhauled, and a similar overhaul is needed of finance theory.”

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe
@academicchatter

“ I won't attempt that here, but fortunately, that process has been started by a group of mathematicians in the London Mathematical Laboratory. They are developing what they call "Ergodicity Economics" to replace the existing theory of finance.”

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

Remember folks, mainstream economists assert that 3C warming is OKEY-DOKEY. They also put universities on a commerce footing and lobbied for debt based higher education.

They also say they are a scientific discipline, because they believe that humans operation on a rational basis. Of course, they demonstrate evidence regarding that assertion.

https://youtu.be/Vrw1HLI2kOY

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@academicchatter
@economics@a.gup.pe

Patreon and substack.. I have to wonder if these are the best vehicles for what he's doing.

They've led the charge of climate inaction since the 80s.

Their beliefs are at the center of the debt crisis of higher education and the housing trap. Their policy is at the center of commercialized academia.

How do we pull this mainstream scorpion off our backs?

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/free-subscribers-if-5-a-month-is

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@academicchatter @economics@a.gup.pe

18 min

More or less spot on about the cost of housing and higher education. One aspect is “we” is misplaced. The Koch network intended this fate. They’ve worked to this end for 50 years.

Billionaires hate us, that is why they are pulling apart the republic and democracy all over the world. It’s them or us. They want tyranny and we want our lives.

https://youtu.be/qEJ4hkpQW8E

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@wdjorth @academicchatter @economics@a.gup.pe

It is easily closer to hate. At the very least, contempt. And neither is incompatible with narcissism and can be an aspect of it.

Billionaires spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to dismantle the republic and ruin people's lives in debt bondage and have done so for 50 years.

The sole reason for the Koch network is to have the US ruled by plutocracy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=issmDdjBa5w

manisha , to academicchatter
@manisha@neuromatch.social avatar

Funding research, fighting divestment

"Details about oil majors contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to top universities to build relationships that could help the industry avoid taking climate action were inside thousands of pages of documents unveiled Tuesday by Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget committees.

Of the files released Tuesday, many show the extraordinary lengths energy giants have gone to in order to maintain public support for the oil industry — a major employer that’s also one of the nation’s top corporate climate polluters.

Companies have acknowledged, then flat-out ignored, stark warnings about the fate of the planet in relation to their activities."

Big Oil document dump spotlights industry influence in academia

@academicchatter

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@manisha @academicchatter

Senator Whitehouse is a national treasure.

We need to refund universities and free them from corporate influence

dlakelan , to random
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

I'm against student loan forgiveness, not because I'm against giving the money out... but because I'm against giving it out only to student loan debtors. Here's the idea... give everyone equally a and let the people with student loans repay it from there. I'm ok with limiting interest rates too, and rolling back capitalization of back interest... totally fine with that. But if we're creating money out of thin air and giving it to anyone, it should 100% be equally distributed.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan

It’s broadening to learn about entirely different economies. I studied S American archeology in college. The Inca empire was hardly “nice” but their economic system itself is prevalent in central and southern traditional cultures. It may be considered intrinsic the tribal economics.

@anthropology ?

It was a system of corvée.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Inca_Empire

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe
@academicchatter

So you're in social sciences and mainstream economists giving you grief? How about some ammo?

"Therefore, empirical data and mathematics, the weapons that Neoclassical economists like to wield to intimidate other social sciences, can instead show that their paradigm is based on myths rather than science.

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/puncturing-the-hubris-of-economics

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

"Economics could be a radically different—and even useful—social science if it absorbed, rather than deflected, the criticisms that David [David Graeber] made of it. But it never will, because the core elements of the Neoclassical paradigm are antithetical to the evolutionary foundations of genuine social sciences like Anthropology and Sociology."

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe

@academicchatter

"This article is valuable, not for its insights, but for highlighting the rampant hubris of mainstream "Neoclassical" economics at the apogee of its influence. It opened with the declaration that "Economics is not only a social science, it is a genuine science" (p. 99). ...

