Well written and argued. There's one quality needed to be intellectually ambitious: to be so self-confidence that we no longer act for praise from others. It took me most of my life to get there, but my thinking became much clearer once liberated from that constraint.
In truth, the two go hand-in-hand: self-confidence leads to greater clarity, and greater clarity leads to greater self-confidence. I only wish it hadn't taken me 60 years to get there.
I love, love, love this, Gena! For years, I've been meaning to write an article to explicate and defend epistemic pride as opposed to epistemic humility. You have done some great work here on this front, so thank you for providing much-needed good thought on this topic as I continue to mull over (and make time for) what I would like to contribute at some point.
Intellectual humility is Christian poison, a rationalization of its hatred of intellectual pride. Christianity, straight or via Kant, has greatly prostituted the social (human) sciences. Rand discusses "common good" in "What Is Capitalism."
A favorite line of nefarious intellectuals is "I will be humiliated if you don't share your writing with me." Since hearing it last I have discovered that my writing of the time was mostly shit and that many of them read Ayn Rand in the closet. Thank you for pointing out where the word comes from. It might be helpful to elaborate upon the various contexts in which humiliation can actually take place and those in which it is not actually possible.
Well written and argued. There's one quality needed to be intellectually ambitious: to be so self-confidence that we no longer act for praise from others. It took me most of my life to get there, but my thinking became much clearer once liberated from that constraint.
In truth, the two go hand-in-hand: self-confidence leads to greater clarity, and greater clarity leads to greater self-confidence. I only wish it hadn't taken me 60 years to get there.
I love, love, love this, Gena! For years, I've been meaning to write an article to explicate and defend epistemic pride as opposed to epistemic humility. You have done some great work here on this front, so thank you for providing much-needed good thought on this topic as I continue to mull over (and make time for) what I would like to contribute at some point.
Superb article! Many thanks for writing it.
Lovely and extremely illuminating. Reminds me of Rand's conception of open mind vs active mind: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/open_mind_and_closed_mind.html.
BTW, the direct link to Hoffman's thoughts is https://future.com/question/future-of-expertise/#auren-hoffman -- the current link is missing the hash-tag that takes the reader directly to the right part of the page.
Thanks, Raman! And I've corrected the link (great tip, thank you!). :)
Intellectual humility is Christian poison, a rationalization of its hatred of intellectual pride. Christianity, straight or via Kant, has greatly prostituted the social (human) sciences. Rand discusses "common good" in "What Is Capitalism."
A favorite line of nefarious intellectuals is "I will be humiliated if you don't share your writing with me." Since hearing it last I have discovered that my writing of the time was mostly shit and that many of them read Ayn Rand in the closet. Thank you for pointing out where the word comes from. It might be helpful to elaborate upon the various contexts in which humiliation can actually take place and those in which it is not actually possible.