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"It’s a weird place man."

Malcolm Gladwell interviews Michael Lewis on “The Undoing Project”, the book on Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s friendship (slightly edited):

Gladwell: This is the first book where you explore academia.

Lewis: It’s a weird place man. It’s really is odd. It reminded me a little bit of Hollywood, watching these movies get made. They spend three, four our five months making the movie and then eight months in award season, celebrating each other. They spend so much time celebrating each other, they don’t have time to make the movies. […]

In all arenas of ambition, the people are very status-conscious in them. This is true of Wall Street, this is true in Washington, but the way that people are so sensitive about their stature in their community - the only thing I’ve seen like it was in Hollywood. Academics spend a lot of time telling each other what geniuses they are. And at the dullest possible kind of events.

And the other thing that’s odd about them is that they write all these kind of papers that really aren’t meant to be read. They aren’t written to engage a reader. […] They’re written in a defensive crouch. They are written to survive their readers. […] I felt so sorry for academics by the end of the thing. (link)