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Let me preface that I do find Wittgenstein very interesting and I enjoyed reading his works. But your critique of the article is really bad. > It's a type of t

by ivalm 7y ago

Let me preface that I do find Wittgenstein very interesting and I enjoyed reading his works. But your critique of the article is really bad. > It's a type of transaction that I bet takes place every single day in every single tech-sector business between a smart-guy code monkey and a dimwit pointy-haired boss and, for some reason, it's always the pointy-haired boss who walks away with his overconfidence in tact and the code monkey that walks away having been made to feel bad about themselves, when it should be the other way around. How is this related to the article? You have some (potentially correct) grievance about imbalanced power relationships in the workplace leading to stupid person winning argument. But this is not the situation here. I don't think the blog author has some power over Wittgenstein. > It is true about pretty much any philosopher of note that they are thought of as being hard to understand Russel is a great example of a very clear philosopher. Heck, Russel's main complaint with Hegel, for example, was failure to use clear logic. > That's not because those philosophers are altogether so very overrated. It's because the readership is mostly comprised of people who are not as smart as those philosophers. This is a hard sell. I've ready many books and research papers by great physicists and mathematicians. People who are as "smart" as the best of philosophers (and certainly smarter than me), but mostly their works are quite clear. ---- I think there is a tendency among, especially, austrian and german philosophers to write in sentences that are hard for modern Americans to parse. I suspect this is not a function of "intellect" but rather the prevalent writing style. A lot of philosophical works used lots of indexical references and non-linear patterns. Yet, we are now taught to write with direct, short sentences. Books and other media we read are full of such language. Even our long sentences usually have only dependent clauses. This makes it hard for us to parse out things like: "Thus the word “is” appears as the copula, as the sign of equality, and as the expression of existence; “to exist” as an intransitive verb like “to go”; “identical” as an adjective; we speak of something but also of the fact of something happening." (3.323, picked somewhat at random by opening a book and looking for a long sentence on the page) With no particular loss of meaning (but with greatly improved comprehension, albeit somewhat more verbose, the fault being all mine as it is too late) we could have: "Thus the word "is" forms a copula that can have two meanings: a sign of equality or an expression of existence. When used to mean "equality," it links an adjective with the object. But, when used to mean "existence," it is an intransitive verb unbound to an object. Thus "is" allows us to speak of something (an object) but also of something happening (no object)."

bobcostas55 7y ago
>Russel is a great example of a very clear philosopher. Here's a random page from Russell's most famous work: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Russell,_Whitehead_-_Principia_Mathematica,_vol._I,_1910.djvu/169 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Russell,_Whitehead_-_Pri...
- ivalm 7y ago
  It uses formal logic formalism but it is pretty clear... what I mean is that there is little burden to interpret what every line means. It is very direct in meaning (if formal logic scares you then look at the text part, short and to the point sentences).
stakhanov 7y ago
The relationship is that one of the reasons cited by the article for why Wittgenstein is overrated is because he's difficult to understand. That's not a valid argument. Being difficult to understand is not a fault in somebody who is in the business of having to explain difficult things all the time. And the fact that the author thinks it's a valid argument makes me think that the author subscribes to the same fallacious cultural norm that PHB (pointy-haired boss) subscribes to when he puts the burden on Dilbert to have to work harder to make himself understood by PHB, rather than PHB taking it upon himself to have to work harder to try to understand Dilbert. Why am I saying it's not a valid argument? Say you read Wittgenstein, and it strikes you that he is difficult to understand, but, despite that feeling of difficulty, your takeaway from reading Wittgenstein is some idea that you think is the idea Wittgenstein is trying to express. At that point you have no way of knowing whether the idea you took away is correct or incorrect, whether it is complete or incomplete as a reflection of what it is that Wittgenstein was trying to say. You furthermore think to yourself: Boy, that idea that was my takeaway from Wittgenstein, I could explain that very easily so that a 6-year old could understand. World view A: Holds most dearly the notion of a complex idea explained so simply that a 6-year-old can understand. World view B: Holds that any idea that can be grasped by a 6-year-old couldn't have been all that complex to begin with. World view A, together with a personality trait of overconfidence, departs from the assumption that your understanding of Wittgenstein is perfect and arrives at the conclusion that Wittgenstein is doing a shitty job making himself understood. World view B departs from the observation that your understanding of Wittgenstein is such that it could be grasped by a 6-year-old. Granting that the stuff that some of the most famous philosophers of all time were talking about when they were exchanging ideas on philosophy is not stuff that a 6-year-old could understand, you would arrive at the conclusion that your understanding of Wittgenstein is probably incorrect and/or incomplete. Now. Overconfident stupid people tend to go through life adopting world view A. Throughout their whole lives they have the experience of smart people talking to them in a complicated way, and taking away ideas that a 6-year-old can understand. Well. If it looks that way to you, it's probably because, being stupid, you only understand half of what they're saying. And, in your perception: Complex ideas simply do not exist. But the world is filled with people explaining simple ideas in complex ways. Well, to such people I have something to say: "Complex ideas do exist. And I'm done trying to explain them to you and feeling bad when failing." And Wittgenstein is not a world-famous historical figure due to being overrated. Rather Crispin Sartwell is somebody no one has ever heard of for reasons that seem to me to be entirely rightful.

