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 pleasure?
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 author is forcing a hot take), then don’t read the book. It’s no different than a date, if the person creeps you out, bounce.
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.
IMO the problem with books is that it is extremely easy to write basically whatever narrative you want nowadays, backed by a long list of "citations" that are dubious at best.
Nobody can contradict what you say in book form.
Two books on the shelf: One says the left stole the election here are the receipts to prove it, the other says the right lied about the election here are the receipts to prove it. Both presumably have an internally consistent narrative that attempts to convince you the story they are selling is THE story.
I've looked into a few of Huberman's citations and found some very small samples sizes. He makes a big deal of what are a best very small optimizations instead of focusing on the really impactful but boring health advice (eat well, exercise, get enough sleep). This is very common in the health / fitness space, because for most people the basics are all you need and the basics are really basic, but to make bank you have to keep coming up with new things.
I've only listened to a few of his podcasts, because they're too long and meandering for me, so perhaps there is more meat in other episodes.
I also don't think he's a grifter in the same way that Peterson is. (I'm not familiar with the other people mentioned in the article.)
I disagree with the others insofar as I think the weighty-est things Huberman suggests are very well researched, and he's generally careful to say when research is newer/sparser for certain discoveries but doesn't make a broken-record of himself. For instance: his videos focusing on sleep. When it comes to other optimizations YMMV but aggregate marginal gains would suggest that exploring these may add up.
Also these days his video series tends to focus more on interviews with experts in their respective fields, rather than his own prescriptions and perspective. I think that's commendable and great.
Yah. This guy sends my bullshit detector into overdrive after just a few seconds.
Can't stand the smug certainty he throws off while describing some ridiculous molecular interaction that he clearly knows nothing about, because no one does.
> 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.
because rather than doing serious intellectual work they're really good at selling what people want to hear, deliberately targeting an American online audience and their anxieties (as that is very profitable). All the mentioned guys are essentially permanent guests on the US podcast circuit.
Peterson and Zeihan are examples of this. Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee, and Zeihan is the modern version of his mentor (and Straftor boss) George Friedman, whose primarily claim to fame is predicting an inevitable war between Japan and the US[1], on a crude theory of geographic determinism, "in the next two decades" in 1991. Zeihan has picked that baton up and replaced Japan with China.
> Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee
I think this hyper reductive. You can watch all his lectures, at Harvard and others, online[0]. It's hard to look objectively at his life and not call it "serious intellectual work".
>"You can watch the incredibly popular lecture series "Personality and Its Transformations", "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief", as well as his "The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories" lectures for free."
I won't pretend I ever watched more than a few minutes of any of this stuff, but isn't it a bunch of inane rambling about finding deep psychological meaning or universal truths in fairy tails? Nonsense along the lines of "Slimey the worm from sesame street represents the dragon, the great primordial evil which the warrior, the eternal hero, must slay to conqueror his fears..."
It's the kind of analysis that right/conservative people with 'pragmatic/common sense' self-perceived alignments would usually mock college professors for, except in Peterson's case it gets lapped up because he mixes it in with things like "communism is bad because it murdered millions of people" and "If you're feeling depressed you should try not living like a slob"
He might have done "serious intellectual work" in a distant past, like his main book were he writes in details about his grandma pubes he saw in a dream, or when in his lecture at UoT were he compares an ancient depiction of two snakes to the twin helix of DNA, but for the past few years he's been rambling about the culture war and strangely defending the fossil fuel industry.
Yes, that's precisely why I don't like him, thank you for articulating it so clearly! I want to compel the people around me to speak a certain way, and I have built an identity around that, and Peterson's cutting social commentary shakes me to my core.
For the things he says. I'd encourage you to look for criticism of him online. He his the obligatory subject of plenty of video essayist on Youtube, it's kind of a meme at this point.
Over the years, Jordan Peterson has gotten more and more aggressive and polarizing. I suspect that social media attention has been a huge influence, because the new Jordan Peterson (NJP) sounds like the old Jordan Peterson's (OJP's) loud aggressive clickbaity twin. Where OJP might have written an academic paper for other scientists, or delivered an hour-long carefully-thought-out lecture, NJP sends an angry tweet full of insults.
For example, after losing a court battle against the College of Psychologists of Ontario, he talked about it as such: "Don't bloody well lecture me ... some dimwit judge with a liberal bias did ... lecturing me about taking responsibility for what I say." I highly recommend watching the video. The tone is also part of the message: https://youtu.be/M5PESEbY_H0?t=74
Or when in December 2021, the Prime Minister of Canada tweeted this to encourage people to get a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine (keeping in mind that there were at no point any mandates for boosters, this was purely an attempt at advertising the fact that booster doses were available and recommended by the healthcare professionals):
> Justin Trudeau: "If you’re taking care of some last-minute Christmas shopping this week, here’s something else you can add to your list: a booster. If you’re eligible for one but haven’t gotten it yet, please, do so now. And if you don’t have your first or second dose, now’s the time to get it."
NJP replied to the tweet as such:
> NJP: "Up yours @JustinTrudeau. Seriously. You'd have to kill me first."
I cannot imagine OJP saying any of these things with this tone and this level of imprudence. OJP was generally cerebral, intellectual, academic, deep, calm, polite. He was a well-respected academic through and through.
NJP, on the other hand, is irritable, imprudent, aggressive, abrasive, impulsive, rude. He is a sensationalist yelling pundit through and through.
He has been widely criticized by legal scholars for misrepresenting the Canadian Bill C-16, which extends the human rights act to cover transgendered people. Peterson, a clinical psychologist, claimed that it would compel speech.
This is probably what the article is referring to. Before the incident Peterson was a respected academic psychologist, but was widely criticized for his amateur legal analysis of C-16. He has since continued to ruin his reputation by making transphobic tweets about Elliot Page, body shaming the plus sized model Yumi Nu, climate change denial, and generally expressing right wing views on a range of issues.
In your opinion, would it be a misrepresentation to say that C-16 makes it easier to fine employers that refuse to use employee pronouns for harassment?
>He just seemed to say sort of "be a decent person and work hard".
We live in a world where even that statement is controversial.
There is a zeitgeist of re-engineering society. Peterson and his tired schtick of "just keep doing the things that were successful for previous generations" interferes. It is unwanted.
What do you think an intellectual is? An intellectual is someone whose hobby or vocation is using his mind to consider the big questions and issues of human life.
There is no certification or competency test for intellectuals. If you say you are one, then— like saying you are a “football fan”— you probably are one.
I say I am an intellectual because I want people to think I am always ready to talk about any philosophical topic. Also I wrote a book about living an intellectual life, so there is evidence I do want to use my mind to consider big questions. Not that evidence matters much.
I am American, too. Turns out some Americans enjoy living a life of mind.
I tend to be a bit repulsed by any online discussion of 'intellectuals'. Pretty much always devolves into BS a la GP. "You like Josh Joshson? He's stupid, you must be too", or "who needs intellectuals? Use your own brain"
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.
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, gender roles etc. There he repeats similar talking points I've seen on online forums for 20 years now, nothing new or interesting.
Edit: Sometimes downvotes amazes me. Did someone downvote this because I said Jordan Peterson said something good, or because I said he did something bad? Will never know. But I've noticed that balanced takes tend to get more downvoted since both sides downvotes them.
For me at least, there's a question as to, "which Jordan Peterson?"
There is the guy you just described, who existed before his year(s?) long struggle with addiction, and then there is the apparently (to me at least) bitter, resentful and angry man who returned after.
Since his return, his expressions, language, positions (and even clothing) have taken on a darker, angrier tone and there's a lot less hope in what I've seen.
