Even if something is a neutral or bad idea overall, it merely takes a little creativity to focus on the good parts that it has. How many generations did smart people support the gold standard? (To pick an idea that’s suboptimal and impactful but not too crazy or repulsive.) I’m sure there are some quite nice essays ruminating on its good points.
Now, suppose that you are reading an essay “drawing out the value” of the gold standard. How much does this essay help you arrive at useful beliefs about currency? Perhaps it is quite helpful, because even if it’s highlighting the good points of a bad idea, those particular good points might be general things it’s helpful to keep in mind. On the other hand, if those good points are cherry-picked to tell a favorable story about the gold standard, then maybe keeping them in mind will come at the expense of tracking other important factors.
Overall, I would say that an essay on the good points of the gold standard is only useful if you already have some key knowledge about currencies that will allow you to integrate the essay into a larger system of understanding, without being unduly swayed by it. And I think that this sort of flexible understanding requires a lot of work to gain, and most people don’t have it about most things. Therefore, an essay about the good points of an idea of unknown quality can be helpful for people with strong understanding of the subject, but is not very useful for most readers.
Even if something is a neutral or bad idea overall, it merely takes a little creativity to focus on the good parts that it has. How many generations did smart people support the gold standard? (To pick an idea that’s suboptimal and impactful but not too crazy or repulsive.) I’m sure there are some quite nice essays ruminating on its good points.
Now, suppose that you are reading an essay “drawing out the value” of the gold standard. How much does this essay help you arrive at useful beliefs about currency? Perhaps it is quite helpful, because even if it’s highlighting the good points of a bad idea, those particular good points might be general things it’s helpful to keep in mind. On the other hand, if those good points are cherry-picked to tell a favorable story about the gold standard, then maybe keeping them in mind will come at the expense of tracking other important factors.
Overall, I would say that an essay on the good points of the gold standard is only useful if you already have some key knowledge about currencies that will allow you to integrate the essay into a larger system of understanding, without being unduly swayed by it. And I think that this sort of flexible understanding requires a lot of work to gain, and most people don’t have it about most things. Therefore, an essay about the good points of an idea of unknown quality can be helpful for people with strong understanding of the subject, but is not very useful for most readers.