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I understand your point. I work with sociologists and I also follow the ongoing "Internet cultural wars". People like Jordan Peterson (who I don't either dislik

I understand your point. I work with sociologists and I also follow the ongoing "Internet cultural wars". People like Jordan Peterson (who I don't either dislike nor agree 100%) really brought these matters to the forefront. His criticisms of postmerdernism are somewhat relevant, but they are also exaggerated. Some corners of "postmodernist academia" are as bad as he paints them, but not all of them, by any means. Even the Sokal scandal is somewhat simplified. It was not so easy for them to get the paper accepted, in fact they were rejected many times by other journals. This is rarely mentioned. The cited work in TFA compares performance evaluations with raises. It found that for the same performance evaluations, an explicit focus on meritocracy leads to worse monetary outcomes for women. That seems fairly objective and methodically sound to me, and not at all related to Sokal-style bullshit. The income gap is a complex topic, and it is clearly not as simple as either extremes of the cultural wars paint it. It is not true that the pay gap is 100% due to discrimination against women, but it is also not 100% true that such discrimination plays no role. As usual in real life, there are nuances and complexities that cannot easily be reduced to simple slogans. Silicon Valley has a religion-ideology that we have no name for yet. It is a very American kind of Protestantism with zero gods. I know the environment and I know what I'm talking about, even though I accept you might disagree. My view is that the self-proclaimed ultra-rationalists are not as rational as they would like to think. It is true that Sociology has a left-wing bias. In my view, this is true of all academia. There was a time, not so long ago, when academia had a right-wing bias. This too is a subject of sociological research :)

asabjorn 8y ago
Those are good points. However, I do think we will look back at the large amount of postmodern literature inspired by Foucault and deidre as obfuscatory to knowledge seeking. They essentially wrap simple concepts within a format that require immense effort to parse, maybe to present an intellectual challenge or to obfuscate what is actually said. Great for staying fashionable as a tool for showing academic belonging in Parisian coffee shops due to the amount of studying needed to pierce the veil, but not so great for knowledge seeking. To me it seems like what they are saying are: - culture is adapted to get the marginal to conform to the majority (Foucault marginal sexual identity that caused him to attempt suicide) - culture corrupts the pristine child’s mind (Rousseau inspired) - either you apply cultural power or you are a victim to cultural power These are interesting to some degree, but not when used to argue for a deconstruction of all experiences into identity groups like postmodernists have. I think they’ve abandoned their academic duty to try to construct world views contiguous both within themselves and to the larger culture.
- TelmoMenezes 8y ago
  > Those are good points. However, I do think we will look back at the large amount of postmodern literature inspired by Foucault and deidre as obfuscatory to knowledge seeking. Postmodernism, at its core, is precisely a criticism of conventional epistemology. I am not a postmoderinst, but I do find that some of their views are interesting, or at least worth considering. I would not be surprised if you are right, and that postmodernism goes down in history as a fool's errand. In any case, I think that it is good that people kick the foundations of knowledge to see what happens. If nobody does that, it becomes very easy to fall into religion/ideology without noticing. To borrow a term from another thinker who also hates postmodernism (I think), knowledge should be anti-fragile. > showing academic belonging in Parisian coffee shops You are absolutely right about this part. Just don't think that Sillicon Valley's Matcha Tea Boutique Shops are so different. The environment is also full of terms and clichés that mostly serve to signal tribal alignment, that really say nothing new and only create a barrier of entry for outsiders: "let us create a curated list of use-cases for under-the-radar angel round startups that are attempting to leverage blockchain technologies for adtech verticals." > culture is adapted to get the marginal to conform to the majority (Foucault marginal sexual identity that caused him to attempt suicide) Right, but he also has some interesting things to say about our relationship with the "mentally ill", how that relationship is different in other societies and why our approach may be pathological for all of us. For example. > culture corrupts the pristine child’s mind (Rousseau inspired) Some might say this, but overall culture is just taken as a powerful force that shapes the reality we inhabit. The thing is that, if one doesn't cherry-pick, some postmodernist ideas actually became mainstream. "We inhabit narratives." > either you apply cultural power or you are a victim to cultural power I think this is mostly true. No problem if you disagree, but it doesn't seem like such a crazy hypothesis to me. > but not when used to argue for a deconstruction of all experiences into identity groups like postmodernists have This is a confusion between postmodernism in general and "grievance studies". > I think they’ve abandoned their academic duty to try to construct world views contiguous both within themselves and to the larger culture. For me, the academic duty is to think seriously and independently. Any other red line only guarantees that we get stuck in local maxima. I think that the unusual views should have a place, and knowledge seekers should make an effort to understand them if they are going to criticize them.