For me, this makes this individual different from some others who may fade away over some of issues cited in the article, but remain essentially the same person.
His personality and message changed after a deep and difficult struggle.
I'm not trying to criticize or defend the man, just raising the issue that he may be different from some others in the list.
Jordan Peterson unfortunately is very much a public intellectual. He just also happens to be a complete and total charlatan who is demonstrably ignorant of most the works he both cites and criticizes.
Yes, the list is basically demagogic pseudo-intellectuals. As pointed out in the article they are "pseudo" as although they might be studied in one field, they quickly start talking about other topics that they have not studied academically and simply try to enforce their model upon. A lot of "clever" people start sounding less clever the more they talk about something you know about.
My definition of a public intellectual is someone who is very bright and can "think in public" about a variety of issues. Weinstein definitely meets that bar for me, probably Jordan as well. Can't speak for the other two as I'm not familiar with their output.
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?
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.
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.
It seems like this used to be what the MSM would bring in experts to comment on complex issues in economics, foreign politics, history, health, science, technology, etc. before each station developed a significant bias due to top-down pressure from ownership or bottom up pressure to push narratives that paralleled the politics of their predominant viewership. Then it was public programming like NPR and PBS. But now almost every outlet finds partisan experts. It would be great if there were a truly neutral non-political source of expert commentary. But how can such an outlet sustain neutrality being subject to those same evolutionary pressures?
HN is honestly doing a great job of this, but is a very different format than planned programming.
Perhaps the key is to watch both sides and formulate your own opinion. Maybe it's better to know the biases outright than to rely on someone else to find neutral viewpoints. Of course the problem with that is, a huge amount of the population has no interest in hearing multiple perspectives, and only wants the 'home teams' talking points.
Are you suggesting something like scientific journals like Nature? Where there is an extreme barrier to publish in and often takes years to get anything out?
Maybe you’ve pointed out a positive for these scientific journals.
The problem with this is that serious questions require difficult work, while what the mass audience fundamentally want is a verbal version of professional wrestling. With all the keyfabe and face/heel narratives.
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.
I'm not an expert, but I have an opinion, maybe some of you want to follow: ALWAYS SUPPORT THE UNDERDOGS. They are the ones experimenting with new ideas and hopefully sharing both what worked and what didn't.
Unfollow all the players with a huge following. They stop producing quality.
Start by supporting underdogs, people who have a following, but small and growing.
Eventually they'll become bigger in terms of following. Then unfollow them.
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.
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.
I think I don't have to "follow" or support anyone, or is that become a must in this new digital world? Like, if you don't follow anyone the system will ignore you or something, I don't know.
1. Hedgehogs. Have one overarching theory that they are certain of.
2. Foxes. Can pick and choose from a variety of sources.
Both groups are smart, informed, and interesting. But when you follow them for a long time, a clear pattern emerges.
- Foxes do much better at making future predictions that come true.
- Hedgehogs become far more popular pundits, and generally wind up getting paid far better. Most pundits with popular shows are hedgehogs.
Why? My theory is that we listen to pundits because it is comfortable to outsource our thinking to them. We find that comfortable if they are smart, well-informed, and certain. It is easy for us to think, "Well if this smart and well-informed guy is so certain, I'd surely agree if I did the work. So now I don't have to bother."
There is a problem here. We become certain when it is easy for us to think a thing true, and hard for us to think it might be false. We feel that the evidence is truly overwhelming. It may be overwhelming. But it is more likely that we're simply being intellectually dishonest. So we actively choose intellectually dishonest pundits who agree with our presumptions, and then become sure that they are right. We enjoy listening to them. But, being intellectually dishonest, they are probably wrong. And now we're emotionally committed to their brand of insanity!
Try this rule of thumb out. Assume that a person who is certain, is probably wrong. And when you find yourself feeling certain, nurse that little doubt about how you REALLY know. It takes time, but consistently making this choice can change your life. For a start, you'll start actually thinking about things that you currently only think you're thinking about.
Just listened to half of an interview (the interview is long, and it's now bedtime) of John Gray.
I think you'd class him as a fox, but perhaps he's more of a badger. Digs deep and wide into history to interpret the present and plot the future. Asks "what's similar and what's different, what's permanent and what's ephemeral?" Not afraid of being unpopular at the time. Some certainty is required when everyone is saying you're wrong, and is justified when ten years later they're saying that what you said ten years ago is obvious.
That said, while he's solid on geopolitics snd the larger systems we are subject to, I wouldn't listen to him about what's happening with dating or something like that.
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 reliable. By contrast Nate Silver really likes to go to his statistics toolset. But I would call him a fox.
However I think there is something to Tetlock's division. And I think my theory connecting certainty to lacking intellectual integrity has a lot to do with it.
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...
"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 their logical integrated cohesion as a whole. And that's regardless of the source.
Experts/Authorities are neither automatically right or wrong. No honest expert or authority ever demands that their statements be taken on faith. If they actually know what they're talking about, their statements can be logically defended and tied to reality. This is the standard that everyone should be held to.
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.
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.
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.
Too much reductionism can be a dangerous thing. This is pretty much the Sophist argument and it is not enough to build a scientific foundation on.
No, you don't need to personally verify all facts. But you need to be able to observe several indepedent validations. Yes, somewhere you have to take someone's word for fact, but multiple independent observations is a close approximation to the perfect scientific method. Related to that is the fact that science is not a democracy, and these observations have to be weighed against how they fit in our generally accepted worldview. Theory is more than just facts.
Every little detail of science has to be questioned, just not by everyone personally. Where that limit for healthy skepticism is drawn is not something can answer logically, but we can recognize if it is completely wrong.
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?
Historians know that they can't take written sources at face value. For them, Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars is just another piece of evidence, not a Definite Proof of Everything That Was.
Caesar is not considered an infallible authority, but that has no bearing on the general consensus that Gallic Wars actually took place.
It would be foolish to think the Gallic Wars happened precisely as Caesar wrote because his book was overt self-aggrandizing propaganda intended to boost his standing with the Roman public.
But as to the Gallic Wars happening at all? There is corroborating evidence. Other Romans wrote about it, often to damn it, and they treated the existence of the war as a fact. He brought tons of Gallic slaves back to Rome which would corroborate the most basic facts of the claim (e.g. that there had been wars with Gallic people) to other Romans who weren't there to personally witness it. Furthermore there is modern archeological evidence of battles and massacres which roughly line up with some of what Caesar claimed to have done.
Everything boils down to faith eventually, though. Even trusting the evidence of your senses is a kind of faith.
So the logical error isn't an epistemological error in all cases - you can see it as someone trying to minimize some distance metric they are operating on between Reality As It Is and Reality As I Know It by making a single hop to someone who, it is believed, has already done a lot of work investigating the ground claims.
This was the conclusion of René Descartes and the meaning behind "I think, therefore I am". It was the only safe conclusion he could come to after a deep series of introspection.
Once he got there, he systematically built up a new framework of thought and reasoning, and we got modern science and philosophy from it.
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 aren't even given that much importance.
Even with softer topics like history, I think it should be essential to include context explaining how we know these things to be true. On what evidence are these beliefs based on? What is the level of epistemic uncertainty of the information we're being given?
> 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?
Honestly, after reflecting on it I do think that I had more courses cover how to prove things ourselves than I was initially remembering. In particular, my physics and electronics labs were the most thorough.
When I wrote that I was specifically thinking about chemistry. It's really been too long since I last studied the topic, so I can't remember any exact details. I just remember a vague sense of thinking "how did we figure this out in the first place?".
