Isn't this implicitly conflating "seriousness" with *inaccessibility*? Thinking about different subfields of philosophy, your tests would suggest that the most "serious" are the more formal subfields: logic, language, and metaphysics, perhaps. Maybe some history of philosophy: medieval scholasticism, etc. Ethics is far more accessible, by contrast. But I don't think that inherently makes it less "serious".
I would expect seriousness to correlate with inaccessibility. For example, suppose that you can understand everything going on in a field with only 5 minutes of thinking about it. Well then I think that's evidence that people aren't thinking about it in a very deep way.
I think that to think about ethics in a serious way, you'd have to have more than six months of training. If I look back to what I thought after thinking hard about ethics for 6 months, much of it was unbelievably dumb.
That's true, but the Tucker test doesn't reflect real understanding so much as whether he can give a sufficiently superficially plausible facsimile of knowledge to (together with his superior rhetorical skills) dupe his equally ignorant audience. I could very easily imagine myself losing a debate with Tucker Carlson, for example; I can't so easily imagine the same for my philosophy of language colleagues. This is possible because ethics is *prima facie* accessible in a way that philosophy of language isn't. But it doesn't really speak to the *depth* of either field.
I don't think you'd lose to Tucker if you argued about some random ethics topic. But remember I don't claim this test is a perfect demonstration, just that it correlates pretty well. I think the Destiny test is better because it's a test of real knowledge.
I’m less confident in that seriousness *strongly* correlates with accessibility. I agree that some correlation exists - you’re right that a field that can be understood in five minutes isn’t much of a field at all. But I also think inaccessibility is frequently a shield for bad ideas.
Maybe there’s a difference between necessary and unnecessary inaccessibility? This would create problems for externally assessing the “seriousness” of a field, because you probably need some understanding of a field before you can determine whether it is unnecessarily inaccessible.
Not at all surprised medicine is low given that it's a highly employable field. Hence, it attracts a lot of people who are just looking for a stable and well-paid profession (as well as people with egos who want a prestigious job and title). The MCAT doesn't correlate strongly with general intelligence, unlike the LSAT, since it's primarily a matter of memorization. There's a certain threshold you have to pass to study medicine, but ultimately industriousness and dedication can compensate for marginal intelligence. This is good since society needs physicians
I’ve taken the MCAT and it’s much more than simple memorization. That might’ve been true for the pre 2015 version of the test, but the test now is application of the knowledge than simple regurgitation of stuff you’ve read. I don’t really agree with the argument you’re making here.
I'm not saying the MCAT's just regurgitation. What I'm saying is that it's a test that's knowledge-centered, whereas the LSAT's basically a verbal intelligence test. Hence, MENSA accepts the LSAT as a basis for admission. The LSAT's less trainable than the GRE, GMAT, and presumably the MCAT since the only way to prep for it is to learn how to reason effectively since that's what the questions test. This isn't to say that a dumb person can score high on any of these, just that with strong work ethic and dedication someone whose IQ is one standard deviation above the mean can score higher on these relatively trainable tests than their raw intellect might predict
In a different sense, the ability of an amateur to excel in debate at least could be a sign of how deadly serious the field is- it can show that it's an area where only a true expert can separate plausible nonsense from gold.
Your test as it stand seems open to undeniable counterexamples. People from the deeply serious fields of geology and evolutionary science used to complain that they got steam rolled in debates by creation scientists because digging into why they were wrong took too long in that forum.
I think a fairer test is a debate in written form. Here, I think, plausible nonsense is easier to expose, at least if there is a real difference between true expertise and plausible nonsense in the area. Also, I think we need to stipulate an intelligent reader who is broadly knowledgeable (though not specifically about the topic at hand). Certainly if an intelligent reader cannot tell a difference between plausible knowledge and expertise *in written form* something is wrong.
Great point. There are important social and psychological aspects to a public debate that obscure and influence success in ways unrelated to the seriousness of the discipline.
And the idea seems to rely at least a bit on the debaters acting in good faith. Convincing me that you're winning a debate on mathematics probably requires not misusing any terms I'm familiar with and not making any errors I can catch (and maybe not reaching any conclusions I'm very suspicious of), but beyond the Bachelor's level, I think a confident actor who doesn't seem confused could possibly fool me.
