I encourage you to expand on "In the real world, research is not a Platonic quest for objective truth" maybe by writing another article or linking what others wrote on a similar subject.
This is an incredibly common pitfall that people fall into time and again. Hell, even I am getting these vibes with all that recent hype about deep learning - despite I am no stranger to academia (in another area and some years back).
I don't know that I have all that much to say about it. Research is (at least to date) a human activity and so it is necessarily beset with human foibles. It requires resources, so it necessarily involves economics, which necessarily involves politics. It's not rocket science. Anyone who thinks about it for even a moment can figure this out without my help.
> recent hype about deep learning
Does anyone really look at contemporary AI as a Platonic quest for objective truth? It seems to me that there is pretty widespread clarity about the fact that this is mostly a commercial endeavor. If you want to talk about Platonic quests for objective truth we should talk about, say, mathematics or fundamental physics.
> Does anyone really look at contemporary AI as a Platonic quest for objective truth?
I realize I have a tendency to romanticize some of the papers I read even if I fully understand intellectually it is a wrong thing to do. Probably I should try concsiously train myself not to do it or something along these lines.
My experience tells me if I have a question or an issue it's very unlikely to be unique to myself. And (re-)reading an honest or even cynical account about something typically helps e.g. ribbonfarm on corporate hierarchies/politics.
This is an incredibly common pitfall that people fall into time and again. Hell, even I am getting these vibes with all that recent hype about deep learning - despite I am no stranger to academia (in another area and some years back).