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Chad Nester (Jul 09 2022 at 14:48):Would it make sense for there to be a North American SYCO and a European SYCO that run in parallel?
Chad Nester (Jul 09 2022 at 14:48):(Not literally at the same time)
Chad Nester (Jul 09 2022 at 14:49):As a sort of community meeting I don't think online participation makes a lot of sense.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2022 at 15:56):Making events accessible online is such a basic gesture to make meetings more accessible, even if it means people missing out on the social aspect of meetings. Why not allow online participation?
Chad Nester (Jul 09 2022 at 16:06):My opinion is that the social aspect of meetings is like %90 of the point of having them.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2022 at 16:18):That's not an acceptable excuse for excluding people from the research content of the meetings.
Chad Nester (Jul 09 2022 at 16:26):We have papers...
John Baez (Jul 09 2022 at 21:14):Due to the climate crisis, we need to stop flying around to conferences.... at least until they develop airplanes that don't run on fossil fuels. We can have local conferences, that's good, and maybe that's what SYCO aims to be - but there are also reasons for people who are geographically far apart to communicate verbally, not just write and read papers. So, we need to get good at conferences where we give talks and even do some of the social part online.
The pandemic was a powerful nudge in the right direction: hybrid conferences. It would be sad to see this progress lost.
Anyway, if SYCO9 is not hybrid, I will have to withdraw my talk.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2022 at 22:10):In part I agree. On the other hand being able to travel around is one of the few perks of working in academia. This, and the freedom in pursuing one's research interests. These two things have been constantly eroded away year after year, because of the pandemic and the climate crisis the former, because of the increasing amount of admin work put on faculty the latter. So, given this, why should one even stay in academia? I understand how "we have to fly less" makes a lot of sense rationally and ideologically, but the practical consequence of this will be, imho, nudging even more people towards the corporate environment.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2022 at 22:12):All this to say that "organizing virtual events while we wait for electric planes to be invented (if ever)" doesn't seem to me like a practicable solution.
John Baez (Jul 09 2022 at 22:13):People riding on the Titanic found it inconvenient to leave their deck chairs, too.
John Baez (Jul 09 2022 at 22:15):If we're worried about the encroaching burden of administrators and administrative work - and I'm sure most of us are - we should tackle that directly, not say "here, go burn some carbon and fly to a nice destination - you'll feel better."
John Baez (Jul 09 2022 at 22:27):By the way, I'm not saying changes in individual behavior are the most important way to cut carbon emissions. But it's part of changing the culture. Treating carbon emissions as an attractive perk, rather than something embarrassing, has got to go.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2022 at 22:36):Don't get me wrong, personally I'm also trying to do my part. One thing I did was investing into a nice VR set in the hope that better virtual reality meeting experiences are eventually developed
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2022 at 22:37):But still, atm all the virtual conference experiences I've tried were quite disappointing, and didn't really manage to re-create any of the perks of an in-person experience
John Baez (Jul 09 2022 at 22:45):Yes, it's true. We need to invent new low-carbon perks.
Chad Nester (Jul 10 2022 at 05:54):I agree that the system of conferences we have now is ecologically irresponsible and that we have to replace it with something. I certainly take your point, and can see a place for virtual events. I also want there to be a place for smaller local events. We can have both :)
Notification Bot (Jul 10 2022 at 05:58):17 messages were moved here from #general: events > SYCO 9, Como by John Baez.
John Baez (Jul 10 2022 at 05:59):I've moved this thread since we're not really talking about SYCO 9 anymore, but rather general issues about conferences.
John Baez (Jul 10 2022 at 06:02):Okay, so we don't disagree, Chad. Perhaps despite appearances, I wasn't trying to bully SYCO 9 into being other than a local conference. think it's great to have lots of hybrid or fully virtual conferences, but I also like the idea of local in-person conferences. They help build communities.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 10 2022 at 09:10):Fabrizio Genovese said:
In part I agree. On the other hand being able to travel around is one of the few perks of working in academia. This, and the freedom in pursuing one's research interests.
