I work in an office littered with highly lettered people. Both men and women with graduate degrees, some simply Masters, mostly Phds. Some are heavily credentialed, garnering more than a few of the creds.
The conceit that accompanies many of them is obvious when speaking with them or casually observing them. The once unceremonials cleaning their noses with pencils, crapping themselves through junior high, and always the last to get a date, grew to see themselves as celebrated geniuses. Because they’re smart and they stayed in an environment that cultivated their mental gifts. And through the cultivation they learned to focus on a narrow field of study like a red laser site on the eye of a target. They learned the field, and extended it by discovering a new rule or law or invention (Okay, I’m talking about the real Phds, not the overly educated on cruft.) So, good for them I say, it’s kind of balances out the early life misery many of them experienced.
That said, something I observed today reminds me of Hayek’s definition of scientism which
“ … describes, of course, an attitude which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.” -F.A. Hayek Counter Revolution of Science, Studies on the Abuse of Reason
Walking back to my office, I overheard one of the several overly educated aver that, “ A country’s finances cannot be compared with those of the person or business because
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