CharonY

Strange. But a couple of passages I remembered to be interesting: In a way Ali Vaez (the guest) paints a picture of weaponized fundamentalism. The pragmatism was evident from the moment Khomeini took power:

"Have you listened to any good podcasts lately?"

There are folks who think that while there are fundamentalists in Iranian leadership, their actions have a very rational, geopolitical core. There is a diversity of articles about it, but a recent transcript of a podcast was actually very good in synthesizing a fair bit of different opinions. I thin it is worth a read, if only to have a better perspective on things over there. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ali-vaez.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TVA.VRxD.dL5_cBX2un2a&smid=url-share

yeaaahhh about that. Let's just say take shallow breaths in my walk-in freezer.

No, it is coming mostly from the leadership and a loyal rural core. If you talk with Iranian students, you might be surprised how modern and westernized (not really the right term, but I can't think of something fitting right now) they are, especially the women and especially relative to some of their peers in the area.

Hold on, do you really think all we do is masturbate horses and perhaps dissecting dolphin clitorises https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01544-X ? Sometimes we have to do non-fun stuff, too you know?

I don't get it. If he was wheelchair bound, he wouldn't try to get up. This description is absolutely unrealistic. Also this, is not how mutations work. Finally, I am pretty sure that ceiling fans are designed to randomize the number of pulls.

Why do I feel that that one explains why I am never called to initial strategic meetings and only get put on committees which fixes what others have messed up?

That is a bit of an understatement.

Actually I think that is a good thing, as this is why they are wiser in the first place. That being said, the doubt should not be a reason not do anything. Instead, it should be an incentive to build error-correction measures into their actions. That being said, it is also clear that the simple story usually wins out, as we generally are not well equipped to deal with complexity.

This is also very present for example in university administration. To some degree it might be present in all in-groups as jargon can be used to mask lack of expertise, but also to minimize their own voice. Even worse, it is my contention that higher compensation for decision making should only be afforded if there is also accountability. Yet management has a whole system to avoid or redirect blame (and I feel that nonsensical corporate speak is part of it). It creates a system where the decision-maker are entirely divorced from what the company/institution is about. I think part of the telling parts when corporate thinking is taking over, if the way they describe their services/products in the most interchangeable way possible. E.g. students, i.e. folks we are supposed to educate are now "clients" or anything sold is now a "product". This way management can take any corporate role without really understanding what they are supposed to create in the first place or demonstrating any tangible expertise with it. Meanwhile, experienced techs are getting replaced by teenagers with a phone, because, why not?

At this point in life, I am convinced that this is the essence of the human condition.

I speak like someone whose professional responsibilities includes being on both sides of peer reviews. I am not sure why you bring it up. Serving as reviewer is a voluntary service and if you do not have interest in it, then just don't do it. Likewise, if you are not an expert in a particular area, don't review in that area. It is really simple, actually. What you shouldn't do is to offload it to AI.

It is likely part of it. There a few articles describing a rather desolate state of affairs where young men and women have increasingly incompatible views and with a system that emphasizes convenience in relationships (e.g. dating apps), things might not look so good. And at the same time folks feel more lonely than ever.

And importantly, the authors coming up with a new concepts are supposed to convince skeptical folks. From what I can tell, current LLMs are really bad at that. But to me, it seems that OP sees peer review as a sort of box ticking exercise, which it really shouldn't be. Anecdotally in my field it seems that beyond scam journals, there is also a bit of fragmentation in science publishing and a seeming decline in article quality. Most notably I found that quite a few new papers, unknowingly replicate finding from somewhat older articles (the magic number seems about 15 years, I suspect it has something to do with changes in keywords as well as accessibility). Theoretically, AI which are well-trained could assist here. But then it seems that for some reasons they tend to coagulate around the same articles and tend to have issue to find relevant papers.

I stumbled across another counterintuitive finding on the age (and gender) split: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/almost-a-third-of-gen-z-men-agree-a-wife-should-obey-her-husband

That does not seem to make any real sense. Fundamentally a review is to some degree a value judgement on the persuasiveness of an argument or finding presented. Yes, one can use software to figure the basis and whether others have already reported on it. But if it is something new, you will have to provide evidence supporting whatever hypotheses you propose. And there will be degrees in judgement as folks might disagree on the value of a particular approach, especially when not applied in a standard way. So in a normal review, folks will form an argument regarding why they think this approach is sufficiently strong or not. This, again, is ultimately a value judgement and requires folks with different perspectives to agree (or disagree) on whether a publication has sufficient merit. Flawed as it is, I don't see how loop searches are going to add anything to it. Because that is fundamental to the whole topic. A review is based on the perspective and knowledge of the review, and it is not an enumeration of facts or factoids. As such, the reviewer's understanding of the topic, as well their specific background and perspective is immensely important.