I'm not arguing that people should have to stop travelling, I'm arguing that people shouldn't have to travel in order to participate. I got into topos theory as a masters student by going to a topos theory school in Nice. There was no funding for this; I got cheap flights and a cheap airbnb to participate. Most people would not have that opportunity. It is great that many academics get generous travel funding, but that's never going to be true of everyone that could benefit from participation in our events and conferences.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2022 at 11:49):I think the idea of the SYCO meetings was to have them so often that if one is inconvenient for you, then you just go to the next one in 3-4 months; and ideally that would mean having them in locations far enough from each other that every community gets a "local" SYCO meeting; sadly only SYCO 4 has ever been in North America as opposed to Europe, and of course covid has been a spanner in the "rolling" model
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2022 at 11:51):Personally I'm in favour of "full hybrid" if that model cannot be realised, and indeed in SYCO 8 which I locally organised we had both in-person and online talks, in a 1:1 ratio approximately. But it's ok for organisers to make their own choices each time.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2022 at 11:56):(Currently the SYCO steering committee includes only Europe-based academics which probably is not ideal if it's not supposed to be a "European" conference)
Jules Hedges (Jul 10 2022 at 12:09):I think all of this makes sense to me. I start from a baseline of considering as a hard requirement being properly hybrid for ACT22 (including making a good experience for people online as far as possible). But SYCO is designed to be very frequent and franchise-able, there should really be parallel events happening on every continent so nobody has to travel far to their nearest one
Benjamin Merlin Bumpus (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 06:25):Just to drive @Morgan Rogers (he/him) ‘s point home, here are my two cents: I think that in-person only conferences only make sense nowadays if they’re workshops or something to that affect. Otherwise, making a conference entirely in person does indeed feel like gatekeeping.
As a personal anecdote, the pandemic allowed me (a few others I know, and I bet many others still) to interact with disciplines, fields and people that I otherwise would not have had access to.
Also there are plenty of people who also, due to family, personal or other reasons cannot commit to traveling as as often as they’d like, so I bet many of us would really appreciate the option to still interact and see live talks… Not to mention John’s very valid point about fossil fuel usage and us not wanting the planet to burn up..
I think that, as a community, we should be thinking of ways to make online/hybrid conferences more engaging, fun and productive.
Paolo Perrone (Jul 11 2022 at 07:17):Not in particular for SYCO, but Chad's initial idea of having two parallel conferences, one in Europe and one in America (or other places too) in principle seems a workable compromise between "still traveling" and "cutting carbon emissions".
One would have to organize it right though (each talk is visible online for everyone, no overlaps, etc).
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 09:29):Adding to the pile of pros for hybrid conferences, talking at conferences gives career points so if one can make it easier to deliver a talk without having to spend money, that is, in the interest of inclusivity, would be great regardless of pandemics, climate change or any other factor. Let's remember attending a conference is costly and as far as my experience goes, you need to be quite well off to afford it, even if uni reimburses you.
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 09:36):Fabrizio Genovese said:
On the other hand being able to travel around is one of the few perks of working in academia.
That's true and I see the point that given the option to deliver talks online, it's only a matter of time for admin to realize they can stop paying travelling money.
This could actually be for the good: it's bad policy to regularly send people across the ocean for networking purposes (or even across a continent). It's good in some measure when you're at an early stage in your career, but then should be more policed. That said, that conversation should happen in uni departments. Externalizing this decision to second-order effects deriving from very specific incentive structures seems ill-advised and, eventually, doomed to fail.
John Baez (Jul 11 2022 at 15:37):I used to advocate the idea that some hotel chain should have restaurants where you can sit in a booth equipped with a video display that lets you eat dinner with someone in a restaurant in some other branch of the chain.
Some people would sit at a table facing a video display that would show another half of a table, which would be the table in the other branch.
John Baez (Jul 11 2022 at 15:39):In fact I still advocate this, even though most people now have cell phones and laptops that do video calls.
