Re: faith

Posted by Douglas Roberts-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Faith-tp7580633p7580802.html

It's a shame I stopped reading when I did on the wikipedia academic elitism link when I got to the nugget I was looking for, because this nugget is a real gem:

"Some observers argue that, while academicians often perceive themselves as members of an elite, their influence is mostly imaginary: "Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy."[3]

Academic elitism suggests that in highly competitive academic environments only those individuals who have engaged in scholarship are deemed to have anything worthwhile to say, or do. It suggests that individuals who have not engaged in such scholarship are cranks. Steven Zhang of the Cornell Daily Sun has described the graduates of elite schools, especially those in the Ivy League, of having a "smug sense of success" because they believe "gaining entrance into the Ivy League is an accomplishment unto itself."[citation needed]"


On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:
I, OTOH, was fairly certain I was going to encounter approximately the same amount as usual of, what do we call it?  Pollyanna-like behavior:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle

No, that's not quite right.

Academic ivory tower elitism?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_elitism

Well no, that doesn't quite capture all of it either.  Although this one sentence comes fairly close to capturing the dietary element that abounds here on FRIAM:  Another criticism is that universities [substitute academics here for the purpose of my point] tend more to pseudo-intellectualism than intellectualism per se; for example, to protect their positions and prestige, academicians may over-complicate problems and express them in obscure language.

The Osterich Effect, but as applied to societal problems rather than economic ones:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich_effect

Some combination of the above, perhaps.

--Doug


On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 9:53 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
Douglas Roberts wrote at 09/26/2012 09:03 PM:
> dead gang members are far more productive members of society than
> live ones, I suspect.

And here I was worried I wouldn't get enough _hate_ in my diet today.

--
glen

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Doug Roberts
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org