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It's a common attitude in a lot of LessWrong-adjacent blogs: analyze some complex phenomenon that the social sciences have studied in depth, but act as if no one has ever thought of it before. So when class comes up, it's better to think of in the terms of some rando blogger, not (for instance) Bourdieu or Weber.

And then when you get absurd results, it proves your originality and willingness to look past conventional wisdom.



I think the LW diaspora types are almost always doing "here's a model for understanding this thing that I like, let's talk about it" rather than "this is How This Thing Works and there is no need to consider other perspectives". A lot of this type of criticism that I see looks like expecting the latter, when there's an underlying assumption shared by the author and the people familiar with the subculture that the former was the goal.

For my own curiosity, what tension do you see between Bordieu's or Weber's work and this rando blogger's perspective?


> And then when you get absurd results, it proves your originality and willingness to look past conventional wisdom.

Do you have any particular absurd results in mind?


Bourdieu and Weber are "rando bloggers" compared to Marx, perhaps we should write them off too?


Presumably anyone studying Weber and Bourdieu has also studied Marx. Anyway, Weber's influence on sociology is huge, comparable to Marx's, and Bourdieu was obviously influenced by Marx, so your comparison doesn't work on any level, really.




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