🧵
https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/puncturing-the-hubris-of-economics

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

"More than 40 pages and over 17,000 words later, it closed with:

"Economics has been successful because, above all, economics is a science. The discipline emphasizes rational behavior, maximization, trade-offs, and substitution, and insists on models that result in equilibrium."

Notice how Lazear engages in a logical fallacy here. He's muddling rational behavior of the discipline with its subject of study.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

They insist on equilibrium for dynamic systems of dimensions > 3, a profoundly false description of complex systems.

These are the authority figures for public economic policy because business and politicians are taught this flat-earth, geocentric idea of human economy and behavior

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

"I never expected David's well-documented evidence that barter-based societies were mythical to convince Neoclassical economists to abandon the myth, because without that myth, their entire paradigm unravels. "
..
🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

"But David's work did strengthen the resolve of, and improve the analysis done by, the subsets of critical economists to which I belong: the Post-Keynesians, the Evolutionary Economists, the Biophysical Economists, and Modern Monetary Theorists. We frequently find ourselves referring to David's work when we attack the myth of barter, and his work has also had a creative impact upon us."

ml , to academicchatter
@ml@ecoevo.social avatar

The documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties" is a must-watch for how student activism revulsed the rich white supremacists in this country, making them slash education funding.

A friend recommended I read "After the Ivory Tower Falls" for more on this. (It's on sale right now, too.) https://www.harpercollins.com/products/after-the-ivory-tower-falls-will-bunch?variant=40957097639970

@academicchatter

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@ml @academicchatter

the animus goes much deeper. Pure rage, fear and contempt of public prosperity spawned collective action by wealth in the 70s that continues to this day. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars every year to shape America as it is today, embodied by the Koch network. Sheer contempt for a better life for all of us is their religion.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=issmDdjBa5w

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@figstick @ml @academicchatter

The decision to finance higher education through debt was a very deliberate act. Both Nixon and Reagan participated. The same economic advise originating from the likes of M Friedman put universities on a commercial footing.

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to academicchatter
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

Why rational economists matter. The crazy ones in charge at university are the ones listened to in public policy because teach their economics to everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/11IkWZAv58Y

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics@a.gup.pe @academicchatter

the change they insisted on, regarding public financing, is the money is now routed thru your student loans and preferred research by the dictates of university revenue flows. In all cases, instead of direct funding, the rich and business now takes their “rightful” cut, they one they insist they are entitled to.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to anthropology
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@anthropology

50 min

Lovely channel worth watching

https://youtu.be/hY77BE0K1_A

koen_hufkens , to academicchatter
@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social avatar

Alternative title should read: Canadian researchers barely lifted above poverty levels.

@academicchatter

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01124-2

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@koen_hufkens @academicchatter

If you get paid too much then you won’t be desperate enough to write those commodity grant applications and the university admins would miss their bonus milestones in order to survive?

Alexlee , to academicchatter
@Alexlee@sciences.social avatar

In an era of post-truth, the strategy of rigidly defending your version of truth and attacking other people's view of the truth is a largely self-destructive excercise that just creates a never ending argument

Understanding the logics and rationales of those people we disagree with is a far better way but requires humility and nuance

Naomi Klein in Doppelganger and Büscher in The Truth About Nature show us how this can be done with , and

@academicchatter

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

Roger Hallam’s March interview last year with Novara Media speaks to this topic.

He points out, quite accurately, on the over reliance of logic and data in non rightwing argumentation. Data isn’t an argument. You need to engage people’s moral systems, system of meaning as the basis for identity. Conservatives understand this very well.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

Right wing arguments are not from ignorance. Conservatives persuade by means of mendacity. Logical fallacies are their bread and butter: defamation, false dichotomy, straw man, strung together as gish gallops are their mainstay.

Attack these, point out their use.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@thelovebing @Alexlee @samohTmaS @academicchatter

Dip into Moral Minds. It’s a lengthy treatise on the topic. Moral instinct is similar to language instinct and an essential component of social creatures. A model of other’s behavior and reasoning about intents is a survival trait for collective action of all sorts.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

Sadly, you didn’t grasp the essence of what I said.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @thelovebing @Alexlee @academicchatter

Moral Minds argues against this. Emotion and reason are tied together in very intimate and subtle ways.

