> I have noticed that historians who transition from the role of academic scribbler to famed public voice follow a sort of pattern. Their first published work might be a monograph, perhaps a PhD thesis turned book. It will be on some narrow topic no sane person cares about, the product of months spent in one archives in one location. U.S.-British trade relations in the 1890s, perhaps, or state-led cultural imperialism in Japanese Manchuria. They may repeat this feat again, but at some point they transition to something broader—now they are writing a global history of trade regimes under the gold standard, or of empire building in the whole Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere. This work will be a brilliant, field-defining piece of scholarship, lauded (or resented) by other luminaries of their sub-discipline, read by scholars and interested laymen alike. That book will be published by an academic press; the next will be aimed at popular audiences. Our historian has now graduated fully to the role of public thinker: her next book will be on the dangers posed by trade wars writ large, or on the nature of modern imperialism. This title will be reviewed in all the famous magazines; people who have never read it will argue about it on twitter. And then everything starts to fall apart.
> The trouble is that just as our historian reaches her full stature as a public name, her well of insight begins to run dry. A true fan of her works might trace elements of their name-making title back to the very first monograph she published as a baby academic. She was able to take all of the ideas and observations from her early years of concentrated study and spin them out over a decade of high-profile book writing. But what happens when the fruits of that study have been spent? What does she have to write about when they have already applied their unique form of insight to the problems of the day?
> Nothing at all, really. Historians like this have nothing left to fall back on except the conventional opinions common to their class. So they go about repackaging those, echoing the same hollow shibboleths you could find in the work of any mediocrity. ...
> You see this pattern recur again and again in the op-eds of our nation. A once-bold foreign correspondent whose former days of daring-do have already been milked for more than they are worth, a Nobel laureate two decades removed from the economic papers that gave him acclaim, a nationally known historian who has not stepped into an archive since graduate school—the details change but the general pattern is the same. In each case the intellectual in question is years removed from not just the insights that delivered fame, but *the activities that delivered insight*.
> The tricky thing is that it is hard to go back to the rap and scrabble of real research when you have climbed so high above it. Penguin will pay you a hefty advance for your next two hundred pages of banal boilerplate; they will not pay you for two or three years of archival research on some narrow topic no one cares about. No matter that the process of writing on that narrow topic refills the well, imbuing you with the ideas needed to fill out another two decades of productive writing. The world is impatient. They do not have time to wait for you to reinvent yourself.
Ah interesting. Yeah this tracks for all the examples I listed - Taleb started out trading derivatives, Jordan Peterson was doing deep dives into the ideology of totalitarian states, Sam Harris into meditation and neuroscience etc. Their core insights are a product of their years of patient study, which is just really hard to do when you become a public intellectual and there are much more rewarding things to do with your time.
It's a more hopeful analysis too - it's not that your brain is fried or any less useful, it's just that the incentives are bad, and you can intervene on those pretty rapidly.
Also seems related to why rich people's kids rarely seem to do well - you need some kind of chip on your shoulder or sense of scarcity to power through years of patient low-paid study.
to riff on "someone has to repeat this simplified over and over" from the essay, I've often heard this summarized as "chips on shoulders puts chips in pockets"
Truly insightful writing—it makes me think, “I should probably send this to my father before posting.”
You touched on my greatest fear about writing on this platform: “You will have thoughts that are more obvious and require less context and reader investment to understand.” The risk of creating watered-down, lukewarm writing that appeals to the masses instead of inspiring the few.
It raises a critical question: What level of control do we, as writers, truly have over the factors motivating our subconscious as we grow our audience? And will we even recognize the shift in our own writing?
A lot of famous writers credit their partners in their book's acknowledgements, and I always thought that was maybe just done out of politeness / loyalty but now I think it might be load-bearing. Having at least one person you love deeply who anchors you keeps you sane and prevents audience capture. I've also heard this called 'fuck-you social capital'
I completely agree and had the same thought—perhaps they were acknowledging their loved ones for carrying the familial load while they focused on completing their novel or what have you. However, as I find myself leaning more on trusted sources around me while increasing my output on this platform and beyond, I’ve come to realize it might have been their way of giving credit for very real contributions to the writing itself. Thank you!!
