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The death of a public intellectual

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Re: The death of a public intellectual

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Jensson wrote: post #18
greendude29 wrote: post #6

> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. These are not intellectuals, let alone public ones. They are all American and follow a 'clickbait' model to public discourse. Seems like you repeatedly fall for it and enjoy doing so. Nothing here reflects any form of intellect.

That is the point of this article though, read a bit further down: "Without fail, each one of comes to dissapoint. They’re either a one trick pony, and every development in the world is analyzed through the same tired lens whether its applicable or not."

[deleted]

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#52

Post by diginova »

irrational wrote: post #8

Those floating shapes on the right side are so distracting that I couldn’t make it through the post.

Same here. But I was distracted by the fact that I could not understand how they are being rendered. The js (https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc...) seems to say that they are being drawn on canvas but the only canvas present in DOM can be deleted with the shapes still animated. Any clues as to how these are being rendered?

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#53

Post by Jensson »

lacrimacida wrote: post #48
Jensson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many underdogs just copies the viewpoints of bigger channels, watching those is even worse than watching the original since at least the original had some thought behind it.

Choose wisely then.

I think a valid strategy is to watch what big personalities were saying or doing when they were still small. Look at what made them big instead of what they do when they are big.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#54

Post by username332211 »

nerdponx wrote: post #28
Jensson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the point of this article though, read a bit further down: "Without fail, each one of comes to dissapoint. They’re either a one trick pony, and every development in the world is analyzed through the same tired lens whether its applicable or not."

Yeah but, one would think after spending even a couple of minutes with Jordan Peterson's corpus of output that maybe we shouldn't venerate people who happen to say one or two things that we find interesting.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Karl Marx was even more of a one trick pony than Peterson and, well, he's the most successful public intellectual of all time.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#55

Post by Jensson »

diginova wrote: post #52
irrational wrote: post #8

Those floating shapes on the right side are so distracting that I couldn’t make it through the post.

Same here. But I was distracted by the fact that I could not understand how they are being rendered. The js ( https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc... ) seems to say that they are being drawn on canvas but the only canvas present in DOM can be deleted with the shapes still animated. Any clues as to how these are being rendered?

Looks like they are SVG elements that are moved around with CSS, at least that is what I see in the DOM.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#56

Post by Dudelander »

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…

If it worked that way, the Gallic Wars wouldn't have happened because Caesar's account would be considered "argument from authority".

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#57

Post by Jensson »

andrewflnr wrote: post #46
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…

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 of course not 100%, but it is about as reliable as it can get for an individual.

What you shouldn't do is assume that stuff that aren't 100% for sure are equally bad.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#59

Post by soulofmischief »

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…

It's quite easy to test this very assumption against chaos theory in a controlled environment and demonstrate why a system involving a complex chain of dependencies is increasingly unpredictable down the chain.

As an uninformed consumer at or the bottom of the chain, you cannot trust that an interface that works today, will work tomorrow, for you do not have access to all of the chaotic variables which constrain the interface.

Re: The death of a public intellectual

#60

Post by [deleted] »

Jensson wrote: post #47
nerdponx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but, one would think after spending even a couple of minutes with Jordan Peterson's corpus of output that maybe we shouldn't venerate people who happen to say one or two things that we find interesting.

Jordan Petersen talks a lot about life being a struggle and how to get through it and make the most of it. A lot of that resonates strongly in many people, it isn't something you would find faults in after watching a few minutes. And that is within his field of expertise so it makes sense that those points are pretty good. The problem is when Jordan Petersen starts to talk about other things than that, like politics,…

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