7 ms·

The Artificial Intelligence of the Public Intellectual

47 points by axiomdata316 7y ago

paganel 7y ago
> Last month, a hyped debate between psychology professor Peterson and philosopher Slavoj Žižek had the former spending his opening remarks stumbling around Marxism, having only just read The Communist Manifesto for the first time since high school. As Andray Domise wrote in Maclean’s, “The good professor hadn’t done his homework.” This is a little bit harsh on Peterson because a lot of Marxists themselves haven't read Marx. You could say that the intellectual history of marxism (at least in the second half of the 20th century) is comprised of a large majority of "marxists" who haven't read his works and a small minority who have done so and who at least have a general idea of what marxism really is about (if it matters I do believe that Žižek has indeed read Marx and he knows what he's talking about).
- ptah 7y ago
  nice whataboutism. fact remains peterson is clueless about marxism
  - paganel 7y ago
    Accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing. The demise of marxism (at least in the Western world) started when clueless people like Marcuse started riding on its wave without having any idea what they were talking about. And on the back of clueless intellectuals like Marcuse you have today's pseudo-intellectuals (including people like Peterson) who ignore the big marxist elephant in the room: the fact that poor people are being exploited by the rich to this very day, instead they are focusing their intellectual "fights" on irrelevant things (like being a feminist or an anti-feminist). To point back to the article, we have no Zola of our times.
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      It seems like if you're going to engage in a public debate in favour of or opposing X, the bare minimum expectation should be that you do enough background research to be able to speak in an informed manner about X.
      - paganel 7y ago
        Care to give an example of where do you think I'm wrong? What does "X" mean? Do you contest the influence of guys like Marcuse on today's public intellectuals and academia? What do you mean by "background research"? I did read a lot of Marx (his youth works, Capital I, half of Grundrisse) and I did read some Marcuse (couldn't make that much out of it, but I can certainly say that his works had no direct relation to Marx's works). I also really do believe that today's public intellectuals are ignoring the blight of the majority of the people inhabiting this planet, being they men or women (like I said, we have no Zola of our time). I'd be happy to be proven wrong in which with case I'm eager for book recommendations. Honestly, I'm pretty taken down by comments such as yours, with general statements that point at nothing in particular (again, what does "X" mean?) in response to a comment like mine that directly mentions two or three things included in TFA (Peterson, Zola, Marx and public intellectuals generally speaking). I expect better from the HN public.
        narag 7y ago
        It seems he's talking about Peterson, not you.
        ForHackernews 7y ago
        > What does "X" mean? Literally any topic that one might try to have an intellectual debate about. In this case, you're choosing "Marxism", but my point is far more general than that. If you're going to stand up and publicly make arguments about feminism, dark energy, protecting endangered species, the rise of China, post-impressionism... the very least you can do is enough background reading to not make a fool of yourself. Contrary to your assertion that "accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing", I am saying that being clueless about the very thing you've arrogantly stood up to talk about in public is a big deal and should be humiliating. I don't think you and I actually disagree that Peterson is an embarrassment.
  - vixen99 7y ago
    What is the point of this kind of comment? Can you not see that its information content is zilch. How about telling us why you take this view and then we might not have wasted seconds reading something to no purpose.
    - ptah 7y ago
      the point is that just stating the opinion that some marxists don't know much about marx does not excuse peterson's ignorance
  - kofejnik 7y ago
    fact: marxism is a steaming pile of horseshit. Source: lived in the USSR
    - antisemiotic 7y ago
      (disclosure: born and living in Poland) Dunno, with all the awful things that your rulers have done, I think that if the impotent Tsarist Russia has survived into the WWII, I'd be speaking German at the very best.
      - kofejnik 7y ago
        without communist revolution and Stalin's pact with Hitler, I don't think there would've been a WWII
        antisemiotic 7y ago
        Last time I checked, it was common knowledge that Hitler invaded Poland because we wouldn't agree to an ex-territorial corridor to Danzig. Of course that's simplifying a lot, but still, I don't see how a revolution in Russia factors into this. Auschwitz is also on Lenin? The mass grave of victims of German soldiers near my parents' house too?
        kofejnik 7y ago
        yes, that's simplifying a lot, definitely. First, the whole landscape would've been different. And then, Hitler invaded Poland because he could, and because he had additional reassurance from Molotov-Ribbentrop. Also, you are conveniently skipping the part where USSR invaded the remaining part of Poland two weeks later. (Need I remind you about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre ?) As for Auschwitz, nice strawman. Stalin and Lenin have blood of millions on their hands, no need to bring up something unrelated.
        antisemiotic 7y ago
  - challenger22 7y ago