While a step in the right direction, I fear that it does not go far enough, and there have been issues regarding enforcement. Nonetheless I am looking forward to see how things develop and at minimum it shows some reaction to things. Percentage-wise, perhaps (or at least less so than younger folks). However, quite a few are on social media (pre-pandemic data on folks over 65 was a bit less than 50%). However, it turns out that older folks (and also the younger ones, it is a bit of a biphasic distribution) are also more likely to share misinformation. A weird thing is that folks that are GenX and Millenials are those who are the most tech savvy, and especially older as well as younger folks are more susceptible to misinformation and scams. Or rather, it is pretty much expected, due to the way tech has changed. It is somewhat interesting to look at perception of far-right parties among older folks in different countries. For example, the German Nazi-wannabe party (AfD) has the lowest votes among folks 70+ (10%), peaking around ages 35-44 and going down again. But folks 18-24 are voting far right with similar frequency as 45-59 year olds, but they also vote with a much larger frequency to the leftist party. I.e. the are on the extremes on both ends, whereas the oldest folks are generally more voting for center or center-right parties. I suspect that this is related to the fact that the oldest generations still have impressions from the post-war era, whereas for many others the lessons of the past have sadly faded. In the UK, which OP was about, the distribution is more"traditional" with the Reform Party favoured substantially more by the older segment. But many other European countries have lower support for the far right among the oldest bracket, but a peak somewhere around 35-60. I.e. folks that should fall under the more tech savvy generation. That is all to say, I suspect some of the traditional wisdom regarding age and voting behaviour has gone straight out of the window.

Fair, also to the other points. However, I will add that democracy as an institution is not guaranteed, while it shouldn't disenfranchise any group, there is the inherent risk that folks that are clearly anti-democratic can be voted into power. And that, too leads to dictatorship. OK, since I had to suffer through articles about it, I feel compelled to share that with you so that we can suffer together. Essentially there is a somewhat weird movement among young men, which tries to create a new form of masculinity, which is strongly associated with right-wing, populist, anti-feminist and to various degree racist ideals. The core of the ideology is that masculinity is in crisis and feminism is to blame. That movement is propagated mostly via the internet by, what I understand, very popular influencers and podcasters. Originally a fringe movement, it has not only become mainstream, but has become part of many right and far right political movements, including MAGA, but also internationally. For example in the UK pupils have been exposed to such influencers and female teachers have trouble teaching young boys: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/andrew-tate-uk-teachers.html I think to some degree it used to be true. You mentioned higher education, but historically only few had the privilege of getting exposed to that. More commonly, older folks resisted social change, including those that could benefit the younger generation. The way to move things their way often was to wait for generational change. I think in recent times these notions have shifted. One is the growing gender divide, that I half-jokingly mentioned, but in the Western world it has been an almost universal phenomenon. Younger folks and again, especially men, for the first time seem to become more conservative and more aligned with social ideals (such as regarding gender roles). While that it is in itself not necessarily bad, the manifestations have become increasingly toxic (as e.g. the manosphere mentioned above), but also, in conjunction with modern media consumption, just increasingly stupid.

There is a worrying trend regarding the influence of the manosphere. Especially the right has utilized these worldviews and its surrounding media system to big political effect. What I am wondering about is whether that is just a short-term swing or potentially a long-term development. The tea party was a weird swing, until it became a fixture and seed for something worse, for example.

If we look at voting behavior of Trump as an indicator of making a mess, the clearest differential is between men and women. Trump was 10 points up among men and Harris 10 points up among women. Looking at Brexit data, men were 10 percent up for leave, whereas women were 2% for remain (https://www.statista.com/statistics/567922/brexit-votes-by-gender/ I do believe the age differential was higher here). For the Reform party, 12.9% of young men voted for Reform, compared to 5.9% of young women (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gender-gap-strongest-at-opposite-ends-of-political-spectrum-in-the-2024-general-election.) In Germany, AFD was at 22% with men, compared to 16% with women. So clearly, we should disenfranchise penises until they settle down and make rational decisions.

It also the question whether you want to. Few papers are just merely a series of statements of facts, but rather they try to push the boundary of knowledge by providing a particular perspective, which are then underpinned by evidence. Whether that evidence is convincing or not (or require further discussion) is ultimately a value judgement. Fundamentally, you can think of scientific papers as a discussion among peers and if AI takes over, it is going to be a discussion among algorithms. Regarding the use of AI as support, I could imagine that they could help in finding additional literature, given the exploding (and also deteriorating) literature landscape. However, I can see that backfire spectacularly, as traditionally experts in the field will know the relevant lit they want to see cited. AI would move the discussion more likely to an amalgamated consensus, with no discerning voices.

There has been somewhat extensive testing in Universities, for obvious reasons. However, for pretty much all tools the conclusion was eventually that they are not good. They have high rates of false positives, as you mentioned. But in addition, even minor is sufficient to confuse some of the software. Our school has abandoned that attempt to prevent plagiarism and I think that is or starting to be the overall consensus.

I am very much looking forward on how it is implemented and what effects it might have. Anecdotally, pretty much every of the top students I talked to had some limit on screen time or were older before they got their first cell phone.

You mean the guy who likes to snort cocaine from toilet seats and indulging in sewage baths?