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IlyaShpitser comments on LW should go into mainstream academia ? - Less Wrong
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Indeed, and I think a case can be made that this is exactly backwards (if we must have such "rules" at all).
Ok, but before we turn everything upside down, can we think a little about why academia ended up being the way it is? Hanson had some good status-based explanations about the academic career trajectory.
If you haven't done cutting edge stuff, the worry is you don't know what you are talking about yet, and shouldn't be a public-facing part of science.
Also there are well-known popularizers who aren't significant academics, e.g. Bill Nye. Bill Nye did some engineering stuff, though.
Aren't defacto most popularizers of academia journalists who write popular articles about science?
Journalists and scientists that write popular exposition books. The former are generally terrible (journalists tend to have an education that emphasizes writing, not numeracy).
But that doesn't stop them from doing it or finding an audience.
Yes, but no one important takes them seriously.
I think plenty of politically important people read the science section of the New York Times and of other newspapers.
If important people would only listen to scientists for understanding science we would have different policy on global warming.
Same reason why milesmathis (google it, have fun) isn't taken, and shouldn't be taken seriously by the mainstream. Because "playing by the rules" didn't work - you usually end up with an unending amount of crackpottery in what is actually not published: books, blogs, etc.
Not publishing in the mainstream while publishing books and self published articles is the crackpott's artillery, unfortunately.
Think like the mainstream: given the amount of crazy stuff that's present on the internet that couldn't be published because it was, indeed, crazy, should I care about this particular guy that doesn't publish anything but books (or self published articles) ? The unfortunate answer is no.
Why do you assume I haven't?
Stop expecting short inferential distances!
Because you wrote one sentence without actually giving the argument. So I went with my prior on your argument. And my prior about arguments that argue for drastically changing the existing order of things is they aren't right.