idea injection

In this piece on why he blogs, Noah Smith says that blogging has allowed me to inject ideas into the discourse with unparalleled speed, breadth, and access. A researcher goes deep into a few topics; a blogger can quickly hit the main points of many topics. This enables speed; academics might take months to write something useful about a breaking event like the Iran War or Trump’s tariffs, while I can have something out in hours. Then he continues, Injecting ideas into the discourse is incredibly powerful. John Maynard Keynes famously described the power of idea injection: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” But Keynes’s point contradicts what Smith has just claimed. In fact, Keynes’s point is the polar opposite of Smith’s. Keynes says that it’s not the…