35 ms·

The death of a public intellectual

140 points by judiisis 3y ago

esafak 3y ago
Develop interests of your own and go beyond public intellectuals. Don't let all your information get recommended to you, only some of it. Reach out for the rest yourself. Books are very efficient at conveying information, so read some to get a lay of the land before going deep. Also, consider that there is more to know than you have time to learn, so be selective. Are you going to act on it? Is it going to give you pleasure?
- hnreport 3y ago
  We are vulnerable to this attack strategy in books as well. The author can lull you in with a compelling concept, but you can soon realize they weren’t able to extrapolate their thesis beyond one chapter (if that). It’s probably the most mature moment I had as a reader, to be able to look at any book and be comfortable judging the pacing/vibe of it with regard to me. If a book isn’t vibing with you (you feel like the author is forcing a hot take), then don’t read the book. It’s no different than a date, if the person creeps you out, bounce.
  - tolani_somoye 3y ago
    This is apt, you tend to read books and the first read is great, subsequent release ends up being the same context as previous book but without substance. The best is probably being able to self reflect and think for yourself, being mindful of your thoughts, thought process and things that affects it.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  IMO the problem with books is that it is extremely easy to write basically whatever narrative you want nowadays, backed by a long list of "citations" that are dubious at best. Nobody can contradict what you say in book form. Two books on the shelf: One says the left stole the election here are the receipts to prove it, the other says the right lied about the election here are the receipts to prove it. Both presumably have an internally consistent narrative that attempts to convince you the story they are selling is THE story.
4ndrewl 3y ago
It's grift, all the way down.
eBombzor 3y ago
Reminds me of Huberman.
- unixhero 3y ago
  Yeah how so?
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    I've looked into a few of Huberman's citations and found some very small samples sizes. He makes a big deal of what are a best very small optimizations instead of focusing on the really impactful but boring health advice (eat well, exercise, get enough sleep). This is very common in the health / fitness space, because for most people the basics are all you need and the basics are really basic, but to make bank you have to keep coming up with new things. I've only listened to a few of his podcasts, because they're too long and meandering for me, so perhaps there is more meat in other episodes. I also don't think he's a grifter in the same way that Peterson is. (I'm not familiar with the other people mentioned in the article.)
    - unixhero 3y ago
      Yeah they are really long. I would say that the flavor of it seems very fact based. So to me not a bad contributor. Ok I see the point. Thank you.
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    I disagree with the others insofar as I think the weighty-est things Huberman suggests are very well researched, and he's generally careful to say when research is newer/sparser for certain discoveries but doesn't make a broken-record of himself. For instance: his videos focusing on sleep. When it comes to other optimizations YMMV but aggregate marginal gains would suggest that exploring these may add up. Also these days his video series tends to focus more on interviews with experts in their respective fields, rather than his own prescriptions and perspective. I think that's commendable and great.
ABeeSea 3y ago
Maybe read the works of actual accomplished academics and not videos from YouTube grifters?
greendude29 3y ago
> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. These are not intellectuals, let alone public ones. They are all American and follow a 'clickbait' model to public discourse. Seems like you repeatedly fall for it and enjoy doing so. Nothing here reflects any form of intellect.
- LoFiSamurai 3y ago
  How is being American relevant? Also, Peterson is Canadian.
  - defrost 3y ago
    ie. North American
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    because rather than doing serious intellectual work they're really good at selling what people want to hear, deliberately targeting an American online audience and their anxieties (as that is very profitable). All the mentioned guys are essentially permanent guests on the US podcast circuit. Peterson and Zeihan are examples of this. Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee, and Zeihan is the modern version of his mentor (and Straftor boss) George Friedman, whose primarily claim to fame is predicting an inevitable war between Japan and the US[1], on a crude theory of geographic determinism, "in the next two decades" in 1991. Zeihan has picked that baton up and replaced Japan with China. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee I think this hyper reductive. You can watch all his lectures, at Harvard and others, online[0]. It's hard to look objectively at his life and not call it "serious intellectual work". [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos/about https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos/about
barrysteve 3y ago
Peter Zeihan, really? The culmulative effect of Jordan's lectures fits too neatly into the Screwtape Letters.
irrational 3y ago
Those floating shapes on the right side are so distracting that I couldn’t make it through the post.
- koenraad 3y ago
  I always use reader mode where ever I can to stop UI distractions.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  I skimmed it, probably at the speed of fall, because I didn't notice them until I went back to find out what you noticed
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Also history fuckery.
- diginova 3y ago
  Same here. But I was distracted by the fact that I could not understand how they are being rendered. The js (https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc417.js https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc...) seems to say that they are being drawn on canvas but the only canvas present in DOM can be deleted with the shapes still animated. Any clues as to how these are being rendered?
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Looks like they are SVG elements that are moved around with CSS, at least that is what I see in the DOM.
- fruit2020 3y ago
  Isn’t it some sort of live stat of people browsing the page? I see it more and more nowadays, feels so intrusive
dilyevsky 3y ago
I didn’t even know he was sick
mediumsmart 3y ago
Comes with the territory when you are on the lookout for Rockstars and fueling the influencer economy. This post should reach 1 on HN to close the circle for max universal irony.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Wish granted. Ed: not for long.
- twic 3y ago
  The weirdest thing about this thread is that nobody has yet suggested replacing public intellectuals with GPT-4.
keiferski 3y ago
It’s unfortunate that there is not an “intellectual media network” that does all the hard public relations stuff for intellectuals and allows them to easily share their work with a public audience. Since this doesn’t exist, you end up with people that are willing to play — and are good at — the media game, which usually means making outrageous attention-grabbing claims that are far outside the person’s expertise.
- subroutine 3y ago
