I don’t rate it highly; it’s just that it’s typical of what I notice a concerted chorus of people saying insistently, and I can see that it has an effect on public opinion—mostly it reinforces general distrust of “intellectual elites”). Maybe I shouldn’t have used that link at all—anyway, it seems to be detracting some attention from the questions I was asking.
mostly it reinforces general distrust of “intellectual elites”
Meh. You don’t have to be a NRx to acknowledge that distrust of intellectuals can be reasonable. Arguably, identifying with the Brahmin class is a political trap LW should stay clear of.
When you call it the “Brahmin class” dismissing it becomes redundant.
I think we need institutions though, in which the “marketplace of ideas” isn’t just the marketplace. Lesswrong is one of them, as are universities.
I believe that the rules of the game in academic research can be very productive as long as there is a there there. I tried to model this as “discovering natural machines”, which is what I think Newton did, or “Finding your Invisible Elephant”—if the blind men actually have an elephant then they may be able to map it if they go about it the right way. But if they have no elephant—one is hugging a tree trunk, another has hold of a snake and another is pushing on a wall—no amount of “scientific method” will help them find the nonexistent elephant. This is why I think some disciplines, like literary criticism and some branches of sociology, despite having peer-reviewed journals and all that, simply go round in circles, and lead to distrust of others, which have something to offer.
I wouldn’t rate too highly the opinion of a woman who lives and works in Manhattan of a campus in Los Angeles.
I don’t rate it highly; it’s just that it’s typical of what I notice a concerted chorus of people saying insistently, and I can see that it has an effect on public opinion—mostly it reinforces general distrust of “intellectual elites”). Maybe I shouldn’t have used that link at all—anyway, it seems to be detracting some attention from the questions I was asking.
Meh. You don’t have to be a NRx to acknowledge that distrust of intellectuals can be reasonable. Arguably, identifying with the Brahmin class is a political trap LW should stay clear of.
When you call it the “Brahmin class” dismissing it becomes redundant.
I think we need institutions though, in which the “marketplace of ideas” isn’t just the marketplace. Lesswrong is one of them, as are universities.
I believe that the rules of the game in academic research can be very productive as long as there is a there there. I tried to model this as “discovering natural machines”, which is what I think Newton did, or “Finding your Invisible Elephant”—if the blind men actually have an elephant then they may be able to map it if they go about it the right way. But if they have no elephant—one is hugging a tree trunk, another has hold of a snake and another is pushing on a wall—no amount of “scientific method” will help them find the nonexistent elephant. This is why I think some disciplines, like literary criticism and some branches of sociology, despite having peer-reviewed journals and all that, simply go round in circles, and lead to distrust of others, which have something to offer.