Interesting. The signaling may be a lot more important than I thought! It could also be a bit of the fact that the types of people who pursue PhD ("hard workers") are the same type of people who pursue being a public figure through writing.
The was really fascinating, thank you! My own explanation for this phenomenon…there just aren’t that many environments in the private sector that really sharpen someone’s intellectual position and viewpoints as deliberately as the PhD model.
The signaling must help—and the connections and network from a PhD—but it’s also the 3–7 years (depending on what country/discipline someone got their doctorate in) that helps someone do original research and generate novel points of view.
Come on, those lists can be dismissed as worthless simply by observing that almost none of all the insanely influential internet writers and personalities (Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, Yarvin, BAP, Cowen, Gwern, Hanania, Yglesias, etc) are on there. Of course the "intellectuals" that appear on those lists all have graduate or post-graduate degrees, but people like Gita Gopinath have approximately zero influence or impact over their replacements. What power they have is rendered irrelevant by their extremely limited freedom of action. The unconstrained online bloggers have more personal influence.
The problem here is taking the prospect list at face value. They could have important roles in their respective countries or chose fields - and may be influential there but most are not household names.
Interesting. The signaling may be a lot more important than I thought! It could also be a bit of the fact that the types of people who pursue PhD ("hard workers") are the same type of people who pursue being a public figure through writing.
The was really fascinating, thank you! My own explanation for this phenomenon…there just aren’t that many environments in the private sector that really sharpen someone’s intellectual position and viewpoints as deliberately as the PhD model.
The signaling must help—and the connections and network from a PhD—but it’s also the 3–7 years (depending on what country/discipline someone got their doctorate in) that helps someone do original research and generate novel points of view.
Come on, those lists can be dismissed as worthless simply by observing that almost none of all the insanely influential internet writers and personalities (Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, Yarvin, BAP, Cowen, Gwern, Hanania, Yglesias, etc) are on there. Of course the "intellectuals" that appear on those lists all have graduate or post-graduate degrees, but people like Gita Gopinath have approximately zero influence or impact over their replacements. What power they have is rendered irrelevant by their extremely limited freedom of action. The unconstrained online bloggers have more personal influence.
The problem here is taking the prospect list at face value. They could have important roles in their respective countries or chose fields - and may be influential there but most are not household names.
Left a response here. https://substack.com/profile/6319739-richard-hanania/note/c-75460988?r=3rgcb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action