The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#41

Post by alexashka » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #4

> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or…

If you change 'extremist' to 'unconventional', then we're in full agreement.

Extreme positions for an independent thinker make sense if you're in your 20s or 30s because you form ideas in contrast to status quo, often by swinging in the opposite direction.

By the time you've had a decade or two to test your ideas in the real world, the extremism fades away into either 'things are far more complex than I thought' or 'I'd need to change many minds to make this work and I see no clear path to get there' - which are not extreme positions as far as I can tell.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#42

Post by api » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

One peeve of mine is these sorts of folks complaining about the popularity of people like Jordan Peterson. Sure I agree that Peterson is confused, pseudo-profound, and misogynistic, but maybe if academics churned out more philosophy that spoke to the concerns of real people Peterson would have less of an audience. People like him are popular because academia produces only impenetrable walls of irrelevant jargon.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#43

Post by ajna91 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

13415 wrote: post #40

hirundo wrote: post #4

> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or…

This is mostly wrong, because there is only one reality. As trivial as this may sound, if you're interested in reality, then you will invariably get to the same conclusion as many other people. Of course, there will always be some shifts in knowledge and at that time a fringe position can be the right one, but these are rare - very rare, indeed. Generally, the fact that there is one reality means that scientific opin…

But most of what people care about are not "mere facts" of reality. What is the correct answer to the questions of morality, politics, etc?

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#44

Post by n4r9 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

api wrote: post #42

One peeve of mine is these sorts of folks complaining about the popularity of people like Jordan Peterson. Sure I agree that Peterson is confused, pseudo-profound, and misogynistic, but maybe if academics churned out more philosophy that spoke to the concerns of real people Peterson would have less of an audience. People like him are popular because academia produces only impenetrable walls of irrelevant jargon.

Is it necessarily the job of academics to have superficial appeal to the layman?

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#45

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

api wrote: post #42

One peeve of mine is these sorts of folks complaining about the popularity of people like Jordan Peterson. Sure I agree that Peterson is confused, pseudo-profound, and misogynistic, but maybe if academics churned out more philosophy that spoke to the concerns of real people Peterson would have less of an audience. People like him are popular because academia produces only impenetrable walls of irrelevant jargon.

"maybe if academics churned out more philosophy that spoke to the concerns of real people Peterson would have less of an audience"

Someone did. His name is Wittgenstein. Folks just don't read him.

Also, real people def experience existential dread. Camus and Sartre are great reads for trying to come to terms with the possibility of infinite (but some infinities are larger than others!) freedom

Real people experience oppression, which is why most of the "postmodern neo-marxists" care so much about stopping it.

Real people experience ethical dilemmas, and would find a lot of utility in exploring the thoughts of Kant, JSM, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Arendt. Out of those, Kant is the only one whose sort of difficult to understand without knowing the jargon. Really this article is about how terrible contemporary French Philosophy given that the useless jargon seems only to be in their works (since Hegel anyway)

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#46

Post by hirundo » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

mrrrgn wrote: post #37

hirundo wrote: post #4

> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or…

Certain personality types are more likely to ignore social pressure and pursue logical conclusions of ideals. It's probably no accident that such personality profiles only account for a small percentage of our population as logical conclusions based off of faulty models can lead to huge disasters. The great mass of people who don't do much deep thinking act as a dampener and probably prevent our society from shaking…

This is an argument against teaching critical thinking skills, which in the current zeitgeist is an extremist position. By thinking independently like this you weaken the dampener and risk the disintegration of society.

If that's followed by an adaptive reintegration, it's a feature not a bug.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#47

Post by bigbadgoose » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

It's OK, even the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th deviations have their "normies"

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#48

Post by pixl97 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

kartan wrote: post #20

hirundo wrote: post #4

> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or…

extremism /ɪkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m,ɛkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m/ noun the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism. Update: My point is that you are redefining what "extremism" means. e.g. The far-right is extremism. To think that you can create colonies in Mars in the next 10 years is "unorthodox". If you redefine extremism to something that is acceptable, and most people defines far-right as extremism, you are defini…

The word extremism has nothing to do with right or wrong itself.

If I live in an area that has had a stable climate for 1000 years, but i had at least some evidence that an 'extreme' change was going to occur, most people would consider that extremism. Especially since people will radically have to alter their behavior to survive.

In general extremist are incorrect, yet due to black swans, not always.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#49

Post by wayoutthere » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

api wrote: post #42

One peeve of mine is these sorts of folks complaining about the popularity of people like Jordan Peterson. Sure I agree that Peterson is confused, pseudo-profound, and misogynistic, but maybe if academics churned out more philosophy that spoke to the concerns of real people Peterson would have less of an audience. People like him are popular because academia produces only impenetrable walls of irrelevant jargon.

People don’t want philosophy; if they did then there are plenty of authors from Aristotle through the modern day. Existentialism is basically “how to survive in an arbitrary world that makes no sense”. It’s a fucking guidebook for the modern world built in the years before and after WW2.

People en masse want pop-philosophy that confirms their existing beliefs. Nobody reads JP to become a better person, they do it to feel better about being a shit person.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#50

Post by pixl97 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #28

BeetleB wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People outside the mainstream on a topic who are not deeply experienced specialists in that field have almost certainly fallen prey to well-crafted arguments that advance a falsehood. First off, these are not mutually exclusive stances. Both you and GP can be right at the same time. Second, I'd leave it at "well-crafted" and omit the claim that they are falsehoods. Whether they are true or false is the source of end…

> They believe it because they bought into a prevailing narrative without much thought. And I'm arguing that this is the most rational thing to do in most cases. If you are outside your field, you should just accept the mainstream position unless you have devoted a great deal of (well-spent) time to the study of the topic. For any given matter of fact there is only one truth and unlimited falsehoods, and many of the…

>For any given matter of fact there is only one truth and unlimited falsehoods

Local maxima and global maxima may not align. In any system assembled from smaller systems and interacting with variable components no one truth may cover all outcomes.

Also this neglects that when it comes to profit motivations, there are intests that will sell a mainstream view that is categorically false for their own financial gain.