  It seems like this used to be what the MSM would bring in experts to comment on complex issues in economics, foreign politics, history, health, science, technology, etc. before each station developed a significant bias due to top-down pressure from ownership or bottom up pressure to push narratives that paralleled the politics of their predominant viewership. Then it was public programming like NPR and PBS. But now almost every outlet finds partisan experts. It would be great if there were a truly neutral non-political source of expert commentary. But how can such an outlet sustain neutrality being subject to those same evolutionary pressures? HN is honestly doing a great job of this, but is a very different format than planned programming. Perhaps the key is to watch both sides and formulate your own opinion. Maybe it's better to know the biases outright than to rely on someone else to find neutral viewpoints. Of course the problem with that is, a huge amount of the population has no interest in hearing multiple perspectives, and only wants the 'home teams' talking points.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Are you suggesting something like scientific journals like Nature? Where there is an extreme barrier to publish in and often takes years to get anything out? Maybe you’ve pointed out a positive for these scientific journals.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    No, I’m suggesting something that is more like CSPAN’s old BookTV, combined with a kind of talent agency and marketing firm.
- pjc50 3y ago
iamnotsure 3y ago
Educate yourself if you don't know who is the guarantor.
vintageplayer 3y ago
I'm not an expert, but I have an opinion, maybe some of you want to follow: ALWAYS SUPPORT THE UNDERDOGS. They are the ones experimenting with new ideas and hopefully sharing both what worked and what didn't. Unfollow all the players with a huge following. They stop producing quality. Start by supporting underdogs, people who have a following, but small and growing. Eventually they'll become bigger in terms of following. Then unfollow them.
- Jensson 3y ago
  Many underdogs just copies the viewpoints of bigger channels, watching those is even worse than watching the original since at least the original had some thought behind it.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    Choose wisely then.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      I think a valid strategy is to watch what big personalities were saying or doing when they were still small. Look at what made them big instead of what they do when they are big.
- raincole 3y ago
  So you judge someone's speech's value by their popularity. Just in the opposite direction.
  - opportune 3y ago
    Also known as compulsive contrarianism
    - sieste 3y ago
      ... or Intellectual Hipster
pj_mukh 3y ago
This seems obvious in the new social media. Say something boring and true and don't get attention. Say something counter culture, evocative but ultimately wrong (or atleast not durable as an idea). Get attention. Rinse. Repeate.
nerdponx 3y ago
> Jordan Peterson Not quite what I expected... I wonder, what was his original experience-based hot take?
j7ake 3y ago
This is inevitable when you have to publish content at a weekly frequency. Scientists often have something new to say at a frequency of years (if productive).
unixhero 3y ago
Peter Zeihan has been ostracised?
RationalDino 3y ago
This relates to one of the topics I want to get to on https://rationaldino.substack.com/ https://rationaldino.substack.com/ but which will take a while. There is a very simple litmus test to tell which are likely to fade, versus which aren't. How certain are they? https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715 https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/d... reports on a long-term study about pundits. Basically they can be divided into two groups: 1. Hedgehogs. Have one overarching theory that they are certain of. 2. Foxes. Can pick and choose from a variety of sources. Both groups are smart, informed, and interesting. But when you follow them for a long time, a clear pattern emerges. - Foxes do much better at making future predictions that come true. - Hedgehogs become far more popular pundits, and generally wind up getting paid far better. Most pundits with popular shows are hedgehogs. Why? My theory is that we listen to pundits because it is comfortable to outsource our thinking to them. We find that comfortable if they are smart, well-informed, and certain. It is easy for us to think, "Well if this smart and well-informed guy is so certain, I'd surely agree if I did the work. So now I don't have to bother." There is a problem here. We become certain when it is easy for us to think a thing true, and hard for us to think it might be false. We feel that the evidence is truly overwhelming. It may be overwhelming. But it is more likely that we're simply being intellectually dishonest. So we actively choose intellectually dishonest pundits who agree with our presumptions, and then become sure that they are right. We enjoy listening to them. But, being intellectually dishonest, they are probably wrong. And now we're emotionally committed to their brand of insanity! Try this rule of thumb out. Assume that a person who is certain, is probably wrong. And when you find yourself feeling certain, nurse that little doubt about how you REALLY know. It takes time, but consistently making this choice can change your life. For a start, you'll start actually thinking about things that you currently only think you're thinking about.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  Just listened to half of an interview (the interview is long, and it's now bedtime) of John Gray. I think you'd class him as a fox, but perhaps he's more of a badger. Digs deep and wide into history to interpret the present and plot the future. Asks "what's similar and what's different, what's permanent and what's ephemeral?" Not afraid of being unpopular at the time. Some certainty is required when everyone is saying you're wrong, and is justified when ten years later they're saying that what you said ten years ago is obvious. That said, while he's solid on geopolitics snd the larger systems we are subject to, I wouldn't listen to him about what's happening with dating or something like that.
RagnarD 3y ago
"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and their logical integrated cohesion as a whole. And that's regardless of the source. Experts/Authorities are neither automatically right or wrong. No honest expert or authority ever demands that their statements be taken on faith. If they actually know what they're talking about, their statements can be logically defended and tied to reality. This is the standard that everyone should be held to.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  When you can personally verify all the facts about biology, physics, and distant places that you rely on to make decisions every day, then you can throw stones about arguments from authority. The rest of us use a little bit of faith.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    You can trim that down quite a lot by assuming things aren't magic and use some minimal trust. If people say that cars are designed using newtonian physics, and you see your car is working, then you can say you have tested newtonian physics even if you don't understand the calculations. Basically you test what you have and trust the description of the implementation. If it works you can trust the whole chain. This is of course not 100%, but it is about as reliable as it can get for an individual. What you shouldn't do is assume that stuff that aren't 100% for sure are equally bad.
