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The death of a public intellectual

thmsmlr.com

201–210 of 374 posts

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#201
The only difference between a public intellectual and an entertainer or other content creator, is that the public intellectual had at least one novel idea about something important. I mean idea very broadly here, it can take the form of a reframing, an intuition pump, a system for reasoning, etc. That makes them known as "the guy who came up with x" vs. "the guy who makes videos about y". Rogan has a podcast, Taleb is the fat tails guy.

But even the best public intellectuals only have a few novel, high quality ideas a year. Most have only a few during their whole career. If someone only writes a book when they have something to say (a rarity for professional authors, more common amongst people who don't like writing). That book probably contains a few, maybe only one, novel idea. That's the case for books, what about tweets or videos?

Entertainers and public intellectuals compete for the same bandwidth. They show up in the same feeds. In order to compete, the intellectuals have to lower their standards, and the result is that many public intellectuals are only in the intellectual business 1/100 of the time, and in the hot takes business the other 99/100.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#202

Comes with the territory when you are on the lookout for Rockstars and fueling the influencer economy. This post should reach 1 on HN to close the circle for max universal irony.

The weirdest thing about this thread is that nobody has yet suggested replacing public intellectuals with GPT-4.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#204
post #158

It might help to expand your horizons a bit. I see a lot of dudes on there I easily spotted for having limited range from the start. The trouble is people like this float too far off the ground and never come down to catch up. They usually lose their touch long before they gain the limelight, but are able to cruise a bit. The big tell: is "being a public intellectual" all they have? Do they have no experiences with t…

I can't hit the link --- getting a 503 -- but I'd add a few. Rebecca Solnit ( Men Explain Things To Me , widely awarded) Ta-Nehisi Coates ( Between the World and Me , MacArthur Fellow) Ibrahim X. Kendi ( How to Be an Antiracist , MacArthur Fellow)

Once I heard Kendi's definition of racism (1) I could no longer take that guy seriously. He is a social justice warrior public intellectual of the post modernist variety leading me to think he is either innocently and unknowningly deluded or an intentional and nefarious grifter profitting from giving apparent credence to the hard left hardliners. A similar role that Jordan Peterson leverages to make a living arguing or giving theoritical support for the religious right.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc (it's a 2 minute video and totally worth it!)

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Eric and Lex are not organic? Certainly both are well connected, but do you really think someone at youtube tapped them to be famous? Idk where the line between organic and inorganic is, but I highly doubt youtube sat down in a meeti g with Lex and said "youve been chosen, were gonna blow your channel up"

We know that Youtube can put their fingers on the scales of their algorithm, and that they do. It's probably a single variable like `multiplier` in their hotness formula that is a default of 1.00. Lex Fridman gets insane reach beyond the quality or popularity of his content. But it's not about a single person. It's that these midwit pseudointellectuals (Peterson, Weinstein) can constantly get churned through the top…

It really seems like Lex Fridman was boosted as a "safe Joe Rogan", a stoner/intellectual/macho podcaster guy, but one who won't lead his audiences into conspiracy theory territory. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because Lex obviously idolizes Joe Rogan and either smokes too much weed before his interviews or acts as if he does.

I really can't wrap my mind around how he managed to get so many high profile guests so fast, except to guess that his father's connections had a lot to do with it. Every part of his meteoric rise seems inorganic to me.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that Youtube can put their fingers on the scales of their algorithm, and that they do. It's probably a single variable like `multiplier` in their hotness formula that is a default of 1.00. Lex Fridman gets insane reach beyond the quality or popularity of his content. But it's not about a single person. It's that these midwit pseudointellectuals (Peterson, Weinstein) can constantly get churned through the top…

It really seems like Lex Fridman was boosted as a "safe Joe Rogan", a stoner/intellectual/macho podcaster guy, but one who won't lead his audiences into conspiracy theory territory. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because Lex obviously idolizes Joe Rogan and either smokes too much weed before his interviews or acts as if he does. I really can't wrap my mind around how he managed to get so many high profile gues…

Lex started out as an AI guy if I'm not mistaken. Also - as an aside - he is legitimately one of the worst interviewers of all time. He is so insanely bad at asking good questions. but he has really interesting people on his show so it doesn't matter.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#207

It’s unfortunate that there is not an “intellectual media network” that does all the hard public relations stuff for intellectuals and allows them to easily share their work with a public audience. Since this doesn’t exist, you end up with people that are willing to play — and are good at — the media game, which usually means making outrageous attention-grabbing claims that are far outside the person’s expertise.

The Conversation is/was an attempt at this:

https://theconversation.com/global

Initially, it was good. Then, it went downhill due to a relaxation of rigour; for every expert giving a scholarly overview, there was a junior academic pushing their particular line. On particularly polarising issue, outright gibberish slipped through (during Jeremy Corbyn's time as leader of the Labour party, for example). These days, there seems to be a scree of shallow articles about current hot topics.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#208
oh ye people, you always need a golden bull to worship. turn your attention inside and listen to the truth that is always there. that's where the revolution starts. otherwise, you're just a consumer of the latest YouTube fad.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#209

> 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 ha…

If someone is a free thinker and person of knowledge and eloquence that I respect I'd probably be interested in hearing their position on pretty much any topic, not just their narrow field of professional interest. Take Noam Chomsky for instance, I seriously doubt that that many people online listened to his lectures on linguistics, right?

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#210
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…

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.

It's perfectly okay to stay agnostic on things you don't know about. It's always okay to say "I don't know." If you were forced to take a position on something you don't know about yourself, then looking to relevant authorities may be a decent enough plan, but who's forcing you to take positions on things?
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