What do you recommend I do during the years that that book-writing process is going on?
Talk about the subject of the book as much as possible, even if you talk bullshit. Because the book was meant to explain why you are talking bullshit. People talking bullshit is exactly what it takes to write a good book on dissolving bullshit.
And does that recommendation change if it turns out that I’m wrong and merely think that I’m right, vs. if I’m actually right?
No. See ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ by Daniel Dennett. The book starts by reviewing all the bullshit people have been saying in the past few hundred years and manages to shed light on culture, popular misconceptions and how you can be wrong.
He actually mentions a few times how creationists and other enemies of evolution actually allowed evolutionary biologists to hone their arguments and become stronger. And yes, the arguments of the critics were often poor from the point of view of the experts, but strong from the point of view of laymen.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with your first recommendation.
I do agree that Dennett (both in DDI and more generally) has an admirable willingness to engage with the “bullshit” in his field, though he also is willing to unilaterally dismiss vast swaths of it when he decides it’s no longer valuable for him to engage with (see, for example, his treatment of qualia in ‘Consciousness Explained’… or listen to him talk to undergraduates, if he still does that; he was always a treat to listen to).
Talk about the subject of the book as much as possible, even if you talk bullshit. Because the book was meant to explain why you are talking bullshit. People talking bullshit is exactly what it takes to write a good book on dissolving bullshit.
No. See ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ by Daniel Dennett. The book starts by reviewing all the bullshit people have been saying in the past few hundred years and manages to shed light on culture, popular misconceptions and how you can be wrong.
He actually mentions a few times how creationists and other enemies of evolution actually allowed evolutionary biologists to hone their arguments and become stronger. And yes, the arguments of the critics were often poor from the point of view of the experts, but strong from the point of view of laymen.
OK, thanks… that’s clear.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with your first recommendation.
I do agree that Dennett (both in DDI and more generally) has an admirable willingness to engage with the “bullshit” in his field, though he also is willing to unilaterally dismiss vast swaths of it when he decides it’s no longer valuable for him to engage with (see, for example, his treatment of qualia in ‘Consciousness Explained’… or listen to him talk to undergraduates, if he still does that; he was always a treat to listen to).