No. Not interesting...frightening.
These people are evil.
Absolutely stunning article. I have bookmarked it. orson Scott Card has justified his entire career with just this one work - I need to read more of his sci-fi.
I am always interesting in what Orson Scott Card has to say- he reminds me of many Democrats from days of yore, fondly remembered and sadly missed, with whom I could generally agree with on a lot of things. Unlike the current band of screeching thugs on TV who have talking points and spin, and won't answer direct questions, Card seems to work in the same Universe I inhabit, and use the same sets of facts. With such a person, you can disagree on some points and conclusions, but still be civil. I surely wish there were more like him
Maybe we will need illiterate foreigners to do the tough jobs in America like making beds and hustling fast-food.
Smolin continues his postmodern attack on science.
" It's a shameful thing when one ideology becomes so dominant that it effectively shuts the door to any other approach."
The dynamics of groupthink apply to global warming.
Card is unfair to link String Theory to the ridiculous social "theories" of the leftist intellectuals. Physicists doing String Theory don't deny objective reality. They strive to make String Theory meaningful, e.g. wanting the parameters of the Standard Model fall out as a unique solution. Smolin's real point is that it just hasn't worked out and so we must pursue other approaches too.
It's also interesting that Card omits a point that Smolin makes early in the book; I'd call it Smolin's basic observation. In the past several centuries, every quarter century or so has seen a breakthrough in fundamental physics except the last quarter. One can't help but feel that something's wrong in the state of Denmark. Smolin lays the blame squarely on the dominance of String Theory in the theoretical physics community.
As I say, I'm in the middle. It's not a bad book so far but I hope Smolin doesn't tell me again that "not only don't they know the equations of the basic theory, they don't even have an approach to figure them out" and "no new predictions have been made" and several other critiques. I get it already.
Thanks for the great post. I'm going to insist my 16-year old chemist/engineer/rocket scientist wannabe to read this. This is a kid who loved "Titus Groan" and reads obscure stuff. He'll get it.
My uncle -- an unashamed liberal who teaches at a major technological university in MI (:koffLawrencekoff:) -- has been forced into this himself and is disgusted by it. I don't talk to him often, but his daughter (also a liberal) is in college and is completely disgusted with this nonsense. If even libs can see the light on this there's still hope.
Doing away with tenure would be a good start.
Great article. I've never taken a class in Gender and Sexuality Studies or any other such major, so I cannot speak about those departments..
My focus has been in Economics, Government, and Law. These are departments where you might expect to find groupthink; though I've actually been surprised how unique most of my professors have been.
As for "Theoretics," he definitely has a point that academics sometimes contrive ways to write 1000 words and say nothing of substance. However, I think there's some danger in confusing complexity with inanity. That Race class he quotes truly sounds ridiculous and vapid; but he acknowledges that the language of (even legitimate) Physics speaks to Physicists and not the average person.. Similarly Economics has a language of its own. That shouldn't necessarily be taken as a sign it has something to hide.
It doesn't matter if the thing in question deals with science or religion; world events or history; the actions of your children or spouse; or how many teaspoons of vanilla go into rice pudding. If a person has staked his ego on his opinion/belief, that ego becomes a sheet anchor. And most of us are simply not strong enough to haul it up by admitting "Whadda you know? Looks like all these years I was wrong."
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And regarding intellectual 'group think' here is Richard Pipe's in his book The Russian Revolution chpt.4, 'The Intelligentsia', page 134:
"...intellectuals turn into a social group for their own interests, the most important of which calls of an increase in the number and increase of white-collar jobs -- an objective best promoted by centralization and bureaucratization....
"Paradoxically, therefore, capitalism and democracy,while enhancing the role of the intellectual, also increases their discontent. Their status in a capitalist society is far beneath that of politicians and businessmen, whom they scorn as managers in the in the art of social management. They envy their wealth, authority, and prestige....it was easier for the intellectuals to accommodate the pre-modern world, in which status was fixed by tradition and the law, than to the fluctuating world of capitalism and democracy, in which they feel humiliated by lack of money and status: Ledwig von Mises thought that intellectuals gravitate to anti-capitalism philosophy 'in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them that their failure is entirely their own fault.' "
Strung along by String Theory. The difference between Science and Fiction is the real world, and Theoretics coming from the English Departments seems more concerned with originality and creativity in language -- i.e. the creation of meaning from texts -- than ascertaining facts about the real world. Like multiculturalism, Theoretics produces a world unto itself, with its own sets of assumptions, language and followers -- not a science to be rigorously tested and agreed to by the community.
This article is way to verbose. It needs boiling down to something like, "if it has social in its name, it ain't science."
Follow the money. "Publish or perish" has been replaced by "Get funded or get out."
I hate it when that happens...