[lbo-talk] Speaking of grad school

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 22 04:16:24 PDT 2012


Andie N: "senior Prof in political science tried to persuade me to write up my theory of Cold War military policy Into a dissertation, although I don't know Russian. I told him thought this was a problem, but he said it didn't!

matter"

[WS:] And apparently he was right. 9/10th of expertise (and for that matter academic teaching) is the ability to effectively project self-confidence and authority, the remaining 1/10th being the actual knowledge of the subject matter.

In other words, if you can effectively project self-confidence and authority, who is going to know whether you actually know what you are talking about, but if you cannot - most people will dismiss you without even paying much attention to what you are saying.

PS. I am currently reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - a good critique of the so-called expertise, especially in social and political sciences and economics.

Nice to see you back. -- Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."



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