/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #11449458

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Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 00:51:36 2020 No.11449458 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>11449479 >>11449666 >>11449988 >>11450188

Why do you think a pompous, self-righteous attitude is so common among faculty in STEM departments at universities?
I get that you "have to be brilliant" to do research in physics, but even if you are extremely intelligent or well-read in a single field (I find most of these STEM faculty are almost autistically focused on a single field or even a single problem) it doesn't make you a superior human being.
I've seen fat old men who likely will die of heart failure before ever seeing retirement choosing to treat 18-year-olds like literal retards for not knowing abstract science they have simply never been exposed to. Usually intelligence is the only aspect of their character which makes them tolerable, but that is really only enough to just make them tolerable.
What compels them to act this way? Do any social scientists know?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 00:57:36 No.11449479 Report

Quoted By:

>>11449458
Why does my truck drivin daddy treat me like a retard for not being abe to shift a fourteen speed transmission even though i've never driven one before. Does dissaproval make you want to prove yourself more?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 01:02:51 No.11449496 Report

Quoted By:

You answered your own question.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 02:17:11 No.11449666 Report

Quoted By: >>11449923

>>11449458
After people have been doing the same thing for a while and with other people of more or less equal competence, they develop sampled-bias expectations of ""normal"" and lose context with the rest of people. Undergrads, specially freshman, are at the opposite end where everything is new and they have no experience of even basic concepts. As a result, some out-of-touch professor will think the worst of you when you aren't even familiar with what he/she sees as """obvious""". If you ever read a textbook and gind the author glosses over a hundred of important details with a dismissive such as ""simply"', ""easily shown"", ""readily seen"" etc you can tell this person likely falls swuarely on that glass tower snobiness. Mathematicians seem to be greatly overrepresented in that area too.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 04:36:24 No.11449923 Report

Quoted By:

>>11449666
I agree. Also nice trips. Mathematicians are literally the worst people in academia, I can't imagine them spending their free time with warm bodies.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 04:54:17 No.11449952 Report

Quoted By: >>11452620

I shamelessly admit to viewing most other students at my University as inferior beings. Law, architecture, biology, forensics, chemistry etc students are decent but still lesser. Mathematicians are ok I guess

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 05:01:35 No.11449966 Report

Quoted By:

BENIS ;DDDDD

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 05:15:36 No.11449988 Report

Quoted By: >>11450071

>>11449458
That's certainly one possible reason. I'll present to you a simpler reason: you, as the student, do not matter in so far as whether or not you have learned the course material.

Promotions (assistant to associate, associate to full, tenure) as a professor involve teaching as one component of the selection criteria. This typically includes in-class peer evaluations and the post-class survey results that universities ask or require their students to provide after taking a course.

Now, after teaching for a few years, you'll see a strange relationship emerge. Your teaching evaluations improve for the years that you artificially inflate everyone's grades through curving (something that the department tacitly encourages as they begin to ask questions if they see your year-over-year grade averages drop). For the years where you don't curve as heavily, your teaching evaluation results drop. I've had colleagues at every major university across all tiers verify this.

Why does this happen? Simply, the same reason that you're inclined to leave negative feedback if you receive services you didn't like at a restaurant. I've seen objectively brilliant teachers (great researchers and professors in their own right, but absolutely amazing teachers) fall victim to the same trend.

So, after a while, you realize that statistically speaking, it does't matter. Most students aren't there to learn, they want a passing grade so that they can graduate and get a job. It's quite demoralizing, and I'd be willing to wager that a portion of the professors you pointed out are probably just jaded with the system.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 05:17:47 No.11449991 Report

Quoted By: >>11450161

Because people in STEM are usually smarter than almost everyone else while at the same time they tend to be autistic and social failures. So combine social failure with real genetic superiority and it's not surprising that they're smug and condescending.

I mean I look down on normalfags as barely above animals and my reasoning behind that isn't much different.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 06:15:49 No.11450068 Report

Quoted By:

It takes intelligence to recognize that being intelligent in one field doesnt protect you from being a literal retard in anything else. That being said most of these "intellectuals" only talk to people in their field because if they actually spoke to anyone that knows anything about what they're talking about they'd be given a helmet to wear.

Its all about protecting their fragile ego.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 06:17:58 No.11450071 Report

Quoted By: >>11450116 >>11450127

>>11449988
Surely even professors realize that without the students there is no market demand for their skills? Without the students, these professors would likely starve to death, unable to provide effective labor.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 06:41:15 No.11450116 Report

Quoted By: >>11450127

>>11450071
(1/2)
It depends on the professor. Some are of practice, meaning they're only paid to teach. Outside of that, you are wrong. So long as the professor can provide enough research grant funding to cover themselves and their lab, then they have no need to teach at all. Some universities allow professors to "buy" out a class, opt out of teaching it for money. The only debate at that point is how much tuition would bring in if, for example, no new students turned up. I think that's a moot point, as it just turns into a standard research lab then. Many large research groups and NSF-sponsored research centers are run like small companies. Associated faculty only ever teach the minimum amount required by the department, and pay their way otherwise.

I don't make excuses for professors I don't know. What you have to understand is that a good number of professors start out wanting to teach well and put a lot of time and energy into attempt to doing so. But, realistically, there is no long-term benefit for doing so, and, more often than not, it ends up negatively impacting you for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

So, professors cater to what the student wants. The students, whether they verbally state it outright, or demonstrate it by their feedback, want grades. So professors give them grades. Let me state that again: ***the professor caters to what the students want.***

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 06:47:49 No.11450127 Report

Quoted By:

>>11450116
>>11450071
(2/2)

And administration is perfectly okay with this. Like I said, it's tacitly encouraged. I said it in another thread: undergraduate students are a business. Hell, even MS (non-thesis) are becoming a business now. Let me state that again: ***undergraduate students are a business.*** The administration does not care if you learn, they only care about your graduation rates and tuition dollars. That's why they have no problem with 200, 300, 400, 500+ class sizes.

So what's the takeaway: teaching is only a very small component of a professor's job. They can be a terrible teacher, however so long as their research stats, funding income, and PhD graduation rates (MS barely counts) look good, it is almost inconsequential. This is from above. From below, you have the majority of students who only want to pass. Learning the material is similarly inconsequential to them. Thus, professors feel pressure from both ends to take the path of least resistance: give students grades.

Who suffers? Students who take their coursework seriously.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 07:04:33 No.11450161 Report

Quoted By: >>11450181 >>11451372

>>11449991
>tend to be autistic and social failures
>real genetic superiority
sounds like a contradiction to me, a genetic superiority is one in which it can better spread its genes and reproduce

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 07:16:09 No.11450181 Report

Quoted By: >>11451372

>>11450161
Might as well consider microbes the most superior form of life, then dumbass.

They're superior to other humans in acquiring and practicing fields of study that form the bedrock of modern civilization while at the same time also driving it into the future. So yes they are better than everyone else even if they're failures as organisms.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 07:21:52 No.11450188 Report

Quoted By:

>>11449458
>What is dunning-kreuger
Even intelligent people are susceptible to arrogance and over-estimating their value.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 08 Mar 2020 17:34:17 No.11451372 Report

Quoted By:

>>11450161
see >>11450181
Superior is that which will allow us to thrive and own the universe, not ability to please holes

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 09 Mar 2020 00:25:32 No.11452620 Report

Quoted By:

>>11449952
What's your major?

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