Why Memes/Substack are 10000x more powerful than a non-STEM PhD thesis, the grievance studies to DIE commissar pipeline, and results from the How To Flex on LinkedIn cringe contest at the end
I have a (seriously) worthy PhD thesis for you, albeit from the early 90s:
My dear friend Craig Chin was an MD and PhD in Political Science at NYU who tragically died of AIDS in 1993 at the age of 32. His PhD thesis shows how the Randy Schilts and his praise of ACT-UP in the book “And the Band Played On” distorted and in places fabricated how the US Government responded to the emergence of AIDS--a mysterious, terrifying disease in its early years.
Craig’s thesis demonstrates that the Reagan Administration responded to respectability politics and appeals to decency and our common humanity and provided funding and institutional resources at scale and as soon as possible.
To the extent this is acknowledged at all by activists, ACT-UP is given the credit. In fact, Reagan responded with common sense and humanity. He and his wife Nancy were actors with many gay friends, and there wasn't a prejudiced bone in his body.
By the way, Randy Schilts' account is also the basis for the hugely successful Broadway play and HBO feature “Angels in America", so the money till kept merrily ringing away, and the opportunities for moral outrage and self-promotion kept spinning along for decades.
Sadly, nobody’s ever heard of Craig’s thesis--the truth doesn’t always generate opportunities for huge fund-raising and demonstrations of self-promoting moral outrage.
I have a PDF of Craig’s thesis and would be glad to send it to anyone interested in reading it.
Hi Hana, I'm not an academic so I don't have a path to publishing Craig's thesis. If there's now an audience for a truthful account of the early AIDS crisis than I'd be glad to make it available.
I'd love to read it, as its always struck me as surely a lie that Reagan would leave them to die. From a wider angle Id love to read a source material account from a gay man of the foundational big lie that set the movement off down the slope, the first time the evil ones got the rush of demonising their enemies across society and getting praised for their bravery in doing so. Like the feminist one in four study. Sorry about your friend, he sounds like a true blue. Jamesjmfinucane@hotmail.com
Academia and credentialism are a joke and always have been. I used to work with someone who occasionally dropped her Ph.D. status into casual conversation. A colleague managed to get a copy of her thesis, maybe even from her, which turned out to be the type of indecipherable verbal onanism that we have come to equate with other esteemed "doctors" of the soft arts such as the First Lady and the array of gender studies and sociology majors that you have highlighted.
I second your approval of this phrase. I also appreciate his use of the word "indecipherable" here. I mean anyone who engages in "verbal onanism" really should keep it indecipherable for modesty's sake and to show respect for people nearby. Nobody asked for it. They shouldn't have to know it's happening. Brown University should replace its current latin motto with "Serva tuum verborum Onanism indecipherable."
Ugh! Part of me longs to read said thesis (the part that can’t seem to look away from a train wreck); the other part of me is repulsed just considering it! What’s WRONG with me?! 😂
The meme that grievanceologists end up as baristas is undermined by the propensity of the system to hire them on as IEDological commissars. They can't do anything useful, but corporate America has ceased worrying about doing useful things. Why sell product and provide service when Blackrock is throwing ESG money from the helicopter?
Nevertheless it is very true that their gobbledygook is undone by memes and shit posts. It takes vast resources to prop up their rule. Look what they need to match a fraction of our power!
also, FWIW, a STEM grad student once told me that 99% of STEM PhD theses have no scientific value, and only exist to get somebody a piece of paper and make the grad program seem productive. sounds similar to what people say about software patents.
I don't think your grad student is necessarily wrong. I have a PhD in chemistry and my thesis has no real value. I had fun doing the lab work behind it, but the truth is it was quite derivative, and if I had to do the project over again just 2 years later, I would have approached it in a different fashion that would have improved the study an enormous amount. The simple fact was, and is, that I wasn't intellectually mature enough from ages 22-26, but passing through that age and writing that worthless thesis was part of that process- so it wasn't worthless in that dimension. I am far more proud of the work I did during my post-doctoral time from age 26-28- work that was almost 100% driven by my own curiosity and intellectual effort, and I was quite pleased to find some other grad students and post docs picked it up where I had left it and continued some number of years after I had finished and moved on to the corporate world.
