I agree much of psychology etc are bad for the reasons you state, but this doesn’t seem to be because everyone else has fried their brains by trying to simulate how to appease triskaidekaphobics too much. It’s because the actual triskaidekaphobics are the ones inventing the psychology theories. I know a bunch of people in academia who do various verbal gymnastics to appease the triskaidekaphobics, and when you talk to them in private they get everything 100% right.
I agree that most people will not literally have their buildings burned down if they speak out against orthodoxies (though there’s a folk etymology for getting fired which is relevant here). But I appreciate Zvi’s sequence on super-perfect competition as a signpost of where things can end up. I don’t think academics, organization leaders, etc. are in super-perfect competition the same way middle managers are, but I also don’t think we live in the world where everyone has infinite amounts of slack to burn endorsing taboo ideas and nothing can possibly go wrong.
when you talk to them in private they get everything 100% right.
I’m happy for them, but I thought the point of having taxpayer-funded academic departments was so that people who aren’t insider experts can have accurate information with which to inform decisions? Getting the right answer in private can only help those you talk to in private.
I also don’t think we live in the world where everyone has infinite amounts of slack to burn endorsing taboo ideas and nothing can possibly go wrong.
Can you think of any ways something could possibly go wrong if our collective map of how humans work fails to reflect the territory?
(I drafted a vicious and hilarious comment about one thing that could go wrong, but I fear that site culture demands that I withhold it.)
I agree much of psychology etc are bad for the reasons you state, but this doesn’t seem to be because everyone else has fried their brains by trying to simulate how to appease triskaidekaphobics too much. It’s because the actual triskaidekaphobics are the ones inventing the psychology theories. I know a bunch of people in academia who do various verbal gymnastics to appease the triskaidekaphobics, and when you talk to them in private they get everything 100% right.
I agree that most people will not literally have their buildings burned down if they speak out against orthodoxies (though there’s a folk etymology for getting fired which is relevant here). But I appreciate Zvi’s sequence on super-perfect competition as a signpost of where things can end up. I don’t think academics, organization leaders, etc. are in super-perfect competition the same way middle managers are, but I also don’t think we live in the world where everyone has infinite amounts of slack to burn endorsing taboo ideas and nothing can possibly go wrong.
I’m happy for them, but I thought the point of having taxpayer-funded academic departments was so that people who aren’t insider experts can have accurate information with which to inform decisions? Getting the right answer in private can only help those you talk to in private.
Can you think of any ways something could possibly go wrong if our collective map of how humans work fails to reflect the territory?
(I drafted a vicious and hilarious comment about one thing that could go wrong, but I fear that site culture demands that I withhold it.)