Quotulatiousness

February 25, 2012

Tim Harford: The problem of “interdisciplinary problems”

Filed under: Economics, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

Tim Harford recently visited Oxford Martin School to discuss the phenomenon of problems that are seen as intractable when viewed from within a “silo” or single discipline, but which yield solutions when approached in co-operation with multiple disciplines:

In academia, the challenge of encouraging interdisciplinary research is at least recognised as a problem. The advancing frontier of scientific knowledge forces most researchers to specialise in ever narrower fields and, as a result, collaboration between these silos is essential. I recently visited the Oxford Martin School, a seven-year-old initiative designed to foster cross-disciplinary projects at the University of Oxford. I talked to the school’s director, Ian Goldin, about the challenges of breaking down academic silos.

He thinks these silos are mostly artificial. Academic journals are largely specialised rather than interdisciplinary and official funding bodies shy away from interdisciplinary projects. The result is that academics with interdisciplinary interests have few ways to fund the research and few credible outlets for publishing the results. The Martin School has funding, but most of the researchers are either junior, with some freedom to experiment, or professors so senior they no longer need to worry about their publication record. The mid-career academics are missing. It is nice to hear the tenure system sometimes produces the hoped-for courage and independence, but not so nice that there is no career track for interdisciplinary researchers.

[. . .]

If problems are one focal point for collaboration, tools can be another. An example: systems needed to deal with the gigantic data sets generated in finance, astronomy and oceanography. Such tools naturally bring together computer scientists and the statisticians, economists and scientists who might use the data. Goldin points to “crowdsourcing” as a second example of a cross-disciplinary tool, complexity science as a third and (optimistically, I feel) practical ethics as a fourth.

Perhaps the real lesson is that promoting cross-disciplinary research need not require a mysterious blend of social-networking tools and funky collaborative architectural spaces. All that is sometimes required is a shared problem, or a shared set of tools, and, above all, the money to pay for the job to be done.

Burger King latest corporation to pull out of UK work experience program

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

The British government’s work experience program for unemployed would-be workers loses another employer:

The fast food giant said it had decided to cease its involvement in the Get Britain Working programme because of recent concerns expressed by the public.

The scheme has attracted growing criticism in recent weeks with opponents describing it as a form of slave labour because young people worked for nothing, while keeping their benefits.

Burger King said it had registered for the programme six weeks ago intending to take on young people for work experience at its Slough headquarters, but had not recruited anyone.

It sounds like the program was well intended — allowing people without work experience to at least have something to put down on a resumé — but fails the PR test because the corporation is seen as “getting work for nothing”. And, without a doubt, some corporations will use the program in exactly that way. Despite that, on balance it seems that the potential benefit to young entrants to the work force is greater than the actual benefit to the companies that get that “free labour”.

The value of that “free labour” may well be lower than the costs to the employer for training them: new employees with no marketable skills are not the bonanza of profit that some seem to think that they are. Some people I worked with early in my working life could be proven to be a net loss for months after hiring …

Offensensitivity now unites the west and Islam

Filed under: Asia, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Brendan O’Neill on the current wave of outrage in Afghanistan over the “Koran burning” incident:

Yet the present bizarre Koran-burning controversy in Afghanistan has shot down in flames this comforting but misleading idea that “they” are dramatically different from “us”.

Because what the furore over some holy books accidentally burned by NATO confirms is that, in truth, these alleged “weird beards” are in thrall to the same PC culture of complaint that has Western society in its grip.

[. . .]

But the great uniter of the East and West today, the thing that binds Muslim extremist and Western liberal, is a profound belief that to be offended is the worst thing, and that whoever dares to cause offence must be made to pay.

[. . .]

Ironically, these pretty craven apologies from NATO and the Obama administration for an innocent mistake made by two NATO personnel are likely only to have inflamed the protests.

Because, as is the case over here, in our ever more touchy and sensitive societies, when you tiptoe around a certain group of people, when you buy into the idea that offending cultural sensibilities is the greatest sin of our age, you actually give people a licence to feel offended.

When you apologise for causing offence and promise never, ever to do it again, you give succour to the idea that offensiveness is a unique and terrible evil, and you flatter the ostentatious offence-taking of groups who wish to be protected by a moral force-field from public debate or ridicule.

In effectively reorienting its Afghan mission around improving the PC credentials and Islamic empathy of its troops, NATO is unwittingly giving a green light to easily offended agitators, boosting their belief that offensiveness is evil and must be quashed. NATO has made itself a hostage to fortune, giving Afghan radicals a licence to go mental at the next whiff of any slight, whether intentional or accidental, against Islam.

Reason.tv: Banning drugs, banning same-sex marriage, and banning fun

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

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