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There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

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Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#2
"Intellectual diversity" of course as always being a code word for acceptance for racism, sexism and antisemitism, etc. in society, cloaked in progressive language. In that sense, yes, the "diversity" has decreased and I hope this continues for many years to come.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#4
post #2

"Intellectual diversity" of course as always being a code word for acceptance for racism, sexism and antisemitism, etc. in society, cloaked in progressive language. In that sense, yes, the "diversity" has decreased and I hope this continues for many years to come.

Oldest trick in the book: use current terminology to repackage your message of division, discord. There's always enough fools who don't notice.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#5
> The communists won World War II, and imposed an ideological purge of unprecedented savagery, universality, and thoroughness ... Liberal democratic cosmopolitanism didn’t win any arguments; it won a war, and got to impose itself by force.

That feeling when you’re so het up about the Modern World you conflate communism and “liberal democratic cosmopolitanism” as “tHE lEFt”.

The true travesty in intellectual diversity is the American right wing abandoning any semblance of intelligent debate. Cue Shapiro calling Andrew Neil a leftist, or almost anything written by Jordan Peterson.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#6
I find there is a lot of intellectual diversity today than 20 years ago, American intellectual imperialism is slowly - but surely - crumbling down. There is no Washington consensus anymore. But nothing has surged to replace it, yet. We are in a transition phase that it can go on for centuries. Our "observatory" over history and society is as tiny as our observatories to discover the universe.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#7
Isn't that natural? The cone of possibilities is large when we know nothing. As we become more knowledgeable, we eliminate hypotheses. So, for instance, while you might have believed all sorts of nonsense about the size of people's heads and whatnot a hundred years ago, you no longer can.

Hell, a thousand years ago, maybe you could have hypothesized the existence of dragons. No, the space of hypotheses is massive, and we keep cutting into it, making small enclaves of things that resist falsification.

This necessarily reduces diversity. I'd be a fool today to believe in miasma theory.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#9
A decrease in intellectual diversity is a natural consiquence of faster communication and wider availability of information. 30 years ago, it was much easier to live your life without much contact to opposing viewpoints. Now if you voice your opinion online, it can be challenged instantly by people from all different backgrounds all across the globe. Of course the result of that is that more controversial viewpoints face more resistance than they did in the past.

However I do think it's worth thinking about how the structure of online communication affects idea formation and the perception of consensus. The gamification and quantization of social interactions which exists on social media platforms does have an effect on which types of ideas are mainstreamed, and which ones are marginalized, and I think it can be argued that this has not always been for the better.

Re: There is much less intellectual diversity now than there was 100 years ago

#10
post #2

"Intellectual diversity" of course as always being a code word for acceptance for racism, sexism and antisemitism, etc. in society, cloaked in progressive language. In that sense, yes, the "diversity" has decreased and I hope this continues for many years to come.

Ah yes "Everyone I disagree is a racist sexist antisemite". Instant argument winner for anyone with a low IQ
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