Although I have no doubt that, like every other field, academia is filled with politics; and publishing process probably helps enforce such politics.
However, I would argue that modern academic publishing is absolutely necessary to produce “useful” science. In order for people to build upon others’ result, they will need strong guarantee of correctness, which necessitates the review process ; and top conferences can also save researchers a lot of time to find impactful new research, especially new ideas.
That being said, I am absolutely not suggesting the publishing system is not without its problems; but I kind of agree with LeCun here, publishing is a important part of the process, and it is will probably out-last both Tesla and Elon.
I think this is a very interesting take, but I am curious about how the career in youtube is better than the academia as she describes it.
Obviously, the discrimination against female and writing without proper acknowledgement is absolutely unacceptable, but I have never heard about anything like this in my field.
However, I feel like youtube is likely a more competitive landscape than grant writing. I think it is very likely the administrative overhead for youtuber is more than 15%, and youtuber needs to get the interest of people completely ignorant of the subject, not just experts, plus battling the unpredictbility of youtube algorithm.
Of course, I am not trying to downplay the problem she mentioned, but I am just wondering how youtube is a better alternative career, considering her goal to do “serious and innovative science”.