Academic Forums, what they are lacking
Academic Forums.
Have you ever been to one? I have on many occasions, where highly professional individuals gather to discuss current future and past developments of a specific field. It could be computer science, fiction, medicine or mechanical engineering. Often these places are largely crowded by serious as well as mischievous people who call themselves professionals forgetting the fact that it's just a cohort from the society, perhaps a little bit above average IQ than the rest of the population. Often there will be screens, displaying articles, conference rooms to present papers, and dinner parties, that everyone wear ties, except ladies. They do perform an important function of keeping a bunch of nerds interested in their so-called profession, by giving them opportunity to socialize in such events. And I can clearly see, some elderly men and women, who have spent their entire lives on profession, accumulate lot of attention in such societies, but when they step out of it, just becomes old empty individuals. I am not at all against professional forums. But I feel there is strong opportunity for improvement.
Being too formal
I always feel these forums are too formal. It doesn't have to be a physical forum. Recently I joined some philosophical groups online and posted some ideas of mine, about various things I observe in life. Just in raw fashion. Acceptance and discussions which followed showed me that general public who knows nothing about philosophy are curious and raised questions so there had been fruitful discussions. But intellectuals just start attacking, like they have seen weed in their beautifully arranged rows of vegetables in their plot. They could not tolerate a stupid question, not just for a one minute of it, as when the ego that they built reading philosophical books of others had made them heavy, to go to a battle. Similar happens in academic forums too. It is a place for people who already shine to shine, and even suppress the voice of novelty, although latter is not the objective by definition. There is no atmosphere like in a bar, where you can open up to bartender drunk in the middle of the night and tell all the stupid things you have been doing in your professional life and discuss. Instead of ties and coats, I would like to see occasional people with big hearts in these forums. These idiots do not even know that all their movements happen due to a paycheck signed by some billionaire who harvest their brain capacity.
Being too narrow
The other problem I see is these forums being too narrow. As professionals have spent significant amount of their time on studying things that they are supposed to study rather than their natural interests, they have developed a tunnel vision. Like horses with blinkers, they can only see the way forward in a narrow field. But innovation and creativity that demand in such high-end professional forums ask for novelty of ideas, new hypothesis etc. Where do they come from? How can acquire such vision for future? I think the key is in diversifying knowledge to other domains. Lawyers do not know what doctors doing, Doctors do not know what mechanical engineers doing, Engineers do not know what farmers doing, and everyone do not know what politicians doing. We learnt about everything when we were in primary school. About fire fighters, pilots, mathematics, geography. But now everyone we associate are just professionals in just one specific subject, stuck in their own heads, with a bunch of academic articles and research papers. How boring it is to be such a person? I would rather walk on a road and speak with a random stranger to kill my boredom in a professional forum and see what real humans are doing nowadays on beaches. Do they still gather around at nights and play with their kids?
next -> becoming a polymath
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