Part of the responsibility definitely falls on me, I should've been more inquisitive when I was younger. Maybe the professors would've been willing to explain if I'd been more self-confident and courageous to visit their office hours to inquire further.
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.
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.
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.
Colleges have 4 years, and most important discoveries took a brilliant person a lifetime of work.
How do you propose we give more detailed explanations and information for proving everything for yourself? Should college last a few hundred years instead of 4?
Did college not teach you how to access and parse through research papers and books?
If you want a more full explanation and to prove things for yourself, why didn't you do so? When you were told, from authority, about the american antarctic base, why didn't you prove its existence by taking a boat there (repeated ad-nauseam for each location in the world)
Come on, it's a spectrum. I don't expect everything to build up a careful chain of trust and verification. But I think we can still do better than what the current education ecosystem provides. You're taking the most extreme perspective to a pretty reasonable claim.
Figuring out how to prove everything myself is impractical because I'm not an expert in every subfield. I think experts in various fields can write shortcuts and simple experiments which prove a lot of knowledge. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Like, colleges right now provide "shortcuts and simple experiments" to approximate knowledge that was gained with a much more rigorous path. Yet, you decry current college as not showing the full path, as taking shortcuts.
Now, you're saying that yes, we need such shortcuts, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's a spectrum... all of which I agree with, and seems to be the opposite of what you said above.
What's the fundamental difference between what you describe and what colleges do? Or is it just a matter of execution quality?
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.
Get into ideas, not the people who introduce you to them. It's probably still an interesting idea well after the person loses their novelty to you. Don't lose yourself so readily to our bizzare celebrity worship/parasocial culture.
This post treats the constant stream of "new public intellectuals" as some kind of organic, natural phenomenon. It's not, these people reach the top of your YouTube feed because someone wants them there. There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman.
People on this site are quick to call something "enshittification" when there are some obvious cash-grabs by megacorps, but are reluctant to admit that the algorithm feeding you content is manipulating you in a similar way.
> And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest.
I did, and they subsequently got banned from every social network, and even their website isn't linkable from Facebook or X or YouTube.
There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman.
Do we know how this was done before? Let’s say you are a hit broadcast network, and you have these new hit shows called Friends and Family Matters. What’s your plan as a broadcast company now?
Should the TV company organically wait to see what kind of TV shows audiences want to see? Or should they create 10 shows that copy Friends and Family Matters, each targeting a different demo (you know, like black people, or women).
So, if you want to build a loose network of content creators, with your fulcrum being like a Rogan for the general demographic, with a contrived character like a Friedman being the “nerd”. So the loop here is you cast a wide net with Rogan, then niche them down to your Jocko’s, Friedman’s, etc.
Rogan doesn’t disclose when he does Ad drops anymore either. So he’s a really bad actor at this point.
Like yeah Joe, you just talked about McDonalds for 10 minutes for free again on an episode with 10 million listeners huh? Oh, talking about the latest movie in theaters again? As if that’s not a 5 minute ‘hey McDonald’s, we can leave this 7 minutes in about how your Coca Cola tastes better than regular Coca Cola, or we can just edit it out. I’m sorry? Did we say edit out? What we meant was, how about like 30 million for 6 month campaign? No? Okay, see ya. No, we never recorded anything about McDonald’s soda tasting better.
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"
Why not? Sans the actual sitting down with the person, that seems entirely unnecessary.
We know the reverse is definitely true, people actually do get deplatformed, so why is it unreasonable to think at least some winners have been picked?
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 of the algorithm. People like the guy who wrote this initial post, in turn, think that there are no political discussions going on deeper than dumbed down, often misused regurgitated political philosophy from much smarter thinkers of the past.
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.
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.
I'm surprised he didn't mention lex Friedman or Joe rogan. The people I admire on YouTube still continue to resonate with me. If anyone is looking for 'leftist Jordan Peterson' I suggestion Gabor mate, he's a much more holistic and less authoritarian, and continues to inspire me.
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.
> 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.
why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war?
So I do this, a lot. Rogan is a good example I struggle with. I regularly go I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about. It isn’t relegated to just Rogan.
Musk was another awful one when you first get into him.
This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
I almost have to shake my head and snap out of it.
Edit:
I’ll add that I’ve gotten extremely good at filtering his guests but still weak to filtering him (it’s kinda like still having feelings for your first). Anytime he puts on a comedian I always go “yeah whatever, who cares what some random comedian thinks about ______”, but I wasn’t able to do that with Rogan. No sir, I listen with both ears as he describes like … nuclear fusion.
That’s not what it is. People are looking around, shaking their heads, with an vague feeling that things *aren’t right* and waiting for someone to be like “alright everyone we’re heading off to start a new life frontier, let’s go!”, and Joe Rogan and Elon Musk feel like the charismatic alphas/cult leader you should be hitching your wagons to.
Because sometimes the crazy cult leader ends up being right, revival (much like the religious revivals of the 1830s in the US) and making a big change when society is in flux is just something in our blood. Problem is right now nobody wants to actually buy 60,000 acres of undeveloped land to get it all started, they just want to profit off of people via parasocial relationships.
It does feel like something like that. Maybe not that exactly, but many people have some sort of need for external authorities to tell them what to do, what to think, who to be, etc. Some lack of confidence in their own judgement? Insecurity about making their own decisions?
Yes, this is a textbook parasocial relationship. No judgment—me too. I've been listening to the "New Heights" podcast a lot recently, so my most recent parasocial relationship is feeling like Jason and Travis Kelce are my friends. Of course I know they're not, it's just how these things work. Parasocial relationships are ubiquitous in the modern day.
My favorite analogy is that parasocial relationships are the Doritos of socialization: appealing. delicious, addictive, can temporarily keep hunger at bay—but fundamentally not satiating, lacking in essential nutrients, and unhealthy when they displace their original natural & more nutritious alternatives.
It's kind of inescapable in modern politics, because it's effective at getting people elected and/or making money. It's not the worst way to get elected; certainly better than relying on narrow donor class money. Just .. recognize the limitations of it.
I’m inclined to agree. The problem is, unlike High School where the kids just grow the fuck out of all the stupid teenage bullshit, adults seem to not have that kinda structure going on.
So instead of being a Rogan stan for those weird years in High School, you are grown ass 30 year year old Stan who’s been stanning for 5 years now minimum.
Adults today don’t know how to snap out of the high school shit they easily snapped out of after high school. It’s like we’re in a high school that never ends.
I don't think that's "adults today". Adults in the past also had parasocial shit going on. Do you think the people banging on Sherlock Holmes's author feeling personally betrayed by the ending were all young kiddos?
I think the issue with being an adult is that you often think you've outgrown childish inclinations. In actuality, I find adults will act childishly and then assume, because they are adults, their behavior must be mature and taken seriously.
Somewhat weird comment...I thought it was obvious, I and others are occasionally interested in what e.g. Joe Rogan has to say because it's entertaining.
I didn't think this was in any way confusing or surprising, and never thought this had anything to do with love.
Plenty of couples started with "oh he's so cute and funny" / "I love listening to her jokes", and few years later found themselves retelling those stories to a wide audience, at their wedding.
Maybe an "appeal to authority" type situation which is guiding an anxious brain? e.g. Rogan has a massive following, therefore you wonder: "why does this person have such a massive following? It must be because they have important things to say. I had better listen too."
I think as men we have a deep seated need to have a strong leader we respect. If we went into the woods and made a tribe I’d for sure want Joe Rogan or Elon Musk making the decisions. Joe Rogan gives even the village idiot a fair shake to make their point on his podcast. It’s like watching a wise king preside over court. There’s not some big gay mystery here, it’s hardwired “if we go hunting a mammoth, I want Joe Rogan leading the hunt and presiding over the feast!”.