Hugely agree with protecting one's scene -- i.e. keeping the intellectual hygeine of your groups very paramount. This kind of rhymes with how villages that survived periods like the black death (high virality!) had to be quite strict on bioligical hygeine.
Until we invent good public health for memes (hooray for the Center for Humane Tech), I agree we need a lot of intellectual strong hygienic practices as cultural norms.
Beautifully written! I wonder if this is a bad equilibrium situation or something more sinister. If there was a social network that encouraged high quality of thought, could it compete with platforms that encourage optimization for the marginal reader?
I'm pretty hopeful! LessWrong is the best current example of a social network that encourages high quality of thought, and it has stayed alive and competitive at least for the last few years.
Substack too is pretty good, substantially better than Twitter because the high cost of subscriptions keeps audiences relatively small.
> Lately I’ve been finding it helpful to think of the brain in terms of tropisms - unconscious structures that organically grow towards a reward signal without any conscious awareness. This is my explanation for why so many smart intellectuals, upon being thrust into punditry superstardom, lose all their good qualities and turn into partisan hacks (many such cases!) The positive reinforcement provided by tens of thousands of people saying nice things about them whenever they repeat party line becomes impossible to resist, and reshapes their brain into whatever form keeps the retweets coming.
A more cynical take - I want it to be false! - is that everyone is betting on audience approval. That’s the only game, even if you’re playing the maverick for a while. Some are playing longer odds than others, but when your outsider horse wins the race, you don’t want to be a jockey anymore - you want to be one of those aristocrats sipping champagne in the audience.
Not on object-level takes, but on (1) coming to prominence after years of deep study on a topic and then (2) opining on broader topics after shallow reflection
Love this essay. Reminded me of Tanner Greer's "Public Intellectuals Have Short Shelf Lives—But Why?" https://scholars-stage.org/public-intellectuals-have-short-shelf-lives-but-why/ His take:
> I have noticed that historians who transition from the role of academic scribbler to famed public voice follow a sort of pattern. Their first published work might be a monograph, perhaps a PhD thesis turned book. It will be on some narrow topic no sane person cares about, the product of months spent in one archives in one location. U.S.-British trade relations in the 1890s, perhaps, or state-led cultural imperialism in Japanese Manchuria. They may repeat this feat again, but at some point they transition to something broader—now they are writing a global history of trade regimes under the gold standard, or of empire building in the whole Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere. This work will be a brilliant, field-defining piece of scholarship, lauded (or resented) by other luminaries of their sub-discipline, read by scholars and interested laymen alike. That book will be published by an academic press; the next will be aimed at popular audiences. Our historian has now graduated fully to the role of public thinker: her next book will be on the dangers posed by trade wars writ large, or on the nature of modern imperialism. This title will be reviewed in all the famous magazines; people who have never read it will argue about it on twitter. And then everything starts to fall apart.
> The trouble is that just as our historian reaches her full stature as a public name, her well of insight begins to run dry. A true fan of her works might trace elements of their name-making title back to the very first monograph she published as a baby academic. She was able to take all of the ideas and observations from her early years of concentrated study and spin them out over a decade of high-profile book writing. But what happens when the fruits of that study have been spent? What does she have to write about when they have already applied their unique form of insight to the problems of the day?
> Nothing at all, really. Historians like this have nothing left to fall back on except the conventional opinions common to their class. So they go about repackaging those, echoing the same hollow shibboleths you could find in the work of any mediocrity. ...
> You see this pattern recur again and again in the op-eds of our nation. A once-bold foreign correspondent whose former days of daring-do have already been milked for more than they are worth, a Nobel laureate two decades removed from the economic papers that gave him acclaim, a nationally known historian who has not stepped into an archive since graduate school—the details change but the general pattern is the same. In each case the intellectual in question is years removed from not just the insights that delivered fame, but *the activities that delivered insight*.
> The tricky thing is that it is hard to go back to the rap and scrabble of real research when you have climbed so high above it. Penguin will pay you a hefty advance for your next two hundred pages of banal boilerplate; they will not pay you for two or three years of archival research on some narrow topic no one cares about. No matter that the process of writing on that narrow topic refills the well, imbuing you with the ideas needed to fill out another two decades of productive writing. The world is impatient. They do not have time to wait for you to reinvent yourself.
