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The death of a public intellectual

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Re: The death of a public intellectual

#341

Post by mola »

ebiester wrote: post #336
mola wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no indescriminate bombing of hospitals. Nice how you pushed this lie so casually. There are very strong proofs that a hospital was hit by a failed rocket launch of a gazan militia against Israel. Plus Hamas and other militias keep their weapons under schools hospitals and mosques. When ever Israel bomb these sites it first gives notice to evacuate. It's in no way indescriminate. As opposed to a surprise raid…

And, as you will notice, I did not say "I" on this. I said "someone." The point of the argument is to say that someone who espouses A does not immediately support B, and used a contemporary example. I could have as easily said, "someone who does not support the bombing and murder of 8,000 Gaza residents by Israel or the withholding of aid does not immediately support the hostage taking of 230 hostages by Hamas." Woul…

Nope, you wrote murder, that's not a fact, that's editorializing.

This is a war, the first strike was the senseless butchery I described. The ideology that drew that strike calls for annihilation of all Jews. And yet, Israel doesn't indescriminatly murders civilians. Israel called all civilians to leave the bombarded area, Hamas called them to stay. you have no idea how many of those dead are combatants, So how is saying "murder of 8000" not controversial?

Israel has no obligation under any international law, or any moral obligation to give aid as long as the hostages are not released. Remember these hostages are as young as 9 MONTHS. Hamas have not let the red cross see them. A person who says what you wrote indirectly supports Hamas by spreading their morally corrupt narrative.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#342

Post by Mouthfeel »

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…

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Re: The death of a public intellectual

#343

Post by Mouthfeel »

dralley wrote: post #236
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?

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.

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Re: The death of a public intellectual

#344

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #331
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a political agenda if it's verifiable fact? When someone says 2+2=4 is that political?

This was supposed to be a personality test, not a political debate. Why would he even bring it up?

When I run a speed test for my internet it will often give me comparisons to give me an idea where I fit in with others and can also give suggestions, such as explaining what docsys means, etc.

Don Quixote and tilting at windmills comes to mind.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#345

Post by pchangr »

saurik wrote: post #338
RationalDino wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't want to come off too hard as directly defending Jordan Peterson--I maybe watched a video or two on YouTube a while back with him talking about something... I liked one and hated the other--but this overall description of someone who is just saying a lot of stuff without any boundary between what they really actually know and where they are so far off the rails they might as well be on a psychedelic trip also…

Plato studied “philosophy” which at the time aimed to provide a full explanation to everything in life. Later in history knowledge got more and more specialized. As time goes by, being able to do meaningful contributions to various fields becomes more difficult. It is considered for example, that Gauss was the last scientist to contribute to all branches of science and similarly John Von Neumann was the last mathematician who made meaningful contributions in all branches of sciences. So yeah, you could say for Plato there were no boundaries as the amount of knowledge that existed was small enough to be fully handled by a human .. and it’s likely not the case anymore.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#346

Post by pchangr »

jlos wrote: post #235
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…

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…

I’d argue that he has published 100+ academic papers on multiple sub-fields of psychology. Specifically on the “psychology of belief” so basically how believing “something” implies certain actions. The problem is p=>q doesn’t imply ~p => ~q

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#347

Post by [deleted] »

ubermonkey wrote: post #185
Kye wrote: 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)

[deleted]

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#348

Post by mongol »

petsfed wrote: post #340
blueflow wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's not difficult to show that a given statement was meant innocently, but it does require some effort. To whit, Norse pagan iconography is a very common in white supremacist imagery. So while I find the Norse pagan imagery interesting and compelling, I can't just hang it on my wall without preparing to defend myself against accusations of being a neo-Nazi. Is it my fault? Is it the accusers fault? No, obviously, it…

The only time I hear about dog whistles is when liberals say that alt right or similar with opposing viewpoints use them. I start to wonder if it is in their head only, or a rhetorical tool so that they can say "did you hear that? it was a dog whistle! tread carefully!"

I hope for better times when we can take what people say at face value and stop second-guessing what they supposedly mean.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#349

Post by petsfed »

mongol wrote: post #348
petsfed wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult to show that a given statement was meant innocently, but it does require some effort. To whit, Norse pagan iconography is a very common in white supremacist imagery. So while I find the Norse pagan imagery interesting and compelling, I can't just hang it on my wall without preparing to defend myself against accusations of being a neo-Nazi. Is it my fault? Is it the accusers fault? No, obviously, it…

The only time I hear about dog whistles is when liberals say that alt right or similar with opposing viewpoints use them. I start to wonder if it is in their head only, or a rhetorical tool so that they can say "did you hear that? it was a dog whistle! tread carefully!" I hope for better times when we can take what people say at face value and stop second-guessing what they supposedly mean.

One that I think about a lot is the "ok" symbol, when its not being held up as a separate symbol (that is, not held up like the peace sign or a middle finger). If you'd normally put the palms of your hands on your knees while sitting, but instead put the o of the symbol on there, then you're doing the thing that's a dog whistle.

And what's insidious about it is that to some extent, people do it just because they know it winds up liberals. Hell, there's a picture of 16-year old me making the sign that way, specifically because the photographer told us not to. That was 25 years ago, so I'm not sure if the symbol had been overloaded at that time. I certainly had no idea about that extra connotation.

Its never clear in isolation if a person using the symbol semi-covertly is doing so because they want to confuse liberals, or to advertise to neo-nazis. Its the same as wearing a red shoelaces in certain parts of Los Angeles. Are you doing it because you're a Blood? Or because you think it goes well with your outfit? What if its both? And if you're not in the context where that extra connotation matters, then no one assumes that there might be that extra connotation. You see the exact same sort of bonkers nitpicking from e.g. QAnon about how every little thing is just code for "this politician is involved in the child sex trade, and want others in the child sex trade to know". Sometimes the accusation of dog-whistling is just bonkers. But I have also seen neo-nazi militias advertising in neutral spaces, and the only reason I was tipped off is because they called themselves the 1488th Civil Defense Militia or some such. As the saying goes, if you know, YOU KNOW.

There are also more explicit dog-whistles, where the word people want to use is deemed politically incorrect. Think "urban" when somebody really means "black" in the late 80s into the 90s.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#350

Post by vkou »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #325
wsve wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give a personal story about this guy, A while back, when I was just beginning therapy, my therapist recommended I take an online personality test, which unbeknownst to me, was authored by Jordan Peterson. After I took the test, it gave 5-7 paragraphs explaining what each individual personality trait meant. Pretty boilerplate, but for some traits, when you got further down the explanations, it started feeling l…

Is it a political agenda if it's verifiable fact? When someone says 2+2=4 is that political?

'...in the Scandinavian countries, where attempts to produce gender-equal societies has reached a maximum'

Is not a verifiable fact. It's just a political opinion, used in conjunction with a verifiable fact, to smuggle a political argument into a 'scientific' personality test.

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