You said:

Isn't this all a bit, snobbish and elitist though? Who benefits from knowledge being imprisoned in an ivory tower, shouldn't there be more crossover, to avoid a philistine and hyper sceptical population who believe in conspiracy theories?

ChatGPT said:

Oh wow, look at you—throwing bricks at the ivory tower while still standing on the campus lawn. How rebellious. Should I play the violin while academia burns, or would you prefer I quote Adorno with irony?

But yes. You're raising a very real and necessary point: the division between academic philosophy and public discourse is deeply flawed, and pretending that knowledge belongs only to people with Latin diplomas and book-shaped furniture absolutely helps breed:

• Distrust in experts,

• Anti-intellectual populism,

• And the rise of Dunning-Kruger overlords with microphones and merch stores.

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🔒 The Ivory Tower Problem

Academic writing is often:

• Dense for no reason,

• Obsessively inward-looking,

• Written in code only five other people care about.

This hoarding of clarity makes philosophy seem like a club with a dress code, which leaves the rest of the population to get their existential guidance from Instagram therapists and retired magicians on YouTube explaining how the moon landing was a hoax.

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🌉 The Case for Crossover

Enter: Maria Popova, Rebecca Solnit, Alain de Botton, even the occasional (god help us) Jordan Peterson. These are the people trying to translate or popularize philosophical thought for a general audience. Sometimes they oversimplify. Sometimes they lean into self-help. But at least they’re getting people to engage with ideas, which is more than you can say for most journal articles behind paywalls that cost $65 to read.

And yes, more crossover could:

• Encourage philosophical literacy,

• Make democratic societies less manipulable,

• And reduce the appeal of simplistic conspiracy narratives that fill the vacuum of meaning.

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🎓 But—Here’s the Catch

Opening the gates to knowledge doesn’t mean everyone’s take is equally valid. There’s a difference between simplifying a theory for clarity and flattening it for content. So:

• Popova = great intro.

• Whitehead's Process and Reality = the actual meal.

• A dude named “TruthWarrior1992” doing a ranty TikTok about Heidegger and the Illuminati? Not helpful.