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      It's quite easy to test this very assumption against chaos theory in a controlled environment and demonstrate why a system involving a complex chain of dependencies is increasingly unpredictable down the chain. As an uninformed consumer at or the bottom of the chain, you cannot trust that an interface that works today, will work tomorrow, for you do not have access to all of the chaotic variables which constrain the interface.
chefandy 3y ago
Get into ideas, not the people who introduce you to them. It's probably still an interesting idea well after the person loses their novelty to you. Don't lose yourself so readily to our bizzare celebrity worship/parasocial culture.
deleted 3y ago
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itsnotabtmoney 3y ago
This post treats the constant stream of "new public intellectuals" as some kind of organic, natural phenomenon. It's not, these people reach the top of your YouTube feed because someone wants them there. There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman. People on this site are quick to call something "enshittification" when there are some obvious cash-grabs by megacorps, but are reluctant to admit that the algorithm feeding you content is manipulating you in a similar way. > And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest. I did, and they subsequently got banned from every social network, and even their website isn't linkable from Facebook or X or YouTube.
- hnreport 3y ago
  There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman. Do we know how this was done before? Let’s say you are a hit broadcast network, and you have these new hit shows called Friends and Family Matters. What’s your plan as a broadcast company now? Should the TV company organically wait to see what kind of TV shows audiences want to see? Or should they create 10 shows that copy Friends and Family Matters, each targeting a different demo (you know, like black people, or women). So, if you want to build a loose network of content creators, with your fulcrum being like a Rogan for the general demographic, with a contrived character like a Friedman being the “nerd”. So the loop here is you cast a wide net with Rogan, then niche them down to your Jocko’s, Friedman’s, etc. Rogan doesn’t disclose when he does Ad drops anymore either. So he’s a really bad actor at this point. Like yeah Joe, you just talked about McDonalds for 10 minutes for free again on an episode with 10 million listeners huh? Oh, talking about the latest movie in theaters again? As if that’s not a 5 minute ‘hey McDonald’s, we can leave this 7 minutes in about how your Coca Cola tastes better than regular Coca Cola, or we can just edit it out. I’m sorry? Did we say edit out? What we meant was, how about like 30 million for 6 month campaign? No? Okay, see ya. No, we never recorded anything about McDonald’s soda tasting better.
- petesergeant 3y ago
  > these people reach the top of your YouTube feed because someone wants them there Who wanted Lex Fridman there, and how did they achieve getting him there? (I've only a passing knowledge of who that is, and haven't heard of Eric Weinstein at all)
graphe 3y ago
I'm surprised he didn't mention lex Friedman or Joe rogan. The people I admire on YouTube still continue to resonate with me. If anyone is looking for 'leftist Jordan Peterson' I suggestion Gabor mate, he's a much more holistic and less authoritarian, and continues to inspire me.
pauldenton 3y ago
Intellectuals undermined their credibility when they said protesting lockdowns was killing grandma, but protesting the police didn't kill grandma and is more important than lockdowns https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette... Reminds me of another letter that has aged just as gracefully https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-former-intelligence-officials-warn-ny-post-story-sounds-like-russian/ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-former-intel...
m0llusk 3y ago
What is most off here is the analysis. The idea is that either someone is totally right about everything they assert because of extreme caution and care, or they are terribly wrong and flawed in a way that makes all of their ideas poison. But most intellectuals are in between there in a way this piece almost describes. Take this specific example of Peter Zeihan. He dares to get out of his areas of expertise and gets somethings wrong and some things very wrong. But much of his core analysis is extremely relevant and useful. He tends to start from population demographics and the raw material sources of industrial supply chains. There is a lot of interesting stuff there and much of what Peter Zeihan points out is quite right and well ahead of the curve. For example, he was talking about Chinese demographic shrinkage well before it started to make major economic and political impacts. So the idea here is that because Peter Zeihan tries to go as far as he can with what he has and ends up in the weeds much of the time that all of his work can be dismissed as foolish wandering about in the weeds. But that is false. The core issues of demographics and industrial supply chain roots remain and have very large impacts that are not particularly well hidden from careful examination. This implies that the real challenge is not deciding if a public intellectual is truly great or disgracefully fallen, but rather defining which points they make are solid and where it is that their reasoning falls off.
- deleted 3y ago
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michpoch 3y ago
> The story goes something like this, I get recommended a clip on YouTube, there’s a man who is calm, articulate, and says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. Is my understanding of the world completely wrong?! I need to read everything this man written. I think author understanding of the world is not wrong, but his approach - definitely. He expects to find some "wise man" who would have answers on all the world problems, sort of a panacea-man, which is clearly not a smart approach. If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? That makes zero sense.
- hnreport 3y ago
  why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? So I do this, a lot. Rogan is a good example I struggle with. I regularly go I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about. It isn’t relegated to just Rogan. Musk was another awful one when you first get into him. This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people? I almost have to shake my head and snap out of it. Edit: I’ll add that I’ve gotten extremely good at filtering his guests but still weak to filtering him (it’s kinda like still having feelings for your first). Anytime he puts on a comedian I always go “yeah whatever, who cares what some random comedian thinks about ______”, but I wasn’t able to do that with Rogan. No sir, I listen with both ears as he describes like … nuclear fusion.
  - raincole 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - wincy 3y ago
      That’s not what it is. People are looking around, shaking their heads, with an vague feeling that things *aren’t right* and waiting for someone to be like “alright everyone we’re heading off to start a new life frontier, let’s go!”, and Joe Rogan and Elon Musk feel like the charismatic alphas/cult leader you should be hitching your wagons to. Because sometimes the crazy cult leader ends up being right, revival (much like the religious revivals of the 1830s in the US) and making a big change when society is in flux is just something in our blood. Problem is right now nobody wants to actually buy 60,000 acres of undeveloped land to get it all started, they just want to profit off of people via parasocial relationships.
