A parable from my time in American academia: One day, the Gates Foundation descended on a field related to mine, with enormous bags of money. They wanted to fund /encourage a certain flavour of historical research. The orders had come on high, from Gates himself.
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It didn't make any sense, what Gates & co. wanted. It wasn't compelling, it was without substance, it wasn't something anybody was interested in But, there was money behind it. Administrators wanted postdocs & professors doing this thing, teaching this thing
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The reason, I eventually discovered, was that Bill Gates had read some book by a third-rate knockoff Malcom Gladwell type, and he'd been convinced by this book that this research was super important and compelling, and so he wanted to fund it.
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Replying to @eugyppius1
Wait, third-rate Malcolm Gladwell... Third-rate version of something that is itself third rate?pic.twitter.com/8LyGFVyOg9
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yes indeed. turns out gladwell is actually rather good at his particular con, but you only really notice it when you see imitators trying the same act and doing it much, much worse.
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