[Academic philosophers] Russ and I have presented our joint work in a number of venues now … and normally when we do so, … we set up a random beeper … When the beep sounds, each audience member is to think about what was going on in her last undisturbed moment of inner experience before the beep. We then use a random number generator to select an audience member to report on her experience. We interview her right there, discussing her experience and the method with the audience and each other. We’ll do this maybe three times in a three-hour session.
As a result, we now have a couple dozen samples of reported inner experience during our academic talks, and the most striking thing we’ve found is that people rarely report thinking about the talk. … Most audience members, listening to most academic talks, spend most of their time with some distraction or other at the forefront of their stream of experience. They may not remember this fact because when they think back on their experience of a talk, what is salient to them are those rare occasions when they did make a novel connection or think up an interesting objection.
(I think the same is true of sex thoughts. People often say they spend a lot of time thinking about sex, but when you beep them they very rarely report it. It’s probably that our sex thoughts, though rare, are much more frequently remembered than other thoughts and so are dramatically overrepresented in retrospective memory.) (more)
We too easily assume we know what we have been doing. Most who think they are obsessed with sex, or that they pay attention to academic talks, are wrong. While understanding its content is what you are supposed to do at an academic talk, attending is probably more about showing your dedication and monitoring. Similarly, our society places a high premium on sex, and looks down on the asexual. In both cases our bias seems to be to assume we have doing whatever would make the best impression if it were true. If you can be this mistaken about stuff this basic, how wrong could you be about other things?
Also a huge issue in academic conferences is self-deceit.
People don't like to admit they are just sitting in the talk to serve social ends, e.g., show respect for the speaker, maintain norms that will keep others coming to their talks and thus help gain them later jobs (you can be impressed by people's intelligent even if you don't have much interest in hearing the details of their work). Also it's about avoiding the slippery slope of 'well there is no harm if I just miss one talk.'
While there are some people who do get a great deal from the talks I think a huge percent of attendees would be better served spending the time skimming the papers then attending a cocktail party with the other attendees where they can converse and ask questions.
Deliberate and ahem conscious manipulation of quotations... I'm not playing.Have a nice day now.