Last night I tried to describe the rationalist community to a friend who had never heard of it. I struggled, but finally settled on describing it as "A school of philosophy that arose on the internet rather than in the academy."
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My vague sense is that para-academic fields suffer from being under-networked. A little too much of the non-joiner, "I'm going my own way" mentality. Not enough people building off each others' work.
For all its faults, the academy does a great job forcing people to connect their ideas to each other's. The emphasis on credit, citations, learning the history of a field, the glory of being "first," paying homage to predecessors, etc — all contribute to the stability of a field.
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Yes… if/as para-academia develops, it will need to develop more structure and mechanisms of this sort (while also leaving freedom for experimentation and iconoclasm)
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