Just the vibe of “How dare you? Get off my lawn!” or is there something in the comment you are actually replying to which you would dispute?
Why on Earth do you think it’s “my lawn” in any sense? I have readily and repeatedly pointed out that I’m a complete amateur in physics, and I claim no status whatsoever as a physicist. I am making a purely negative and reactive point that pop-physics is about fake explanations perpetuated mostly for status-related reasons.
Pardon me. I mean “Get off my neighbor’s lawn! You kids these days need to learn respect!”
(In case my message is insufficiently overt I am suggesting you have the ‘status-related reasons’ approximately backward.)
pop-physics is about fake explanations
Nonsense. Or, again, you are talking about an entirely different thing. Sources with bullshit fake explanations can be found and so can sources that give solid explanations with only limited mathematical detail, summaries and take home findings that have been worked out by others. It is the latter that lukeprog is referring to.
Pardon me. I mean “Get off my neighbor’s lawn! You kids these days need to learn respect!”
Your speculations about my motives here are stupendously wrongheaded. If you look at my previous LW comments, you’ll see that one of my recurring themes, on which I hammer incessantly, is that in many fields, people who get officially credentialed as experts under the present system are in fact naked emperors whose supposed expertise couldn’t withstand scrutiny by a smart amateur who tries to make honest sense of it. (And also that excessive faith in credentialed expertise is a widespread and under-appreciated bias even among many LW contributors.) Assuming that I would act as a self-appointed guardian of a credentialist intellectual monopoly is absurd given the views I have expressed loudly and repeatedly.
In fact, if we’re going to discuss the workings of the present system, the mainstream respectable view is that as an amateur, one should pay homage to credentialed experts in physics for their pop-science writings, extol these writings as a great source of enlightenment, and raise one’s own status by being an owner and reader of such books. So rather than looking at my claims as upholding the intellectual monopoly of credentialed experts, you can view them as attacking the way these experts abuse their position for monetary and status gain by getting into these enterprises in pop-science. Such enterprises are supposedly educational and enlightening, but in fact entirely obscurantist and subservient to upholding the existing credentialist and bureaucratic hierarchy. (This even aside from the purely venal interest involved.)
Why on Earth do you think it’s “my lawn” in any sense? I have readily and repeatedly pointed out that I’m a complete amateur in physics, and I claim no status whatsoever as a physicist. I am making a purely negative and reactive point that pop-physics is about fake explanations perpetuated mostly for status-related reasons.
Pardon me. I mean “Get off my neighbor’s lawn! You kids these days need to learn respect!”
(In case my message is insufficiently overt I am suggesting you have the ‘status-related reasons’ approximately backward.)
Nonsense. Or, again, you are talking about an entirely different thing. Sources with bullshit fake explanations can be found and so can sources that give solid explanations with only limited mathematical detail, summaries and take home findings that have been worked out by others. It is the latter that lukeprog is referring to.
Your speculations about my motives here are stupendously wrongheaded. If you look at my previous LW comments, you’ll see that one of my recurring themes, on which I hammer incessantly, is that in many fields, people who get officially credentialed as experts under the present system are in fact naked emperors whose supposed expertise couldn’t withstand scrutiny by a smart amateur who tries to make honest sense of it. (And also that excessive faith in credentialed expertise is a widespread and under-appreciated bias even among many LW contributors.) Assuming that I would act as a self-appointed guardian of a credentialist intellectual monopoly is absurd given the views I have expressed loudly and repeatedly.
In fact, if we’re going to discuss the workings of the present system, the mainstream respectable view is that as an amateur, one should pay homage to credentialed experts in physics for their pop-science writings, extol these writings as a great source of enlightenment, and raise one’s own status by being an owner and reader of such books. So rather than looking at my claims as upholding the intellectual monopoly of credentialed experts, you can view them as attacking the way these experts abuse their position for monetary and status gain by getting into these enterprises in pop-science. Such enterprises are supposedly educational and enlightening, but in fact entirely obscurantist and subservient to upholding the existing credentialist and bureaucratic hierarchy. (This even aside from the purely venal interest involved.)