This is the entire problem with this kind of taxonomy though. Pop psychology can be debated by my dog. But the stuff my ClinPsychD wife does required 11 years of higher ed for a reason!
Your article and your references are fascinating. Many thanks!
I like your pair of tests, as I think they nicely bring to the perceptual level your underlying concept. I also respect Bonnell, even if I happen to disagree with him on something. As for the other person, there is not much there on which I care to expend cognitive effort.
Regarding debates: In some cases, I have seen the debaters "talk past each other". This may be a device to satisfy those in the audience who have already chosen sides, but I end up less than satisfied over how the points were dealt with.
On the professions: One aspect that I observe in your list is that those at the top are "thing oriented", whereas those at the bottom are "people oriented". Over the years, I have come to appreciate that many who are "people oriented" have strengths in that realm that are the equal by some measure to the strengths of those with the high tested IQ.
Personality also has to have a role. Physicists and engineers as likely to be strong with "introversion, intuition, thinking, and judgment or prospecting ( Myers-Briggs INTJ or INTP ) whereas those in the "people" category will likely fall near the opposite of these.
Your reference to writers producing articles consisting of buzzwords thrown together brings to mind the publication of "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", by Alan Sokal in 1996. While his hoax may have been or soon will be eclipsed by AI, I would not be surprised if this paper is still considered a classic.
The thing is that wrt say, the history of Israel/Palestine, knowing a lot about various points of the history doesn't necessarily help you that much when you're debating one particular point of the history. For example Finkelstein can know far more than Destiny about the Nakba, the first intifada, operation cast lead, etc. But how does that help him in a debate about whether the current Israeli offensive constitutes genocide? The knowledge that you'll accumulate by studying the broader topic a lot doesn't generalize to any particular debate regarding the topic in the same way that knowing the intricacies of how math and physics work on a general level will be massively important to a debate about any particular topic or contention in the field of math or physics. If Destiny and Finkelstein entered into a contest where they had to showcase a wide breadth of knowledge regarding the historical intricacies of the conflict, I am sure Finkelstein would win very clearly. But if they are in a contest where Destiny can vigorously research a few particular points, and then "choose his battles" and primarily challenge Finkelstein on those, it does not surprise me that he can do well.
I also think there's basically a 1-1 correlation between knowledge of the fundamentals of a field and research ability. I've always found that to be true of philosophers. If we were serious about how we hire professors, hiring them solely on the basis of an objective test of the college level coursework of a field would work perfectly imo.
I don't know, I wouldn't want to debate Harold Bloom [or his Shade, I guess] on Shakespeare or pretty much anything in the Canon, and I've been reading flittingly in that Canon all my life.
Whatever you think about the value of that Canon, and the superstrate of theories on it, there's an awful lot to master there to be able to talk competently about it.
It took more than six months to create a Harold Bloom. Do you know how many books he wrote? Do you know how long it takes to write a dissertation for a PhD.
Better than I would with Terence Tao! But I'd still be out of my depths. A Comprehensive Exam-style question that requires comparing the development of the English novel over 400 years with ancient Epics or something - I'd do badly because I believe it would take me six months just to get through the novels of George Eliot, let alone the critical discussion of her work.
I'm not sure, [here](https://youtu.be/JcA5szcnESY?si=TaApiUVpkESbqRIj) is a debate with Destiny and economics professor Richards Wolff. Your mileage may vary, but most think destiny preformed well here. I wager that the problem both with Wolff and Finkelstien is that they represent a fringe position in their respective fields. They gained notoriety because their opinions are shared by many non-experts. Norman Finkelstein can't even read Hebrew or Arabic. to defeat them Destiny can just piggy back of the mainstream opinion of the field. I think that Destiny would do a lot worse if he tried to debate Morris on Israel or Krugman on economics.
Or what if he debated the archeologist Israel Finkelstein (no relation) on the historicity of the Davidic Kingdom? I see no way he would succeed there, he'd have to be aware of so much literary and archeological evidence that
I think a problem here might be that when judging how well someone did in a debate, you are often yourself a layman (and so are most of the people who make up the consensus of how it went). So, for example, when I checked the comments for the Huemer-Sapolsky debate on free will, the majority were people who thought that Huemer was just saying nonsense, and that he had his ass handed to him by Sapolsky (I can see that it has now become more well-rounded, so I might be misremembering somewhat). But someone who is familiar with philosophy would not see it that way. When you have not spent a lot of time thinking about a subject, some things will seem very plausible to you, which are not plausible upon further examination, but a 90 minute debate format doesn't really allow for those sorts of things to be fleshed out.
