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.
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.