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Most of academia functions as a proof of that, honestly. I'm just always disappointed when I see someone with positions that I personally find really novel and interesting within a discipline that I'm familiar with also having really abysmal takes in other areas.
Disappointed as well, but never surprised. Capitalism, through division of labor, forces people to have extremely narrow focus to survive in their chosen career field. If they don't, they'll fall behind their peers, and potentially even get fired. This means a lot of people never learn anything about humanities, particularly social justice. The pursuit of a stable career, even a proletarian career, reinforces reactionary attitudes, by depriving people of a well-rounded education outside of their chosen field. People tell themselves anything anti-capitalist, anti-bigotry, anti-imperialist etc. is "useless" because it won't make them money.
Capitalism expects skilled workers like programmers, scientists, and engineers to care about their fields outside of work, to the extent that you're even expected to go back to school sometimes and/or renew certifications, and that's on top of unpaid internships and mandatory overtime. This means someone who tries to pursue hobbies or be a polymath/autodidact (i.e. "jack of all trades, master of none") is treated as an "unskilled" worker in our economy, and therefore less likely to survive in any kind of career field with sufficiently developed division of labor and narrowness of focus. People who are able to focus hard and keep their focus narrow will eventually however attempt to have "takes" that are outside of their chosen field, and these "takes" will be shoddy, mishmashed, and biased, like this physicist trying to talk about political economy. However, she'll be fine because she's toeing the establishment line. It is actually the Marxists who will get laughed out of the room in economics, not because they're wrong but because they don't echo a power-serving narrative, which is the other problem with Capitalism. It goes from something "efficient" that tears down pre-capitalist social structures to something reactionary that serves to perpetuate itself (regardless of efficiency) in a heartbeat. Marx's theory of value, after all, was derived from Adam Smith and David Ricardo, albeit with some nuance added, and some contradictions resolved, and taken to the logical outcome of proletarian revolution, but the bourgeois economists, upon encountering Marx's work, immediately abandoned the labor-based value theories put forward by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and began to retreat into the la la land of subjective value theory and marginal utility theory, showing how quickly the bourgeoisie will decouple themselves from reality if it is in their own short term political interests.
Damn. I'm not familiar with any of her stuff outside of physics. Unfortunate.
proof that just because youre smart at one thing doesnt mean youre smart at everything
Most of academia functions as a proof of that, honestly. I'm just always disappointed when I see someone with positions that I personally find really novel and interesting within a discipline that I'm familiar with also having really abysmal takes in other areas.
Disappointed as well, but never surprised. Capitalism, through division of labor, forces people to have extremely narrow focus to survive in their chosen career field. If they don't, they'll fall behind their peers, and potentially even get fired. This means a lot of people never learn anything about humanities, particularly social justice. The pursuit of a stable career, even a proletarian career, reinforces reactionary attitudes, by depriving people of a well-rounded education outside of their chosen field. People tell themselves anything anti-capitalist, anti-bigotry, anti-imperialist etc. is "useless" because it won't make them money.
Capitalism expects skilled workers like programmers, scientists, and engineers to care about their fields outside of work, to the extent that you're even expected to go back to school sometimes and/or renew certifications, and that's on top of unpaid internships and mandatory overtime. This means someone who tries to pursue hobbies or be a polymath/autodidact (i.e. "jack of all trades, master of none") is treated as an "unskilled" worker in our economy, and therefore less likely to survive in any kind of career field with sufficiently developed division of labor and narrowness of focus. People who are able to focus hard and keep their focus narrow will eventually however attempt to have "takes" that are outside of their chosen field, and these "takes" will be shoddy, mishmashed, and biased, like this physicist trying to talk about political economy. However, she'll be fine because she's toeing the establishment line. It is actually the Marxists who will get laughed out of the room in economics, not because they're wrong but because they don't echo a power-serving narrative, which is the other problem with Capitalism. It goes from something "efficient" that tears down pre-capitalist social structures to something reactionary that serves to perpetuate itself (regardless of efficiency) in a heartbeat. Marx's theory of value, after all, was derived from Adam Smith and David Ricardo, albeit with some nuance added, and some contradictions resolved, and taken to the logical outcome of proletarian revolution, but the bourgeois economists, upon encountering Marx's work, immediately abandoned the labor-based value theories put forward by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and began to retreat into the la la land of subjective value theory and marginal utility theory, showing how quickly the bourgeoisie will decouple themselves from reality if it is in their own short term political interests.