Although I certainly think that there is something to what you are saying, but it is probably not as dramatic as you make it out to be (I suspect).
Debating is a different skill then doing scientific research or studying political systems. I think you’re right that fields differ in how much effort it takes to ‘pass’ as not obviously ignorant. But just because Ben Shapiro is good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t mean he actually does. Like, whatever research he did on history was enough to get “The right side of history” published, but not enough to make it good. It takes genuine expertise in humanities fields to be able to separate superficially plausible nonsense that can fly for 20 minutes on a podcast from actual knowledge.
This isn’t to say that there’s no difference between fields or that there aren’t some nonsense fields. But your test isn’t a great one.
Adversarial interviewing and debating is itself a skill, and one people like Destiny or Tucker Carlson are well practiced in. I'm not going to watch a five hour video though to check your claim that Destiny did "fine" and therefore Finkelstein (and the whole field of history?!) is unserious, but it's not, on the face of it, a very convincing rubric.
I think it's overly optimistic to claim that Tucker couldn't defeat a mathematician in a debate. Mathematicians would think he'd lost, the same way insiders in other disciplines tend to back their own, but they're a tiny tiny fraction of the population. Like, given a few days prep and no shame, I'm sure I could make a persuasive-sounding case against any well-proven theorem.
Tucker: "But people find errors in published proofs all the time! [Three examples]"
Terence: "That is pretty rare, but--"
Tucker: "Pretty rare? [fourth example]!".
Terence: "Well, regardless, this is a high-profile result that's been looked at extensively and nobody's found any errors in it."
Tucker: "Nobody? What about [reference to actual, but obscure paper whose title sounds plausibly like it could contradict the theorem, but doesn't.]"
Terence: "I haven't read that one, what does it say is the error?"
Tucker: "It disproves the theorem directly! My research team found it in an hour. What is wrong with mathematical culture that you can come on here and say confidently that nobody's found any errors in the proof, when this paper refuting it has been out for over a year? Why are you so committed that you'll blind yourself to the evidence? Is this somehow a political thing?"
Terence: "No, I personally read the proof, and understood it, and followed the reasoning. If we had a day, I could take you through it."
You may be overestimating philosophy here. Destiny does fine in philosophy disputes, too. And I think six months preparation would be more than enough to contend with academic philosophers on many topics, especially in ethics.
For philosophy, it may be highly variable and turn more on the topic in question. It doesn't take months of preparation to see that a lot of philosophy consists of clusters if claims that "seem true" to the proponent of the claim.
How commonly do potential medical students even take the GRE?
You seem to think the fact that a dumb person can have a debate about a novel with an insightful person implies that the whole concept of having insight about a novel is bogus.
To put it another way, if the field of literary criticism is not serious, how could one even judge who is winning the debate? Or is it just a gut feeling but not something worthy of academic study?
It's unclear to me what you mean by a field not being serious. If English and humanities and history aren't serious, do you think the academic careers of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were not serious? Or the careers of the people who have written and edited dictionaries? Or of people who prepare critical texts of the Bible? Or of the authors of all the history books ever written?
Sure, if I want to debate a historian, I can read the books her academic rivals wrote and throw those points back at her (I could win the debate if I was a better debator), but I didn't do all the research and work of writing those books.
I think the point you are trying to make is that it is more likely to find politically motivated or silly people in the humanities. But that doesn't mean the whole field is "unserious".
Isn't this implicitly conflating "seriousness" with *inaccessibility*? Thinking about different subfields of philosophy, your tests would suggest that the most "serious" are the more formal subfields: logic, language, and metaphysics, perhaps. Maybe some history of philosophy: medieval scholasticism, etc. Ethics is far more accessible, by contrast. But I don't think that inherently makes it less "serious".
I would expect seriousness to correlate with inaccessibility. For example, suppose that you can understand everything going on in a field with only 5 minutes of thinking about it. Well then I think that's evidence that people aren't thinking about it in a very deep way.
