There's a class of people who are something like pragmatists: they realize that academia has all kinds of problems, but they also recognize that it is where a huge majority of many kinds of intellectual work are done.
https://twitter.com/rothosphere/status/1395651668658642945
So in the same way that a real radical cut's his hair and puts on a suit, very smart people with serious ambitious agendas will join academia because that's where (many of the) intellectual big boys are, and where (much of) the, eventually, civilization-shaping discourse happens.
("Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”)
And I sort of suspect that a lot of the griping about how flawed academia is, from people like me, is a little bit motivated reasoning from people that are not smart enough or compliant enough to hack it inside the system.
We're not really capable of harnessing the intellectual potential of the academic system.
So we're scornful of its flaws, from the outside.
So we're scornful of its flaws, from the outside.
To be clear, I'm definitely NOT saying that academia ISN'T deeply flawed.
But that still leaves a question of how important or effective it is on net.
But that still leaves a question of how important or effective it is on net.
And the people who are disdaining it seem to me to be as likely to be executing a blind-spot as the people who think that the system is worth participating in.
[Disclaimer: I only did a bit more than a year of undergrad, because I was unimpressed with the intellectual environment.]
*cuts, obviously.
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