FIND SOURCES OF WISDOM THAT WITHSTAND MIMESIS
Experts play an increasingly prominent role in our society. But what makes an expert? A degree? A podcast? Increasingly, experts are crowned mimetically, like fashion.
Because there is less and less agreement about cultural values and even about the value of science itself (consider the debates about climate change), people find “experts” whose expertise is largely a product of mimetic validation. It’s critical to cut through mimesis and find sources of knowledge that are less subject to mimesis.
Find sources that have stood the test of time. Be wary of self-proclaimed and crowd-proclaimed experts.
It’s less likely that experts will be mimetically chosen in the hard sciences (physics, math, chemistry) because people have to show their work. But it’s easy for someone to become an overnight expert on “productivity” merely because they got published in the right place. Scientism fools people because it is a mimetic game dressed up as science.
The key is carefully curating our sources of knowledge so that we are able to get down to what is true regardless of how many other people want to believe it. And that means doing the work.
Every once in a while, then, it’s good to deconstruct the mimetic layers behind someone’s authority and think seriously about how we chose our sources of knowledge in the first place. We might find that the road to our favorite experts was paved with mimetic influence.
Wanting, Luke Burgis
Experts play an increasingly prominent role in our society. But what makes an expert? A degree? A podcast? Increasingly, experts are crowned mimetically, like fashion.
Because there is less and less agreement about cultural values and even about the value of science itself (consider the debates about climate change), people find “experts” whose expertise is largely a product of mimetic validation. It’s critical to cut through mimesis and find sources of knowledge that are less subject to mimesis.
Find sources that have stood the test of time. Be wary of self-proclaimed and crowd-proclaimed experts.
It’s less likely that experts will be mimetically chosen in the hard sciences (physics, math, chemistry) because people have to show their work. But it’s easy for someone to become an overnight expert on “productivity” merely because they got published in the right place. Scientism fools people because it is a mimetic game dressed up as science.
The key is carefully curating our sources of knowledge so that we are able to get down to what is true regardless of how many other people want to believe it. And that means doing the work.
Every once in a while, then, it’s good to deconstruct the mimetic layers behind someone’s authority and think seriously about how we chose our sources of knowledge in the first place. We might find that the road to our favorite experts was paved with mimetic influence.
Wanting, Luke Burgis