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I wanna talk for a minute about informality in computer science and race and privilege, based on a conversation @lindsey and I had about how they just recently found and published Dennis Ritchie's doctoral dissertation. https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertation/
Dennis Ritchie is of course in the running for being the GOAT, like, considered broadly. He never flipped the final bit to formally get his PhD, which was sending a bound copy of the accepted dissertation to the university library. We can view this, in a sense, as a flex.
He didn't need the PhD sheet of paper to prove anything. He had his job lined up at Bell Labs, he was doing great work. And he just... didn't feel like doing it, or paying for the last bit flip. So he didn't.
I've done all kinds of things like this in my life. Just... don't feel like doing a thing, so don't. In the article, they say Dennis "never really loved taking care of the details of living". Relatable.
But you have to have a certain amount of clout/privilege before that works.
But you have to have a certain amount of clout/privilege before that works.
Among my colleagues, a bunch of us have PhDs. And a bunch don't. I'm not really sure who does and who doesn't, and it doesn't matter. It would be very odd to care, and it would be very odd to address somebody in computing as "Dr. So-and-so" except as a joke.
Similarly, actually using your "Dr." title makes you look like something of a quack, at least to me. You've definitely got some theory of AGI you want to push, and it involves functional reactive programming and sacred geometry and you've founded a research institute :-O
CS educators and researchers and practitioners, throughout my college career and afterwards, have largely been first-name basis people. It's how we operate.
Not too long ago, though, we ran this program jointly with a bunch of HBCU&HSIs, where students would come to Google with their professors, and we'd do classes on the G campus.
And you know what? HBCU professors go by "Doctor So-and-so", as far as I've seen.
And you know what? HBCU professors go by "Doctor So-and-so", as far as I've seen.
They're not just some person standing up there talking. They're a doctor, with a PhD. The social context is different than in broader computing; folks at HBCUs are more tuned in to stereotype threat, taking active steps against it.
Just the idea that a person would get effectively within spitting distance of having the PhD credential, and then just not go through with it... there's some privilege there.
"My son's gonna feel free to be as weird as a white guy..." -- Open Mike Eagle
(I hope so.) #BLM
"My son's gonna feel free to be as weird as a white guy..." -- Open Mike Eagle
(I hope so.) #BLM