I keep hearing this meme repeated lately (most recently by the My Pillow guy), and I guess my brain is wired differently, but oh boy, would I hate that society.
A guy standing up every week declaming with moral authority? The word you are looking for is preacher.
And that's what these people are. They provide a comforting sense of moral certainty and judgement; they define enemies, usually a nebulous Them; they're satisfying to listen to; and they publish on a schedule to reinforce the little ritual of listening to them. You've heard the adhan and you are called.
> This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
People have somehow lost all the words for communicating relationships between people that aren't sexual. Although the "fan" relationship can get pretty weird at times. It's interesting to hear from someone who's liminal enough to realize that they're inside the experience but also knows what's wrong with it. Thank you for this post.
> I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about
You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right.
Clearly there is a middle ground, we should not blindly follow some authority, but some skills generalize, and some people may be worth listening to on general topics, and not just the ultra-specialized experts.
It is an obviously wrong approach. There are plenty of intelligent people out there, this doesn't keep them from being occasionally wrong. If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
In the last couple years there was more than ample opportunity to see how badly this approach fails, you have droves of these "public intellectuals" as TFA calls them for every crisis (COVID, energy crisis, russian wars, gaza etc.) and almost all of them are just Average Joes dishing out their BBQ-level hot takes in public. Remember all the math and physics PhDs in 2020 suddenly being genius experts on disease modelling? The same people who suddenly became experts on warfare some time in early 2022? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Yes. This was prominent when Russia invaded Ukraine. It was as if millions of people woke and decided, "I'm tired of being an infectious disease expert. Starting today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"
Thing is, none of the people i followed for COVID takes did that. They've carried on posting about infectious diseases. So i think it is possible to distinguish between these barbecue-level fake public intellectuals, and real experts, because apparently i did that.
That people do pay attention to the Tomas Pueyos of the world is a problem - but not because it's impossible not to, just because they're doing it!
You know, there is a difference between Covid denialism and saying “maybe we should have invested in a lot more air purifiers and good ventilation”. I’m butthurt about the lack of science used for understanding an airborn contagion even by our elected officials.
Scientific people who are outside of a field that has institutional scientific blindness problems are absolutely allowed to call out that bullshit when we see it. We don’t get upset when a non chiropractor says that chiropractors are hucksters. I should not be lumped in with Covid deniers for pointing out that most disease experts massive undervalued and underutilized air ventilation techniques (an example technique would be doing regular activities, like classes, outside)
The thing about being a professional contrarian is you don't need to know anything about the underlying subject, or have special access to information, you just follow the mainstream media and say the opposite.
Meanwhile I saw a friend of mine who actually is an immunology PhD get driven off Twitter in 2020 by angry mobs.
Is considering oneself an omniscient Oracle the right approach?
> If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
For myself, the domain(s) that the "influencer" has skills within is crucially important, as certain domains encompass or intersect with almost all others.
This is an interesting comment section from certain specific perspectives, but if one lacks the necessary background you could miss out on the show entirely.
> You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right.
But do they really cut through bullshit and appearances? The individuals that the author has mentioned are mostly oversimplifying the world.
> Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too.
That's the issue here - treating real world issues as a though experiment. It creates solutions that are very appealing to people who perceive themselves as thinkers. The ideas are usually simple, round, fair, based on some fairness coming from nature or math, but they completely discard the complexity of the problem. As soon as you start adding corner cases it solution fails.
You can see that as well in software engineering - if only we could simplify the problem we're trying to solve, the solution would be so clean!
It's the behaviour I notice rather than the stated motives;
> But dear reader see this pattern for what it is... every 6 months I
find someone new to obsess over... Without fail, each one of comes
to disappoint.
Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in
itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it?
> says something that completely violates the narrative. How
fascinating.
A rebel! One validated by popular opinion no less!
The problem is, no matter how many rebellious public intellectuals we
binge on, it will not take one any closer to being that rebellious
and fascinating person. Escape from such a cycle is to jump directly
to being that which you wish to be. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect
$200.
Find what is so odious in this "narrative" of which you speak, and
loudly denounce it!
But beware, if you like to have friends. Instead of being the cool,
interesting person at the party, who knows all the latest,
internet-celebrity-validated talking points, you will be the bus loony
in the anorak who people avoid. Trust me, I've lived it for 40
years. With some guile you can go to ground disguised as university
professor for a while.
> Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it?
I do feel that the author has some interesting personality trait - but I'm not sure if he's in the minority.
After writing my comment I have realised that maybe it's why I never understood the appeal of Twitter. I have never had any "gurus" or "authorities" that I'd universally respect. I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care? When I read that the author says he follows that "person" so deeply, watching their videos for hours, I completely can not relate. Neither on logical nor emotional level.
I might dig into a topic, let's say, siege of Berlin during II WW, but I'd be focusing on the topic and the source / author will be completely irrelevant. I'll even probably select various ones, as I enjoy challenging my own perspective.
Old Twitter was much better for offering you a plethora of perspectives, especially of random individuals "on the ground", in whatever sense, who were not professional talking heads. That time is long gone.
While I don’t use social media, nor am I prone to personality obsession like the author, there’s definitely something to be said about following an “authority” on Twitter and the like. Whether they’re an artist whose work you enjoy, a top expert in a field you’re interested in, or simply a person whose writing on some topic you appreciate, surely there’s an individual whose insight you’d find valuable enough to “follow”?
> surely there’s an individual whose insight you’d find valuable enough to “follow”?
Not me. What I would like to follow is a topic that interests me, with discourse predominantly populated by subject matter experts. "User-based" follow systems like Twitter only make sense insamuch as the user sticks to their expertise, and as soon as they start veering away into new topics their comments are just as likely to be noise as the average schmuck, and I don't know why I would want to waste my time deliberately consuming noise.
What you describe wanting, is what academic journals are. Subject matter experts discussing that subject matter with one another. Social media is not for you, and that's fine.
What other people are describing, is more like, an author writes a book you enjoy; so you read another book of theirs. There is enjoyment in their prose style and personal voice, and so they seek out more of the same.
And maybe the first book was a scifi or mystery novel, and the next book you find by that author is a non-fiction history of egypt, or a genetics textbook. You will likely still enjoy reading that book.
Sometimes that author can even be an expert on all such topics; Issac Asimov existed, after all. But when people are reading for entertainment, they'll be less picky.
> surely there’s an individual whose insight you’d find valuable enough to “follow”?
Not really. I'd rather follow a site with news in topics that are of my interests (e.g. https://electrek.co/) than some short-form messages of an individual. If these tweets would be containing links to their blog then I'd rather check the blog occasionally.
> I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care?
Because if someone puts out good tweets at a reasonable frequency, then following them means you will have good tweets in your feed at a reasonable frequency.
You might also get a lot of terrible tweets in your feed, but that's fine, that's how Twitter works, you just scroll past the terrible stuff.
It's not a million miles of subscribing to a newspaper. You don't expect every piece to be good, but as long as there are a few good things every week, it may be worth it.
What I have learnt is that the majority of people are not interesting enough to keep quiet just to be "allowed" to be around them. The number of people I respect and am interested in listening to their opinion goes down from year to year, with experience. Most people are jerks that deserve to stay in their bubble with their "friends".
In a neighbouring thread we're talking about "conviviality" (Ivan
Illich's "Tools for..."
It's an odd word.
What I found is that almost every random bore at the pub has a wealth
of interesting stuff to say. You just have to tease it out. You have
to work at conversations. It's a bit of a lost art imho.
The first step is always to get the topic off the mainstream (stop
exchanging platitudes) by showing an interest in some marginal
personal remark. Doesn't work for everyone of course. And some people
just don't want to.
