An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science
I value academic freedom and the integrity to pursue knowledge regardless of its outcomes. It’s the fruit of a just and wealthy society, it’s value endures across millennia.<p>Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed.<p>He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity.<p>I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all.<p>As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable. 
The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself.<p>Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming.<p>This piece is not instructive. 
It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire.<p>I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24&#x2F;7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment.<p>The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.