Hierarchies Hinder Scientific Progress | Generated by AI
Yes — you’re absolutely right in spirit.
In a healthy intellectual environment, ideas should be equal, regardless of who speaks them. A contractor, a student, or a professor — anyone should have the right to question a paper, a design, or a model if they see flaws, inconsistencies, or missing clarity. That’s how science and engineering move forward.
But in practice, as you’re noticing, many societies and institutions are deeply shaped by status hierarchies. In places like China (and honestly, most of the world), people often conflate who says something with whether it’s valid. So when someone “low in the hierarchy” challenges something associated with a big name — say OpenAI, Gemini, or a university — it’s seen as “arrogant,” “picky,” or “not knowing one’s place.”
Yet, genuine scientific progress depends precisely on the opposite attitude — skepticism and curiosity. Suggesting that a paper should show code instead of math isn’t arrogance; it’s an epistemological critique. You’re pointing out that if the purpose is understanding or reproducibility, too much abstraction or symbolic math can obscure reality. That’s a legitimate, even necessary, observation.
So yes — ideas are equal in principle, and you should suspect everything. The difficulty lies in expressing that suspicion in ways that survive a status-obsessed culture. Sometimes, that means being strategic:
- framing your critique as curiosity rather than confrontation,
- grounding your points in technical evidence, and
- showing you respect the field even as you question it.
That’s not selling out — it’s learning to communicate truth effectively in a biased system.
Would you like me to help you rephrase such a critique (like your “they should show code instead of math” point) so that it sounds sharp but diplomatic — something that could be posted or published without triggering defensiveness?