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The death of a public intellectual

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Re: The death of a public intellectual

#71

Post by tolani_somoye »

hnreport wrote: post #65
esafak wrote: post #2

Develop interests of your own and go beyond public intellectuals. Don't let all your information get recommended to you, only some of it. Reach out for the rest yourself. Books are very efficient at conveying information, so read some to get a lay of the land before going deep. Also, consider that there is more to know than you have time to learn, so be selective. Are you going to act on it? Is it going to give you p…

We are vulnerable to this attack strategy in books as well. The author can lull you in with a compelling concept, but you can soon realize they weren’t able to extrapolate their thesis beyond one chapter (if that). It’s probably the most mature moment I had as a reader, to be able to look at any book and be comfortable judging the pacing/vibe of it with regard to me. If a book isn’t vibing with you (you feel like the…

This is apt, you tend to read books and the first read is great, subsequent release ends up being the same context as previous book but without substance. The best is probably being able to self reflect and think for yourself, being mindful of your thoughts, thought process and things that affects it.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#72

Post by michpoch »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #67
RagnarD wrote: post #41

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and thei…

This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. I think it would be cool if we taught kids how things work along with how they can prove it for themselves. Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs are…

> This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself.

Could you give some example of what would you like to prove, from your college curriculum?

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#73

Post by cornholio »

Jensson wrote: post #57
andrewflnr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you can personally verify all the facts about biology, physics, and distant places that you rely on to make decisions every day, then you can throw stones about arguments from authority. The rest of us use a little bit of faith.

You can trim that down quite a lot by assuming things aren't magic and use some minimal trust. If people say that cars are designed using newtonian physics, and you see your car is working, then you can say you have tested newtonian physics even if you don't understand the calculations. Basically you test what you have and trust the description of the implementation. If it works you can trust the whole chain. This is…

This is exactly why the appeal to authority is such a useful heuristic: when it comes to physics, I trust the man who teaches the engineers that car companies employ to make cars - because I can see cars work every day, so at the end of the chain there must exist a person who has fundamental insights about how the world works.

So while I can't prove something is right by appeal to authority, it's a very practical way for me to swift though the unbounded mass of claims and information that I couldn't possibly verify or prove in my lifetime, not even to a 19th century level of scientific knowledge.

For example, I saw an onion cell once at a school microscope, but I have never seen a bacteria. So as far as I can independently prove, I live in times before the germ theory of disease - but that doesn't mean I shouldn't trust my doctor when he recommends vaccines and antibiotics. The entire antivaxx movement is just an attempt to challenge the medical authority by people who are not intellectually equipped to verify the scientific claims.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#74

Post by pauldenton »

Intellectuals undermined their credibility when they said protesting lockdowns was killing grandma, but protesting the police didn't kill grandma and is more important than lockdowns https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette... Reminds me of another letter that has aged just as gracefully https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-former-intel...

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#75

Post by m0llusk »

What is most off here is the analysis. The idea is that either someone is totally right about everything they assert because of extreme caution and care, or they are terribly wrong and flawed in a way that makes all of their ideas poison. But most intellectuals are in between there in a way this piece almost describes.

Take this specific example of Peter Zeihan. He dares to get out of his areas of expertise and gets somethings wrong and some things very wrong. But much of his core analysis is extremely relevant and useful. He tends to start from population demographics and the raw material sources of industrial supply chains. There is a lot of interesting stuff there and much of what Peter Zeihan points out is quite right and well ahead of the curve. For example, he was talking about Chinese demographic shrinkage well before it started to make major economic and political impacts.

So the idea here is that because Peter Zeihan tries to go as far as he can with what he has and ends up in the weeds much of the time that all of his work can be dismissed as foolish wandering about in the weeds. But that is false. The core issues of demographics and industrial supply chain roots remain and have very large impacts that are not particularly well hidden from careful examination. This implies that the real challenge is not deciding if a public intellectual is truly great or disgracefully fallen, but rather defining which points they make are solid and where it is that their reasoning falls off.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#76

Post by ImPleadThe5th »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #67
RagnarD wrote: post #41

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and thei…

This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. I think it would be cool if we taught kids how things work along with how they can prove it for themselves. Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs are…

My calc 2 professor would start every new concept by first describing (briefly) how the greeks would have done it with pure geometry, then how classic mathematics came to the solution from a different angle.

Probably the only higher math course I took that I was excited to go to lecture every day.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#77

Post by michpoch »

> The story goes something like this, I get recommended a clip on YouTube, there’s a man who is calm, articulate, and says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. Is my understanding of the world completely wrong?! I need to read everything this man written.

I think author understanding of the world is not wrong, but his approach - definitely. He expects to find some "wise man" who would have answers on all the world problems, sort of a panacea-man, which is clearly not a smart approach.

If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? That makes zero sense.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#78

Post by crooked-v »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #67
RagnarD wrote: post #41

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and thei…

This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. I think it would be cool if we taught kids how things work along with how they can prove it for themselves. Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs are…

> never

No, you definitely do eventually. I remember plenty of that stuff from back in my advanced math days (even if I can't remember any of the math itself at this point), like the aha moments showing linear algebra work underpinning the memorization from calculus. It's just way up there in the coursework because the 100- and 200-level classes don't have the time to explain that stuff to 50-plus people and make sure any of them understand any of it.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#79

Post by dagw »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #67
RagnarD wrote: post #41

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and thei…

This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. I think it would be cool if we taught kids how things work along with how they can prove it for themselves. Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs are…

maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance

That doesn't match my experience with college at all. I was admittedly a math major and possibly other departments do it differently, but most math courses I took put a lot of emphasis on proving stuff and proofs, and proving stuff was around 50% of the final exam in most courses.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#80

Post by RandomLensman »

RagnarD wrote: post #41

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and thei…

In a lot of cases you cannot check the connection to reality. And things being plausible (or following some "logic") means little to nothing when it comes to being correct.
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