mikewarot 3y ago
(Edited/extended per nonrandomstring's comment below) Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but it seems to me that the Author expects to find a human that is to be right on their subject matter, all the time, and never goes beyond that narrow scope. It's quite possible to be right in a carefully enclosed area, but you have to expand that area as much as possible to make it applicable to the modern world. Thus, mistakes (and the experienced gained from them) are part of the territory. I see the authors quest as one bound to be fruitless in the long run. I curate my information sources, and I readily accept their flaws. I know that Peter Zeihan sometimes gets out over his skis intellectually, but that's a part of his schtick. I know the general biases, strengths and weaknesses of those I pay attention to. I give them authority with my attention, they didn't get it from anywhere else. I believe everyone should take similar care.
- andyjohnson0 3y ago
  > Why would anyone expect a human to be right on everything, all the time? Thats not the claim re public intellectuals - just that they have expertise and the ability to explain it. Don't straw-man yourself.
mjburgess 3y ago
I'm not seeing a very sympathetic analysis of this. This phenomenon is as old as time, with Socrate's students hanging on his every word. In my view its an entirely reasonable thing: you encounter a person who can articulate a coherent ideology, method, system (etc.) which is entirely new to you. You use that person as a means of learning this system; and when you've learnt it all, you move on. The key thing is you arrive at a critical point where you have seen their pov and can criticise it; and that you dont end up in a cult-like following of their ideas. This cultishness is everywhere in academia, see, eg., all the departments that are "Kantian" or "Wittigensteinian" --- people forever trapped in the work of one author. I am very suspicious of "History of"-type disciplines for this reason. I dont see this as having to do with social media, but if at all, maybe it accelerates it. I certainly think you need much more than 6mo with any substantive person.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Some people fall into careers where they have one hammer and use it forever. You can see it on youtube for channels to be setup on a sole concept and then the creator drives it home forever.
- shusaku 3y ago
  The social media part exacerbates the issue because the intellectual has direct access to their listeners. In the past, if you wrote an influential book, indeed your fans might go back and comb through your back catalogue. And the basic idea of you needing to write your next great book on the next hot topic to maintain your fame is there. But social media cuts out the book writing cycle, instead you can spend five minutes on a tweet, a few days on a YouTube video, etc. The loop is much tighter, and the effect is accelerated.
Borrible 3y ago
Cult of Personality. The strong man for one, the celebrity for the next, the intellectual for the other.It presumably makes one's own lack of power,fame and significance bearable. Egoprothesis in a deficient mental model of the world.
- deleted 3y ago
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simongray 3y ago
Zeihan's synthesis view of geopolitics is pretty interesting, but he does display glaring faults when he ventures beyond that niche, e.g. when he tries to summarise the economic systems of the world in his most recent book he says all of Europe is socialist, which is what I would consider a very basic American layman's take on economics, not really fitting for any kind of public intellectual in the social sciences. I try to look past it, though, since his demographics and culture-focused geopolitics analysis is still interesting to me.
- DavidPiper 3y ago
  This was my take on Zeihan too. He's one of the few I've approached in the way the OP is talking about (minus the worship part). I bought and read one of his books. I completely agree with your take: his demographics work was a new model of thought for me, and interesting to think about and apply. A lot of his extrapolation felt really off, though. For Zeihan in particular I went a bit deeper in trying to figure out why a lot of his analysis didn't sit well with me. Part of it was the America-centricity - the superficial non-interest for Europe and other continents. The second part, though, was that I don't think he really considers that the people making these systems work also suffer if the systems collapse. At a societal level, we are motivated to keep our global systems maintained because they sustain our ways of life - not because somebody signed an agreement. The signing was just a means of getting it started. Anyway, end rant, but I guess his ideas feel too far down the isolationist line. My analysis of which probably proves the OP's worshipping point. It's designed to pull you in.
  - helpfulclippy 3y ago
    I think of Peter Zeihan commentary as having two parts. The first part is where he takes a current event and contextualizes it with a bunch about the geography, demography and supply chain stuff, or maybe some history. I'd say he has an overall pretty high level of quality here, helped along by the fact that everyone's geography and demography is usually pretty stable from week to week. In the second part, he takes everything from the first part and fits it into his career-long public storytelling project, where he's writing a thriller novel out loud 5 minutes at a time, set in the near future where Eurasia is now Mad Max except without all the gas, and pirates rule the seas. I happen to love Mad Max AND pirates, so I have fun, but I don't take it as seriously as the first part.
layer8 3y ago
I have a similar effect with TV series, getting excited at a new premise at first, but then often losing interest midways once the pattern-matching kicks in and I get a grasp on what their shtick is. The magic is usually only in the beginnings.
hackandthink 3y ago
My relationship with "intellectuals" is more stable. From time to time I'm looking what's up with: Nassim Taleb Andrew Gelmam Adam Tooze Scott Aaronson John Mearsheimer Noam Chomsky Bernard-Henri Lévy
justanotherjoe 3y ago
Im no longer catholic, but i use Jesus as a comparison to thrse figures. It's what i call the jesus principle: "Would jesus have this many things to say?" Jesus was 'the son of god' and yet he didn't have that much to say when it comes down to it. Really. When you compile all the things he said, without duplication, it would probably fit in a one hour podcast. Now, take joe rogan's guest. Let's say Alex Honnold. He lives a really interesting life and one hour into the podcast he would be struggling for things to say. Should you listen to these public intellectuals you mentioned? sure. But after one hour or so, thats really enough to get an abstraction. Because when it comes down to it : There's really not much to say.
- justanotherjoe 3y ago
  im explaining it poorly. What i mean is that the principle is "if jesus didn't have that much to say,who is this guy that he talks for thousands of hours?"
  - Almondsetat 3y ago
    Yours is a bad example. Jesus said that the old law was still valid, which means that in fact you have to study the entire OT to get the full message. He just left it to the reader as an exercise
    - justanotherjoe 3y ago
      That's my point though. He didn't need to say it again cause he wouldnt add anything to it.
