The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#51

Post by primroot » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #34

The "furious exchange of proper nouns" made me lul. "Derrida and Badiou at Tanagra!" It's like this because like the Tamarians, everyone in the discussion is assumed to be familiar with all of the background material -- and if you are not, then what the hell are you doing here? I saw this kind of elitism unfold here on Hackernews once. Someone once asked for an explanation of what deconstruction was and was told basi…

"Intellectuals don't make studies about themselves." - Noam Chomsky (probably paraphrased because I can't find the source, although I'm sure I've heard him plenty of times say this.)

I think intellectuals (including the ones that do honestly try to answer questions about the world rather finding ways to convince people about how important their field is) should be compared to the priestly castes of older societies. That is one way to make sense of their behavior.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #30

lostmymind66 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still disagree. Many issues usually fall into 2 or a few sides (abortion, taxes, gun control, etc), so statistically, it's fairly easy to come up with your own opinion on any one issue and match the mainstream. There are also many people that go to the extremist views because they want to be different. They are guided by the mainstream and choose a different side, just so they can feel like a rebel. I don't really…

Nearly no issues fall on 2 sides. Is there a time of pregnancy where abortion is ok? What guns do you want to control, and what kind of control do you want to have? Are your taxes progressive or proportional? How progressive? Where does progressiveness stop? Do you create product-specific taxes? Anyway, take 10 issues that fall on exactly 2 sides, and you should never meet two people that agree with them all.

[deleted]

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#53

Post by mistermann » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:51 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.

Considering the subject matter of the article, I think this is a fair question...

misogynistic:

- strongly prejudiced against women

- feeling, showing, or characterized by hatred of women

What aspect of Peterson's "message" do you consider to be misogynistic, and with respect to which of the above definitions (or, another accepted definition)?

I'd ask the same about the "confused" part, but that's even more vague.

(And in the event of a possible "Please keep religious flamewar off this site" warning, I think another fair question is how a person who initially levels serious pejorative accusations is considered innocent of posting religious flamewar, but someone who merely questions them is guilty? If the actual reason is something more along the lines of "do not go against the general orthodoxy of the site because it creates a toxic environment", which is actually realistically pragmatic, then perhaps making such things explicit in the site guidelines would be helpful to reduce these sorts of problems.)

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#54

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:52 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…

There's entire books written which contradict every point you've brought up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own (his stuff on epistemology not the rest)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#55

Post by pmiller2 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #30

lostmymind66 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still disagree. Many issues usually fall into 2 or a few sides (abortion, taxes, gun control, etc), so statistically, it's fairly easy to come up with your own opinion on any one issue and match the mainstream. There are also many people that go to the extremist views because they want to be different. They are guided by the mainstream and choose a different side, just so they can feel like a rebel. I don't really…

Nearly no issues fall on 2 sides. Is there a time of pregnancy where abortion is ok? What guns do you want to control, and what kind of control do you want to have? Are your taxes progressive or proportional? How progressive? Where does progressiveness stop? Do you create product-specific taxes? Anyway, take 10 issues that fall on exactly 2 sides, and you should never meet two people that agree with them all.

Does the pigeonhole principle not apply anymore? Surely you will find at least 2 people who agree on 10 binary issues in any group of 1025 people, unless this is some roundabout way of saying there are no binary issues.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#56

Post by pixl97 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:54 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…

>because there is only one reality

Mostly, yet this view also has significant problems. The biggest issue is that as complexly increases, ability to completely traverse the problem space decreases. Combinatorial explosions commonly happen. The more variables you add to the equation, the larger effect local variables will have on the answer people arrive at.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#57

Post by barrkel » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 6:05 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…

The easiest way for an aspiring rationalist to talk himself into supporting a faulty conclusion is to start with a feeling of rightness or wrongness, examine those feelings and pluck out some rationalisations, then mistake them for principles and follow them to extremes.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#58

Post by badpun » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #49

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…

> Nobody reads JP to become a better person, they do it to feel better about being a shit person.

I've just watched an interview with him where he says that, when he's out on the street in basically any city in the world, he's approached roughly once every ten minutes by someone thanking him for the help they got from his lectures and books. In many cases they say that, thanks to JP, they were able to lift themselves from shitty life situation (ex. abusive family, addiction, depression, aimlessness, anger etc.) and turn their lives around. I cannot reconcile that with your comment.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#59

Post by menacingly » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

xfs wrote: post #18

Der_Einzige wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why the term for what this article is criticising is "Critical Theory". Leftist postmodernists are damn good at critiquing things, and calling out why one should reject a mainstream position. Of course, they forgot that the seductive belief in rationalism - specifically in the claim that some human recognize reality more correctly than others (and education is what separates the wrong from the correct…

Well, you have to master the language of critique before being able to critique the language itself.

The language of critique itself is designed to reach certain conclusions and be blind to others. It's like a calculator with no odd numbers.

Re: The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

#60

Post by 0815test » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #49

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…

The stance that "the world is arbitrary and makes no sense" is itself far from uncontroversial! Indeed, the very term "modern world" suggests that our world (in contrast with the "pre-modern" one) does derive much of its comparative success from institutions and frameworks that work (at least to some extent) in ways that can be made some sense of and understood fairly well.