Speaking ‘out of our lane’ is how we illuminate and challenge bad priors – lest we blindly ingest all default historically inherited assumptions, which stall progress, and prolong the suffering of the many, for the comfort of the few
Consider business-analysis.
the ideal of: like good science and engineering; not the bad
The problem which business-analysts solve, is caused when incumbent specialists of any enterprise, are unable to see past sentimentally held priors (which may have been very important once, but aren’t the end state, and are now redundant)
For this work, analysts are necessarily ’less experienced’ in the historic significance of operational specifics for any respective enterprise implementation; a fact which is inevitably emotional for incumbent specialists, as ‘someone who simply doesn’t understand’ carves around old treasure.
consider that business analysts are the enterprise implementation of writings’ “kill your darlings”
For academia, stay in your own lane is the call-sign of wilful stagnation, and an implicit plea for effective-retirement. However senior, academics ought not publicly dismiss challenges to old means of inquiry, or hinder the pursuit of new truths, surely?
‘stay in your own lane’ is artificial preservation of misplaced trust in hidden assumptions, and toxic to intellectual growth
In a world where entire fields of study seem more than happy to blindly pursue the shiny thing of complexity-first distinctions; isolated lanes – which protect sentimentally held priors of forebears, and which perpetuate misunderstandings, framed as tradition – need all be torn down; to allow the sanitising ignorance of daylight to flood in and over; to illuminate unseen, historically inherited assumptions, which hold us all back.
Fuck immutable lanes – like our collective future depends upon it.