Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The death of a public intellectual

thmsmlr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 374 posts

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#281

Post by RationalDino »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #245
jlos wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would not consider someone who has the following CV an intellectual? - Has published or co-authored over 100+ academic papers in multiple fields - Has h-index of 41, i10-index of 77, with 21,000 citations [0] - Taught at Harvard - Tenured Professor at the largest University in Canada - 20+ year clinical practice - Best selling author with over 5 million copies sold You don't have to like his ideas, but if this…

Isn't this just an appeal to authority?

As other comments said, this is not just an appeal to authority. He really is an authority.

However, having established real authority, he then uses it to convey ideas which are less supported. https://youtu.be/eKwSDqJAum8?si=WKNMLmu8Y8OO7kwn&t=631 calls this a "science sandwich", and it is a good description. So, for instance, he'll have a series of lectures. Some are real science. Such as how the big 5 personality characteristics correlate with political alignment. Others are pseudoscience. Such as using Jungian archetypes to push his politics. He doesn't differentiate, and audiences who have accepted his authority ALSO don't differentiate.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#282

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

y0ssar1an wrote: post #225

> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. Man repeatedly falls for the worst "public intellectuals" (really, pretentious charlatans), discovers that they're not trustworthy, and runs to the internet screaming "THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IS DEAD." nah brah, you just have bad tase. Jordan Peterson -> an incoherent rambler. He's inca…

> which he calls the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex", because they're all in a big conspiracy to suppress his genius ideas.

I don't say this sarcastically or ironically... but isn't that one of the big things proper science actually does? Think about it for a moment, science is the business of suppressing all the stupid ideas humans have come up with over the centuries. And until it got started doing that, those ideas were everywhere, keeping everyone ignorant.

It has a somewhat careful methodology to this suppression. It designs experiments to falsify everything it can, conducts those experiments rigorously and exhaustively, until everyone is convinced that those ideas are wrong and the ideas are as dead as doornails.

But, if somehow it comes across one that is falsifiable but that can't be falsified by experiment, it moves on... plenty of other ideas to suppress.

Hell, science should adopt that moniker and run with it. Be proud of it. It's one of the things it gets right.

If that's his worst jab at science, he's just lazy and not very clever.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#283

Post by dralley »

JSavageOne wrote: post #266
dralley wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people ever dislike public figures? Why do people dislike Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil or Jake Paul? Peterson is / was a drug addict that gives mediocre-at-best self-help advice, who also goes around whining about wokeness and saying hateful things, while somehow keeping a large audience and grifting them for millions of dollars. As far as public figures go, it's fairly typical for such a person to invite antipathy.

Nothing you just said disputes any of what Peterson has said. The fact that you mention him being a "drug addict" (he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants after his wife got cancer) and then use words like "whining" to try to discredit him without actually addressing or disputing anything he's said shows you just have an axe to grind with no substance.

>he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants

That is a very severe understatement. He was so badly addicted to benzos (for years) that he ended up going to Russia to have himself put into a weeks-long medically-induced coma to go cold-turkey, which resulted in brain damage. (He insisted on that course of action, which Western doctors refused to go along with, for obvious reasons).

That left him unable to walk or speak properly for months and he still hasn't and probably will never fully recover. Just watch videos of him from a few years ago and compare them to videos from recently.

I get that benzos is being studied as a potential treatment for depression, but he was doing massive quantities, and not as part of a pharmaceutical trial.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#284

Post by c22 »

virtualritz wrote: post #211

It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'. This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text of the most basic ideas, frequently completely missing the point, into sophisticated-sounding language. The other names tell me nothing; but having the former in the list kept me from looking up the latter. [1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellec…

Intellectual just means working with ideas. It's not the same as intelligence.

We can still call Gochnaur [0] a baseball player even if he wasn't any good at it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gochnaur

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#285

Post by hindsightbias »

hnreport wrote: post #167
pjc50 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely I think a lot of these people would be better off if they got into k-pop or something rather than geopolitics.

Bro, so what u saying, u saying millions of us are effectively Rogan simps in a parasocial relationship? These relationships are on both sides (e.g AOC on the left).