Look at the photographs and answer me: Is it a man's white-privileged sexism or is it this white male's bias toward feminine beauty or is it a physical reality, that woke "women" are comic book ugly?
I remember a podcast with Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad in which he described the problem as the humanities trying to compete with science research. Science research has respect because it works, (when it is real science anyway) but to the layman the works are incomprehensible. Humanities academics try to compete as in a "cargo cult" by writing stuff that is meaningless and incomprehensible. Everyone in academia is afraid to be found out as stupid, so they proclaim how fine the emperor's clothes are. Thus the less sense it makes, and the more counterintuitive, the better!
No. I often, as a practicing organic chemist, would read the PhD theses of famous organic chemists of the 20th century. It was a humbling experience a lot of the time- they made my own thesis seem small by comparison.
Most of this astroturf activism pseudointellectual stuff is illiterate, incoherent, and often factually incorrect. If it checks the political boxes, it gets a pass. While I’m sure Rastafarian women have made great contributions to social “justice” when not smoking a joint, it seems like there may be topics of greater gravity to write about. Hey, if you encourage certain behaviors and punish others, that’s what you’re gonna get. Simple as that. Bad for all of us.
I have a (seriously) worthy PhD thesis for you, albeit from the early 90s:
My dear friend Craig Chin was an MD and PhD in Political Science at NYU who tragically died of AIDS in 1993 at the age of 32. His PhD thesis shows how the Randy Schilts and his praise of ACT-UP in the book “And the Band Played On” distorted and in places fabricated how the US Government responded to the emergence of AIDS--a mysterious, terrifying disease in its early years.
Craig’s thesis demonstrates that the Reagan Administration responded to respectability politics and appeals to decency and our common humanity and provided funding and institutional resources at scale and as soon as possible.
To the extent this is acknowledged at all by activists, ACT-UP is given the credit. In fact, Reagan responded with common sense and humanity. He and his wife Nancy were actors with many gay friends, and there wasn't a prejudiced bone in his body.
By the way, Randy Schilts' account is also the basis for the hugely successful Broadway play and HBO feature “Angels in America", so the money till kept merrily ringing away, and the opportunities for moral outrage and self-promotion kept spinning along for decades.
Sadly, nobody’s ever heard of Craig’s thesis--the truth doesn’t always generate opportunities for huge fund-raising and demonstrations of self-promoting moral outrage.
I have a PDF of Craig’s thesis and would be glad to send it to anyone interested in reading it.
Requiescat in Pace, dear Craig.
Just re-reading this over a year later .... is there anyway Dr. Chin's thesis could be published, as part of a compendium perhaps?
Hi Hana, I'm not an academic so I don't have a path to publishing Craig's thesis. If there's now an audience for a truthful account of the early AIDS crisis than I'd be glad to make it available.
Please share
If you provide me an email address I'll send it to you--mine is coffman@alameda.net.au
I'd love to read it, as its always struck me as surely a lie that Reagan would leave them to die. From a wider angle Id love to read a source material account from a gay man of the foundational big lie that set the movement off down the slope, the first time the evil ones got the rush of demonising their enemies across society and getting praised for their bravery in doing so. Like the feminist one in four study. Sorry about your friend, he sounds like a true blue. Jamesjmfinucane@hotmail.com
Academia and credentialism are a joke and always have been. I used to work with someone who occasionally dropped her Ph.D. status into casual conversation. A colleague managed to get a copy of her thesis, maybe even from her, which turned out to be the type of indecipherable verbal onanism that we have come to equate with other esteemed "doctors" of the soft arts such as the First Lady and the array of gender studies and sociology majors that you have highlighted.
