7 ms·

Curiosity damned the cat

55 points by danielam 5y ago

shannifin 5y ago
I always find Feser thought-provoking. Haven't read anything of his for a while though, so this was refreshing. Will probably spend more time browsing his posts from the past few months now. In regard to the subject matter, I do wonder how it may relate to the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of keeping it a secret, at least for a time, for the purposes of using it to start a business with a competitive advantage. I wonder, because this is precisely what I'm doing. Startups are obviously a great place for unhealthy / disordered desires for wealth, power, fame, etc., to easily take root, and I wonder how the pursuit of knowledge may play into that, or how one can guard against it.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I’m glad you’ve gotten something out of the writings of this Professor of Theology. When I’ve read him in the past I’ve found his lines of reasoning chaotic, his arguments unconvincing, and him to be uninformed about some of the matters he treats at length. But, perhaps more seriously, his comportment is inconsistent with someone who wants to be taken seriously. He often seems to be fighting personal battles against real or imagined enemies, rather than examining ideas. At times he descends into personal insults against people whose opinions he objects to. It’s here, too: look at the swipe against the imagined “village atheist” right off the bat—a phrase obviously intended to evoke the “village idiot”. He’s hard to take seriously for me, or even to tolerate beyond a few paragraphs.
  - DaveSchmindel 5y ago
    I came here to provide similar, if not this exact feedback. I hadn't heard of the author before today and I only made it to the second labelled section of the essay before thinking, "Wow this reeks of arrogance and lack of self-awareness."
    - masterphilo 5y ago
      I must be on a different planet because he didn't sound that way to me at all. Even his "village atheist" comment that parent had a fit over completely slipped by me until he pointed my attention to it just now, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing the author meant in bad faith. I quite enjoyed the ideas discussed in the article, and even though it is steeped in religious undertones, you don't have to be religious to understand his broader point, I think.
      - wrs 5y ago
        “The highest sort of knowledge concerns the divine first cause and last end of our existence, and of how to prepare our souls so that they might be united to him forever. The further one’s intellectual pursuits take one from interest in and knowledge of these ultimate matters, the more disordered they are.” So yeah, I think you kinda do.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - grensley 5y ago
    Very much seconding this take. His arguments routinely lack nuance and there's some tenuous dot-connecting. As I got to the end of the article, I kind of got this nagging feeling that when I went to read about the author I was going to find some bit about conservative punditry, and lo-and-behold it was there.
  - askafriend 5y ago
    Nailed it.
    - Cybotron5000 5y ago
