Welcome New Readers

Thanks for the recommendations from a couple of prominent thinkers in the heterodox community, and I will be back at it when the academic calendar allows with it's ebbs and flows.

I’ll be back writing in time, but in the meantime I will comment that one of my new ideas emerging is that the value of deep contemplation of complex issues may come back into fashion soon. Instinct and common sense can help people go a long way, but we recently have seen several examples where experts have far and away out-shone the gut-feeling-people on some issues. On some issues, System 2 thinking is needed, as Kahnemann and Stanovich would put it.

As academia works to regain trust as it slowly drops illiberal wokeness, I believe it will slowly emerge that the critical thinking skills and deep reading and learning that is done at universities will again be seen as valuable and precious.

If done properly, the decision-making coming out of good critical thinkers trained in traditional university departments can help industry, science, economics, and health. To achieve this, a kind of open minded scientific skepticism is needed in all university departments. But this empiricism has to have a very non-cynical approach, utilizing free speech and merit-based competition, and it cannot illogically dismiss predecessors’ work. Only with careful logic and empiricism should previous ideas be modified or thrown out. In addition, the universities should try to once again recruit on merit of a specific type: a deepness of insight, intellect and deep reading—and perhaps a bit less on likability, grant dollar signs, and attractiveness. One day, I hope universities once again become a joy to work in for the brightest, the subject-obsessed, and most widely-read in society.

For all the criticisms of academia coming from people I have admired in the last 8 years, I think it will become clear over time that if you pick the deepest thinkers from within academia, rather than the loud illiberal activists, academics can once again impress and help the public.

More to come in the future.