John Baez (Jul 11 2022 at 15:39):It's still hard to talk and eat a meal with some people far away.
John Baez (Jul 11 2022 at 15:40):(Change "restaurant" to "bar" if that's more your thing.)
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 16:08):uhm I remember a big tech company revealing a full-immersive video call setup like that last year
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 16:08):your idea is great btw!
John van de Wetering (Jul 11 2022 at 18:21):I agree with the general principle that we should make the online component of a hybrid conference more like the actual conference. Meaning: somehow make it more social. The question is, how do we do this? Did anyone feel like they were at an online conference where this was better than at other conferences?
John van de Wetering (Jul 11 2022 at 18:22):For me, the one that came closest was QPL2021, where they had everyone in Gathertown, so that you could walk around virtually and talk to people if you wanted. The problem there was that not everyone actually was in Gathertown, so that you couldn't do the thing where you hunt down the speaker of the last talk in order to ask them a couple more questions
John van de Wetering (Jul 11 2022 at 18:24):Would the long-term thing to do be to invest in virtual reality type solutions together with telepresence robots, so that you can actually "be" at the conference?
Benjamin Merlin Bumpus (he/him) (Jul 11 2022 at 19:07):I’ve had good experiences with gathertown (the paid version is apparently much better). For example I attended a Dagstuhl conference in 2021 which was entirely on Gathertown and it worked quite well.
José Siqueira (Jul 12 2022 at 20:27):In fact, while organising the Cambridge CT seminar as the pandemic dwindled there were many speakers (and audience members!) that I couldn't have invited if not for the willingness of everyone to attend remotely. This is an even bigger deal for a large scale event like a conference.
Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jul 22 2022 at 18:13):John Baez said:
Due to the climate crisis, we need to stop flying around to conferences.... at least until they develop airplanes that don't run on fossil fuels. We can have local conferences, that's good, and maybe that's what SYCO aims to be - but there are also reasons for people who are geographically far apart to communicate verbally, not just write and read papers. So, we need to get good at conferences where we give talks and even do some of the social part online.
The pandemic was a powerful nudge in the right direction: hybrid conferences. It would be sad to see this progress lost.
Anyway, if SYCO9 is not hybrid, I will have to withdraw my talk.
Hi, I'm a little late but I totally agree with this. I'm very worried about this issue. I want to share how it affects me in relation to my life experience.
I've tried to organize my life not to pollute too much. I haven't a car and I didn't even pass a driver's license for this reason. I could have become an engineer but I moved to mathematics and I thought that doing research in math would be an ethical occupation, in particular on the point of pollution. But I was completely wrong! I'm doing research at Ottawa for the end of my masters but was in France before and I went to a conference at Calgary last time. I'm going to do 18 000 km in airplane on a period of 6 months. All my efforts go up in smoke. I'm very probably going to continue with a PhD in math here at Ottawa and I will have to share my work with other people. I think a lot to the way I'm going to do it. Should I adopt an aggressive behavior by refusing to fly to conferences and only talk in visioconference knowing that it would affect my career progression, even more knowing that I'm just a beginner? I think this is the most moral option.
Definitely, people need to engage themselves and I'm very glad that John adopt this position. Being a mathematician and flying everywhere is being a very big polluter. No matter the beauty of the maths. That's the reality. Think to Grothendieck who understood that the ecology is as important as categories. He was decades in advance and now we must inspire ourselves from him.
John Baez (Jul 22 2022 at 19:46):Thanks, @Jean-Baptiste Vienney. Yes, I like to explain to academics that the single easiest way they can cut their carbon emissions is likely to be reducing their travel to conferences. For example when I gave a virtual talk in Switzerland I said this:
US citizens emit 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year on average; Swiss just 4.2. But we can all do more:
- Stop flying to conferences. By not flying from Los Angeles to Zurich I saved 3.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
[etc.]
John Baez (Jul 22 2022 at 19:47):So a single round-trip flight to Switzerland is almost the annual carbon emissions of someone in Switzerland!