asabjorn 8y ago

Those are good points. However, I do think we will look back at the large amount of postmodern literature inspired by Foucault and deidre as obfuscatory to knowledge seeking. They essentially wrap simple concepts within a format that require immense effort to parse, maybe to present an intellectual challenge or to obfuscate what is actually said. Great for staying fashionable as a tool for showing academic belonging in Parisian coffee shops due to the amount of studying needed to pierce the veil, but not so great for knowledge seeking. To me it seems like what they are saying are: - culture is adapted to get the marginal to conform to the majority (Foucault marginal sexual identity that caused him to attempt suicide) - culture corrupts the pristine child’s mind (Rousseau inspired) - either you apply cultural power or you are a victim to cultural power These are interesting to some degree, but not when used to argue for a deconstruction of all experiences into identity groups like postmodernists have. I think they’ve abandoned their academic duty to try to construct world views contiguous both within themselves and to the larger culture.

TelmoMenezes 8y ago
> Those are good points. However, I do think we will look back at the large amount of postmodern literature inspired by Foucault and deidre as obfuscatory to knowledge seeking. Postmodernism, at its core, is precisely a criticism of conventional epistemology. I am not a postmoderinst, but I do find that some of their views are interesting, or at least worth considering. I would not be surprised if you are right, and that postmodernism goes down in history as a fool's errand. In any case, I think that it is good that people kick the foundations of knowledge to see what happens. If nobody does that, it becomes very easy to fall into religion/ideology without noticing. To borrow a term from another thinker who also hates postmodernism (I think), knowledge should be anti-fragile. > showing academic belonging in Parisian coffee shops You are absolutely right about this part. Just don't think that Sillicon Valley's Matcha Tea Boutique Shops are so different. The environment is also full of terms and clichés that mostly serve to signal tribal alignment, that really say nothing new and only create a barrier of entry for outsiders: "let us create a curated list of use-cases for under-the-radar angel round startups that are attempting to leverage blockchain technologies for adtech verticals." > culture is adapted to get the marginal to conform to the majority (Foucault marginal sexual identity that caused him to attempt suicide) Right, but he also has some interesting things to say about our relationship with the "mentally ill", how that relationship is different in other societies and why our approach may be pathological for all of us. For example. > culture corrupts the pristine child’s mind (Rousseau inspired) Some might say this, but overall culture is just taken as a powerful force that shapes the reality we inhabit. The thing is that, if one doesn't cherry-pick, some postmodernist ideas actually became mainstream. "We inhabit narratives." > either you apply cultural power or you are a victim to cultural power I think this is mostly true. No problem if you disagree, but it doesn't seem like such a crazy hypothesis to me. > but not when used to argue for a deconstruction of all experiences into identity groups like postmodernists have This is a confusion between postmodernism in general and "grievance studies". > I think they’ve abandoned their academic duty to try to construct world views contiguous both within themselves and to the larger culture. For me, the academic duty is to think seriously and independently. Any other red line only guarantees that we get stuck in local maxima. I think that the unusual views should have a place, and knowledge seekers should make an effort to understand them if they are going to criticize them.