Yogi Jaeger 💙 @yoginho@spore.social Profile picture
Sep 17, 2020 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I just read another one of those “how I overcame writing anxiety and became a more productive writer” threads on #AcademicTwitter. They are a frighteningly frequent thing. A few thoughts. #StockholmSyndrome /1
This latest thread was full of very reasonable advice on how to boost your writing productivity by a researcher who published something like a dozen and a half articles and book chapters over the past year. The implicit claim is that this made them a better writer. /2
But why would you want to optimise your output like this in the first place? What kind of system makes you think this is a good thing? This cult of productivity is driving us insane & it’s also driving academic research into a corner, the corner of the low-hanging fruit. /3
Who is supposed to read your dozen-and-a-half articles a year? And was it really necessary to publish that many? Certainly it helps your career. But do you really have that much to say? I don’t. And from reading the scientific literature, I think very, very few people do. /4
Anyway, what are you doing to your mind if you attempt to optimise your productivity? You’re putting it into a cage. Creativity requires leisure. Time wasting. The best thoughts come to you under the shower. Don’t treat your mind as if it is a machine to be optimised. /5
This cult of productivity will make you focus only on what’s right in front of you. Put your blinders on. If you can’t get your thoughts straight, you won’t write them down. It destroys playful exploration. It kills our ability to fail in productive ways. And it kills all joy. /6
The cult of productivity is the single biggest disease in academia today. By becoming a more productive writer you're playing along in the destruction of everything that basic research is about. Think twice before you go that way. /7
I became a better writer when I stopped caring about deadlines (early on in my career) & when I dropped out of the awful rat race that is modern science. I now have the leisure I need. I don’t need to publish 15 papers a year. I feel better, and I write better as a result. /8
If you play along with the cult of productivity you will succeed within the current system. When that runs against the wall (and it will) you will stand on a pedestal among the ruins, your potential wasted, your energy burnt out. Think about it. Don’t play along. /9
Fuck productivity! It’s one of the worst diseases of the mind in these late modern times. Change will come. But not through being productive. Through being original & courageous.

If you still need convincing, please read @melgregg’s “Counterproductive.” At your leisure. /10

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More from @yoginho

May 30
@balazskegl @drmichaellevin @ThouArtThat I don't know what @drmichaellevin posted above since he blocked me. But just to make sure: we are *not* part of the same family. And the differences between our philosophies are fundamental, not "minuscule." Neither is @drmichaellevin a revolutionary. Indeed, he is a reactionary.
@balazskegl @drmichaellevin @ThouArtThat I explain why @drmichaellevin's "philosophy" is vacuous, just a PR stunt, here: . TAME is an attempt at disguising that his approach is, in fact, utterly reductionist, the culmination of modernist thinking, not the beginning of a metamodern science.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/why-tame-…
@balazskegl @drmichaellevin @ThouArtThat That's one difference between his work and that of @ThouArtThat and I, who are trying to do serious work, based on solid philosophy, which is aimed at *understanding* the world and our place in it, not to control and manipulate (i.e. engineer) everything.
Read 9 tweets
Jan 22
I traveled to Paris to give my philosophy crash course for scientists () to a wonderful group of @lpiparis_ @FIREPhD students, as I do every year.

Contact me if you want to bring this course to your own institute! It's not only fun, but also useful...johannesjaeger.eu/philosophy.html
... allowing you to become a better researcher through philosophy. The course has an interactive, discussion-based format that is based on an online series of lecture which are freely available: .
It helps you reflect on your own scientific practice and world view using a (1) process-based, (2) perspectival-realist, and (3) deliberative approach to the philosophy of science. The course heavily focuses on students' own experiences, practices, and questions.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 10, 2023
New blog post just dropped!

"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."



reviewing this recent Nature paper:



TL:DR: potentially interesting model, wrapped in utterly misleading packaging.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-…
nature.com/articles/s4158…
"I think assembly theory has lots of merit and potential, but this particular paper frames its argument in a way which is unfortunate and, frankly, more than just a bit misleading. My personal suspicion is that this has two reasons: (1) the authors hyped up their claims ...
... to get the paper published in a glam journal, plus (2) they also overestimate the reach and power of their model in ways which may be detrimental to its proper application and interpretation."
Read 6 tweets
Sep 9, 2023
Just received my expected rejection from @elife (after appeal).

The way I was rejected reflects the atrocious attitude of the journal & the whole field of biology towards conceptual work.

It also showcases a lack of intellectual integrity on behalf of the journal editors. 🧵
I submitted the paper knowing full well that @eLife usually restricts its scope to empirical work. The idea was to challenge that restriction, since (in my opinion) biology urgently needs a revival of serious conceptual efforts to prevent the descent of the field into pointless..
@eLife ... construction of large data sets that are increasingly costly to produce but yield diminishing returns in terms of insight and understanding into the workings and organization of living systems. Hence, no surprise when my work was deemed "out of scope." That's fair enough.
Read 21 tweets
Jan 19, 2022
The current #COVID19 media coverage around me seems to agree on three things: (1) there is nothing we can do against #omicron, (2) this variant is mild & the wave will be over soon, (3) we're soon going "endemic," to "live with the virus," & back to normality. /1
There seems to be very little push-back against this narrative, which is something that really surprises me. But worse than that: it does *not* bode well for the next pandemic (whether the next #COVID19 variant or something altogether more worrisome). /2
Re (1): we can't do anything & #ZeroCovid was never an option.

Well, we never really tried. Those few countries that did were isolated (either geographically or surrounded by countries who didn't implement any low-incidence measures). /3
Read 23 tweets
Feb 19, 2021
Our second paper on dynamical modularity, "Dynamical Modules in Metabolism, Cell and Developmental Biology" by @NickMonk14 & myself is now available as a preprint: osf.io/rydbn via @OSFramework /1
It complements our earlier evolutionary perspective on the subject (osf.io/vfz4t) with its more regulation-based approach and a long list of practical examples that illustrate our novel conceptual framework for the dynamical decomposition of complex systems. /2
Just like our earlier paper, the argument starts with the following observation: modular phenotypic traits imply that the underlying regulatory processes—the epigenotype of the organism—must be dissociable as well. How to decompose them, however, is not a trivial task. /3
Read 16 tweets

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