Professor Alan Davison - Being passionate about a problem doesn't mean your solution is right.

10 Lessons Learned

Embark on a journey through logic, leadership, and the quest for intellectual diversity with Dr. Alan Davison on our latest podcast episode. It’s time to challenge your perspectives.

About Professor Alan Davison

Alan heads up Heterodox Academy in Australia, promoting viewpoint diversity in our academic communities. He has published both scholarly and popular articles on trends in social sciences and humanities research.

Alan launched the “Permission to Think” speaker series alongside well-known media figure Josh Szeps in 2021, which invites prominent scholars to openly discuss complex issues during this age of outrage. Examining the role of intellectuals and institutions in public debates, especially those in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) faculties. To date, guests in the series have included the likes of Jonathan Haidt and Alice Dreger.

Alan had an unusual educational background, being largely home-schooled and entering university via special admissions. He studied piano privately through his teens before initially undertaking a Bachelor of Music in performance, changing to musicology for his postgraduate study.

His long-running research interests cover music and visual culture, art and aesthetics, celebrity studies, and 19th-century European cultural history, but he maintains his knowledge of previous interests, especially in the philosophy of science and the scientific method.

Episode notes

0:00 Intro
08:35 Lesson 1: Never Stop Being Curious
13:23 Lesson 2: Being passionate about a problem doesn't mean you have a solution
20:38 Lesson 3: Try to Steelman and not Strawman.
29:30 Lesson 4: Smart people can use their IQ to rationalize terrible ideas.
36:16 Lesson 5: Be both strategic and tactical and challenging orthodox.
42:43 Lesson 6: Being anti orthodox can be as bad as being orthodox.
44:50 Lesson 7: Humans are apes.
49:56 Lesson 8: Great leaders are both intellectual and ethical.
01:03:07 Lesson 9: Be consistent but be prepared to change.
01:06:25 Lesson 10: Working for and amongst people with diverse viewpoints is fulfilling.