Living in Finland I learned the art of just being quiet around others
and that "interesting company" can be hanging out without words, say
just appreciating a walk together.
So I'm with in theory. People are interesting for the most part. However the amount of work to reward you are describing is tantamount to pulling up hedgerows in zelda for coins. Your not likely to find anything amazing but maybe once in awhile interesting. Again probably depends on the establishment
If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way.
Both of your examples have a very strong technical component, either understanding the underlying biology/epidemiology or understanding war theory and practice. It is indeed unlikely that someone is an expert in both.
But many important topics have far fewer, if any, objective truths attached to it. In the case of covid restrictions, opinions should obviously be founded on science, but science can only inform our moral choices, not make them for us. Is the damage done to developing minds worth locking down schools if it reduces the spread of covid? Can there be a state/societal mandate to force people to stay in their homes, or even to get vaccinated?
You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
> If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way.
Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion. It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey. So if I see someone describing, with full confidence, that this is good and that is bad, without all that load of middle-tones, it just makes me feel that they either are not too smart or do not have good intentions.
> You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
I can see the appeal here. What I do not understand is, why would you approach that person as an authority?
> It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey
Yes, it's much easier to paint the whole world one color than trying to paint it in two colors: you'd have to make distinctions and that's quite hard. But on the other hand, if two colors are not enough to paint the whole world, surely one color is even less enough?
That might be an interesting experiment. Poll people on a large scale about dozens of minuscule moral issues that can be determined as GOOD or EVIL, then try to assemble more complex moral issues out of these building blocks. You could end up with some sort of statistical model of morality.
<< Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion.
Yep. Naturally, there is a weird social pressure to have an opinion now even if it ends up being just wrong later. Somehow just waiting is not acceptable. You need to take a stance and declare yourself as team A or team B ( or more ), which only adds to the further tribalization of our discourse.
> it's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey
When I was a teen I saw the world as black and white.
When I got in college I knew they are all grey.
And now I understand there are different shades of grey. Most of time we have no enough information to tell, but sometimes it's worth to look closely to distinguish them.
It's not really English to have a 'well-founded' opinion..
Opinions are not based on knowledge or certainty.. they're opinions.
I miss when opinions were a thing you said to get the 'nothing' out and a probative suggestion that started conversations.
Locking opinion down to knowledge and certainty is essentially non-sensical in English.
The old saying was 'opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one'. Perfectly encapsulates how serious opinions are.... not at all serious, by design.
> why would you even watch this [person’s] videos analysing Ukraine war?
Because that was how you began life.
Your parents (and later/lesser, primary school teachers) were the source of answers on nearly everything.
There’s probably something quite natural about transferring a belief of being competent/knowledgeable in one area into some expectation of the same in another area. It's the underpinning of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy.
It certainly works in the opposite direction: someone whom you know to pontificate out their backside on one topic, that expectation holds for the next, randomly chosen topic as well.
Violating the narrative is irrelevant. But if someone writes something interesting, logical, that I didn’t already know, I usually look for more, whether it’s hn comments , github projects, youtube videos, arxiv papers etc. once I see something particularly dumb or illogical from them, I stop. Especially if I found some other rabbit hole to follow.
That's difference in knowledge vs intelligence though. We see repeatedly that people with expert knowledge are frequently wrong because they shape what they see to fit their knowledge. Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently.
It's the adage of "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail."
Intelligent people have a full toolbox to analyze things with but domain experts tend to only have increasingly large hammers.
> Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently.
Citation needed. This sounds like a Rationalist power fantasy which doesn't fit my experience of the world at all.
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?
This is very true. I think part of the issue is that there's an element of critical thinking skills that you would hope to eventually acquire _AS_ you continue to listen to any attributed public intellectual. Otherwise you can go your whole life reading Christopher Hitchens from when he was a great rhetorician and contrarian of US foreign policy to his transformation of racist war-mongering anti-theism days.
I'd agree, but then the number of people that I meet who are otherwise intelligent and thoughtful, but have a casual, uncritical belief in the ability for Elon Musk to lead humanity forward on multiple fronts is shocking.
Have you ever heard of the "all in" podcast?
A cousin of mine in her 20's has a podcast. I listened in on one and was surprised to hear that whe was giving out financial and investing advice. For context, she lives with her husband in his childhood bedroom with her inlaws, and works two or three days a week as a health professional. She has virtually no savings or investments, relies on her inlaws for food, and has an expensive Jeep on a 6 year loan. Interesting to think that folks are listening to her advice as though she is an expert.
I can believe it. There are those skilled at performative intellectualism, i.e. sounding very smart and insightful, but the performance itself is the product, it is all they sell and offer. Whenever I hear a public speaker appealing to supposed ancient wisdom of obscure tribes and traditions who had better-than-modern diets, laws, monetary policy, medicine, footwear (or lack iof), etc then that tells me that it’s just more hucksterism
Also, it just takes a lot of time to produce that kind of content
The people with the knowledge/experience are often busy doing real world stuff
For others, producing that content is the "best" thing they can do with their time, but ironically that means you probably don't want to listen to them
I’ve begun noticing this performative art play out more and more often on HN lately, especially in threads regarding medicine and healthcare. Apparently everyone became an armchair doctor and got their public policy degrees while on lockdown. It usually leads to a deep discussion with just one comment buried in the middle of the stack going “uhm, wtf?”
I should start a list of red flags in my notes. “Inflammation” comes to mind as well as any sort of explanation that invokes evolutionary biology or neuroscience.
373 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadAlso, 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 pleasure?
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 author is forcing a hot take), then don’t read the book. It’s no different than a date, if the person creeps you out, bounce.
Nobody can contradict what you say in book form.
Two books on the shelf: One says the left stole the election here are the receipts to prove it, the other says the right lied about the election here are the receipts to prove it. Both presumably have an internally consistent narrative that attempts to convince you the story they are selling is THE story.
I've only listened to a few of his podcasts, because they're too long and meandering for me, so perhaps there is more meat in other episodes.
I also don't think he's a grifter in the same way that Peterson is. (I'm not familiar with the other people mentioned in the article.)
Ok I see the point. Thank you.
Also these days his video series tends to focus more on interviews with experts in their respective fields, rather than his own prescriptions and perspective. I think that's commendable and great.
Can't stand the smug certainty he throws off while describing some ridiculous molecular interaction that he clearly knows nothing about, because no one does.
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.
Peterson and Zeihan are examples of this. Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee, and Zeihan is the modern version of his mentor (and Straftor boss) George Friedman, whose primarily claim to fame is predicting an inevitable war between Japan and the US[1], on a crude theory of geographic determinism, "in the next two decades" in 1991. Zeihan has picked that baton up and replaced Japan with China.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan
I think this hyper reductive. You can watch all his lectures, at Harvard and others, online[0]. It's hard to look objectively at his life and not call it "serious intellectual work".
[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos/about
>"You can watch the incredibly popular lecture series "Personality and Its Transformations", "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief", as well as his "The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories" lectures for free."
I won't pretend I ever watched more than a few minutes of any of this stuff, but isn't it a bunch of inane rambling about finding deep psychological meaning or universal truths in fairy tails? Nonsense along the lines of "Slimey the worm from sesame street represents the dragon, the great primordial evil which the warrior, the eternal hero, must slay to conqueror his fears..."
It's the kind of analysis that right/conservative people with 'pragmatic/common sense' self-perceived alignments would usually mock college professors for, except in Peterson's case it gets lapped up because he mixes it in with things like "communism is bad because it murdered millions of people" and "If you're feeling depressed you should try not living like a slob"
Agreed.
