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Busting the paradigm without busting your career?

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A Cornell U psych prof warns against letting the career lardbellies know in so many words that you plan to shake things up a bit:

Do not present your ideas as paradigm defying. Let your audience figure it out for themselves. As soon as you trumpet your ideas as being paradigm busting, you are opening yourself up, regardless of what you say, to attack from people who will disagree with anything too new. So, downplay the paradigm-defying nature of your ideas. Let your audience figure it out. Some won’t figure it out and thus will feel less threatened.

Robert J. Sternberg, “Was Your Idea Too Creative?” at Inside Higher Ed

Applying the prof’s ideas to ID, perhaps it’s self-defeating for a researcher to say that a chosen approach opposes Darwinism. Darwinism is self-destructing anyhow. Better just to say that one can ansewer some questions more correctly and more easily if we are not expected to hew closely to a strict Darwinian account of evolution. That amounts to the same thing but non-fanatics may not pick up on the significance.

Comments
Stephen J Gould once said something like (going from memory), "the first thing you need in an argument is a good argument, the second thing you need is a way to allow your opponents to join your side while saving face."johnnyb
November 25, 2020
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Good advice for any teacher or salesman. Persuasion doesn't persuade. Only direct experience with Nature persuades. A good teacher or salesman provides an opening to let Nature speak. The trolls can't sue Nature.polistra
November 24, 2020
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