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Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#71

Post by qntty »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #70
qntty wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Jordan Peterson is a pseudo intellectual because he pretends to have a deep understanding of Marxism and postmodernism, but when pushed, he admits that he hasn't even read the people he criticizes. He uses his position as a professor to give himself authority but his ideas wouldn't last 3 seconds in an environment where people had any background in the things he's talking about. There are people who are criticized unfairly for being a pseudo intellectual but Jordan Peterson isn't one of them. Any set of criteria for what constitutes a pseudo intellectual will include people like JBP unless you exclude people with academic jobs.

As for whether I dislike his ideas, I can't really get too worked up about most of what he says. It's sort of trite and he seems to have a very mildy authoritarian personality and his views on gender seem to be pretty unimaginative, but this is true about a lot of people. He seems to have some helpful advice for young people (take responsibility for yourself, etc.) that some people say they really need to hear, so it's not all bad. But at the same time, he's also a charlatan when he talks about political theory.

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#72

Post by etse »

elendilm wrote: post #64

Christopher 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"

“there is no absolute truth” sounds awful like a statement of absolute truth

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#73

Post by MrLeftHand »

qntty wrote: post #69
james_s_tayler wrote: post #52

Earlier 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 can sense political and ideological disagreement between you and JP.

So you're saying that people having different opinion on politics, gender, identity can't have a positive impact on someones life?

Downvoting someone just because he or she was moved by a person you don't like doesn't make you right.

And the debate about whether he is, or is not a pseudo intellectual has nothing to do with this. You don't have to be an intellectual to help others. To have a positive impact on people.

I love how people always think that positive impact comes from technology, or science. Yes, these things make our lives better, but does it help when people are immoral, corrupt and disregard their fellow human beings?

Someone wrote Steve Jobs in the comments. Coming up with better consumer electronics and then ruthlessly keeping prices high and boxing the consumer in their company ecosystem is not helpful to society. Will I downvote the guy? No.

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#74

Post by james_s_tayler »

qntty wrote: post #71
james_s_tayler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Jordan Peterson is a pseudo intellectual because he pretends to have a deep understanding of Marxism and postmodernism, but when pushed, he admits that he hasn't even read the people he criticizes. He uses his position as a professor to give himself authority but his ideas wouldn't last 3 seconds in an environment where people had any background in the things he's talking about. There are people who are criticized un…

Something I've been grappling with lately is that everyone basically pretends to have an understanding of everything to some degree.

Most of our models of things are hopelessly low resolution cartoon versions of the real thing, yet we feel like because we know what something is, perhaps how to operate it, and perhaps where/how to acquire it then we feel like we can explain it in much greater detail than we actually can. This is the so-called Illusion of Explanatory Depth.

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27117

I don't personally know if his models of Postmodernism and Marxism are ultra-low, low, medium, high or ultra-high resolution, but I would venture to say a well read University professor on the world stage talking about these Philosophies on a regular basis has at least read Derrida, Foucault, Marx and other primary sources. I'd be very surprised if he hadn't and if you could point to a an admission from him that would be appreciated.

For me, I came to learn about these ideas from him. His firebrand, sky-is-falling style of Rhetoric made it fun to listen to and ultimately I thought well I didn't understand it very well after listening to him for an hour, but I came away with a feeling it's important to dig deeper and do more investigation. I went away and got an alternative explanation of Postmodernism from Stephen Hicks who I thought explained it a lot better and clearer and I enjoyed watching that. I watched Thad Russell get into Postmodernism with Joe Rogan to hear it more from the Postmodernist side.

Ultimately a good professor sparks interest and debate and inspires people to get interested and learn. Peterson did that for me. I didn't necessarily take his version of things and just run with it but he made my ears prick up and he made me pay attention. I think that's really valuable.

Now the most legit criticism of Peterson is that whacky ancient snake paintings == DNA thing and he's justifying that belief purely just because he wants to and because an anthropologist got high on Ayahuasca, tripped balls and wrote a book. I'd expect more from an academic but hey... We're all human. Gotta take the good with the bad.

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#75

Post by deepaksurti »

Prabhu Ramachandran [1], author of Mayavi [2]

The amount of high quality work he does, all the while being positive, cheerful and friendly is a trait to imbibe and admire.

I am privileged to have him as a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide.

[1] https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/

[2] https://github.com/enthought/mayavi

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#77

Post by playing_colours »

John Carmack. First, by making one of the most memorable game of my childhood. Second, by inspiring me and a few of my friends via Masters of Doom [1], with his tweets, videos, by being a Craftsman, the embodiment of a great programmer. Masters of Doom helped one of my colleagues to ignite his passion for coding again, after a long exposure to mind-numbing corporate work.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#79

Post by fghtr »

smellf wrote: post #66
fghtr wrote: post #48

Richard 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?

Here is the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stallman&redirect...

Re: Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?

#80

Post by meshr »

qntty wrote: post #6
meshr wrote: post #3

Robin Hanson

The sex redistribution guy?

Ok, I found Hanson’s view on “sex redistribution” in his blog http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html

Mad world: It is ok for the US president to pay prostitutes, restrict sex-redistributing websites and it is ok for the first lady to sell body. What is not ok is to advocate more liberal sex policies for scientists.

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