Once More With Feeling

[bryant]

Oh, look. Randall Monroe decided to be a geek asshole today.

Alan Sokal's literary criticism hoax is funny and all that stuff. However, it's hardly a problem unique to literary criticism, as demonstrated by the Bodganov brothers. Apparently the physics community is vulnerable to that sort of thing as well. Who'd have guessed?

The discussion thread is pretty good.

Comments

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad others are on it.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

You know, I liked the comic. (Mostly, perhaps, for the first three panels.) Then I read your post. Then I read the thread and started to realize just how obnoxious the last panel was--mostly based not on its critics but on those amused by it, whose posts consist mostly of "heh yeah I can't understand that field it must be bullshit". Sigh.

[bryant]

The first three panels are hilarious.

The last panel is kind of funny.

The alt text ("If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction.") is just bitchy.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

And here I thought the comics was vaguely amusing before I saw this post and actually went into the comment thread.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

Also: I was betting that the wikipedia article on Deconstruction would already be edit-locked, but apparently not.

It does have a banner on top saying "All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear", though. For some reason I find the fact that Wikipedia has such a banner hilarious.

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

I remember at a BRIC (Boston Regional Inorganic Chemistry) meeting last year or the year before, [A CERTAIN PROFESSOR WHOM I RESPECT TREMENDOUSLY] of [A CERTAIN UNIVERSITY WHICH FEATURED AT THE CLIMAX OF JERE'S ESOTERRORISTS GAME] presented his results on the internal magnetic field of linearized iron (III) and iron (IV) compounds he'd made, complete with detailed theoretical derivation wherein he explained that trapped inside the nucleus of each iron atom of his material was a force greater than five cyclotrons, and anyway towards the end I realized that he could have just started lighting candles and chanting to Baal for all that anyone in the audience could tell. And this was a crowd of fifty highly-trained chemists whose area of expertise nominally overlapped with his...

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations! You're a Tech-Priest!

Tom

[bryant]

I also have a cranky rant about the postures of the various people in each panel, but it might be going too far.

[indigo.livejournal.com]

I attempted to read Possession on my trip last weekend, but ultimately gave up because the fact that I wasn't getting it meant I wasn't enjoying it. (The story started out interesting, but I had a hard time getting anything out of the actual letters and analysis thereof, and when the story turned into "academic rivalry is dramatastic!" I gave up, because it wasn't enjoyable at all anymore.)

It seems like the crux of the "joke" is the basic rivalry between scientists and the humanities; people will always try and find a way to put down other people's passions to make themselves feel better, and making fun of things you don't understand is a basic tenet behind all sorts of prejudices. (Disclaimer: I haven't read the discussion thread.)

Jason has gotten some flak in the (math/science/computer-centric) Warcraft community because he has an English degree and an MBA. (I also have a humanities degree but I don't flaunt it; there's no sense explaining how my actual academic work has a lot to do with technology and the hours I spent playing with databases and statistical analysis.) I feel like if anyone has no right to mock members of their own broader community (gamers, academia, etc.) it's members of a subculture or an intellectual minority. Surely we all remember being the victims of playground bullies and have the common sense not to turn into them.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

I think the fair critique of deconstruction and literary criticism -- one that is supported by Sokal's hoax -- is not that these people are all spouting nonsense at each other, it's that they don't bother to try to understand each other.

Some of them are saying very deep, meaningful things. Perhaps. But I don't see effective peer review. I don't see them effectively making themselves understood to each other. Forget about whether they make themselves understood to me - I'm not egotistical enough to think that's their job. It's nice if someone dumbs it down so I can get it, but that's not central to the topic. What is central - and what Sokal demonstrated isn't being done -- is effective communication within the discipline.

And clearly it's not unique to litcrit. But one might argue that the difference between litcrit and, say, physics is that the reason for an opaque jargon in litcrit is not nearly as clear. You need unfamiliar terms to deal with unfamiliar concepts - just start with "quanta" and work up from there - so you expect physics to sound opaque to an outsider. But is the opacity of litcrit inherent to the discipline? Has a jargon been established in order to facilitate communication of difficult concepts? The suspicion among some (e.g. Monroe) is that it has shaded over into business-consultant jargon, i.e. intended to obfuscate a lack of substance, rather than to communicate deep substance.

But I am an outsider, so I have no opinion. But Sokal's result is suggestive.

[bryant]

I'm confused. What did Sokal demonstrate that the Bodganovs didn't also demonstrate?

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd say a difference is in the response of the communities. Sokal provoked defensiveness and blame from the litcrit community. The Bogdanovs have, to my reading of the event (I hadn't heard of them, and it certainly seems like newspaper-fairness-disease to equate the two) provoked some review and discussion of the peer-review system.

[bryant]

Yeah. I actually don't have a lot of interest in talking to someone who goes right for the disease metaphor when I disagree with them. Sorry.