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Ad hominem attacks don't really improve the level of discussions on HN.
by freddie_mercury 7y ago
Ad hominem attacks don't really improve the level of discussions on HN.
- keiferski 7y agoI don’t consider it an ad-hominem attack. The man has consistently shown that he is vastly undereducated on things he has public opinions on. The quote linked to above is a perfect example - it reads as if from someone who skimmed the Wikipedia article on Nietzsche and spent zero time attempting to understand his thought. For anyone who has even a passing knowledge of Nietzsche’s ideas, Pinker’s quote is just hilariously, woefully ignorant. Nietzsche was not a pessimist - if anything he was an optimist. It’s only in the (uninformed) public imagination that he is some kind of nihilist pessimist. Judging from Pinker’s quote, his knowledge of Nietzsche doesn’t go deeper than public hearsay. Considering that nearly all of Pinker’s works suffer from this same flaw, I have no problem dismissing him.
- ulisesrmzroche 7y agoNeither does nagging like this