John Baez (Jul 22 2022 at 19:47):When people respond by saying the plane would fly to Switzerland even if they don't get on it, then I know they're getting desperate and the conversation needs to become a bit more detailed.
Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jul 23 2022 at 00:52):Do you succeed to convince conference organizers by explaining more? What do you say?
I have the feeling that the only solution is to become more to say that we will give a talk only if it's a virtual one and people will change their mind because it will be socially more acceptable, even at a point, after some years, the general opinion could turn around and flying to conferences would become something bad.
Jon Sterling (Jul 23 2022 at 05:54):The situation is of course more complex than it is being portrayed... During the pandemic when demand for flights plummeted, the usual flights were being run basically empty by the airlines to ensure that they kept their rights at each airport. So when the interlocutor says "the flight would still go whether or not they are on it", they are quite right (but it's not for me to decide whether they are desperate)
Maybe over a (very, very) long period of time, individual decisions on whether to fly would have a non-trivial impact on emissions.
Jon Sterling (Jul 23 2022 at 05:57):I think the incompetence of the airlines might solve this problem for us --- it's becoming so risky to fly (very high probability of lost luggage, getting stranded, refusal of airlines to reimburse, etc.) that I and most people I know are very hesitant to take any trips whatsoever unless absolutely necessary. I am guessing this utter collapse of the airline system will do a lot more to decrease demand for flights than shaming academics for carbon emissions.
Jon Sterling (Jul 23 2022 at 11:09):In any case, I think we should sooner censure academics whose very research is harmful to the the human environment (e.g. the legions of blockchain researchers, as well as those who sell their expertise in military contracts) than those who travel for conferences to see old friends from whom they are separated because of the impossible job/career prospects for young academics.
Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jul 23 2022 at 13:38):I agree with you on the fact that "the flight would still go whether or not they are on it". I don't know whether the incompetence of the airlines will reduce the demand for flights a lot or not, neither if this incompetence is something as huge as you describe it.
The efforts needed to stop global warming and other consequences of human activity on the environment are huge. The word Anthropocene captures the idea that humanity is now the principal strength in the evolution of our planet. If all academics stopped from one day to the other flying to conferences, the impact on emissions by the intermediate of the flights they are not going to take would probably be close to zero. However in a situation where all academics would have stopped flying to conferences, I'm sure that the emissions produced by these academics and also by other people would have decreased, by other mechanisms. Why? Because the ideas and general behavior of these academics would have changed. If you are willing to stop flying to conferences, you will as well take care of your emissions of dioxide carbon by other sources. Secondly, as an academic you represent the intellectual elite. Your actions as a human being have much bigger consequences than the one of a poor Sudanese, as it appears by your very much higher emissions of carbon dioxide. You are richer, more educated, closer to people who take important decisions... Definitely, you are on the top of the pyramid in terms of capital, whether economic, symbolic, cultural or social (These ideas of capital have been developed by Bourdieu).
I lose myself by trying to convince you that stopping flying to conferences as an academics either have more consequences or is correlated with more changes that you think. Maybe, I don't speak so much in a mathematical way and it doesn't help. Anyway.
The question of academics whose research is harmful to the human environment is another one. We can act on different subjects at the same time. But the ones who fly to conferences are much more numerous as it is the majority.
John Baez (Jul 23 2022 at 16:45):I'm less interested in "censuring" anyone for air travel - I don't really do "censuring" - than in reducing my own air travel, helping people understand the easiest ways to cut their carbon emissions, and helping make hybrid conferences and virtual lectures into a standard, widely accepted thing.
John Baez (Jul 23 2022 at 16:56):I agree with Jean-Baptiste that academics, like other influential and talkative people, have the ability to do a lot just by setting a good example.
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 26 2022 at 09:22):Jon Sterling said:
The situation is of course more complex than it is being portrayed... During the pandemic when demand for flights plummeted, the usual flights were being run basically empty by the airlines to ensure that they kept their rights at each airport. So when the interlocutor says "the flight would still go whether or not they are on it", they are quite right (but it's not for me to decide whether they are desperate)
I always found these arguments puzzling... is the point that demand does not impact offer? Or that we are not clever enough to avoid a tragedy-of-the-commons type of behaviour?
