Prestigious Detail

Intellectuals get great motivation from big grand questions, and often do work adjacent to them, intending to be relevant to them. Such intellectuals mostly get prestige for the observable impressive detail of their work. Detail such as data collection, stat analysis, game theory models, agent-based models, case studies, phil analysis, engaging public essays, compelling keynote talks, and managing related orgs.When the world changes its mind on such questions, intellectuals often gain prestige from the fact that they had supported those new positions in their work well before the world did. And such intellectuals like to credit their impressive detail for contributing to this intellectual progress.However, intellectual opinions on big grand questions are usually driven more than they like to admit by simple abstract arguments, often processed intuitively. We usually form such opinions soon after hearing of such questions, and then may change our minds as new such arguments occur to…

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