      - Almondsetat 3y ago
        You are again making a mistake. Jesus didn’t have to add much because it was implicit that everything written in the OT was the truth. Unfortunately if you don’t believe in Christianity there is no book or philosopher that has told the whole “truth” about the universe, so any new kid on the block might indeed have many things to say
activitypea 3y ago
Might be worth taking a step back and considering how people like Peterson and Weinstein become public intellectuals in the first place.
seydor 3y ago
Popularity is not a good filter for importance, especially about future importance. In old times, editors would decide what gets popular, now algorithms do and they are quite dumb and don't take risks.
lionkor 3y ago
Why does this fucking article keep lagging my entire browser and keeps reloading? I have a constant loading bar. Just let me read the damn text. Of course reader mode is broken. Decide what you want to do: Do you want to publish content, or visual art? Don't try doing both when you're not great at either.
GnarfGnarf 3y ago
This post has sloppy editing: then it i was Eric Weinstein You’re basis for truth (should be "Your") Hasn't been corrected in ten months?
squirrel23 3y ago
I really like the text. Short, concise and to the point. I also felt like you were describing a little bit of me lol. The one thing I fail to capture is, what is the solution to this problem? How can these intellectuals not "die"?
- squirrel23 3y ago
  One thing to point out, I meant I related to you in the obsession to follow someone like say Peterson.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    I think in the case of Peterson the answer to not dying is "not getting addicted to benzodiazopene".
meindnoch 3y ago
Tell me about your relationship with your father.
teknico 3y ago
WARNING: libertarian content ahead. > And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest. Here you go, all three of them (including Ludwig Von Mises too): Hans-Hermann Hoppe on “For a New Liberty” by Murray Rothbard at 50 https://mises.org/wire/hans-hermann-hoppe-new-liberty-50 https://mises.org/wire/hans-hermann-hoppe-new-liberty-50
Kye 3y ago
It might help to expand your horizons a bit. I see a lot of dudes on there I easily spotted for having limited range from the start. The trouble is people like this float too far off the ground and never come down to catch up. They usually lose their touch long before they gain the limelight, but are able to cruise a bit. The big tell: is "being a public intellectual" all they have? Do they have no experiences with the real world to temper flighty, assumption-based beliefs? Bad news. Even Zeno of Citium saw the world as a merchant while Stoicism was cooking in his head. You can't create or benefit from philosophy isolated from people who challenge your assumptions. Here's some people to get you started: On Malik (some interesting photography too): https://om.co/ https://om.co/ Anil Dash (appreciates a good Prince pun): https://www.anildash.com/ https://www.anildash.com/ Judith Butler, just about anything they put out in public. bell hooks (deceased, but has a lot worth reading) Adam Savage (lots of good life advice in Q&As): https://www.youtube.com/@tested https://www.youtube.com/@tested Wil Wheaton (yeah I know, but he hit a new gear once he got past alcohol and started really dealing with his childhood trauma): https://wilwheaton.net/ https://wilwheaton.net/ Michael Rosenbaum (played a solid Lex Luthor and now does great interviews): https://www.youtube.com/@InsideOfYouPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@InsideOfYouPodcast Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating (from Enterprise to interview show): https://www.youtube.com/@ShuttlepodShow/ https://www.youtube.com/@ShuttlepodShow/
- ubermonkey 3y ago
  I can't hit the link --- getting a 503 -- but I'd add a few. Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things To Me, widely awarded) Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me, MacArthur Fellow) Ibrahim X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist, MacArthur Fellow)
  - Kye 3y ago
    Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" was eye-opening on a topic I thought I was already well-informed on, and it barely scratched the surface. So much stuff boiled to the surface in the almost 10 years since.
  - migro23 3y ago
    Once I heard Kendi's definition of racism (1) I could no longer take that guy seriously. He is a social justice warrior public intellectual of the post modernist variety leading me to think he is either innocently and unknowningly deluded or an intentional and nefarious grifter profitting from giving apparent credence to the hard left hardliners. A similar role that Jordan Peterson leverages to make a living arguing or giving theoritical support for the religious right. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc (it's a 2 minute video and totally worth it!)
d_burfoot 3y ago
The author has completely the wrong approach to absorbing wisdom from public intellectuals. Yes, of course every thinker is limited. They produce some beautiful work, some good work, and some mediocre work, some bad work. The trick is to consume the former and avoid the latter. Furthermore, we ought to evaluate writers based on their best work (use max(..) instead of average(..) as the aggregation operator). Of course Nassim Taleb, after getting famous, became cranky and overeager to engage in tawdry public insult-slinging. That does not detract from the beauty and depth of his best work. Of course George RR Martin's later books are not very good, and he will probably not finish the series. That does not reduce the magic of Tyrion Lannister's defense of King's Landing. I could produce an endless stream of examples like this.
kukkeliskuu 3y ago
"This guy had something interesting to say" is not a good heuristic for finding people who you can trust on multiple subjects. A little bit better heuristic is if the person can publicly admit they have been wrong about something and change their mind. I have been more and more disappointed by analytical analysis, in other words "wiseacring" of all kinds of intellectuals, so I have started to believe the problem is more in the analytical approach itself, and less in the person doing the analysis. I am gravitating towards people who talk from experience, not from analysis. I expect them also to not appear to be reactive, talking from fear. An example of a person talking from fear would be a kind of junior developer who can never admit they are wrong, and who tries to cover up their mistakes.
WendyTheWillow 3y ago
Kill your heroes; every single “intellectual” on YouTube can and should be ignored. Follow the field, not any individual. This need to have some special, unique insight, the hottest take, is death to understanding.
bparsons 3y ago
The author seems to only be interested in people who appear on podcasts targeting lonely men between the ages of 20-40. I can assure him that there is a whole world of serious thinkers and authors that have never appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast.
iammjm 3y ago
What’s wrong with Peter Zeihan?
alphazard 3y ago