      Yup. Other than perhaps some badly thought through, greeting card-level platitudes you could maybe make a half-arsed argument for, like: ‘memento mori’, ‘maybe it’s good to look at the bigger picture sometimes and not obsess over trivialities’, ‘over-specialisation is not always a good thing’ etc. there’s little of any substance or original thought here. Isn’t it odd how his peculiar (and glaringly transparent) obsessions and worldview is seemingly eminently justified and ‘moral’ while those of the people who differ from him he deems wicked? Sadly there are many examples of similarly pronouncedly pompous public prosletizers and pundits who at best are just indulging in shallow faux-academic self-pleasuring (in a desperate attempt to legitimise their pre-existing private or political views/cosmogonies) and at worse are eventually outed as blatant hypocrites (I wonder whether he has a portrait of himself that he keeps in the attic? :)… Every paragraph practically drips with deep loathing for the proles/non-elite’s free access to information and education and disdain for their hard-fought for right to self-educate and better themselves... To me he seems the antithesis of enlightenment values (and what I consider the best of US values actually…). He obviously would prefer a world where the hoi polloi were forced to imbibe his kind’s reactionary bilge from philosophically wobbly pulpits every Sunday (and doff their sweaty nightcaps as he passes :) rather than thinking for themselves…
  - httpsterio 5y ago
    > One of them is the desire to be seen as clever. Manifestations of this might include developing abstruse lines of argument, with feigned earnestness, for positions one does not really take seriously and one’s readers are not likely to take seriously either; the use of logical symbolism and other technical apparatus in cases where it is not necessary in order to make one’s point; a predilection for one-upmanship and argumentativeness; and, in general, a tendency to treat intellectual life as a kind of game or mental onanism. If their blog post isn't self-ironic on purpose, then it is at least accidentally. I would definitely categorize the writing above as an excellent example on how someone might choose to word their opinion or thoughts in a manner that is seen as intellectual. The whole post reeked of this mental intellectual onanism.
yellow_lead 5y ago
> "And the most absurd manifestation is the rise of “geek culture” – of people who devote enormous amounts of time and energy to learning and thinking about the minutiae of fictional universes from movies, comics, and games, or who obsess over the work and personal lives of favorite actors, musicians, bands, etc. My point, as longtime readers know, is by no means to disparage such things per se. But for many people today, such trivial pursuits have gone well beyond a point that is spiritually healthy, and have become a kind of substitute religion." Can't say I find this very convincing. People may find joy out of obsessing over "the work and personal lives of favorite actors, musicians, bands, etc." Or it may allow them to connect with it in new ways. Feser says he doesn't want to disparage this, but it isn't "spiritually healthy." Whatever that means.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I didn’t get that far in the essay, but experience shows that people who take their fandoms maybe a little too seriously are healthier, and certainly less dangerous, than people who take their religions a little too seriously. At least most of them know that these worlds are fictional. I have strong opinions about TOS being superior to any Trek that came after, but I’m unlikely to start a shooting war over it, or strap on a suicide vest.
  - TrainedMonkey 5y ago
    I suspect this strongly depends on a religion and a fandom. For example, fandoms that cause self-harm in a chase of some fictional perfection vs people who are heavily into Buddhism or derivatives.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      I was forgetting about soccer hooligans.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        or stalkers
slumdev 5y ago
Making St. Thomas accessible by relating his work to modern times is a skill. Great post.