    Most of Peterson's experience with Marxism is through reading about it's effects (Gulag Archipelago, collecting soviet era propoganda), not reading about it's philosophy. The philosophy can be understood pretty easily from social context without having read the Manifesto.
    - antisemiotic 7y ago
      The Communist Manifesto doesn't explain the philosophy of marxism in any meaningful way, it's about the goals of what we would today call a socialdemocratic party, with the important difference that back then such parties were actually intending to implement socialism after reaching said goals. To have a bare minimum of an idea of what was Marx talking about, I'd recommend reading at least "Wage Labour and Capital". Judging from how many strawmans of Marx's take on Labour Theory of Value are out there, I'm fairly sure it can't be guessed from context.
- frozenport 7y ago
  I think people were underwhelmed by the debate because Peterson had very little say, hinting he either agreed or didn't prepare. People came for a fight but got a three hour snooze fest.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Studying Marx and his work extensively should belong to the historians studying Marxism. If "Marxism" is valuable path of thinking, it musth have evolved and some things Marx said are not considered outdated or wrong by today's Marxists. If what "Marxism really is about" has not changed, it's stale and outdated ideology. If all outsiders understand Marx wrong, I very doubt that it's worth of reading his original works. He clearly can't write clearly if you need dedication to Marxism to really understand.
- unknownkadath 7y ago
  He's a professor, though, and critcising the left is kind of his specialization.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
while it's important to criticize intellectuals on their positions, especially if they show ignorance on a topic they're debating and especially if they're tryng to position themselves as expert in the subject matter, it's a little unfair to expect them to come into life fully formed and knowledgeable about everything. as long as they're honest about it I think it's ok for debates to happen between people that aren't subject expert. how are they supposed to learn, alone in a cave?
- ggg2 7y ago
  the problem seems to be the publisher (which some researchers double as) framing it in a peer-consensus way when it's not.
michjedi 7y ago
This article is full of ad hominems and doesn't present any challenges to ideas. Rather poor in my opinion
sago 7y ago
There is a certain degree of oxymoron in the term 'public intellectual'. Reality is complex. Terrifyingly so. The academics I have the most respect for walk a tightrope in a state of barely contained vertigo. It is very difficult to make a strong point, almost impossible to make it both correct and understandable, and (IMO) definitely impossible to make the tightrope accessible for others to walk. To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition. Ideally the person doing that simplification does so knowingly for the purpose of education. But that is entirely opaque to public view. So it is no surprise that those who gain most recognition are those most willing to misrepresent the nuance of their field. Or to caricature the opponents of the viewpoint they wish to espouse. How do even informed members of the public tell? A PhD from Harvard as a shibboleth, sounds about right. I'm not saying the public is dumb. Just that none of us have the expertise or the dedication or the time. We rely on tribal signalling. So we are primed for intellectual hucksterism.
- 0815test 7y ago
  > To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition. This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. You can be really, really sure about a quite complex and nuanced statement, or make helpful simplifications but then have to admit to some uncertainty, if only because your statement might be misinterpreted. More than anything, you can provide clear, unambiguous, broadly available references to enable anyone who's actually relying on your claims to fact-check them. Seeming more confident than you actually are is a common rhetorical trick, but one that we should be training the general public not to fall for so easily. Because a bad actor can seem so much more confident, no matter how fringe their claims might be - it's a loser move! One can take pride in sticking to the minimally-necessary amounts of ambiguity and/or nuance, whatever those might be in any given context.
  - sago 7y ago
    > This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. One might say I stripped all nuance (etc) to make my point. I agree with your second paragraph. On your first: I have a long-standing beef with references, though. The selection of references, I think, is much more significant than the contents themselves. And it takes a lot of expertise to intuit the degree of selection bias. It takes ground knowledge of the things not selected. I think a part of this Dunning Kruger trap is the illusion one can fact check and verify an argument. So the very presence of references becomes the shibboleth.
challenger22 7y ago