The only difference between a public intellectual and an entertainer or other content creator, is that the public intellectual had at least one novel idea about something important. I mean idea very broadly here, it can take the form of a reframing, an intuition pump, a system for reasoning, etc. That makes them known as "the guy who came up with x" vs. "the guy who makes videos about y". Rogan has a podcast, Taleb is the fat tails guy. But even the best public intellectuals only have a few novel, high quality ideas a year. Most have only a few during their whole career. If someone only writes a book when they have something to say (a rarity for professional authors, more common amongst people who don't like writing). That book probably contains a few, maybe only one, novel idea. That's the case for books, what about tweets or videos? Entertainers and public intellectuals compete for the same bandwidth. They show up in the same feeds. In order to compete, the intellectuals have to lower their standards, and the result is that many public intellectuals are only in the intellectual business 1/100 of the time, and in the hot takes business the other 99/100.
momirlan 3y ago
oh ye people, you always need a golden bull to worship. turn your attention inside and listen to the truth that is always there. that's where the revolution starts. otherwise, you're just a consumer of the latest YouTube fad.
virtualritz 3y ago
It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'. This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text of the most basic ideas, frequently completely missing the point, into sophisticated-sounding language. The other names tell me nothing; but having the former in the list kept me from looking up the latter. [1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-d...
- BryanLegend 3y ago
  I'm sure I'll get downvoted here, but I think Peterson is brilliant. His books have absolutely given me insightful ideas that have improved my life and relationships.
  - alwyn 3y ago
    12 Rules for Life was mostly good, it definitely helped me with some things. I liked his earlier podcasts on JRE and other shows. However, I couldn't get through Beyond Order at all; I had to drop it fairly early. I think I still like the Peterson from 5-ish years ago. How he currently is, and how he has _mostly_ been for the past 2 years or so does not align with me anymore.
    - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
      Can’t help but feel like something happened to him during the rehab years. It is miraculous he came through, but he seems very different. Might be the fame, aging, the need to build an audience, or the rehab process. Who knows.
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    Yes, not to mention his (completely free) lecture series on the Bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn.... an incredibly scholar he is.
    - deleted 3y ago
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
> The story goes something like this, I get recommended a clip on YouTube, there’s a man who is calm, articulate, and says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. Is my understanding of the world completely wrong?! I need to read everything this man written. Read books. Watch Harvard/Yale lectures on humanities. Write notes on them. Think for yourself and write essays on the those topics. Once you get comprehensive education, random YouTube celebrities will stop being deep and fascinating to you. Or at least you will have 30-40 other perspectives from renowned thinkers to complement your worldview.
gwern 3y ago
A much better-written essay on a similar thesis: https://scholars-stage.org/public-intellectuals-have-short-shelf-lives-but-why/ https://scholars-stage.org/public-intellectuals-have-short-s...
y0ssar1an 3y ago
> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. Man repeatedly falls for the worst "public intellectuals" (really, pretentious charlatans), discovers that they're not trustworthy, and runs to the internet screaming "THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IS DEAD." nah brah, you just have bad tase. Jordan Peterson -> an incoherent rambler. He's incapable of putting together straightforward premise1-premise2-premise3-->conclusion arguments. If you ask him "how's the weather?", you'll get an hour long brain spew about Ancient Rome, Napoleon, woke feminism, and the worst Holocaust takes you can imagine. Eric Weinstein -> a narcissist mathematician who came up with a theory of everything, but refused to publish it because real physicists might criticize it and hurt his feelings. He wanted to be recognized as the new Einstein based solely on a video of a talk to a non-physicist audience. His podcasts are mostly rants against the Physics Deep State and Big Science, which he calls the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex", because they're all in a big conspiracy to suppress his genius ideas. Chamath -> don't know him. Peter Zeihan -> just another hyper-caffeinated prognosticator who claims to know the future.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > which he calls the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex", because they're all in a big conspiracy to suppress his genius ideas. I don't say this sarcastically or ironically... but isn't that one of the big things proper science actually does? Think about it for a moment, science is the business of suppressing all the stupid ideas humans have come up with over the centuries. And until it got started doing that, those ideas were everywhere, keeping everyone ignorant. It has a somewhat careful methodology to this suppression. It designs experiments to falsify everything it can, conducts those experiments rigorously and exhaustively, until everyone is convinced that those ideas are wrong and the ideas are as dead as doornails. But, if somehow it comes across one that is falsifiable but that can't be falsified by experiment, it moves on... plenty of other ideas to suppress. Hell, science should adopt that moniker and run with it. Be proud of it. It's one of the things it gets right. If that's his worst jab at science, he's just lazy and not very clever.
ifyoubuildit 3y ago
A lot of negative comments in here. It seems that everyone has their own whipping boy "public intellectual" in mind that once loudly said a thing that they disagreed with, and this is the opportunity to really stick it to them for that audacity. Here's my hot take: consume what you want, just don't let it consume you. All of these people have probably said something worth mulling over, whether you ultimately end up agreeing with them or not. Learn what you can and then move on.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
Can anyone actually explain what philosophy or worldview Jordan Peterson is selling?
slothtrop 3y ago
My idea of a public intellectual is someone like Scott Alexander or maybe Eliezer Yudkowsky, but I suppose being on camera makes you more public than anything else.
jfax 3y ago
This article refers to "public intellectuals" as only being men.
nerddadnear40 3y ago
Peterson seems strongly influenced by Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau who are doing quite a job at restoring meaning to the western world, linking rational and irrational thinking into a kind of universal theory with mathematical notations across verticals. It's really mind-blowing and imho, Matthieu Pageau is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time and he remains quite isolated and hidden. His content is infrequent, freshly brilliant, and challenging for those curious to learn it.
defgeneric 3y ago
The debate about the "public intellectual" is a very old one by now. Most date the emergence of the public intellectual to the Dreyfus affair. I read the author's list here with sadness, thinking that the younger generation is being cut off from the history of an important modern phenomenon by youtube's algorithm. Youtube videos just aren't a good medium for this. Sustained, in-depth conversation across journals and magazines and periodicals was much better.