To argue that "tribal over there" in the land of darkness and unreason and "logic" over here in the land of light, is ironically kinda tribal.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

I understand where you're coming from. It's the very valid ethical issue that manipulation is bad. This is why I think Aristotle's quote is useful here, the Greeks if anything were immensely well versed in rhetoric, as a national sport.. :flan_wink:

Referring again to the long tradition of those who marshalled social change, the rational arguments must be of good faith. At this point, moral sentiments are rightly marshalled.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

This is what made Roger Hallam's interview with Novara so interesting, 'his' recipe is:

  1. are you credible
  2. what's does it mean (this is where moral sentiments come in)
  3. what should be done

consider WWII: Nazis purposely killed millions in their camps, this was murder, their crimes against humanity must end

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

I am also going to say, I think it's not simple either.. it's subtle and, at best, I can say I know it's there.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @thelovebing @Alexlee @academicchatter

True but I think the epic orators had the talent to shift people between modes. In a way the book I refer to (Moral Minds) is interesting (if very long) in that regard.

Within limits, emotion can be used to shift to logical thinking because emotion is never absent from humanity anyway.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

Well documented. Maxwell mentions this in his diary (pointed out to me by someone)

From the engineering side, I want to make one note: the majority of the most pitched battles in engineering revolve around different mental models and assumptions made over a project. More than a few sharp people noted, to me, that having people describe the problem in their own words can work wonders dispelling acrimony.

It's difficult if reputations are involved.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

In short, people not only work under different assumption, but may also have unstated concerns or issues facing them, and they are not malign but very practical.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@thelovebing @Alexlee @academicchatter @samohTmaS

If you don't even know the material yourself, you're going to evaluate how?

In any case, those who have rallied people to social change work in the emotive sphere. It's all rather well documented.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Alexlee @samohTmaS @academicchatter

Truth is and always was a tiny fraction of people's outlook, the bulk is moral sentiments and the behavior shaped in response to it along with habit.

The most depressing element of conservatism is its deliberate erosion of all the arguments made for republics and the modern state, themselves somewhat imperfect solutions and the product of centuries of bloody conflict in Europe.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

and that's where the deft high EQ individual can work magic. The super salesman effectively convinces his clients that it's all their idea. That's a talent.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@thelovebing @Alexlee @samohTmaS @academicchatter

So then the studies of infants and toddlers performed to tease out when their theories of mine generally come online and all that, when they can model agency, then intention and where structure of moral judgement comes online..

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

Enter in quote from Sinclair and salaries. WRT to radiation.. we can't really escape expsoure.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

There is a difference between deception and pathos.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

One round of jury duty involved a civil case of a man suffering from asbestosis. Terminally ill. I got a dose of information on that topic, if you'll pardon the pun.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @TEG @Alexlee @academicchatter

It is but one tool, a very flawed tool, used in science to elucidate truth.

True because the mistaken description implies reliance on perfection and 'reason' of those involved. Things work better in good faith, but then Sinclair and salaries.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@samohTmaS @Alexlee @academicchatter

As is logic, then we get into axioms and definitions.

Mencjusz , to academicchatter
@Mencjusz@sciences.social avatar

became a turd that you can't flush down the toilet and keeps farting toxic gasses all over the place. Worst still, "we" keep playing the game, pretending that everything is fine and cheerily announcing another publication in a meaningless rat race of factors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8

@academicchatter

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dogzilla @Mencjusz @academicchatter

Financial independence = academic independence

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@IanSudbery @dogzilla @Mencjusz @academicchatter

My comments are made in the following context:

  1. economists lobbied to transform universities to a commercial posture
  2. public funding was slashed
  3. professors are denied tenure and put on contract (ie made gig workers)
  4. research grants are commodified, specifically crafted to generate revenue
  5. that revenue has captured by admin to rapidly balloon their numbers.
  6. financial preciousness promotes exploitative posture institution wide
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