>Their minds have hijacked the public trust, each one acting as the pinnacle of intellect, an individual example of brilliance to cut through all the dullness, before sacrificing the very rigor that put them there in order to maintain the illusion floated by the media, by them, even by us. The public intellectual once meant public action, a voice from the outside shifting the inside, but then it became personal, populated by self-serving insiders. The public intellectual thus became an extension — rather than an indictment — of the American Dream, the idea that one person, on their own, can achieve anything, including being the smartest person in the room as well as the richest. >That includes online activists and writers like Mikki Kendall, who regularly leads discussions about feminism and race on Twitter; Bill McKibben, who cofounded 360.org, an online community of climate change activists; and YouTubers like Natalie Wynn, whose ContraPoints video essays respond to real questions from alt-right men. In both models, complex thought does not reside solely with the individual, but engages the community. I do not like this article. It does not organize its criticisms well, and it is really hard to understand exactly why the author dislikes the individual intellectuals she calls out, and likes the others. For example, Peterson actively engages his audience, but doesn't get credit for it. The best guess I have for the author's position is trying to portray her left-of-center political as authoritative by appealing to higher abstractions; I honestly don't know. It is strange.
AbrahamParangi 7y ago
Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me. A mediocre idea can still be the best idea in the room. "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
- heymijo 7y ago
  "Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me." This sounds like the idea some manager have of "don't bring me a problem unless you have a solution", which is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way of managing.
  - valiant55 7y ago
    I think that style of management is just fine if it's stated as "Don't bring me a problem unless you have a proposed solution." By proposing a solution it starts a conversation about how to resolve the stated problem. Often times someone will just complain (rightly or wrongly) about an issue and then everyone just kind of stares at the floor for 5 seconds and then moves on.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      The problem is information asymmetry. The problem is often due to information the decision makers don't have, while the proper solution requires information the complaintants don't have. This, it's only possible to propose a solution together.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
        Can't part of the solution be the research required to come up with an alternative?
  - uncletaco 7y ago
    I think very differently about this. I’ve rarely encountered a problem where there wasn’t enough time to consider alternative solutions before taking it to my manager. Also depending on how long a manager has been managing, there’s a non trivial chance the worker have more intimate knowledge of the implementation space than the manager, especially if they’re a developer or worker who has ownership over the task. Granted it is a personal thing for me. I was told this in ROTC over a decade ago and I’ve never had a manager actually demand this of me. I’ve always imposed it on myself.
ppod 7y ago
This article is a bait and switch. It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual, when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author. > Speaking of white audiences … here’s where I mention the intellectual dark web even though I would rather not. It’s the place — online, outside the academy, in pseudo-intellectual “free thought” mag Quillette — where reactionary “intellectuals” flash their advanced degrees while claiming their views are too edgy for the schools that graduated them. These are your Petersons, your Sam Harrises, your Ben Shapiros, the white (non)thinkers, usually men, tied in some vague way to academia
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > This article is a bait and switch. No, it's not. > It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual, Which it does. > when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author. But it's not, if by that you mean the particular “reactionary” figured mentioned in that paragraph, the criticism of whom in that paragraph is of he same tenor as that of public intellectuals of different political stripes in the paragraphs preceding and following that one (the next begins, “But it’s not just the conservative public intellectuals who are slacking off...” Your thesis seems to be based entirely on taking that paragraph out of context and pretending it is the secret central point of the article, when it is clearly not, and comes off as the kind of knee jerk defense of those figures (particularly Peterson) common from certain corners of HN. The actual central criticism of the article is made explicitly later, standardly enough in the two paragraph conclusion which also includes a resolution as well as a criticism; the main criticism being not focussed on any one political leaning, “The individuals who have since become symbols of thought — from the right (Christina Hoff Sommers) to the left (Roxane Gay) — are overrepresented in the media, contravening the original definition of their role as outsiders who spur public action against the insiders. In a capitalist system that promotes branded individualism at the expense of collective action, the public intellectual becomes a myth of impossible aspiration that not even it can live up to, which is the point — to keep selling a dream that is easier to buy than to engage in reality.”
GoodJokes 7y ago
ITT: bad readers and closet lobsters
cafard 7y ago
About 50 years ago, Time Magazine ran an article on somebody's list of the 100 leading intellectuals in America. I remember almost no names from the list, but do remember a definition from an official at Harvard, a dean perhaps: An intellectual is a scholar who is living beyond his scholarly means. Honestly, public intellectual has always been an odd calling. Who would you define it? One who writes serious, scholarly books, yet also articles in the popular or semi-popular press? The difficulty might then be in judging whose serious books are serious.

