Tbc, in the grandparent I was responding to the specific sentence I quoted, which seems to me to be making a bold claim that I think is false. It’s of course possible that the correct action is still “leave academia”, but for a different reason, like the one you gave.
Re:
it should not be ‘joined’ but instead ‘quit, and get to work on an alternative’.
That depends pretty strongly on what the alternative is. Suppose your goal is for more investigation of speculative ideas that may or may not pan out, so that humanity figures out true and useful things about the world. It’s not clear to me that you can do significantly better than current academia, even if you assume that everyone will switch from academia to your new institution.
And of course, people in academia are selected for being good at academic jobs, and may not be good at building institutions. Or they may hate all the politicking that would be required for an alternative. Or they might not particularly care about impact, and just want to do research because it’s fun. All of which are reasons you might join academia rather than quit and work on an alternative, and it’s “morally fine”.
Tbc, in the grandparent I was responding to the specific sentence I quoted, which seems to me to be making a bold claim that I think is false. It’s of course possible that the correct action is still “leave academia”, but for a different reason, like the one you gave.
Re:
That depends pretty strongly on what the alternative is. Suppose your goal is for more investigation of speculative ideas that may or may not pan out, so that humanity figures out true and useful things about the world. It’s not clear to me that you can do significantly better than current academia, even if you assume that everyone will switch from academia to your new institution.
And of course, people in academia are selected for being good at academic jobs, and may not be good at building institutions. Or they may hate all the politicking that would be required for an alternative. Or they might not particularly care about impact, and just want to do research because it’s fun. All of which are reasons you might join academia rather than quit and work on an alternative, and it’s “morally fine”.