MIT and Mendacity
September 27, 2019
I am back from a fun series of locations. Nifty USSR style apartment blocks, big statues, and weird refrigerator magnets. I missed the thrill and excitement of MIT’s struggles with ethics and money. (Spoiler: Money won it seems.)
I noted this write up a few moments ago:
This MIT Press Reader article observes:
It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish. In those situations — everyday 21st-century life — there are still ways to carve out spaces of resistance, counterargument, and autonomy.
Good to know about the irrelevance of principle. MIT thinking in full bloom.
Embrace obfuscation; for example:
Obfuscation assumes that the signal can be spotted in some way and adds a plethora of related, similar, and pertinent signals — a crowd which an individual can mix, mingle, and, if only for a short time, hide.
You get the idea. Deception.
John Kenneth Galbraith was on the right track. He allegedly said:
Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.
On my flight back to the US, I read “How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.” The New Yorker makes clear that MIT’s attempts to cover up (obfuscate) its relationship with Mr. Epstein, the deceased person of interest with allegedly improper interests in young girls, did not work.
But there’s more. I read “M.I.T. Media Lab, Already Rattled by the Epstein Scandal, Has a New Worry” which stated in the typical New York Times manner:
Four researchers who worked on OpenAg said in interviews with The New York Times that Mr. Harper had made exaggerated or false claims about the project to its corporate sponsors, a group that included the retail giant Target, as well as in interviews with the news media.
Enough already.
How does one spell “mendacity”? Does it start with the letter “M”?
I wonder if top flight academic institutions are what they seem. Maybe some institutions are obfuscating but failing.
I wonder if there is a Bulgarian refrigerator magnet for doing the best one can under difficult circumstances.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
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