Of course if a sizable amount of people stops travelling airlines will reduce flights, eventually. Of course it's hard to coordinate on such a decision, but stopping flying as an habit will reduce demand ever so slightly and set an example.
Jon Sterling (Jul 26 2022 at 11:21):@Matteo Capucci (he/him) I don't think demand will have much effect unless the drop in demand is both _precipitous_ and sustained. Sustained "slightly decreased" demand will have zero effect.
Jon Sterling (Jul 26 2022 at 11:27):All in all, this is more of the same liberal-individualist attitude on social change which focuses on individual habits rather than the larger institutional matters that dwarf the individual actions in impact. It can certainly make someone feel "clean" but it doesn't do a lot to change things...
For another example, take a look at how agricultural production works. Much of agricultural produce is made in order to be wasted (not only through inefficiency, but literally because various industries are subsidized in order to ensure their continued existence in various regions regardless of the year-to-year demand for their produce). So if, for instance, you discovered that (e.g.) soybean or corn production was very devastating to the environment and you succeeded to organize millions of people to stop eating soybean and corn products, this would nonetheless not change the amount that is produced. In essence the reason is that we do not have a "production-for-use" economy.
Jon Sterling (Jul 26 2022 at 11:28):This is one of many reasons why "vote with your wallet" has never led to any kind of social change except changes in the style and tenor of the advertising that we are shown (e.g. the strides in representation and inclusion within mass-market advertising for the high-income strata of minority groups in the United States)...
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 26 2022 at 12:01):Matteo Capucci (he/him) I don't think demand will have much effect unless the drop in demand is both _precipitous_ and sustained. Sustained "slightly decreased" demand will have zero effect.
This is the same argument that leads to tragedy of the commons: 'my little change in behavior will barely impact the group, so I might as well keep doing what I know it's wrong'. The flaw is assuming everybody else is a fixed player and will not change their behavior (and underestimating signaling, too)
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 26 2022 at 12:07):Re the rest, I absolutely agree. We need systemic change. But does this discount us from local, individual actions? No. In fact we can and must do both. You can't expect a government to regulate a bad behavior if a sizable amount of their electorate doesn't already show they would follow/welcome the rule (eg cities not building cycling infrastructure bc people don't cycle)
Also somehow we're never the system, and always the individuals. Here we are talking about deciding for our own conferences, so why blame some higher structure instead of making the change we want to see?
Naso (Jul 26 2022 at 12:34):Looking to the past there are so many examples of systemic violence, abuse. and stupidity that we now call disgraceful. But today we participate in so many activities we will probably look back on with shame (factory farming, destruction of the environment, etc etc).
Conferences that to not accommodate remote participation normalise discrimination against people who aren't rich as well as normalise not giving a shit about the environment.
On the other hand, when influential people like yourselves take a stand that is truly inspiring . I think you are more capable of making a difference than you realise.
John Baez (Jul 26 2022 at 18:20):Also somehow we're never the system, and always the individuals. Here we are talking about deciding for our own conferences, so why blame some higher structure instead of making the change we want to see?
Right. What I'm arguing for is not so much a system of penalizing individual air travelers by wagging my finger at them, making them comply in order to feel "virtuous" - but rather, a system that makes it easy to attend conferences without flying. This is about the system.
John Baez (Jul 26 2022 at 18:22):Subsidizing air travel with government dollars is also about the system - it's one of the many ways the government subsidizes the use of fossil fuels.
In academic grants, governments should not be giving away money to burn carbon. They should be helping people set up good teleconferencing systems and other systems that can reduce the need to burn carbon.
John Baez (Jul 26 2022 at 18:23):But a bit of friendly finger-wagging is necessary, to get people to start thinking creatively about these problems.
John Baez (Jul 26 2022 at 18:31):And, to have any right to do this finger-wagging, we need to start by setting a good example ourselves.