[sawwit]

Wait, so Steve Jobs wasn't a visionary. He was just a salesman exploring unexploited markets as any salesman does? Albert Einstein wasn't a visionary. He was just a physicist that explored unconsidered theories as any physicist does?

It seems to me that in philosophy there is just as much "groupthink" as in almost any human endeavor—there is a maybe little less in the hard sciences where the systems give you feedback about whether an idea is correct or not.

[igravious]

You're just biased towards the so-called hard sciences. There is nothing about them specifically that prevents groupthink as you call it. Science deals with what is, not with what ought to be or shouldn't be and so on. Sure, for a scientist the universe kicks back but that is nothing to do with how a scientist chooses what to work on in the first place, and what preconceived notions and frameworks that scientist is operating under. I could give countless examples of scientists comfortably working within ideological frameworks or reasoning using incorrect theories.

The whole point of philosophy is that it is meant to encourage freedom of thought and free-thinking individuals. That's its job spec. I disagree that “there is just as much "groupthink" as in almost any human endeavor” -- if that really is the case then philosophy is failing at what philosophy _ought_ to be succeeding at.

I'm not saying Bostrom isn't an extraordinarily good philsopher, I'm saying that seeing the big picture and going against conventional wisdom and intuition goes with the territory. Don't imagine that I'm running Bostrom down, I very much enjoy reading the guy and listening to his thought processes, I find him to be a very rigourous thinker.

Maybe it's a small quibble, of course he can be both.