[FRIAM] academia as a market of ideas

[Prof David West]

A "market" found in aboriginal Australia and the South Pacific:

1- the two sides never spoke, only one side was "in the market" at any given time.
2- side A put out piles of the goods(A) they wanted to trade then leave.
3- side B would place their trade goods(B) near the goods(A) they wished to purchase, then leave.
4-Side A would remove piles that had no goods(B) and factor the goods(A) piles into smaller lots, then leave.
5-Side B would add good(B) to the smaller good(A) piles.
4-5 would continue until there was no change in the good(A) and good(B) piles — indicating that X amount of Good(A) was worth Y amount of Good(B)

No "commonality" of which glen speaks.

Academia does not function as such a market, but I think FRIAM might. Lot's of ideas put out that attract no response while others spawn long threads. This is a kind of "valuation" of the original idea to others on the list.

davew



On Thu, Feb 18, 2021, at 2:29 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> IDK, my joke response earlier was intended to say that I can't parse 
> "market of ideas". A market requires some common measure (e.g. 
> currency) to which everything is reduced and with which the things are 
> bought and sold. If it's a market, what is that measure? You could make 
> an argument that the measure need not be a reduction ... like some sort 
> of barter. But there would still need to be some commonality, perhaps a 
> language like English. And my guess is each idea domain has its own 
> jargon, which implies the domains would all need to be 
> inter-translatable ... and that would require some discussion of how 
> isomorphic the languages are. 
> 
> I'd argue part of why Nick thinks Sober is a tourist is because their 
> languages don't match very well. Hence, either it's not a market or 
> these 2 traders are bad at trading ... or somesuch.
> 
> On 2/18/21 12:44 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > I would think the metaphor is quite precise, since the same force that
> > distorts a commercial market place -- accrued power -- also distorts an
> > academic one.   I guess you might say -- I might say -- that when Sober
> > publishes in a behavior journal, he is using his power in one domain --
> > philosophy of biology --  to tour in another.  To make that case I would
> > have to show that the argument he makes is not only shabby in behavioral
> > terms, but no reason to claim that behavioral presuppositions are
> > inconsistent with more general principles of science.  A heavy lift?
> > 
> > Nick Thompson
> > ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
> > Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2021 1:37 PM
> > To: friam at redfish.com
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Watch Mars landing this afternoon
> > 
> > Speaking of efficiency, to what extent is it fair to consider academia an
> > efficient market of ideas? To the degree that it is, would this justify
> > conceptual tourism?
> 
> -- 
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
> 
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