47 points by axiomdata316 7y ago

> Last month, a hyped debate between psychology professor Peterson and philosopher Slavoj Žižek had the former spending his opening remarks stumbling around Marxism, having only just read The Communist Manifesto for the first time since high school. As Andray Domise wrote in Maclean’s, “The good professor hadn’t done his homework.” This is a little bit harsh on Peterson because a lot of Marxists themselves haven't read Marx. You could say that the intellectual history of marxism (at least in the second half of the 20th century) is comprised of a large majority of "marxists" who haven't read his works and a small minority who have done so and who at least have a general idea of what marxism really is about (if it matters I do believe that Žižek has indeed read Marx and he knows what he's talking about).

ptah 7y ago
nice whataboutism. fact remains peterson is clueless about marxism
- paganel 7y ago
  Accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing. The demise of marxism (at least in the Western world) started when clueless people like Marcuse started riding on its wave without having any idea what they were talking about. And on the back of clueless intellectuals like Marcuse you have today's pseudo-intellectuals (including people like Peterson) who ignore the big marxist elephant in the room: the fact that poor people are being exploited by the rich to this very day, instead they are focusing their intellectual "fights" on irrelevant things (like being a feminist or an anti-feminist). To point back to the article, we have no Zola of our times.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    It seems like if you're going to engage in a public debate in favour of or opposing X, the bare minimum expectation should be that you do enough background research to be able to speak in an informed manner about X.
    - paganel 7y ago
      Care to give an example of where do you think I'm wrong? What does "X" mean? Do you contest the influence of guys like Marcuse on today's public intellectuals and academia? What do you mean by "background research"? I did read a lot of Marx (his youth works, Capital I, half of Grundrisse) and I did read some Marcuse (couldn't make that much out of it, but I can certainly say that his works had no direct relation to Marx's works). I also really do believe that today's public intellectuals are ignoring the blight of the majority of the people inhabiting this planet, being they men or women (like I said, we have no Zola of our time). I'd be happy to be proven wrong in which with case I'm eager for book recommendations. Honestly, I'm pretty taken down by comments such as yours, with general statements that point at nothing in particular (again, what does "X" mean?) in response to a comment like mine that directly mentions two or three things included in TFA (Peterson, Zola, Marx and public intellectuals generally speaking). I expect better from the HN public.
      - narag 7y ago
        It seems he's talking about Peterson, not you.
      - ForHackernews 7y ago
        > What does "X" mean? Literally any topic that one might try to have an intellectual debate about. In this case, you're choosing "Marxism", but my point is far more general than that. If you're going to stand up and publicly make arguments about feminism, dark energy, protecting endangered species, the rise of China, post-impressionism... the very least you can do is enough background reading to not make a fool of yourself. Contrary to your assertion that "accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing", I am saying that being clueless about the very thing you've arrogantly stood up to talk about in public is a big deal and should be humiliating. I don't think you and I actually disagree that Peterson is an embarrassment.
- vixen99 7y ago
  What is the point of this kind of comment? Can you not see that its information content is zilch. How about telling us why you take this view and then we might not have wasted seconds reading something to no purpose.
  - ptah 7y ago
    the point is that just stating the opinion that some marxists don't know much about marx does not excuse peterson's ignorance
- kofejnik 7y ago
  fact: marxism is a steaming pile of horseshit. Source: lived in the USSR
  - antisemiotic 7y ago
    (disclosure: born and living in Poland) Dunno, with all the awful things that your rulers have done, I think that if the impotent Tsarist Russia has survived into the WWII, I'd be speaking German at the very best.
    - kofejnik 7y ago
      without communist revolution and Stalin's pact with Hitler, I don't think there would've been a WWII
      - antisemiotic 7y ago
        Last time I checked, it was common knowledge that Hitler invaded Poland because we wouldn't agree to an ex-territorial corridor to Danzig. Of course that's simplifying a lot, but still, I don't see how a revolution in Russia factors into this. Auschwitz is also on Lenin? The mass grave of victims of German soldiers near my parents' house too?
        kofejnik 7y ago
        yes, that's simplifying a lot, definitely. First, the whole landscape would've been different. And then, Hitler invaded Poland because he could, and because he had additional reassurance from Molotov-Ribbentrop. Also, you are conveniently skipping the part where USSR invaded the remaining part of Poland two weeks later. (Need I remind you about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre ?) As for Auschwitz, nice strawman. Stalin and Lenin have blood of millions on their hands, no need to bring up something unrelated.
        antisemiotic 7y ago
- challenger22 7y ago
  Most of Peterson's experience with Marxism is through reading about it's effects (Gulag Archipelago, collecting soviet era propoganda), not reading about it's philosophy. The philosophy can be understood pretty easily from social context without having read the Manifesto.
  - antisemiotic 7y ago
    The Communist Manifesto doesn't explain the philosophy of marxism in any meaningful way, it's about the goals of what we would today call a socialdemocratic party, with the important difference that back then such parties were actually intending to implement socialism after reaching said goals. To have a bare minimum of an idea of what was Marx talking about, I'd recommend reading at least "Wage Labour and Capital". Judging from how many strawmans of Marx's take on Labour Theory of Value are out there, I'm fairly sure it can't be guessed from context.
frozenport 7y ago
I think people were underwhelmed by the debate because Peterson had very little say, hinting he either agreed or didn't prepare. People came for a fight but got a three hour snooze fest.
nabla9 7y ago
Studying Marx and his work extensively should belong to the historians studying Marxism. If "Marxism" is valuable path of thinking, it musth have evolved and some things Marx said are not considered outdated or wrong by today's Marxists. If what "Marxism really is about" has not changed, it's stale and outdated ideology. If all outsiders understand Marx wrong, I very doubt that it's worth of reading his original works. He clearly can't write clearly if you need dedication to Marxism to really understand.
unknownkadath 7y ago
He's a professor, though, and critcising the left is kind of his specialization.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

