Researcher: the mob cared about citations until LLMs got good at them, then stopped instantly
RexDouglass · x · 2026-11-07
Data scientist Rex Douglass mocks academia's double standards: there was a whole month when citations were treated as the single most important thing in science, with mobs descending on anyone who dared explain it's undergrad-level stuff. Once LLMs got good at citations, the mob stopped caring immediately.
In a self-reply he adds: nobody has a theory of human slop — people invent distinctions and pretend to care intensely because it's entertaining and a virtue-signalling device, and none of them ever seriously cared about metascience.
Essentially an opinionated take on how academic gatekeeping shifts the moment AI removes the leverage.
Related event: Researcher Mocks Shifting Moral Standards in AI Discourse(2 posts)→
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