From the examples youâve given, you show a pretty heavy bias toward âintellectual work as explorationâ providing us with things that are more true and useful, and I suppose I donât doubt you, in that it is âbetterâ to take the approach more likely to give us something true and useful at the end (for which exploration, if not fully optimized, seems better-suited than performance).
That said, if I understand you correctly, it seems as though much exploration involves looking at the âperformanceâ of others, and that performance exists only a as a layer on top of someoneâs prior exploration (however distant). Peter Singer sitting and reading and thinking for a long time is important, but Peter Singer giving a TED talk is also important, if we think of âintellectual workâ as âhave the idea, and make sure others also come to have the ideaâ.
Thanks, I found this helpful. TED talks are a great example of intellectual performance without a negative connotation.
Iâve realized Iâm most interested in the question of which metaphor to be holding while doing intellectual work.
On that, I think it makes sense to be (almost) exclusively using the âexplorationâ metaphor when doing intellectual work.
Then, it seems good to switch to the âperformanceâ metaphor when itâs time to propagate ideas (or hand off to a partner specialized in intellectual performance).
Open question for me: Is it costly to grow skillful in intellectual performance? Does it make oneâs intellectual work worse /â less truth-seeking? (My intuition is âyes, itâs costlyâ but seems plausible that the performance skill could be safely compartmentalized.)
My intuition is that becoming skillful is difficult, as it would be for most performance skills, but that itâs quite possible to do so without getting worse at intellectual work, as long as you continue to value that work and have a social circle that wonât let you slack off on truthseeking. Many intellectual âperformersâ who get a bit epistemically lazy may have been prevented from doing so if theyâd had friends around to check their worst impulses.
From the examples youâve given, you show a pretty heavy bias toward âintellectual work as explorationâ providing us with things that are more true and useful, and I suppose I donât doubt you, in that it is âbetterâ to take the approach more likely to give us something true and useful at the end (for which exploration, if not fully optimized, seems better-suited than performance).
That said, if I understand you correctly, it seems as though much exploration involves looking at the âperformanceâ of others, and that performance exists only a as a layer on top of someoneâs prior exploration (however distant). Peter Singer sitting and reading and thinking for a long time is important, but Peter Singer giving a TED talk is also important, if we think of âintellectual workâ as âhave the idea, and make sure others also come to have the ideaâ.
Thanks, I found this helpful. TED talks are a great example of intellectual performance without a negative connotation.
Iâve realized Iâm most interested in the question of which metaphor to be holding while doing intellectual work.
On that, I think it makes sense to be (almost) exclusively using the âexplorationâ metaphor when doing intellectual work.
Then, it seems good to switch to the âperformanceâ metaphor when itâs time to propagate ideas (or hand off to a partner specialized in intellectual performance).
Open question for me: Is it costly to grow skillful in intellectual performance? Does it make oneâs intellectual work worse /â less truth-seeking? (My intuition is âyes, itâs costlyâ but seems plausible that the performance skill could be safely compartmentalized.)
My intuition is that becoming skillful is difficult, as it would be for most performance skills, but that itâs quite possible to do so without getting worse at intellectual work, as long as you continue to value that work and have a social circle that wonât let you slack off on truthseeking. Many intellectual âperformersâ who get a bit epistemically lazy may have been prevented from doing so if theyâd had friends around to check their worst impulses.