> but isn't it a bunch of inane rambling about finding deep psychological meaning or universal truths in fairy tails?
No, it's not. Some of it is illustrated through fables, but I don't think it's inane rambling, no.
I've only briefly heard him, but why is he so polarizing? He just seemed to say sort of "be a decent person and work hard".
</sarcasm>
It's 2023. This is a very controversial idea.
For example, after losing a court battle against the College of Psychologists of Ontario, he talked about it as such: "Don't bloody well lecture me ... some dimwit judge with a liberal bias did ... lecturing me about taking responsibility for what I say." I highly recommend watching the video. The tone is also part of the message: https://youtu.be/M5PESEbY_H0?t=74
Or when in December 2021, the Prime Minister of Canada tweeted this to encourage people to get a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine (keeping in mind that there were at no point any mandates for boosters, this was purely an attempt at advertising the fact that booster doses were available and recommended by the healthcare professionals):
> Justin Trudeau: "If you’re taking care of some last-minute Christmas shopping this week, here’s something else you can add to your list: a booster. If you’re eligible for one but haven’t gotten it yet, please, do so now. And if you don’t have your first or second dose, now’s the time to get it."
NJP replied to the tweet as such:
> NJP: "Up yours @JustinTrudeau. Seriously. You'd have to kill me first."
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/14745955491774341...
I cannot imagine OJP saying any of these things with this tone and this level of imprudence. OJP was generally cerebral, intellectual, academic, deep, calm, polite. He was a well-respected academic through and through.
NJP, on the other hand, is irritable, imprudent, aggressive, abrasive, impulsive, rude. He is a sensationalist yelling pundit through and through.
Drugs tend to do that to people. Peterson and Musk are in their fully matured junkie persona phases.
This is probably what the article is referring to. Before the incident Peterson was a respected academic psychologist, but was widely criticized for his amateur legal analysis of C-16. He has since continued to ruin his reputation by making transphobic tweets about Elliot Page, body shaming the plus sized model Yumi Nu, climate change denial, and generally expressing right wing views on a range of issues.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37875695
We live in a world where even that statement is controversial.
There is a zeitgeist of re-engineering society. Peterson and his tired schtick of "just keep doing the things that were successful for previous generations" interferes. It is unwanted.
There is no certification or competency test for intellectuals. If you say you are one, then— like saying you are a “football fan”— you probably are one.
I say I am an intellectual because I want people to think I am always ready to talk about any philosophical topic. Also I wrote a book about living an intellectual life, so there is evidence I do want to use my mind to consider big questions. Not that evidence matters much.
I am American, too. Turns out some Americans enjoy living a life of mind.
"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."
The problem is when Jordan Petersen starts to talk about other things than that, like politics, gender roles etc. There he repeats similar talking points I've seen on online forums for 20 years now, nothing new or interesting.
Edit: Sometimes downvotes amazes me. Did someone downvote this because I said Jordan Peterson said something good, or because I said he did something bad? Will never know. But I've noticed that balanced takes tend to get more downvoted since both sides downvotes them.
There is the guy you just described, who existed before his year(s?) long struggle with addiction, and then there is the apparently (to me at least) bitter, resentful and angry man who returned after.
Since his return, his expressions, language, positions (and even clothing) have taken on a darker, angrier tone and there's a lot less hope in what I've seen.
For me, this makes this individual different from some others who may fade away over some of issues cited in the article, but remain essentially the same person.
His personality and message changed after a deep and difficult struggle.
I'm not trying to criticize or defend the man, just raising the issue that he may be different from some others in the list.
Karl Marx was even more of a one trick pony than Peterson and, well, he's the most successful public intellectual of all time.
The culmulative effect of Jordan's lectures fits too neatly into the Screwtape Letters.
Ed: not for long.
HN is honestly doing a great job of this, but is a very different format than planned programming.
Perhaps the key is to watch both sides and formulate your own opinion. Maybe it's better to know the biases outright than to rely on someone else to find neutral viewpoints. Of course the problem with that is, a huge amount of the population has no interest in hearing multiple perspectives, and only wants the 'home teams' talking points.
Maybe you’ve pointed out a positive for these scientific journals.
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.
Unfollow all the players with a huge following. They stop producing quality.
Start by supporting underdogs, people who have a following, but small and growing.
Eventually they'll become bigger in terms of following. Then unfollow them.
Say something boring and true and don't get attention.
Say something counter culture, evocative but ultimately wrong (or atleast not durable as an idea). Get attention.
Rinse. Repeate.
Not quite what I expected... I wonder, what was his original experience-based hot take?
Scientists often have something new to say at a frequency of years (if productive).
There is a very simple litmus test to tell which are likely to fade, versus which aren't. How certain are they?
https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/d... reports on a long-term study about pundits. Basically they can be divided into two groups:
1. Hedgehogs. Have one overarching theory that they are certain of.
2. Foxes. Can pick and choose from a variety of sources.
Both groups are smart, informed, and interesting. But when you follow them for a long time, a clear pattern emerges.
- Foxes do much better at making future predictions that come true.
- Hedgehogs become far more popular pundits, and generally wind up getting paid far better. Most pundits with popular shows are hedgehogs.
Why? My theory is that we listen to pundits because it is comfortable to outsource our thinking to them. We find that comfortable if they are smart, well-informed, and certain. It is easy for us to think, "Well if this smart and well-informed guy is so certain, I'd surely agree if I did the work. So now I don't have to bother."
There is a problem here. We become certain when it is easy for us to think a thing true, and hard for us to think it might be false. We feel that the evidence is truly overwhelming. It may be overwhelming. But it is more likely that we're simply being intellectually dishonest. So we actively choose intellectually dishonest pundits who agree with our presumptions, and then become sure that they are right. We enjoy listening to them. But, being intellectually dishonest, they are probably wrong. And now we're emotionally committed to their brand of insanity!
Try this rule of thumb out. Assume that a person who is certain, is probably wrong. And when you find yourself feeling certain, nurse that little doubt about how you REALLY know. It takes time, but consistently making this choice can change your life. For a start, you'll start actually thinking about things that you currently only think you're thinking about.
I think you'd class him as a fox, but perhaps he's more of a badger. Digs deep and wide into history to interpret the present and plot the future. Asks "what's similar and what's different, what's permanent and what's ephemeral?" Not afraid of being unpopular at the time. Some certainty is required when everyone is saying you're wrong, and is justified when ten years later they're saying that what you said ten years ago is obvious.
That said, while he's solid on geopolitics snd the larger systems we are subject to, I wouldn't listen to him about what's happening with dating or something like that.
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 reliable. By contrast Nate Silver really likes to go to his statistics toolset. But I would call him a fox.
However I think there is something to Tetlock's division. And I think my theory connecting certainty to lacking intellectual integrity has a lot to do with it.
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
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...
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 their logical integrated cohesion as a whole. And that's regardless of the source.
Experts/Authorities are neither automatically right or wrong. No honest expert or authority ever demands that their statements be taken on faith. If they actually know what they're talking about, their statements can be logically defended and tied to reality. This is the standard that everyone should be held to.
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.
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.
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.
No, you don't need to personally verify all facts. But you need to be able to observe several indepedent validations. Yes, somewhere you have to take someone's word for fact, but multiple independent observations is a close approximation to the perfect scientific method. Related to that is the fact that science is not a democracy, and these observations have to be weighed against how they fit in our generally accepted worldview. Theory is more than just facts.
Every little detail of science has to be questioned, just not by everyone personally. Where that limit for healthy skepticism is drawn is not something can answer logically, but we can recognize if it is completely wrong.
