We are living on the verge of a *potential* golden age. There is a simultaneous counter-reaction against freethinking which holds far more institutionanal power.
The contest is only just beginning and technological conditions cut both ways. It's easy to publish, but centralised infrastructure makes easy to spy and censor.
All the world might be like China by the time die. Would that be a golden age?
"The Golden Age intellectual is quite willing to make members of his or her tribe uncomfortable."
That's an ok start, but that definition has a few big problems. For example:
1. A lot of public intellectuals do not fit into, are not genuinely 'members of', and/or are extremely reluctant to associate or identify with a 'tribe' at all. "Independent of tribes' or 'Brave enough to be willing to frequently piss off all the major tribes or even their own subscribers' might be better. What 'tribe' is Scott Alexander in or Tyler Cowen or Robin Hanson in? To the extent they use terms to describe their outlook that overlap with the terms associated with the big 'tribes', they often use those terms (or allowed themselves to be described using that term) in highly eccentric and vague ways, with special definitions and so many exceptions and carve-outs that an actual typical member of the tribe wouldn't recognize it as an accurate description. E.g., Andrew Sullivan and 'conservative'. I could be wrong, but judging from the comments he gets, I doubt that the majority of Sullivan's readership / subscriber base would identify as 'conservative', and my hunch is that it's a small portion of his audience, which would be pretty odd for a genuinely 'conservative' writer.
2. What about Dan Klein or Don Boudreaux? If you allow for 'niche' tribes like 'Classical Liberal', then that is more like a statement of one's ideological views and commitments, and why or how would one be willing to make people with the same views and commitments 'uncomfortable' by the very process of espousing them? Sure there are plenty of debates on exceptional or hard edge cases, which side of the line some tricky issue falls on and so forth, but these are not about walking away from 'consensus tribal orthodoxy', but often trying to argue for what constitutes even more loyal and devoted adherence to it!
3. The "Strange New Respect" problem of incentives for defecting, which in practical experience, is almost always to the progressives who dominate media institutions. The intent behind "own tribe uncomfortable" seems to be about an intellectual with the courage and virtue to discover and follow The Truth no matter where it may lead, even if it means some risk of social penalty and expected net harm to personal interests. But if there's little harm, how brave is it? And how can an outsider tell if you are a noble truth-teller, or just a corrupted traitor mercenary soldiering for a new highest bidder?
If you are genuinely in a group, and care very deeply about remaining a "member in good standing", and know that if you say something you think is true you will lose than standing, *and you think you have nowhere else to go*, then it does indeed take a great deal of intellectual courage to argue for something your friends and allies really dislike. But if you're not really all that strongly attached, and do have somewhere else to go that is actually quite lucrative and attractive, then the whole "own tribe" premise falls apart entirely. It would be one thing for David French or Ross Douthat or Andrew Sullivan to criticize conservatives if they mostly depended on the goodwill of genuine conservatives for their livelihood, future prospects, and public respectability. But they don't.
Give the above problems, I think the proposed definition is unworkable.
Instead, my alternative proposal is "reputational skin in the game". A truly virtuous and rigorous public intellectual should, when espousing any position, articulates the conditions or evidence that he or she would accept to flip positions. That is, for the purpose of modern public intellectual argumentation, any position should depend on evidence or reasoning that is reasonably falsifiable - or at the very least in theory or in principle falsifiable - and one should be able to explain what an opponent must do that would be accepted as falsifying any premise or step in the chain of reasoning. "If you do these steps and show this result, then I will change positions regarding that."
If the public intellectual presented with such evidence refuses to budge, they must accept whatever reputational hit follows from the contradiction with their previous statements.
"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned." -Thomas Sowell
As with income, our golden age is dependent, at least in part, on our own desire to obtain it. My third installment of Irrational Institutions will address this point and ponder the cases where technology is a force for more even distribution and when it is not. I will also aim to generalize the controversial "Gender-equality paradox" by making the case that more dispersion usually follows the advent of more choices, and not always to the good.
For my latest installment, discussing Reality Privilege, Subculture Society, and the Complacent Class:
I wonder if Substack could become a virtual or quasi institution, encouraging cross-pollination among its writers - joint posts, joint podcasts, etc. The distribution problem for the golden age might be eased if virtual institutions arise to help clusters achieve critical mass for public awareness.
We are living on the verge of a *potential* golden age. There is a simultaneous counter-reaction against freethinking which holds far more institutionanal power.