by ivalm 7y ago

bobcostas55 7y ago

>Russel is a great example of a very clear philosopher. Here's a random page from Russell's most famous work: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Russell,_Whitehead_-_Principia_Mathematica,_vol._I,_1910.djvu/169 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Russell,_Whitehead_-_Pri...

ivalm 7y ago
It uses formal logic formalism but it is pretty clear... what I mean is that there is little burden to interpret what every line means. It is very direct in meaning (if formal logic scares you then look at the text part, short and to the point sentences).

stakhanov 7y ago

The relationship is that one of the reasons cited by the article for why Wittgenstein is overrated is because he's difficult to understand. That's not a valid argument. Being difficult to understand is not a fault in somebody who is in the business of having to explain difficult things all the time. And the fact that the author thinks it's a valid argument makes me think that the author subscribes to the same fallacious cultural norm that PHB (pointy-haired boss) subscribes to when he puts the burden on Dilbert to have to work harder to make himself understood by PHB, rather than PHB taking it upon himself to have to work harder to try to understand Dilbert. Why am I saying it's not a valid argument? Say you read Wittgenstein, and it strikes you that he is difficult to understand, but, despite that feeling of difficulty, your takeaway from reading Wittgenstein is some idea that you think is the idea Wittgenstein is trying to express. At that point you have no way of knowing whether the idea you took away is correct or incorrect, whether it is complete or incomplete as a reflection of what it is that Wittgenstein was trying to say. You furthermore think to yourself: Boy, that idea that was my takeaway from Wittgenstein, I could explain that very easily so that a 6-year old could understand. World view A: Holds most dearly the notion of a complex idea explained so simply that a 6-year-old can understand. World view B: Holds that any idea that can be grasped by a 6-year-old couldn't have been all that complex to begin with. World view A, together with a personality trait of overconfidence, departs from the assumption that your understanding of Wittgenstein is perfect and arrives at the conclusion that Wittgenstein is doing a shitty job making himself understood. World view B departs from the observation that your understanding of Wittgenstein is such that it could be grasped by a 6-year-old. Granting that the stuff that some of the most famous philosophers of all time were talking about when they were exchanging ideas on philosophy is not stuff that a 6-year-old could understand, you would arrive at the conclusion that your understanding of Wittgenstein is probably incorrect and/or incomplete. Now. Overconfident stupid people tend to go through life adopting world view A. Throughout their whole lives they have the experience of smart people talking to them in a complicated way, and taking away ideas that a 6-year-old can understand. Well. If it looks that way to you, it's probably because, being stupid, you only understand half of what they're saying. And, in your perception: Complex ideas simply do not exist. But the world is filled with people explaining simple ideas in complex ways. Well, to such people I have something to say: "Complex ideas do exist. And I'm done trying to explain them to you and feeling bad when failing." And Wittgenstein is not a world-famous historical figure due to being overrated. Rather Crispin Sartwell is somebody no one has ever heard of for reasons that seem to me to be entirely rightful.