For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable. Another area of study that might be interesting to consider is anthropology. Again this is a field that allows us to step outside of our cultural assumptions.
Both of these are highly politicized fields, which suggests to me that an attempt to extract value is going to run into many difficulties. Even presenting correctly extracted value is fraught—if the moral of the story is “by the way, an entire field of academia threw away the truth fifty years ago and has been a joke since then” that moral cannot be presented without being recognized as a partisan position, and thus seen as a political move.
Politics may well be unavoidable when trying to study human society. Any substantial result is going reflect well or poorly on certain public policies. Economics has its political side but that field still has plenty to offer.
Even presenting correctly extracted value is fraught—if the moral of the story is “by the way, an entire field of academia threw away the truth fifty years ago and has been a joke since then” that moral cannot be presented without being recognized as a partisan position, and thus seen as a political move.
Yes, that’s certainly a polarizing position to take.
Both of these are highly politicized fields, which suggests to me that an attempt to extract value is going to run into many difficulties. Even presenting correctly extracted value is fraught—if the moral of the story is “by the way, an entire field of academia threw away the truth fifty years ago and has been a joke since then” that moral cannot be presented without being recognized as a partisan position, and thus seen as a political move.
Politics may well be unavoidable when trying to study human society. Any substantial result is going reflect well or poorly on certain public policies. Economics has its political side but that field still has plenty to offer.
Yes, that’s certainly a polarizing position to take.
Yet history of anthropology, with all the frauds and lost collections and mistakes and actual stuff...