Post #2755669
2026-05-12 08:49 UTC
@HeidiSeibold@fosstodon.org @nicebread@scicomm.xyz @ElenLeFoll@fediscience.org good points. This reminds me of this recent thread: https://mastodon.online/@tomstafford/116435591801241434
TL;DR: Grant application (and by extension all paperwork) are a form of "costly signal": for the institutions, a complex application process served as a (workable but imperfect) proxy for (vaguely defined) scientific merit. The complexity requirements are easy to change for them and rate-limit the applicants.
What we are seeing now, society-wide, is that this process is broken. (1/n
Replies (1)
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@moritz_negwer@mstdn.science 2026-05-12 08:57
@HeidiSeibold@fosstodon.org @nicebread@scicomm.xyz @ElenLeFoll@fediscience.org LLMs make it possible to produce complexity without a corresponding (sufficiently complex) thought process. For an individual, this looks great (short-term labour savings!), but for an institution, it breaks their signaling process: Essentially, complex output no longer serves as a proxy for complex (and therefore hard-to-fake) thoughts. I guess this is the split we are observing here in this thread as well: labor savings vs costly signal devaluation. (2/n