“Verbal onanism”--yes! 😂
I second your approval of this phrase. I also appreciate his use of the word "indecipherable" here. I mean anyone who engages in "verbal onanism" really should keep it indecipherable for modesty's sake and to show respect for people nearby. Nobody asked for it. They shouldn't have to know it's happening. Brown University should replace its current latin motto with "Serva tuum verborum Onanism indecipherable."
Ugh! Part of me longs to read said thesis (the part that can’t seem to look away from a train wreck); the other part of me is repulsed just considering it! What’s WRONG with me?! 😂
It's like an orgy of professional victimhood.
An orgy that we are paying for through taxes and societal collapse.
Entrance to the Victim orgy will be $65K a year, thank you.
The meme that grievanceologists end up as baristas is undermined by the propensity of the system to hire them on as IEDological commissars. They can't do anything useful, but corporate America has ceased worrying about doing useful things. Why sell product and provide service when Blackrock is throwing ESG money from the helicopter?
Nevertheless it is very true that their gobbledygook is undone by memes and shit posts. It takes vast resources to prop up their rule. Look what they need to match a fraction of our power!
this cracked me up.
also, FWIW, a STEM grad student once told me that 99% of STEM PhD theses have no scientific value, and only exist to get somebody a piece of paper and make the grad program seem productive. sounds similar to what people say about software patents.
I don't think your grad student is necessarily wrong. I have a PhD in chemistry and my thesis has no real value. I had fun doing the lab work behind it, but the truth is it was quite derivative, and if I had to do the project over again just 2 years later, I would have approached it in a different fashion that would have improved the study an enormous amount. The simple fact was, and is, that I wasn't intellectually mature enough from ages 22-26, but passing through that age and writing that worthless thesis was part of that process- so it wasn't worthless in that dimension. I am far more proud of the work I did during my post-doctoral time from age 26-28- work that was almost 100% driven by my own curiosity and intellectual effort, and I was quite pleased to find some other grad students and post docs picked it up where I had left it and continued some number of years after I had finished and moved on to the corporate world.
Look at the photographs and answer me: Is it a man's white-privileged sexism or is it this white male's bias toward feminine beauty or is it a physical reality, that woke "women" are comic book ugly?
"Flip to the end of the alphabet to find the serious work done by the white-adjacents"
LOL!!!!!! Brilliant!
Speaking of memes --- https://frederickrsmith.substack.com/p/memes-and-mentally-physically-mutilated
Mind blown. Thnx
How much longer before the end of the alphabet becomes S?
Brutal!
>>> I have read a few theses...The non-STEM ones are impossible to understand because they are full of word salad.
Let me help you. They are all remixes of the same song:
White people = Bad
I remember a podcast with Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad in which he described the problem as the humanities trying to compete with science research. Science research has respect because it works, (when it is real science anyway) but to the layman the works are incomprehensible. Humanities academics try to compete as in a "cargo cult" by writing stuff that is meaningless and incomprehensible. Everyone in academia is afraid to be found out as stupid, so they proclaim how fine the emperor's clothes are. Thus the less sense it makes, and the more counterintuitive, the better!
"Have you ever read any world-changing theses?"
No. I often, as a practicing organic chemist, would read the PhD theses of famous organic chemists of the 20th century. It was a humbling experience a lot of the time- they made my own thesis seem small by comparison.
I noticed that the white-adjacent theses lacked the annoying colons (":") in their titles.
Dear Yuri,
You are are the answer to the question: What is better than a Savage?
A Lilting and Wise Savage of course!
Most of this astroturf activism pseudointellectual stuff is illiterate, incoherent, and often factually incorrect. If it checks the political boxes, it gets a pass. While I’m sure Rastafarian women have made great contributions to social “justice” when not smoking a joint, it seems like there may be topics of greater gravity to write about. Hey, if you encourage certain behaviors and punish others, that’s what you’re gonna get. Simple as that. Bad for all of us.