There continue to be no shortcuts to truth.
Historians know that they can't take written sources at face value. For them, Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars is just another piece of evidence, not a Definite Proof of Everything That Was.
Caesar is not considered an infallible authority, but that has no bearing on the general consensus that Gallic Wars actually took place.
But as to the Gallic Wars happening at all? There is corroborating evidence. Other Romans wrote about it, often to damn it, and they treated the existence of the war as a fact. He brought tons of Gallic slaves back to Rome which would corroborate the most basic facts of the claim (e.g. that there had been wars with Gallic people) to other Romans who weren't there to personally witness it. Furthermore there is modern archeological evidence of battles and massacres which roughly line up with some of what Caesar claimed to have done.
So the logical error isn't an epistemological error in all cases - you can see it as someone trying to minimize some distance metric they are operating on between Reality As It Is and Reality As I Know It by making a single hop to someone who, it is believed, has already done a lot of work investigating the ground claims.
Once he got there, he systematically built up a new framework of thought and reasoning, and we got modern science and philosophy from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito%2C_ergo_sum?wprov=sfla1
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 aren't even given that much importance.
Even with softer topics like history, I think it should be essential to include context explaining how we know these things to be true. On what evidence are these beliefs based on? What is the level of epistemic uncertainty of the information we're being given?
Could you give some example of what would you like to prove, from your college curriculum?
When I wrote that I was specifically thinking about chemistry. It's really been too long since I last studied the topic, so I can't remember any exact details. I just remember a vague sense of thinking "how did we figure this out in the first place?".
Part of the responsibility definitely falls on me, I should've been more inquisitive when I was younger. Maybe the professors would've been willing to explain if I'd been more self-confident and courageous to visit their office hours to inquire further.
Probably the only higher math course I took that I was excited to go to lecture every day.
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.
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.
How do you propose we give more detailed explanations and information for proving everything for yourself? Should college last a few hundred years instead of 4?
Did college not teach you how to access and parse through research papers and books? If you want a more full explanation and to prove things for yourself, why didn't you do so? When you were told, from authority, about the american antarctic base, why didn't you prove its existence by taking a boat there (repeated ad-nauseam for each location in the world)
Figuring out how to prove everything myself is impractical because I'm not an expert in every subfield. I think experts in various fields can write shortcuts and simple experiments which prove a lot of knowledge. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Like, colleges right now provide "shortcuts and simple experiments" to approximate knowledge that was gained with a much more rigorous path. Yet, you decry current college as not showing the full path, as taking shortcuts.
Now, you're saying that yes, we need such shortcuts, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's a spectrum... all of which I agree with, and seems to be the opposite of what you said above.
What's the fundamental difference between what you describe and what colleges do? Or is it just a matter of execution quality?
Can you prove this assertion with math?
People on this site are quick to call something "enshittification" when there are some obvious cash-grabs by megacorps, but are reluctant to admit that the algorithm feeding you content is manipulating you in a similar way.
> And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest.
I did, and they subsequently got banned from every social network, and even their website isn't linkable from Facebook or X or YouTube.
Do we know how this was done before? Let’s say you are a hit broadcast network, and you have these new hit shows called Friends and Family Matters. What’s your plan as a broadcast company now?
Should the TV company organically wait to see what kind of TV shows audiences want to see? Or should they create 10 shows that copy Friends and Family Matters, each targeting a different demo (you know, like black people, or women).
So, if you want to build a loose network of content creators, with your fulcrum being like a Rogan for the general demographic, with a contrived character like a Friedman being the “nerd”. So the loop here is you cast a wide net with Rogan, then niche them down to your Jocko’s, Friedman’s, etc.
Rogan doesn’t disclose when he does Ad drops anymore either. So he’s a really bad actor at this point.
Like yeah Joe, you just talked about McDonalds for 10 minutes for free again on an episode with 10 million listeners huh? Oh, talking about the latest movie in theaters again? As if that’s not a 5 minute ‘hey McDonald’s, we can leave this 7 minutes in about how your Coca Cola tastes better than regular Coca Cola, or we can just edit it out. I’m sorry? Did we say edit out? What we meant was, how about like 30 million for 6 month campaign? No? Okay, see ya. No, we never recorded anything about McDonald’s soda tasting better.
Who wanted Lex Fridman there, and how did they achieve getting him there?
(I've only a passing knowledge of who that is, and haven't heard of Eric Weinstein at all)
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 the reverse is definitely true, people actually do get deplatformed, so why is it unreasonable to think at least some winners have been picked?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
But it's not about a single person. It's that these midwit pseudointellectuals (Peterson, Weinstein) can constantly get churned through the top of the algorithm. People like the guy who wrote this initial post, in turn, think that there are no political discussions going on deeper than dumbed down, often misused regurgitated political philosophy from much smarter thinkers of the past.
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.
Those constitute "fallen".
Which wrongthinker are you referring to?
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.
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.
So I do this, a lot. Rogan is a good example I struggle with. I regularly go I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about. It isn’t relegated to just Rogan.
Musk was another awful one when you first get into him.
This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
I almost have to shake my head and snap out of it.
Edit:
I’ll add that I’ve gotten extremely good at filtering his guests but still weak to filtering him (it’s kinda like still having feelings for your first). Anytime he puts on a comedian I always go “yeah whatever, who cares what some random comedian thinks about ______”, but I wasn’t able to do that with Rogan. No sir, I listen with both ears as he describes like … nuclear fusion.
Because sometimes the crazy cult leader ends up being right, revival (much like the religious revivals of the 1830s in the US) and making a big change when society is in flux is just something in our blood. Problem is right now nobody wants to actually buy 60,000 acres of undeveloped land to get it all started, they just want to profit off of people via parasocial relationships.
My favorite analogy is that parasocial relationships are the Doritos of socialization: appealing. delicious, addictive, can temporarily keep hunger at bay—but fundamentally not satiating, lacking in essential nutrients, and unhealthy when they displace their original natural & more nutritious alternatives.
These relationships are on both sides (e.g AOC on the left).
It's kind of inescapable in modern politics, because it's effective at getting people elected and/or making money. It's not the worst way to get elected; certainly better than relying on narrow donor class money. Just .. recognize the limitations of it.
So instead of being a Rogan stan for those weird years in High School, you are grown ass 30 year year old Stan who’s been stanning for 5 years now minimum.
Adults today don’t know how to snap out of the high school shit they easily snapped out of after high school. It’s like we’re in a high school that never ends.
I think the issue with being an adult is that you often think you've outgrown childish inclinations. In actuality, I find adults will act childishly and then assume, because they are adults, their behavior must be mature and taken seriously.
Until I dropped social media, I was getting Rogan links all the time.
I didn't think this was in any way confusing or surprising, and never thought this had anything to do with love.
Isn't this the position of most people?
Plenty of couples started with "oh he's so cute and funny" / "I love listening to her jokes", and few years later found themselves retelling those stories to a wide audience, at their wedding.
"I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric."
(if you've never read the whole thing, it's worth it, far beyond the list)
I don't understand asking non-experts their opinion on basically anything.
And that's what these people are. They provide a comforting sense of moral certainty and judgement; they define enemies, usually a nebulous Them; they're satisfying to listen to; and they publish on a schedule to reinforce the little ritual of listening to them. You've heard the adhan and you are called.
> This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
People have somehow lost all the words for communicating relationships between people that aren't sexual. Although the "fan" relationship can get pretty weird at times. It's interesting to hear from someone who's liminal enough to realize that they're inside the experience but also knows what's wrong with it. Thank you for this post.
> I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about
See also "Gell-Mann amnesia" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right.
