Originally Posted by
Bertrand
yeah that sounds like supervision, his strong points kind of drown in your own so it seems like he's relatively insubstantial. I think in the academic world he sort of kicked the door down in talking about this kind of stuff in a non straightforwardly literary or ideological way. In other words, I think he did a lot to legitimate humanitarian intuition within academia outside the humanities (this is why I think he attacks them for their shortcomings so much, because he sees the divide clearly, although in his own way works to bridge it). In some sense such intuitions were already at work, but they have always been on the periphery acting from behind the scenes in academic culture (which is what he drags out into the light). Its like he laid the groundwork for a theoretical head on analysis of a lot of those ideas, which had really been hitherto constrained to literary style analysis or idealogical debate within political science and sociology/womens studies, etc. This is actually a major weakness from the point of view of gamma which can do something similar but from the point of view of economics, so it tends to disregard a lot of that input. I think a lot of radicalism is in response to being ignored. For Jordan to bring in a legitimate scientific psychological (inasmuch as such a thing exists) ground to the discussion (i.e.: on Solzhenitsyn, Nietzsche, Jung, etc) by connecting it to the existing research, he actually has done something really tremendous. But I think beta's whole way of being takes a lot of that stuff to be self evident, but the point is a major divide has emerged between those who think like that and those who don't. Going back to the economics point, I think people don't fully realize what a substitute for spiritual well being on the level of public policy considerations it is... I think what Jordan stands for in some ways is a counter balance to that approach that was getting progressively more and more marginalized and therefore radicalized, for lack of scientific basis sufficient to stand up to the kind of results economics can measure and produce. I don't think the full force of this has even begun to be felt, but I think something like this is a major cultural moment, although it won't be fully realized for a long time. I think academia really needed someone like Jordan. I think people like Jonathan Haidt are also doing similar work which will be bolstered by his popularity and legitimating influence. The biggest benefit may be the interest generated in this area so the next generation will face less roadblocks to developing these ideas and what they come up with stands to be really exciting. I think for all that people will look back on Jordan as being a major figure. Probably not just a flash in the pan, but I worry if Jordan focuses too much on this book tour, i.e.: this new version of himself, and not on doing more research and continuing to develop new ideas, he might actually fade away, because its not his strong side and I think to fully realize social impact one needs to work from their strong side