140 points by judiisis 3y ago

Develop interests of your own and go beyond public intellectuals. Don't let all your information get recommended to you, only some of it. Reach out for the rest yourself. Books are very efficient at conveying information, so read some to get a lay of the land before going deep. Also, consider that there is more to know than you have time to learn, so be selective. Are you going to act on it? Is it going to give you pleasure?

hnreport 3y ago
We are vulnerable to this attack strategy in books as well. The author can lull you in with a compelling concept, but you can soon realize they weren’t able to extrapolate their thesis beyond one chapter (if that). It’s probably the most mature moment I had as a reader, to be able to look at any book and be comfortable judging the pacing/vibe of it with regard to me. If a book isn’t vibing with you (you feel like the author is forcing a hot take), then don’t read the book. It’s no different than a date, if the person creeps you out, bounce.
- tolani_somoye 3y ago
  This is apt, you tend to read books and the first read is great, subsequent release ends up being the same context as previous book but without substance. The best is probably being able to self reflect and think for yourself, being mindful of your thoughts, thought process and things that affects it.
mrguyorama 3y ago
IMO the problem with books is that it is extremely easy to write basically whatever narrative you want nowadays, backed by a long list of "citations" that are dubious at best. Nobody can contradict what you say in book form. Two books on the shelf: One says the left stole the election here are the receipts to prove it, the other says the right lied about the election here are the receipts to prove it. Both presumably have an internally consistent narrative that attempts to convince you the story they are selling is THE story.

4ndrewl 3y ago

It's grift, all the way down.

eBombzor 3y ago

Reminds me of Huberman.

unixhero 3y ago
Yeah how so?
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  I've looked into a few of Huberman's citations and found some very small samples sizes. He makes a big deal of what are a best very small optimizations instead of focusing on the really impactful but boring health advice (eat well, exercise, get enough sleep). This is very common in the health / fitness space, because for most people the basics are all you need and the basics are really basic, but to make bank you have to keep coming up with new things. I've only listened to a few of his podcasts, because they're too long and meandering for me, so perhaps there is more meat in other episodes. I also don't think he's a grifter in the same way that Peterson is. (I'm not familiar with the other people mentioned in the article.)
  - unixhero 3y ago
    Yeah they are really long. I would say that the flavor of it seems very fact based. So to me not a bad contributor. Ok I see the point. Thank you.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  I disagree with the others insofar as I think the weighty-est things Huberman suggests are very well researched, and he's generally careful to say when research is newer/sparser for certain discoveries but doesn't make a broken-record of himself. For instance: his videos focusing on sleep. When it comes to other optimizations YMMV but aggregate marginal gains would suggest that exploring these may add up. Also these days his video series tends to focus more on interviews with experts in their respective fields, rather than his own prescriptions and perspective. I think that's commendable and great.

ABeeSea 3y ago

Maybe read the works of actual accomplished academics and not videos from YouTube grifters?

greendude29 3y ago

> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. These are not intellectuals, let alone public ones. They are all American and follow a 'clickbait' model to public discourse. Seems like you repeatedly fall for it and enjoy doing so. Nothing here reflects any form of intellect.