Clearly there is a middle ground, we should not blindly follow some authority, but some skills generalize, and some people may be worth listening to on general topics, and not just the ultra-specialized experts.
That people do pay attention to the Tomas Pueyos of the world is a problem - but not because it's impossible not to, just because they're doing it!
Scientific people who are outside of a field that has institutional scientific blindness problems are absolutely allowed to call out that bullshit when we see it. We don’t get upset when a non chiropractor says that chiropractors are hucksters. I should not be lumped in with Covid deniers for pointing out that most disease experts massive undervalued and underutilized air ventilation techniques (an example technique would be doing regular activities, like classes, outside)
Meanwhile I saw a friend of mine who actually is an immunology PhD get driven off Twitter in 2020 by angry mobs.
Is considering oneself an omniscient Oracle the right approach?
> If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)
For myself, the domain(s) that the "influencer" has skills within is crucially important, as certain domains encompass or intersect with almost all others.
This is an interesting comment section from certain specific perspectives, but if one lacks the necessary background you could miss out on the show entirely.
But do they really cut through bullshit and appearances? The individuals that the author has mentioned are mostly oversimplifying the world.
> Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too.
That's the issue here - treating real world issues as a though experiment. It creates solutions that are very appealing to people who perceive themselves as thinkers. The ideas are usually simple, round, fair, based on some fairness coming from nature or math, but they completely discard the complexity of the problem. As soon as you start adding corner cases it solution fails.
You can see that as well in software engineering - if only we could simplify the problem we're trying to solve, the solution would be so clean!
> But dear reader see this pattern for what it is... every 6 months I find someone new to obsess over... Without fail, each one of comes to disappoint.
Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it?
> says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating.
A rebel! One validated by popular opinion no less!
The problem is, no matter how many rebellious public intellectuals we binge on, it will not take one any closer to being that rebellious and fascinating person. Escape from such a cycle is to jump directly to being that which you wish to be. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200.
Find what is so odious in this "narrative" of which you speak, and loudly denounce it!
But beware, if you like to have friends. Instead of being the cool, interesting person at the party, who knows all the latest, internet-celebrity-validated talking points, you will be the bus loony in the anorak who people avoid. Trust me, I've lived it for 40 years. With some guile you can go to ground disguised as university professor for a while.
I do feel that the author has some interesting personality trait - but I'm not sure if he's in the minority.
After writing my comment I have realised that maybe it's why I never understood the appeal of Twitter. I have never had any "gurus" or "authorities" that I'd universally respect. I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care? When I read that the author says he follows that "person" so deeply, watching their videos for hours, I completely can not relate. Neither on logical nor emotional level.
I might dig into a topic, let's say, siege of Berlin during II WW, but I'd be focusing on the topic and the source / author will be completely irrelevant. I'll even probably select various ones, as I enjoy challenging my own perspective.
Not me. What I would like to follow is a topic that interests me, with discourse predominantly populated by subject matter experts. "User-based" follow systems like Twitter only make sense insamuch as the user sticks to their expertise, and as soon as they start veering away into new topics their comments are just as likely to be noise as the average schmuck, and I don't know why I would want to waste my time deliberately consuming noise.
What you describe wanting, is what academic journals are. Subject matter experts discussing that subject matter with one another. Social media is not for you, and that's fine.
What other people are describing, is more like, an author writes a book you enjoy; so you read another book of theirs. There is enjoyment in their prose style and personal voice, and so they seek out more of the same.
And maybe the first book was a scifi or mystery novel, and the next book you find by that author is a non-fiction history of egypt, or a genetics textbook. You will likely still enjoy reading that book.
Sometimes that author can even be an expert on all such topics; Issac Asimov existed, after all. But when people are reading for entertainment, they'll be less picky.
Not really. I'd rather follow a site with news in topics that are of my interests (e.g. https://electrek.co/) than some short-form messages of an individual. If these tweets would be containing links to their blog then I'd rather check the blog occasionally.
Because if someone puts out good tweets at a reasonable frequency, then following them means you will have good tweets in your feed at a reasonable frequency.
You might also get a lot of terrible tweets in your feed, but that's fine, that's how Twitter works, you just scroll past the terrible stuff.
It's not a million miles of subscribing to a newspaper. You don't expect every piece to be good, but as long as there are a few good things every week, it may be worth it.
It's an odd word.
What I found is that almost every random bore at the pub has a wealth of interesting stuff to say. You just have to tease it out. You have to work at conversations. It's a bit of a lost art imho.
The first step is always to get the topic off the mainstream (stop exchanging platitudes) by showing an interest in some marginal personal remark. Doesn't work for everyone of course. And some people just don't want to.
Living in Finland I learned the art of just being quiet around others and that "interesting company" can be hanging out without words, say just appreciating a walk together.
Conversations (on the surface level) have become narrow.
It's the pursuit to reveal a very specific meaning, and the connections around it. It won't go anywhere.. people will want freedom from it.
Both of your examples have a very strong technical component, either understanding the underlying biology/epidemiology or understanding war theory and practice. It is indeed unlikely that someone is an expert in both.
But many important topics have far fewer, if any, objective truths attached to it. In the case of covid restrictions, opinions should obviously be founded on science, but science can only inform our moral choices, not make them for us. Is the damage done to developing minds worth locking down schools if it reduces the spread of covid? Can there be a state/societal mandate to force people to stay in their homes, or even to get vaccinated?
You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion. It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey. So if I see someone describing, with full confidence, that this is good and that is bad, without all that load of middle-tones, it just makes me feel that they either are not too smart or do not have good intentions.
> You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
I can see the appeal here. What I do not understand is, why would you approach that person as an authority?
Yes, it's much easier to paint the whole world one color than trying to paint it in two colors: you'd have to make distinctions and that's quite hard. But on the other hand, if two colors are not enough to paint the whole world, surely one color is even less enough?
Yep. Naturally, there is a weird social pressure to have an opinion now even if it ends up being just wrong later. Somehow just waiting is not acceptable. You need to take a stance and declare yourself as team A or team B ( or more ), which only adds to the further tribalization of our discourse.
When I was a teen I saw the world as black and white.
When I got in college I knew they are all grey.
And now I understand there are different shades of grey. Most of time we have no enough information to tell, but sometimes it's worth to look closely to distinguish them.
Opinions are not based on knowledge or certainty.. they're opinions.
I miss when opinions were a thing you said to get the 'nothing' out and a probative suggestion that started conversations.
Locking opinion down to knowledge and certainty is essentially non-sensical in English.
The old saying was 'opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one'. Perfectly encapsulates how serious opinions are.... not at all serious, by design.
Because that was how you began life.
Your parents (and later/lesser, primary school teachers) were the source of answers on nearly everything.
There’s probably something quite natural about transferring a belief of being competent/knowledgeable in one area into some expectation of the same in another area. It's the underpinning of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy.
It certainly works in the opposite direction: someone whom you know to pontificate out their backside on one topic, that expectation holds for the next, randomly chosen topic as well.
It's the adage of "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail."
Intelligent people have a full toolbox to analyze things with but domain experts tend to only have increasingly large hammers.
Citation needed. This sounds like a Rationalist power fantasy which doesn't fit my experience of the world at all.
it does make sense, you can understand multiple things. especially after researching it.
The people with the knowledge/experience are often busy doing real world stuff
For others, producing that content is the "best" thing they can do with their time, but ironically that means you probably don't want to listen to them
I should start a list of red flags in my notes. “Inflammation” comes to mind as well as any sort of explanation that invokes evolutionary biology or neuroscience.
Anyway, basically what I'm saying is, if the CO2 levels go above 500ppm in my room, I get extreme brain fog.