Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Robin Hanson's avatar

Nick B, your hypothesis is plausible, and yes, if one can resist the urge to over-rely on the inside view, it should add info to the outside view.

Nick T, I have found valuable insights in postmodernist writing.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

From the inside it looks like what the English professors claim just cannot make any sense; yet the outside view suggests that most of the times when it appears to a student as if a consensus among the professors is completely crazy, it is because the student has a misconception rather than the professors.

Does this imply that apparently ridiculous postmodernist writing should be taken more seriously, rather than shrugged off with a vague reference to the Sokal affair? (I'm sorry if this question sounds loaded; it wasn't meant that way.)

Expand full comment
12 more comments...

No posts