When you call it the "Brahmin class" dismissing it becomes redundant.

I think we need institutions though, in which the "marketplace of ideas" isn't just <B>the</B> marketplace. Lesswrong is one of them, as are universities.

I believe that the rules of the game in academic research can be very productive as long as there is a there there. I tried to model this as "discovering natural machines", which is what I think Newton did, or "Finding your Invisible Elephant" -- if the blind men actually have an elephant then they may be able to map it if they go about it the right way. But if they have no elephant - one is hugging a tree trunk, another has hold of a snake and another is pushing on a wall - no amount of "scientific method" will help them find the nonexistent elephant. This is why I think some disciplines, like literary criticism and some branches of sociology, despite having peer-reviewed journals and all that, simply go round in circles, and lead to distrust of others, which have something to offer.