What I did not like about this article is that it equates autodidacts with always being woefully uninformed or delusionally incorrect.

While I have no illusions that I am a physicist (and thus I have no great theories to put forth), I don’t think much of my understanding of physics, biology, chemistry or neuroscience is wayward. Incomplete, sure. But no more incomplete (and probably less so) than many scientist/engineer types who believe they are experts in everything but really only know their one tiny field.

I have read the same textbooks they all have. Many of the same papers. I’m not a researcher in any field*. I don’t have the money or time to be that independent of a university.

Yes, many autodidacts are a bit nutty in their ideation. But not all of us are that way. I’d be willing to bet that I know more about most fields than most scientists who do not actually work in those fields (meaning that yes, an expert in, say, anthropology probably knows a hell of a lot more about anthro than I do, but I bet I could run circles around them in geology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, systems design, etc).

All autodidacts aren’t poorly self-educated loons, is what I am trying to say.

*While this is not quite true, no one cares about my economic history research.