This is very good from Henry.

One of the general points behind it - that we should think about what our contributions add to the conversation - has a bunch of striking consequences.

In particular, I think it suggests the Discourse has turned too much against narrow specialists. https://twitter.com/henryfarrell/status/1343984117344579584

It's true that a lot of philosophers produce work that is only valuable if you are interested in a very narrow topic.

But usually the most salient alternative is doing good but not great versions of stuff everyone else is doing.

And while that may have value in a vacuum, good work is after all good, its added value is zero. After all, someone else is going to be doing a great version of the same thing.

The specialist adds some value, and between them the specialists in a field may add a lot of value.

Objection: What if a speciality is all dried out, and just arguing in circles?

Reply: It is good to be a specialist in two things, especially two things that have few specialists in common. That way you can inform both fields.

My perhaps idiosyncratic view is that the best work in philosophy in the last couple of decades has come from people becoming experts in pairs of fields that previously lacked experts in common. But there are still plenty of pairs of fields without many common experts.

Objection: Even if the specialists collectively solve a lot of problems, that doesn't help a lot unless someone communicates the solutions to the wider world.

Reply: True, but it doesn't mean everyone has to be a great communicator.

In the limit, it might suffice for the community of specialists to have one great communicator in their midst.

It's true that not every community manages even that, but it doesn't mean everyone needs to work on this.

The same is true, I think, of the recent push towards more public philosophy. It's possible to believe the following two things (in fact I think they are both true).

1) There was not nearly enough public philosophy circa 2006, and it is good that there is more now. The work that folks like Myisha Cherry, Barry Lam, Peter Adamson etc do is great, and more work like theirs would be great.

2) Most philosophers should not try to emulate them.

It's probably easiest to see this if you think about Adamson. Imagine a philosopher who sets out to make their own history of European philosophy podcast, and it is half as good as Adamson's.

That would be an amazing achievement, and add virtually no value.

TL;DR: Think less about the value of your ideas in a vacuum, and more about their value in the social setting we in fact are in. In this world, it really might be the best thing you can do is "create a speck of intense irritation for someone whose views you vigorously dispute".