I think that to think about ethics in a serious way, you'd have to have more than six months of training. If I look back to what I thought after thinking hard about ethics for 6 months, much of it was unbelievably dumb.
That's true, but the Tucker test doesn't reflect real understanding so much as whether he can give a sufficiently superficially plausible facsimile of knowledge to (together with his superior rhetorical skills) dupe his equally ignorant audience. I could very easily imagine myself losing a debate with Tucker Carlson, for example; I can't so easily imagine the same for my philosophy of language colleagues. This is possible because ethics is *prima facie* accessible in a way that philosophy of language isn't. But it doesn't really speak to the *depth* of either field.
I don't think you'd lose to Tucker if you argued about some random ethics topic. But remember I don't claim this test is a perfect demonstration, just that it correlates pretty well. I think the Destiny test is better because it's a test of real knowledge.
I’m less confident in that seriousness *strongly* correlates with accessibility. I agree that some correlation exists - you’re right that a field that can be understood in five minutes isn’t much of a field at all. But I also think inaccessibility is frequently a shield for bad ideas.
Maybe there’s a difference between necessary and unnecessary inaccessibility? This would create problems for externally assessing the “seriousness” of a field, because you probably need some understanding of a field before you can determine whether it is unnecessarily inaccessible.
Not at all surprised medicine is low given that it's a highly employable field. Hence, it attracts a lot of people who are just looking for a stable and well-paid profession (as well as people with egos who want a prestigious job and title). The MCAT doesn't correlate strongly with general intelligence, unlike the LSAT, since it's primarily a matter of memorization. There's a certain threshold you have to pass to study medicine, but ultimately industriousness and dedication can compensate for marginal intelligence. This is good since society needs physicians
I’ve taken the MCAT and it’s much more than simple memorization. That might’ve been true for the pre 2015 version of the test, but the test now is application of the knowledge than simple regurgitation of stuff you’ve read. I don’t really agree with the argument you’re making here.
I'm not saying the MCAT's just regurgitation. What I'm saying is that it's a test that's knowledge-centered, whereas the LSAT's basically a verbal intelligence test. Hence, MENSA accepts the LSAT as a basis for admission. The LSAT's less trainable than the GRE, GMAT, and presumably the MCAT since the only way to prep for it is to learn how to reason effectively since that's what the questions test. This isn't to say that a dumb person can score high on any of these, just that with strong work ethic and dedication someone whose IQ is one standard deviation above the mean can score higher on these relatively trainable tests than their raw intellect might predict
Ahh okay got it. Sorry, I guess I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
No worries; I should've been more articulate in my initial comment lol
In a different sense, the ability of an amateur to excel in debate at least could be a sign of how deadly serious the field is- it can show that it's an area where only a true expert can separate plausible nonsense from gold.
Your test as it stand seems open to undeniable counterexamples. People from the deeply serious fields of geology and evolutionary science used to complain that they got steam rolled in debates by creation scientists because digging into why they were wrong took too long in that forum.
I think a fairer test is a debate in written form. Here, I think, plausible nonsense is easier to expose, at least if there is a real difference between true expertise and plausible nonsense in the area. Also, I think we need to stipulate an intelligent reader who is broadly knowledgeable (though not specifically about the topic at hand). Certainly if an intelligent reader cannot tell a difference between plausible knowledge and expertise *in written form* something is wrong.
Great point. There are important social and psychological aspects to a public debate that obscure and influence success in ways unrelated to the seriousness of the discipline.
I think this is an interesting idea that is probably true a lot of the time (as you said, a heuristic).
But I wonder how you reconcile it with the fact that conspiracy theorists often hold their own in debates https://open.substack.com/pub/benthams/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7oulk.
And the idea seems to rely at least a bit on the debaters acting in good faith. Convincing me that you're winning a debate on mathematics probably requires not misusing any terms I'm familiar with and not making any errors I can catch (and maybe not reaching any conclusions I'm very suspicious of), but beyond the Bachelor's level, I think a confident actor who doesn't seem confused could possibly fool me.
Right, it would have to be in front of an audience of people who understand the topic.
I’m surprised at how low psychology is.
This is the entire problem with this kind of taxonomy though. Pop psychology can be debated by my dog. But the stuff my ClinPsychD wife does required 11 years of higher ed for a reason!
Your article and your references are fascinating. Many thanks!