55 points by danielam 5y ago

I always find Feser thought-provoking. Haven't read anything of his for a while though, so this was refreshing. Will probably spend more time browsing his posts from the past few months now. In regard to the subject matter, I do wonder how it may relate to the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of keeping it a secret, at least for a time, for the purposes of using it to start a business with a competitive advantage. I wonder, because this is precisely what I'm doing. Startups are obviously a great place for unhealthy / disordered desires for wealth, power, fame, etc., to easily take root, and I wonder how the pursuit of knowledge may play into that, or how one can guard against it.

leephillips 5y ago
I’m glad you’ve gotten something out of the writings of this Professor of Theology. When I’ve read him in the past I’ve found his lines of reasoning chaotic, his arguments unconvincing, and him to be uninformed about some of the matters he treats at length. But, perhaps more seriously, his comportment is inconsistent with someone who wants to be taken seriously. He often seems to be fighting personal battles against real or imagined enemies, rather than examining ideas. At times he descends into personal insults against people whose opinions he objects to. It’s here, too: look at the swipe against the imagined “village atheist” right off the bat—a phrase obviously intended to evoke the “village idiot”. He’s hard to take seriously for me, or even to tolerate beyond a few paragraphs.
- DaveSchmindel 5y ago
  I came here to provide similar, if not this exact feedback. I hadn't heard of the author before today and I only made it to the second labelled section of the essay before thinking, "Wow this reeks of arrogance and lack of self-awareness."
  - masterphilo 5y ago
    I must be on a different planet because he didn't sound that way to me at all. Even his "village atheist" comment that parent had a fit over completely slipped by me until he pointed my attention to it just now, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing the author meant in bad faith. I quite enjoyed the ideas discussed in the article, and even though it is steeped in religious undertones, you don't have to be religious to understand his broader point, I think.
    - wrs 5y ago
      “The highest sort of knowledge concerns the divine first cause and last end of our existence, and of how to prepare our souls so that they might be united to him forever. The further one’s intellectual pursuits take one from interest in and knowledge of these ultimate matters, the more disordered they are.” So yeah, I think you kinda do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- grensley 5y ago
  Very much seconding this take. His arguments routinely lack nuance and there's some tenuous dot-connecting. As I got to the end of the article, I kind of got this nagging feeling that when I went to read about the author I was going to find some bit about conservative punditry, and lo-and-behold it was there.
- askafriend 5y ago
  Nailed it.
  - Cybotron5000 5y ago
    Yup. Other than perhaps some badly thought through, greeting card-level platitudes you could maybe make a half-arsed argument for, like: ‘memento mori’, ‘maybe it’s good to look at the bigger picture sometimes and not obsess over trivialities’, ‘over-specialisation is not always a good thing’ etc. there’s little of any substance or original thought here. Isn’t it odd how his peculiar (and glaringly transparent) obsessions and worldview is seemingly eminently justified and ‘moral’ while those of the people who differ from him he deems wicked? Sadly there are many examples of similarly pronouncedly pompous public prosletizers and pundits who at best are just indulging in shallow faux-academic self-pleasuring (in a desperate attempt to legitimise their pre-existing private or political views/cosmogonies) and at worse are eventually outed as blatant hypocrites (I wonder whether he has a portrait of himself that he keeps in the attic? :)… Every paragraph practically drips with deep loathing for the proles/non-elite’s free access to information and education and disdain for their hard-fought for right to self-educate and better themselves... To me he seems the antithesis of enlightenment values (and what I consider the best of US values actually…). He obviously would prefer a world where the hoi polloi were forced to imbibe his kind’s reactionary bilge from philosophically wobbly pulpits every Sunday (and doff their sweaty nightcaps as he passes :) rather than thinking for themselves…
- httpsterio 5y ago
  > One of them is the desire to be seen as clever. Manifestations of this might include developing abstruse lines of argument, with feigned earnestness, for positions one does not really take seriously and one’s readers are not likely to take seriously either; the use of logical symbolism and other technical apparatus in cases where it is not necessary in order to make one’s point; a predilection for one-upmanship and argumentativeness; and, in general, a tendency to treat intellectual life as a kind of game or mental onanism. If their blog post isn't self-ironic on purpose, then it is at least accidentally. I would definitely categorize the writing above as an excellent example on how someone might choose to word their opinion or thoughts in a manner that is seen as intellectual. The whole post reeked of this mental intellectual onanism.

yellow_lead 5y ago

> "And the most absurd manifestation is the rise of “geek culture” – of people who devote enormous amounts of time and energy to learning and thinking about the minutiae of fictional universes from movies, comics, and games, or who obsess over the work and personal lives of favorite actors, musicians, bands, etc. My point, as longtime readers know, is by no means to disparage such things per se. But for many people today, such trivial pursuits have gone well beyond a point that is spiritually healthy, and have become a kind of substitute religion." Can't say I find this very convincing. People may find joy out of obsessing over "the work and personal lives of favorite actors, musicians, bands, etc." Or it may allow them to connect with it in new ways. Feser says he doesn't want to disparage this, but it isn't "spiritually healthy." Whatever that means.

leephillips 5y ago
I didn’t get that far in the essay, but experience shows that people who take their fandoms maybe a little too seriously are healthier, and certainly less dangerous, than people who take their religions a little too seriously. At least most of them know that these worlds are fictional. I have strong opinions about TOS being superior to any Trek that came after, but I’m unlikely to start a shooting war over it, or strap on a suicide vest.
- TrainedMonkey 5y ago
  I suspect this strongly depends on a religion and a fandom. For example, fandoms that cause self-harm in a chase of some fictional perfection vs people who are heavily into Buddhism or derivatives.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I was forgetting about soccer hooligans.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      or stalkers

slumdev 5y ago

Making St. Thomas accessible by relating his work to modern times is a skill. Great post.