Robin Hanson
The sex redistribution guy?
If that's all you know him by you should definitely read his actual blog and work, since he's super interesting and actually a really wonderful person.
Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#62Elon Musk
This will be a controversial answer for some reasons I think are misplaced. In my opinion Elon Musk seems like he has a potent toxic side to his personality, and he doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of certain things. He also legitimately seems delusional at times. However in terms of bringing awareness, optimism, and a willingness to actively work on engineering solutions to long-term existential threats to hum…
If someone has a historical record of making delusions become reality, then I think they aren't really delusional.
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#63Jordan Peterson
Unfairly down voted.
I second this. Jordan Peterson
Edit: To all the people that cowardly down voting me: I also like Heather Mac Donald and Ben Shapiro.
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#64Christopher Hitchens. His impact on me is so powerful that for the last 4 years I have my ringtone and sms alert tone set to him saying "There are no final solutions. There is no absolute truth"
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#65I kinda like Warren Buffett
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#66Richard Stallman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman
How is Stallman a redirect to RMS's page? Shouldn't it go to a disambiguation or name page?
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#67J. R. R. Tolkien
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#68Leonard Susskind, a theoritical physicist at Stanford. He has open, free video lectures that cover an entire 4 year cirruculum of a physics degree in his personal website called Theoritical Minimum.
Yep, he has an extremely charming personality judging from his videos. Something similar is about Robert Sapolski, also from Stanford. Love watching these guys lecture. Natural born teachers.
I suspect our Youtube accounts are doppelgangers. o/
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a 'brave' answer...
It's a fine answer. He spends his time railing against Marxism, Postmodernism, SJW culture and telling people to take responsibility. His main messages seem to boil down to become resilient and don't destroy the world.
He's helped me to become resilient too ... resilient to the pseudo intellectual BS he peddles.
Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a fine answer. He spends his time railing against Marxism, Postmodernism, SJW culture and telling people to take responsibility. His main messages seem to boil down to become resilient and don't destroy the world.
He's helped me to become resilient too ... resilient to the pseudo intellectual BS he peddles.
I've noticed this really interesting phenomenon when people disagree with or dislike someone in academia to label them as a psuedo intellectual.
This happens for people on both sides of the divide. Look at the comments on any potentially controversial academic discussion and the phrase pseudo intellectual comes up an awful lot.
Now, I can't imagine both sides of a debate contain only psuedo intellectuals. Nor can I reasonably say I think the entire of Academia is filled with only so-called psuedo intellectuals.
So how do you delineate who is an actual intellectual vs. who is a psuedo intellectual?
What is your criteria? What is the criteria in general?
Anyone?
Because it seems to me this phenomenon manifests when people either disagree with or dislike an academics conclusions. As such I completely discount the opinion of anyone willing to use the phrase psuedo intellectual.