while it's important to criticize intellectuals on their positions, especially if they show ignorance on a topic they're debating and especially if they're tryng to position themselves as expert in the subject matter, it's a little unfair to expect them to come into life fully formed and knowledgeable about everything. as long as they're honest about it I think it's ok for debates to happen between people that aren't subject expert. how are they supposed to learn, alone in a cave?

ggg2 7y ago
the problem seems to be the publisher (which some researchers double as) framing it in a peer-consensus way when it's not.

michjedi 7y ago

This article is full of ad hominems and doesn't present any challenges to ideas. Rather poor in my opinion

sago 7y ago

There is a certain degree of oxymoron in the term 'public intellectual'. Reality is complex. Terrifyingly so. The academics I have the most respect for walk a tightrope in a state of barely contained vertigo. It is very difficult to make a strong point, almost impossible to make it both correct and understandable, and (IMO) definitely impossible to make the tightrope accessible for others to walk. To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition. Ideally the person doing that simplification does so knowingly for the purpose of education. But that is entirely opaque to public view. So it is no surprise that those who gain most recognition are those most willing to misrepresent the nuance of their field. Or to caricature the opponents of the viewpoint they wish to espouse. How do even informed members of the public tell? A PhD from Harvard as a shibboleth, sounds about right. I'm not saying the public is dumb. Just that none of us have the expertise or the dedication or the time. We rely on tribal signalling. So we are primed for intellectual hucksterism.

0815test 7y ago
> To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition. This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. You can be really, really sure about a quite complex and nuanced statement, or make helpful simplifications but then have to admit to some uncertainty, if only because your statement might be misinterpreted. More than anything, you can provide clear, unambiguous, broadly available references to enable anyone who's actually relying on your claims to fact-check them. Seeming more confident than you actually are is a common rhetorical trick, but one that we should be training the general public not to fall for so easily. Because a bad actor can seem so much more confident, no matter how fringe their claims might be - it's a loser move! One can take pride in sticking to the minimally-necessary amounts of ambiguity and/or nuance, whatever those might be in any given context.
- sago 7y ago
  > This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. One might say I stripped all nuance (etc) to make my point. I agree with your second paragraph. On your first: I have a long-standing beef with references, though. The selection of references, I think, is much more significant than the contents themselves. And it takes a lot of expertise to intuit the degree of selection bias. It takes ground knowledge of the things not selected. I think a part of this Dunning Kruger trap is the illusion one can fact check and verify an argument. So the very presence of references becomes the shibboleth.

