Thanks, I found this helpful. TED talks are a great example of intellectual performance without a negative connotation.
I’ve realized I’m 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 “exploration” metaphor when doing intellectual work.
Then, it seems good to switch to the “performance” metaphor when it’s 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 one’s intellectual work worse / less truth-seeking? (My intuition is “yes, it’s costly” 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 it’s 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 won’t let you slack off on truthseeking. Many intellectual “performers” who get a bit epistemically lazy may have been prevented from doing so if they’d had friends around to check their worst impulses.
Thanks, I found this helpful. TED talks are a great example of intellectual performance without a negative connotation.
I’ve realized I’m 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 “exploration” metaphor when doing intellectual work.
Then, it seems good to switch to the “performance” metaphor when it’s 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 one’s intellectual work worse / less truth-seeking? (My intuition is “yes, it’s costly” 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 it’s 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 won’t let you slack off on truthseeking. Many intellectual “performers” who get a bit epistemically lazy may have been prevented from doing so if they’d had friends around to check their worst impulses.