Interesting, you’re clearly more familiar with Bregman than I am: I was thinking of it in terms of the social reinforcement in finding interesting cause areas and committing to them thing he appears to be trying to do rather than his philosophy.
There’s definitely a tradeoff between wide reach and rigour when writing for public audiences, but I think most people fall short of rigour most of the time. But those who claim exceptional rigour as their distinguishing characteristic should definitely try to avoid appearing to be more cliquey and arbitrary in their decision making than average...
When it comes to someone like Pinker it’s the tone that irritates me more than the generalizations, to the point I’m even more annoyed when I think he’s right about something! If Bregman sometimes sounds similar I can see how it would grate.
Interesting, you’re clearly more familiar with Bregman than I am: I was thinking of it in terms of the social reinforcement in finding interesting cause areas and committing to them thing he appears to be trying to do rather than his philosophy.
There’s definitely a tradeoff between wide reach and rigour when writing for public audiences, but I think most people fall short of rigour most of the time. But those who claim exceptional rigour as their distinguishing characteristic should definitely try to avoid appearing to be more cliquey and arbitrary in their decision making than average...
When it comes to someone like Pinker it’s the tone that irritates me more than the generalizations, to the point I’m even more annoyed when I think he’s right about something! If Bregman sometimes sounds similar I can see how it would grate.