I like your pair of tests, as I think they nicely bring to the perceptual level your underlying concept. I also respect Bonnell, even if I happen to disagree with him on something. As for the other person, there is not much there on which I care to expend cognitive effort.
Regarding debates: In some cases, I have seen the debaters "talk past each other". This may be a device to satisfy those in the audience who have already chosen sides, but I end up less than satisfied over how the points were dealt with.
On the professions: One aspect that I observe in your list is that those at the top are "thing oriented", whereas those at the bottom are "people oriented". Over the years, I have come to appreciate that many who are "people oriented" have strengths in that realm that are the equal by some measure to the strengths of those with the high tested IQ.
Personality also has to have a role. Physicists and engineers as likely to be strong with "introversion, intuition, thinking, and judgment or prospecting ( Myers-Briggs INTJ or INTP ) whereas those in the "people" category will likely fall near the opposite of these.
Your reference to writers producing articles consisting of buzzwords thrown together brings to mind the publication of "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", by Alan Sokal in 1996. While his hoax may have been or soon will be eclipsed by AI, I would not be surprised if this paper is still considered a classic.
The thing is that wrt say, the history of Israel/Palestine, knowing a lot about various points of the history doesn't necessarily help you that much when you're debating one particular point of the history. For example Finkelstein can know far more than Destiny about the Nakba, the first intifada, operation cast lead, etc. But how does that help him in a debate about whether the current Israeli offensive constitutes genocide? The knowledge that you'll accumulate by studying the broader topic a lot doesn't generalize to any particular debate regarding the topic in the same way that knowing the intricacies of how math and physics work on a general level will be massively important to a debate about any particular topic or contention in the field of math or physics. If Destiny and Finkelstein entered into a contest where they had to showcase a wide breadth of knowledge regarding the historical intricacies of the conflict, I am sure Finkelstein would win very clearly. But if they are in a contest where Destiny can vigorously research a few particular points, and then "choose his battles" and primarily challenge Finkelstein on those, it does not surprise me that he can do well.
I also think there's basically a 1-1 correlation between knowledge of the fundamentals of a field and research ability. I've always found that to be true of philosophers. If we were serious about how we hire professors, hiring them solely on the basis of an objective test of the college level coursework of a field would work perfectly imo.
I don't know, I wouldn't want to debate Harold Bloom [or his Shade, I guess] on Shakespeare or pretty much anything in the Canon, and I've been reading flittingly in that Canon all my life.
Whatever you think about the value of that Canon, and the superstrate of theories on it, there's an awful lot to master there to be able to talk competently about it.
But if you spend 6 months doing many hours a day of prep for it, I think you could do fine.
It took more than six months to create a Harold Bloom. Do you know how many books he wrote? Do you know how long it takes to write a dissertation for a PhD.
Better than I would with Terence Tao! But I'd still be out of my depths. A Comprehensive Exam-style question that requires comparing the development of the English novel over 400 years with ancient Epics or something - I'd do badly because I believe it would take me six months just to get through the novels of George Eliot, let alone the critical discussion of her work.
I don't know if this is true but if it is, I'd take it as evidence that Harold Bloom is a serious guy.
> Destiny, in contrast, has been studying the conflict for just around 5 months and has not read a single book on the topic.
This is false, at the very least, he read " Scars of War, Wounds of Peace- The Israeli-Arab Tragedy" [here are his notes](https://publish.obsidian.md/destiny/Research/Book+Notes/Scars+of+War%2C+Wounds+of+Peace-+The+Israeli-Arab+Tragedy)
> Economics would do fine [in the Destiny test]
I'm not sure, [here](https://youtu.be/JcA5szcnESY?si=TaApiUVpkESbqRIj) is a debate with Destiny and economics professor Richards Wolff. Your mileage may vary, but most think destiny preformed well here. I wager that the problem both with Wolff and Finkelstien is that they represent a fringe position in their respective fields. They gained notoriety because their opinions are shared by many non-experts. Norman Finkelstein can't even read Hebrew or Arabic. to defeat them Destiny can just piggy back of the mainstream opinion of the field. I think that Destiny would do a lot worse if he tried to debate Morris on Israel or Krugman on economics.
Or what if he debated the archeologist Israel Finkelstein (no relation) on the historicity of the Davidic Kingdom? I see no way he would succeed there, he'd have to be aware of so much literary and archeological evidence that
Wolff has a PhD from a top mainstream dept but he’s heterodox and not at all representative of economists.
