NERD ESTABLISHES ENTIRE INSTITUTE AFTER REALIZING NERDS FROM DIFFERENT SUBJECTS SHOULD ACTUALLY TALK TO EACH OTHER
In what experts are calling “a f@#king revolutionary concept,” MIT Professor Munther Dahleh has written a whole-ass book explaining how he invented the mind-blowing idea that people with different expertise should occasionally speak to one another.
THE SHOCKING REVELATION
Professor Dahleh reportedly spent over a decade formulating the groundbreaking theory that problems like climate change and AI might benefit from having more than one type of smart person in the room at once.
“We were sitting around one day when it hit me like a ton of bricks,” Dahleh allegedly told colleagues. “What if—and this is crazy—we let the engineering people talk to the policy people? And then maybe throw in some data nerds too?”
The revolutionary concept, which Dahleh calls “the triangle” but normal humans call “basic collaboration,” has stunned approximately 0% of people outside academia.
EXPERTS WEIGH IN
“This is absolutely the most innovative way to rebrand ‘teamwork’ that I’ve seen in my 30 years of professional bullsh!t analysis,” says Dr. Obvious Point, Professor of Common Sense at the University of Duh. “Calling it ‘transdisciplinary’ instead of ‘people working together’ is genius—it adds at least $50,000 to any grant application.”
LOCAL KINDERGARTEN TEACHER RESPONDS
When informed of the revolutionary approach, local kindergarten teacher Ms. Schmidt was reportedly confused.
“So he spent ten years creating an institute based on the idea that people should share and work together? That’s literally day one of kindergarten curriculum. I could have saved MIT millions of dollars.”
THE REVOLUTIONARY “TRIANGLE”
Dahleh’s groundbreaking methodological framework—known as “the triangle”—proposes the radical notion that physical systems, people, and regulations all interact with each other.
“It’s brilliant because it’s shaped like a triangle,” explained Professor Idon Givafuck of the Department of Geometric Metaphors. “If he’d called it ‘the circle’ or ‘the rhombus,’ nobody would have given a sh!t.”
PANDEMIC PROVES CONCEPT
The COVID-19 pandemic apparently served as the perfect demonstration of Dahleh’s concept, showing that viruses, people, and government responses all affect each other—a revelation that shocked absolutely no one who has ever lived in human society.
“Before IDSS, we would have handled COVID by having biologists study it in complete isolation, while sociologists separately studied human behavior without any knowledge of the virus, and politicians made decisions by consulting star charts,” explained one administrator who requested anonymity because “this is embarrassing as hell.”
REVOLUTIONARY DOCUMENTATION PROCESS
In perhaps his most daring move yet, Dahleh decided to write down his thoughts in what he calls “a book,” ensuring future generations can benefit from his wisdom.
“Unlike my academic research which is meticulously documented in published papers, I realized I hadn’t left a trail explaining how I created an entire institute,” Dahleh explains. “This is completely different from the 48,917 other books written by academics explaining how they created institutes.”
THE PRICE OF INNOVATION
According to sources within MIT, establishing the Institute for Data, Systems and Society required overcoming numerous challenges, primarily explaining to department heads why their exclusive academic fiefdoms should occasionally communicate with each other.
“We had to create shared journals, conferences, and common spaces,” Dahleh writes, apparently unaware that coffee shops have been successfully facilitating interdisciplinary conversations for centuries at a fraction of the cost.
THE FUTURE OF COLLABORATION
A survey conducted among MIT students revealed that 97.3% of them were “completely f@#king shocked” to learn that complex problems might require multiple perspectives, while the remaining 2.7% had previously held jobs in the real world.
In related news, MIT has announced plans for a new $200 million Center for Breathing and Walking Simultaneously, which aims to revolutionize the way humans perform two basic functions at once.
