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The Tech Elite’s Favorite Pop Intellectual

2 points by kqr2 6y ago

ggm 6y ago
Thank god its not Ray K. I half expected it to be either the Kurse or Malcolm Gladwell. She's a Thiel Fellowship alumnus. So pop, but not gawker pop.. I have this old saw going off now "a fool and their money are easily parted" -the last real intellectual I spoke to repeated it over dinner: they were an (emeritus now, I guess) professor of philosophy and they specialised in highly paid consultancy to boards of directors to "make them feel better" (his words)
- jfengel 6y ago
  I hadn't realized that she was anybody's favorite anything. I listen to her podcast, but I've never heard anybody else talk about it. (I'm not, of course, among the Tech Elite.) I started listening to that podcast when it was run by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor. I didn't and don't think much of her as an interviewer; she seems to have a kind of naive faith in Bayesianism and doesn't push back on a lot of things that I think deserve closer scrutiny. I keep thinking of dropping it, but there hasn't been an episode in a while. I often skip episodes. I'm all for popularizing rationality and skepticism, but you have to be really careful about it. It's easy to assume the mantle of rationality without actually being rational. Thiel is himself an excellent example: he's more contrarian than rationalist, and a lot of the issues he promotes are strongly disagreed with by people with considerably more experience and expertise than he has. How can you resolve that? Is it because he's genuinely that much smarter, or is it because he's wrong and engaging in all of the usual ways that rational people use to deceive themselves into thinking they're doing comprehensive research? Are these just equal and opposite opinions? That doesn't sound very rationalistic. I hadn't heard that Galef was tied into that camp, but having heard hear it doesn't surprise me.
  - ggm 6y ago
    I don't think you can resolve it because people are fundamentally not completely rational. Thiel is rich. He's strong willed, strong minded and opinionated. He isn't stupid. Unfortunately, sometimes it's easier to get stupid people to change their mind. Like.. me! If you enjoy the podcasts why not keep listening. At best this commentary is a second hand view about the meta state of Galef. What she says herself is not strongly critiqued here. And, after all you aren't constrained to only listen to ideas you like or agree with. I don't like Thiel or the newer cult of Ayn Rand and self reliance (for vested people only) so I tend to be over dismissing of things said in that circuit. Probably, there are valuable observations in amongst what I find harder to swallow. As you say (and I agree I think) a naieve FAITH in bayesianism is truly a statement of our times: both the faith word (fundamentally a-scientific) and the (mis?)application of Bayes to everything.

2 points by kqr2 6y ago

ggm 6y ago

Thank god its not Ray K. I half expected it to be either the Kurse or Malcolm Gladwell. She's a Thiel Fellowship alumnus. So pop, but not gawker pop.. I have this old saw going off now "a fool and their money are easily parted" -the last real intellectual I spoke to repeated it over dinner: they were an (emeritus now, I guess) professor of philosophy and they specialised in highly paid consultancy to boards of directors to "make them feel better" (his words)

jfengel 6y ago
I hadn't realized that she was anybody's favorite anything. I listen to her podcast, but I've never heard anybody else talk about it. (I'm not, of course, among the Tech Elite.) I started listening to that podcast when it was run by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor. I didn't and don't think much of her as an interviewer; she seems to have a kind of naive faith in Bayesianism and doesn't push back on a lot of things that I think deserve closer scrutiny. I keep thinking of dropping it, but there hasn't been an episode in a while. I often skip episodes. I'm all for popularizing rationality and skepticism, but you have to be really careful about it. It's easy to assume the mantle of rationality without actually being rational. Thiel is himself an excellent example: he's more contrarian than rationalist, and a lot of the issues he promotes are strongly disagreed with by people with considerably more experience and expertise than he has. How can you resolve that? Is it because he's genuinely that much smarter, or is it because he's wrong and engaging in all of the usual ways that rational people use to deceive themselves into thinking they're doing comprehensive research? Are these just equal and opposite opinions? That doesn't sound very rationalistic. I hadn't heard that Galef was tied into that camp, but having heard hear it doesn't surprise me.
- ggm 6y ago
  I don't think you can resolve it because people are fundamentally not completely rational. Thiel is rich. He's strong willed, strong minded and opinionated. He isn't stupid. Unfortunately, sometimes it's easier to get stupid people to change their mind. Like.. me! If you enjoy the podcasts why not keep listening. At best this commentary is a second hand view about the meta state of Galef. What she says herself is not strongly critiqued here. And, after all you aren't constrained to only listen to ideas you like or agree with. I don't like Thiel or the newer cult of Ayn Rand and self reliance (for vested people only) so I tend to be over dismissing of things said in that circuit. Probably, there are valuable observations in amongst what I find harder to swallow. As you say (and I agree I think) a naieve FAITH in bayesianism is truly a statement of our times: both the faith word (fundamentally a-scientific) and the (mis?)application of Bayes to everything.