In the Chronicle, Paul Rahe complains of intellectuals who suck up to dictators: What would it take to elicit servility from an intellectual? Money would help, of course. Just ask the Harvard professors who … shilled for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in return for a quarter of a million dollars a month. …
There is an implicit dichotomy here that is inappropriate -- the choice between scholarly work with indifference to acclaim vs pure status seeking. But what if you want to do good? Then ideally you would seek status for the purpose of persuading people of the value of good ideas. Sadly, the latter often becomes a pure chase for status. Conversely, so-called purists are so indifferent to social convention that they blind themselves to useful interaction and (even when endowed with the truth) have no effective way of conveying those truths to the majority. Even worse, those who are autistic truth seekers can be biased by not knowing how to interpret useful comments or information when phrased in biased ways or presented in forms that aren't cleanly rational or neutrally argued. So their own work is itself biased by the unwillingness to understand and sympathize with the desire for collective feeling and status in ordinary humans. Knowing the latter while pursuing truth is hardest of all. But sadly, most "truth seekers" are happy to revel in their identity as asocial nerds even if it lessens their effectiveness as scholars.
Intellectuals in modern day America or Europe are conformist assholes, in general. There are no philosophers anymore. You killed them, I killed them, we all killed them.
Perhaps I'm just contrarian, but I thought Benjamin Barber gave a pretty good defense of his actions. There's a bit of guilt-by-association going on which lowers normal standards of evidence.
My co-blogger says the right-wing association with suspecting intellectuals of wrongheadedness is bolstered by Rahe's place of teaching.
The Qaddafi warp is a social phenom worth studying, and it affected a greater chunk of the West than academia. I think it gets to why people value purity theatre so much (suddenly post-rebellion everyone who took money from Qaddafi from Beyonce to LSE is "impure", like they would have been pre-2003).
You offer futarchy as a solution to many biases and short-comings in our political system. I more or less accept your arguments vis-a-vie academia.
Do you have any thoughts on:1. The net effect of all this academic status-competition2. Whether institutional, cultural, or even individual steps could be taken to shift the equilibrium up
There is an implicit dichotomy here that is inappropriate -- the choice between scholarly work with indifference to acclaim vs pure status seeking. But what if you want to do good? Then ideally you would seek status for the purpose of persuading people of the value of good ideas. Sadly, the latter often becomes a pure chase for status. Conversely, so-called purists are so indifferent to social convention that they blind themselves to useful interaction and (even when endowed with the truth) have no effective way of conveying those truths to the majority. Even worse, those who are autistic truth seekers can be biased by not knowing how to interpret useful comments or information when phrased in biased ways or presented in forms that aren't cleanly rational or neutrally argued. So their own work is itself biased by the unwillingness to understand and sympathize with the desire for collective feeling and status in ordinary humans. Knowing the latter while pursuing truth is hardest of all. But sadly, most "truth seekers" are happy to revel in their identity as asocial nerds even if it lessens their effectiveness as scholars.
shilled for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in return for a quarter of a million dollars a month"I would shill for Qaddafi for half that.
Intellectuals in modern day America or Europe are conformist assholes, in general. There are no philosophers anymore. You killed them, I killed them, we all killed them.
Perhaps I'm just contrarian, but I thought Benjamin Barber gave a pretty good defense of his actions. There's a bit of guilt-by-association going on which lowers normal standards of evidence.
My co-blogger says the right-wing association with suspecting intellectuals of wrongheadedness is bolstered by Rahe's place of teaching.
The Qaddafi warp is a social phenom worth studying, and it affected a greater chunk of the West than academia. I think it gets to why people value purity theatre so much (suddenly post-rebellion everyone who took money from Qaddafi from Beyonce to LSE is "impure", like they would have been pre-2003).
Mind, the name of the fight ageing blogger, has a post that addresses this question at the very end of the post.
http://www.fightaging.org/a...
The FDA is not elected and to those who oppose ageing, a tyrant. So yes, here is a distinction with a difference.
You offer futarchy as a solution to many biases and short-comings in our political system. I more or less accept your arguments vis-a-vie academia.
Do you have any thoughts on:1. The net effect of all this academic status-competition2. Whether institutional, cultural, or even individual steps could be taken to shift the equilibrium up
Otherwise is this just more gnashing of teeth?