… is page 307 from Thomas Sowell’s 2002 collection; Argumentative essays:
People who pride themselves on having ideas often fail to understand that we only know whether ideas are right or wrong after they have been tested by real-world experience. Most of them are wrong.
DBX: Yes.
This understanding helps to explain the shortcomings of so-called “higher education” today. “Higher education” is a heavily subsidized industry for producing ideas, but in the many factories of this industrial archipelago there are precious few good ways to test the practicality and relevance of these ideas in the outside world.