The contest is only just beginning and technological conditions cut both ways. It's easy to publish, but centralised infrastructure makes easy to spy and censor.
All the world might be like China by the time die. Would that be a golden age?
Thank you for sharing your fantasy team with us. Special thanks to razib for his hat tip that brought me here.
"The Golden Age intellectual is quite willing to make members of his or her tribe uncomfortable."
That's an ok start, but that definition has a few big problems. For example:
1. A lot of public intellectuals do not fit into, are not genuinely 'members of', and/or are extremely reluctant to associate or identify with a 'tribe' at all. "Independent of tribes' or 'Brave enough to be willing to frequently piss off all the major tribes or even their own subscribers' might be better. What 'tribe' is Scott Alexander in or Tyler Cowen or Robin Hanson in? To the extent they use terms to describe their outlook that overlap with the terms associated with the big 'tribes', they often use those terms (or allowed themselves to be described using that term) in highly eccentric and vague ways, with special definitions and so many exceptions and carve-outs that an actual typical member of the tribe wouldn't recognize it as an accurate description. E.g., Andrew Sullivan and 'conservative'. I could be wrong, but judging from the comments he gets, I doubt that the majority of Sullivan's readership / subscriber base would identify as 'conservative', and my hunch is that it's a small portion of his audience, which would be pretty odd for a genuinely 'conservative' writer.
2. What about Dan Klein or Don Boudreaux? If you allow for 'niche' tribes like 'Classical Liberal', then that is more like a statement of one's ideological views and commitments, and why or how would one be willing to make people with the same views and commitments 'uncomfortable' by the very process of espousing them? Sure there are plenty of debates on exceptional or hard edge cases, which side of the line some tricky issue falls on and so forth, but these are not about walking away from 'consensus tribal orthodoxy', but often trying to argue for what constitutes even more loyal and devoted adherence to it!
3. The "Strange New Respect" problem of incentives for defecting, which in practical experience, is almost always to the progressives who dominate media institutions. The intent behind "own tribe uncomfortable" seems to be about an intellectual with the courage and virtue to discover and follow The Truth no matter where it may lead, even if it means some risk of social penalty and expected net harm to personal interests. But if there's little harm, how brave is it? And how can an outsider tell if you are a noble truth-teller, or just a corrupted traitor mercenary soldiering for a new highest bidder?
If you are genuinely in a group, and care very deeply about remaining a "member in good standing", and know that if you say something you think is true you will lose than standing, *and you think you have nowhere else to go*, then it does indeed take a great deal of intellectual courage to argue for something your friends and allies really dislike. But if you're not really all that strongly attached, and do have somewhere else to go that is actually quite lucrative and attractive, then the whole "own tribe" premise falls apart entirely. It would be one thing for David French or Ross Douthat or Andrew Sullivan to criticize conservatives if they mostly depended on the goodwill of genuine conservatives for their livelihood, future prospects, and public respectability. But they don't.
Give the above problems, I think the proposed definition is unworkable.
Instead, my alternative proposal is "reputational skin in the game". A truly virtuous and rigorous public intellectual should, when espousing any position, articulates the conditions or evidence that he or she would accept to flip positions. That is, for the purpose of modern public intellectual argumentation, any position should depend on evidence or reasoning that is reasonably falsifiable - or at the very least in theory or in principle falsifiable - and one should be able to explain what an opponent must do that would be accepted as falsifying any premise or step in the chain of reasoning. "If you do these steps and show this result, then I will change positions regarding that."
If the public intellectual presented with such evidence refuses to budge, they must accept whatever reputational hit follows from the contradiction with their previous statements.
"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned." -Thomas Sowell
As with income, our golden age is dependent, at least in part, on our own desire to obtain it. My third installment of Irrational Institutions will address this point and ponder the cases where technology is a force for more even distribution and when it is not. I will also aim to generalize the controversial "Gender-equality paradox" by making the case that more dispersion usually follows the advent of more choices, and not always to the good.
For my latest installment, discussing Reality Privilege, Subculture Society, and the Complacent Class:
https://infovores.substack.com/p/irrational-institutions-2
I wonder if Substack could become a virtual or quasi institution, encouraging cross-pollination among its writers - joint posts, joint podcasts, etc. The distribution problem for the golden age might be eased if virtual institutions arise to help clusters achieve critical mass for public awareness.