> I wager that the problem both with Wolff and Finkelstien is that they represent a fringe position in their respective fields.
I think a problem here might be that when judging how well someone did in a debate, you are often yourself a layman (and so are most of the people who make up the consensus of how it went). So, for example, when I checked the comments for the Huemer-Sapolsky debate on free will, the majority were people who thought that Huemer was just saying nonsense, and that he had his ass handed to him by Sapolsky (I can see that it has now become more well-rounded, so I might be misremembering somewhat). But someone who is familiar with philosophy would not see it that way. When you have not spent a lot of time thinking about a subject, some things will seem very plausible to you, which are not plausible upon further examination, but a 90 minute debate format doesn't really allow for those sorts of things to be fleshed out.
Although I certainly think that there is something to what you are saying, but it is probably not as dramatic as you make it out to be (I suspect).
Debating is a different skill then doing scientific research or studying political systems. I think you’re right that fields differ in how much effort it takes to ‘pass’ as not obviously ignorant. But just because Ben Shapiro is good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t mean he actually does. Like, whatever research he did on history was enough to get “The right side of history” published, but not enough to make it good. It takes genuine expertise in humanities fields to be able to separate superficially plausible nonsense that can fly for 20 minutes on a podcast from actual knowledge.
This isn’t to say that there’s no difference between fields or that there aren’t some nonsense fields. But your test isn’t a great one.
Adversarial interviewing and debating is itself a skill, and one people like Destiny or Tucker Carlson are well practiced in. I'm not going to watch a five hour video though to check your claim that Destiny did "fine" and therefore Finkelstein (and the whole field of history?!) is unserious, but it's not, on the face of it, a very convincing rubric.
I think it's overly optimistic to claim that Tucker couldn't defeat a mathematician in a debate. Mathematicians would think he'd lost, the same way insiders in other disciplines tend to back their own, but they're a tiny tiny fraction of the population. Like, given a few days prep and no shame, I'm sure I could make a persuasive-sounding case against any well-proven theorem.
Tucker: "But people find errors in published proofs all the time! [Three examples]"
Terence: "That is pretty rare, but--"
Tucker: "Pretty rare? [fourth example]!".
Terence: "Well, regardless, this is a high-profile result that's been looked at extensively and nobody's found any errors in it."
Tucker: "Nobody? What about [reference to actual, but obscure paper whose title sounds plausibly like it could contradict the theorem, but doesn't.]"
Terence: "I haven't read that one, what does it say is the error?"
Tucker: "It disproves the theorem directly! My research team found it in an hour. What is wrong with mathematical culture that you can come on here and say confidently that nobody's found any errors in the proof, when this paper refuting it has been out for over a year? Why are you so committed that you'll blind yourself to the evidence? Is this somehow a political thing?"
Terence: "No, I personally read the proof, and understood it, and followed the reasoning. If we had a day, I could take you through it."
Tucker: "Maybe next time."
You may be overestimating philosophy here. Destiny does fine in philosophy disputes, too. And I think six months preparation would be more than enough to contend with academic philosophers on many topics, especially in ethics.
For philosophy, it may be highly variable and turn more on the topic in question. It doesn't take months of preparation to see that a lot of philosophy consists of clusters if claims that "seem true" to the proponent of the claim.
How commonly do potential medical students even take the GRE?
You seem to think the fact that a dumb person can have a debate about a novel with an insightful person implies that the whole concept of having insight about a novel is bogus.
I don't think I implied that!
To put it another way, if the field of literary criticism is not serious, how could one even judge who is winning the debate? Or is it just a gut feeling but not something worthy of academic study?
It's unclear to me what you mean by a field not being serious. If English and humanities and history aren't serious, do you think the academic careers of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were not serious? Or the careers of the people who have written and edited dictionaries? Or of people who prepare critical texts of the Bible? Or of the authors of all the history books ever written?
Sure, if I want to debate a historian, I can read the books her academic rivals wrote and throw those points back at her (I could win the debate if I was a better debator), but I didn't do all the research and work of writing those books.
I think the point you are trying to make is that it is more likely to find politically motivated or silly people in the humanities. But that doesn't mean the whole field is "unserious".