Ah interesting. Yeah this tracks for all the examples I listed - Taleb started out trading derivatives, Jordan Peterson was doing deep dives into the ideology of totalitarian states, Sam Harris into meditation and neuroscience etc. Their core insights are a product of their years of patient study, which is just really hard to do when you become a public intellectual and there are much more rewarding things to do with your time.
It's a more hopeful analysis too - it's not that your brain is fried or any less useful, it's just that the incentives are bad, and you can intervene on those pretty rapidly.
Also seems related to why rich people's kids rarely seem to do well - you need some kind of chip on your shoulder or sense of scarcity to power through years of patient low-paid study.
to riff on "someone has to repeat this simplified over and over" from the essay, I've often heard this summarized as "chips on shoulders puts chips in pockets"
I've intentionally avoided courting low-quality engagement for pretty much this reason: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/construction-beacons/
Low-quality repetition actually destroys the ability to represent an idea, because the naïve meaning of the words is replaced by a simulacrum meant ironically: http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/excerpts-from-a-larger-discussion-about-simulacra/
This thread on X is also relevant: https://x.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1879704792832127345
Taleb as a spaced repetition system for humanity to not forget:)))
Truly insightful writing—it makes me think, “I should probably send this to my father before posting.”
You touched on my greatest fear about writing on this platform: “You will have thoughts that are more obvious and require less context and reader investment to understand.” The risk of creating watered-down, lukewarm writing that appeals to the masses instead of inspiring the few.
It raises a critical question: What level of control do we, as writers, truly have over the factors motivating our subconscious as we grow our audience? And will we even recognize the shift in our own writing?
Thank you—loved this.
A lot of famous writers credit their partners in their book's acknowledgements, and I always thought that was maybe just done out of politeness / loyalty but now I think it might be load-bearing. Having at least one person you love deeply who anchors you keeps you sane and prevents audience capture. I've also heard this called 'fuck-you social capital'
I completely agree and had the same thought—perhaps they were acknowledging their loved ones for carrying the familial load while they focused on completing their novel or what have you. However, as I find myself leaning more on trusted sources around me while increasing my output on this platform and beyond, I’ve come to realize it might have been their way of giving credit for very real contributions to the writing itself. Thank you!!
Hugely agree with protecting one's scene -- i.e. keeping the intellectual hygeine of your groups very paramount. This kind of rhymes with how villages that survived periods like the black death (high virality!) had to be quite strict on bioligical hygeine.
Until we invent good public health for memes (hooray for the Center for Humane Tech), I agree we need a lot of intellectual strong hygienic practices as cultural norms.
Beautifully written! I wonder if this is a bad equilibrium situation or something more sinister. If there was a social network that encouraged high quality of thought, could it compete with platforms that encourage optimization for the marginal reader?
I'm pretty hopeful! LessWrong is the best current example of a social network that encourages high quality of thought, and it has stayed alive and competitive at least for the last few years.
Substack too is pretty good, substantially better than Twitter because the high cost of subscriptions keeps audiences relatively small.
realizing Scott, as always, was there before me (from https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-do-i-suck)
> Lately I’ve been finding it helpful to think of the brain in terms of tropisms - unconscious structures that organically grow towards a reward signal without any conscious awareness. This is my explanation for why so many smart intellectuals, upon being thrust into punditry superstardom, lose all their good qualities and turn into partisan hacks (many such cases!) The positive reinforcement provided by tens of thousands of people saying nice things about them whenever they repeat party line becomes impossible to resist, and reshapes their brain into whatever form keeps the retweets coming.
A more cynical take - I want it to be false! - is that everyone is betting on audience approval. That’s the only game, even if you’re playing the maverick for a while. Some are playing longer odds than others, but when your outsider horse wins the race, you don’t want to be a jockey anymore - you want to be one of those aristocrats sipping champagne in the audience.
Did you put Chomsky and Peterson in the same bucket?!!!
Not on object-level takes, but on (1) coming to prominence after years of deep study on a topic and then (2) opining on broader topics after shallow reflection
I loved reading this post. I had a notion of this idea, but lacked the level of clarity expressed in this article. Thank you Ivan!
thanks Kaustav! great to hear from you again