Episode: The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Heart of Texas Episode

This week all three of your whisky-swilling disputationists found themselves together in Austin, Texas, for a Civitas Institute conference, and we managed to sneak away to record this week's episode in person. Though you wish earnestly for us to return to Substack or Zoom, since we had some technical challenges with our sound mix (one microphone wouldn't work at all, and we weren't able to fix it much in post-production).

In any case, after noting how John's beloved McRibb is going to rescue Bitcoin from its recent 40% slump, we get down to business, answering a reader/ listener comment asking what, exactly, is "scientific" about "political science"? And for our second topic, we beat up John (so what else is new, you ask) about his forthcoming essay on "The Declaration of Independence as a Constitution," part of our ongoing consideration of the Declaration ahead of the 250th anniversary this summer. To be continued. . .

Alas, since this is an audio-only episode, there is no video available on YouTube, but we'll resume our livestream format experiments next week.

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Macho Grande'@ChrisCampion35w

A bit late to the feedback loop, but here goes: John seemed to be defending some of the research being done at colleges, that not all of it was "practical", but adds to the broader, general knowledge base of humanity (all of these are my words, not his).

But - from a tuition payer or a student's point of view, they are paying for esoteric and impractical knowledge, meaning all students through their tuition subsidizes the esoteric studies or research that have little to no practical value. So there's a cost borne for this study, which John seemed to argue had high value (or value) just on its face, because it's learning and knowledge.

He then went on to say that studying supernova didn't have practical outcomes here because we're millions of years away from it in our own solar system. But that direct STEM type of research, outside of our own system, helps us understand how our sun works, so it's not impractical and has direct effect on understanding of solar and planetary mechanics. Consider the learning of the effects of solar flares and their historical alignment with impacts on Earth, of all kinds, and those are direct, applicable learnings of solar physics, and solar mechanics. So there. The problem with colleges is the default setting that all education is useful and needed, and that is demonstrably not so - and certainly not when I'm asked to help pay for this crap with tuition dollars.

Discussion (4)

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Richard Easton@RichardEaston35w
Lileks should be scared. Lucretia is smoother than he is at doing ads.
PODCAST ORGANIZATION
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Steven Hayward@StevenHayward35w
ReplyingtoRichard Easton
Richard Easton (View Comment):
Lileks should be scared. Lucretia is smoother than he is at doing ads.
I'm not going to tell her that! You tell her!
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Saint Augustine@SaintAugustine35w
Fact/Value dichotomy: rubbish and myth, but still taught.
Fact/Opinion dichotomy: its evil offspring: rubbish and myth, but still taught.
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Macho Grande'@ChrisCampion35w
A bit late to the feedback loop, but here goes: John seemed to be defending some of the research being done at colleges, that not all of it was "practical", but adds to the broader, general knowledge base of humanity (all of these are my words, not his).
But - from a tuition payer or a student's point of view, they are paying for esoteric and impractical knowledge, meaning all students through their tuition subsidizes the esoteric studies or research that have little to no practical value. So there's a cost borne for this study, which John seemed to argue had high value (or value) just on its face, because it's learning and knowledge.
He then went on to say that studying supernova didn't have practical outcomes here because we're millions of years away from it in our own solar system. But that direct STEM type of research, outside of our own system, helps us understand how our sun works, so it's not impractical and has direct effect on understanding of solar and planetary mechanics. Consider the learning of the effects of solar flares and their historical alignment with impacts on Earth, of all kinds, and those are direct, applicable learnings of solar physics, and solar mechanics. So there. The problem with colleges is the default setting that all education is useful and needed, and that is demonstrably not so - and certainly not when I'm asked to help pay for this crap with tuition dollars.