sj_zero on Nostr: Writers like Voltaire or Thomas Paine, who weren't writing to get another grant, but ...
Writers like Voltaire or Thomas Paine, who weren't writing to get another grant, but to examine ideas (and possibly to sell books or persuade others). The public square at the time would allow long form discussion and debate, and rewarded them for their works.
By contrast, today the academic public square is about impressing some layman into giving you a government grant, or getting published by writing simple things in a highly complicated way; and twitter is the public square for non-academics, and it's about getting the most engagement out of 240 characters.
Despite having the most powerful information system known to human history in the Internet and now LLM AIs, people aren't trained to think in terms of big and rigorous ideas presented in a way most people can understand. Therefore, people focus on short pithy posts online, and like in Plato's allegory of the cave they get quite upset at you if you try to see the real world rather than just the shadows cast on the cave wall. How many people get pissed off when they see my effortposting? How many people who pretend to care about smart conversation have muted me for the sin of not just giving them the red vs. blue view they wanted to see?
Now, that doesn't mean there's no value in academic writing, just as it doesn't mean there's no value in twitter pithiness. But when you have two extremes that are essentially unproductive, you have intellectual stagnation, and many people would agree we've seen intellectual stagnation for at least a decade. A lot of very smart people are saying mostly the same things they did 10 years ago, because there's only so many smart things you can say in 240 characters, and there's only so many times you can speak into the academic void and not even hear the echo of your own voice.
tl;dr: ur a homo :P
By contrast, today the academic public square is about impressing some layman into giving you a government grant, or getting published by writing simple things in a highly complicated way; and twitter is the public square for non-academics, and it's about getting the most engagement out of 240 characters.
Despite having the most powerful information system known to human history in the Internet and now LLM AIs, people aren't trained to think in terms of big and rigorous ideas presented in a way most people can understand. Therefore, people focus on short pithy posts online, and like in Plato's allegory of the cave they get quite upset at you if you try to see the real world rather than just the shadows cast on the cave wall. How many people get pissed off when they see my effortposting? How many people who pretend to care about smart conversation have muted me for the sin of not just giving them the red vs. blue view they wanted to see?
Now, that doesn't mean there's no value in academic writing, just as it doesn't mean there's no value in twitter pithiness. But when you have two extremes that are essentially unproductive, you have intellectual stagnation, and many people would agree we've seen intellectual stagnation for at least a decade. A lot of very smart people are saying mostly the same things they did 10 years ago, because there's only so many smart things you can say in 240 characters, and there's only so many times you can speak into the academic void and not even hear the echo of your own voice.
tl;dr: ur a homo :P