challenger22 7y ago

>Their minds have hijacked the public trust, each one acting as the pinnacle of intellect, an individual example of brilliance to cut through all the dullness, before sacrificing the very rigor that put them there in order to maintain the illusion floated by the media, by them, even by us. The public intellectual once meant public action, a voice from the outside shifting the inside, but then it became personal, populated by self-serving insiders. The public intellectual thus became an extension — rather than an indictment — of the American Dream, the idea that one person, on their own, can achieve anything, including being the smartest person in the room as well as the richest. >That includes online activists and writers like Mikki Kendall, who regularly leads discussions about feminism and race on Twitter; Bill McKibben, who cofounded 360.org, an online community of climate change activists; and YouTubers like Natalie Wynn, whose ContraPoints video essays respond to real questions from alt-right men. In both models, complex thought does not reside solely with the individual, but engages the community. I do not like this article. It does not organize its criticisms well, and it is really hard to understand exactly why the author dislikes the individual intellectuals she calls out, and likes the others. For example, Peterson actively engages his audience, but doesn't get credit for it. The best guess I have for the author's position is trying to portray her left-of-center political as authoritative by appealing to higher abstractions; I honestly don't know. It is strange.

AbrahamParangi 7y ago

Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me. A mediocre idea can still be the best idea in the room. "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

heymijo 7y ago
"Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me." This sounds like the idea some manager have of "don't bring me a problem unless you have a solution", which is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way of managing.
- valiant55 7y ago
  I think that style of management is just fine if it's stated as "Don't bring me a problem unless you have a proposed solution." By proposing a solution it starts a conversation about how to resolve the stated problem. Often times someone will just complain (rightly or wrongly) about an issue and then everyone just kind of stares at the floor for 5 seconds and then moves on.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    The problem is information asymmetry. The problem is often due to information the decision makers don't have, while the proper solution requires information the complaintants don't have. This, it's only possible to propose a solution together.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
      Can't part of the solution be the research required to come up with an alternative?
- uncletaco 7y ago
  I think very differently about this. I’ve rarely encountered a problem where there wasn’t enough time to consider alternative solutions before taking it to my manager. Also depending on how long a manager has been managing, there’s a non trivial chance the worker have more intimate knowledge of the implementation space than the manager, especially if they’re a developer or worker who has ownership over the task. Granted it is a personal thing for me. I was told this in ROTC over a decade ago and I’ve never had a manager actually demand this of me. I’ve always imposed it on myself.

ppod 7y ago

This article is a bait and switch. It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual, when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author. > Speaking of white audiences … here’s where I mention the intellectual dark web even though I would rather not. It’s the place — online, outside the academy, in pseudo-intellectual “free thought” mag Quillette — where reactionary “intellectuals” flash their advanced degrees while claiming their views are too edgy for the schools that graduated them. These are your Petersons, your Sam Harrises, your Ben Shapiros, the white (non)thinkers, usually men, tied in some vague way to academia

dragonwriter 7y ago
> This article is a bait and switch. No, it's not. > It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual, Which it does. > when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author. But it's not, if by that you mean the particular “reactionary” figured mentioned in that paragraph, the criticism of whom in that paragraph is of he same tenor as that of public intellectuals of different political stripes in the paragraphs preceding and following that one (the next begins, “But it’s not just the conservative public intellectuals who are slacking off...” Your thesis seems to be based entirely on taking that paragraph out of context and pretending it is the secret central point of the article, when it is clearly not, and comes off as the kind of knee jerk defense of those figures (particularly Peterson) common from certain corners of HN. The actual central criticism of the article is made explicitly later, standardly enough in the two paragraph conclusion which also includes a resolution as well as a criticism; the main criticism being not focussed on any one political leaning, “The individuals who have since become symbols of thought — from the right (Christina Hoff Sommers) to the left (Roxane Gay) — are overrepresented in the media, contravening the original definition of their role as outsiders who spur public action against the insiders. In a capitalist system that promotes branded individualism at the expense of collective action, the public intellectual becomes a myth of impossible aspiration that not even it can live up to, which is the point — to keep selling a dream that is easier to buy than to engage in reality.”

GoodJokes 7y ago

ITT: bad readers and closet lobsters

cafard 7y ago

About 50 years ago, Time Magazine ran an article on somebody's list of the 100 leading intellectuals in America. I remember almost no names from the list, but do remember a definition from an official at Harvard, a dean perhaps: An intellectual is a scholar who is living beyond his scholarly means. Honestly, public intellectual has always been an odd calling. Who would you define it? One who writes serious, scholarly books, yet also articles in the popular or semi-popular press? The difficulty might then be in judging whose serious books are serious.