What’s up with this dichotomy between LW and academia? I’m sure plenty of people on here have high-level degrees or work in some academic field.
Also: What are a few examples of the arrogance you see against academia on this forum? I would actually express the opposite view, and say that LW is pretty friendly to academia, with people citing mainstream books and articles all the time, etc. Not much fringe stuff going on here as far as I can tell.
What’s up with this dichotomy between LW and academia? I’m sure plenty of people on here have high-level degrees or work in some academic field.
Some of the people on LW have academic degrees or work at academic jobs, but I can’t think of many active posters who seem to be on the track of becoming the sort of academician whom other academicians will recognize and pay attention to.
My impression of the typical LessWronger is someone who might be clever enough to be a run-of-the-mill academic worker, but who didn’t get on with the program where they’d basically need to put the majority of their time and output into the academic machine to get any hope of establishing a career. The equally clever people in academia don’t have spare time to hang out at LW and actually do eventually get quite a lot better at their chosen thing than the average LW’er at any of their miscellaneous interesting things of the week. Meanwhile, LW is the akrasia culture, where the sort of highly focused and high-achieving people who end up making a name for themselves in modern academia are invisible, and the people hanging out here have no way of picking up their cultural habits. Instead, there’s a large peer group of low-achieving procrastinators who like to post interesting forum messages to identify with and unconsciously learn habits from.
Another channel where academics hang out:
Less Wrong
What’s up with this dichotomy between LW and academia? I’m sure plenty of people on here have high-level degrees or work in some academic field.
Also: What are a few examples of the arrogance you see against academia on this forum? I would actually express the opposite view, and say that LW is pretty friendly to academia, with people citing mainstream books and articles all the time, etc. Not much fringe stuff going on here as far as I can tell.
Some of the people on LW have academic degrees or work at academic jobs, but I can’t think of many active posters who seem to be on the track of becoming the sort of academician whom other academicians will recognize and pay attention to.
My impression of the typical LessWronger is someone who might be clever enough to be a run-of-the-mill academic worker, but who didn’t get on with the program where they’d basically need to put the majority of their time and output into the academic machine to get any hope of establishing a career. The equally clever people in academia don’t have spare time to hang out at LW and actually do eventually get quite a lot better at their chosen thing than the average LW’er at any of their miscellaneous interesting things of the week. Meanwhile, LW is the akrasia culture, where the sort of highly focused and high-achieving people who end up making a name for themselves in modern academia are invisible, and the people hanging out here have no way of picking up their cultural habits. Instead, there’s a large peer group of low-achieving procrastinators who like to post interesting forum messages to identify with and unconsciously learn habits from.