I know a lot of leftists. Not one has ever sent me a link to an AOC podcast. Does she even have a podcast?

Until I dropped social media, I was getting Rogan links all the time.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#286

Post by RationalDino »

5040 wrote: post #263
RationalDino wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hedgehog/fox classification isn't mine, it is Philip Tetlock's. As is the data about pundits showing what the outcome is. See https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/tetlock/ . But I agree that it is not a perfect distinction. For example, Malcolm Gladwell writes on such a variety of things and viewpoints that he can't be a hedgehog. But he pursues a good story over what what is true, and therefore isn't very reli…

>The hedgehog/fox classification isn't mine, it is Philip Tetlock's I know it from Isaiah Berlin, but it looks like he took it from Archilochus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

Thank you for that correction and history.

I got it from Tetlock, and didn't realize that his applying it to intellectuals wasn't original to him. I also previously knew about it from Archilochus.

Regardless, it is a useful insight. We usually shouldn't trust talking heads who seem certain. And the exemplar that I hold in my mind was Karl Rove's 2012 meltdown as he refused to question his certainty that Romney would win: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/11/07/16458...

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#287

Post by blueflow »

RationalDino wrote: post #278
blueflow wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of times when i hear about Peterson, its someone trying to discredit him. Then i go to Youtube, search for what Peterson said about $topic, and can't find shit that i would even bother about. This stuff is getting creepy. Where is all the dislike coming from?

What you are experiencing is called "the controversy bait-and-switch". Peterson is a master of it. What he does is say something designed to look like a dog whistle to get people upset. Then when challenged on it, he say something reasonable to pull in fans. Then he says something else which is designed to be misunderstood, and repeats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKwSDqJAum8&t=244s explains it, and shows an actu…

Ngl, its a big PITA if you say thing A, and some people understand A, B, C and D and then get mad at you for supporting D. This happened to me some times before and i absolutely hate it. Seeing your argument that its a baddy thing makes me feel very uneasy.

And the "dog whistle" thing you mentioned is conceptually that, accusing someone of saying something they didn't exactly say. I hate this concept. How would someone even proove that something they said wasn't a "dog whistle"?

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#288

Post by sroussey »

RationalDino wrote: post #281
AlecSchueler wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just an appeal to authority?

As other comments said, this is not just an appeal to authority. He really is an authority. However, having established real authority, he then uses it to convey ideas which are less supported. https://youtu.be/eKwSDqJAum8?si=WKNMLmu8Y8OO7kwn&t=631 calls this a "science sandwich", and it is a good description. So, for instance, he'll have a series of lectures. Some are real science. Such as how the big 5 personality…

This is how we ended up think taking vitamin c helps with colds.

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#289

Post by RationalDino »

blueflow wrote: post #287
RationalDino wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are experiencing is called "the controversy bait-and-switch". Peterson is a master of it. What he does is say something designed to look like a dog whistle to get people upset. Then when challenged on it, he say something reasonable to pull in fans. Then he says something else which is designed to be misunderstood, and repeats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKwSDqJAum8&t=244s explains it, and shows an actu…

Ngl, its a big PITA if you say thing A, and some people understand A, B, C and D and then get mad at you for supporting D. This happened to me some times before and i absolutely hate it. Seeing your argument that its a baddy thing makes me feel very uneasy. And the "dog whistle" thing you mentioned is conceptually that, accusing someone of saying something they didn't exactly say. I hate this concept. How would someo…

It happens to all of us by accident. That's fine.

But by the time you've built yourself a major brand based on doing this over and over again, your repeated protestations about "just being misunderstood" wear thin.

There is a legitimate grey area in the middle.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#290

Post by whiddershins »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #245
jlos wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would not consider someone who has the following CV an intellectual? - Has published or co-authored over 100+ academic papers in multiple fields - Has h-index of 41, i10-index of 77, with 21,000 citations [0] - Taught at Harvard - Tenured Professor at the largest University in Canada - 20+ year clinical practice - Best selling author with over 5 million copies sold You don't have to like his ideas, but if this…

Isn't this just an appeal to authority?

No, it directly addresses the claim. Is X a 'public intellectual'? Here are n facts that indicate X is.
Post reply on HN