LoFiSamurai 3y ago
How is being American relevant? Also, Peterson is Canadian.
- defrost 3y ago
  ie. North American
- Barrin92 3y ago
  because rather than doing serious intellectual work they're really good at selling what people want to hear, deliberately targeting an American online audience and their anxieties (as that is very profitable). All the mentioned guys are essentially permanent guests on the US podcast circuit. Peterson and Zeihan are examples of this. Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee, and Zeihan is the modern version of his mentor (and Straftor boss) George Friedman, whose primarily claim to fame is predicting an inevitable war between Japan and the US[1], on a crude theory of geographic determinism, "in the next two decades" in 1991. Zeihan has picked that baton up and replaced Japan with China. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Peterson has essentially monetized telling Americans what a dystopia Canada is, acting like some sort of reverse Handmaids Tale refugee I think this hyper reductive. You can watch all his lectures, at Harvard and others, online[0]. It's hard to look objectively at his life and not call it "serious intellectual work". [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos/about https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos/about

barrysteve 3y ago

Peter Zeihan, really? The culmulative effect of Jordan's lectures fits too neatly into the Screwtape Letters.

irrational 3y ago

Those floating shapes on the right side are so distracting that I couldn’t make it through the post.

koenraad 3y ago
I always use reader mode where ever I can to stop UI distractions.
readthenotes1 3y ago
I skimmed it, probably at the speed of fall, because I didn't notice them until I went back to find out what you noticed
andrewflnr 3y ago
Also history fuckery.
diginova 3y ago
Same here. But I was distracted by the fact that I could not understand how they are being rendered. The js (https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc417.js https://thmsmlr.com/assets/app-76652943792d609207b149d2720cc...) seems to say that they are being drawn on canvas but the only canvas present in DOM can be deleted with the shapes still animated. Any clues as to how these are being rendered?
- Jensson 3y ago
  Looks like they are SVG elements that are moved around with CSS, at least that is what I see in the DOM.
fruit2020 3y ago
Isn’t it some sort of live stat of people browsing the page? I see it more and more nowadays, feels so intrusive

dilyevsky 3y ago

I didn’t even know he was sick

mediumsmart 3y ago

Comes with the territory when you are on the lookout for Rockstars and fueling the influencer economy. This post should reach 1 on HN to close the circle for max universal irony.

andrewflnr 3y ago
Wish granted. Ed: not for long.
twic 3y ago
The weirdest thing about this thread is that nobody has yet suggested replacing public intellectuals with GPT-4.

keiferski 3y ago

It’s unfortunate that there is not an “intellectual media network” that does all the hard public relations stuff for intellectuals and allows them to easily share their work with a public audience. Since this doesn’t exist, you end up with people that are willing to play — and are good at — the media game, which usually means making outrageous attention-grabbing claims that are far outside the person’s expertise.

subroutine 3y ago
It seems like this used to be what the MSM would bring in experts to comment on complex issues in economics, foreign politics, history, health, science, technology, etc. before each station developed a significant bias due to top-down pressure from ownership or bottom up pressure to push narratives that paralleled the politics of their predominant viewership. Then it was public programming like NPR and PBS. But now almost every outlet finds partisan experts. It would be great if there were a truly neutral non-political source of expert commentary. But how can such an outlet sustain neutrality being subject to those same evolutionary pressures? HN is honestly doing a great job of this, but is a very different format than planned programming. Perhaps the key is to watch both sides and formulate your own opinion. Maybe it's better to know the biases outright than to rely on someone else to find neutral viewpoints. Of course the problem with that is, a huge amount of the population has no interest in hearing multiple perspectives, and only wants the 'home teams' talking points.
j7ake 3y ago
Are you suggesting something like scientific journals like Nature? Where there is an extreme barrier to publish in and often takes years to get anything out? Maybe you’ve pointed out a positive for these scientific journals.
- keiferski 3y ago
  No, I’m suggesting something that is more like CSPAN’s old BookTV, combined with a kind of talent agency and marketing firm.
pjc50 3y ago

iamnotsure 3y ago

Educate yourself if you don't know who is the guarantor.

vintageplayer 3y ago

I'm not an expert, but I have an opinion, maybe some of you want to follow: ALWAYS SUPPORT THE UNDERDOGS. They are the ones experimenting with new ideas and hopefully sharing both what worked and what didn't. Unfollow all the players with a huge following. They stop producing quality. Start by supporting underdogs, people who have a following, but small and growing. Eventually they'll become bigger in terms of following. Then unfollow them.

Jensson 3y ago
Many underdogs just copies the viewpoints of bigger channels, watching those is even worse than watching the original since at least the original had some thought behind it.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  Choose wisely then.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    I think a valid strategy is to watch what big personalities were saying or doing when they were still small. Look at what made them big instead of what they do when they are big.
raincole 3y ago
So you judge someone's speech's value by their popularity. Just in the opposite direction.
- opportune 3y ago
  Also known as compulsive contrarianism
  - sieste 3y ago
    ... or Intellectual Hipster

pj_mukh 3y ago

This seems obvious in the new social media. Say something boring and true and don't get attention. Say something counter culture, evocative but ultimately wrong (or atleast not durable as an idea). Get attention. Rinse. Repeate.

nerdponx 3y ago

> Jordan Peterson Not quite what I expected... I wonder, what was his original experience-based hot take?

j7ake 3y ago

This is inevitable when you have to publish content at a weekly frequency. Scientists often have something new to say at a frequency of years (if productive).

unixhero 3y ago

Peter Zeihan has been ostracised?

RationalDino 3y ago

This relates to one of the topics I want to get to on https://rationaldino.substack.com/ https://rationaldino.substack.com/ but which will take a while. There is a very simple litmus test to tell which are likely to fade, versus which aren't. How certain are they? https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715 https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/d... reports on a long-term study about pundits. Basically they can be divided into two groups: 1. Hedgehogs. Have one overarching theory that they are certain of. 2. Foxes. Can pick and choose from a variety of sources. Both groups are smart, informed, and interesting. But when you follow them for a long time, a clear pattern emerges. - Foxes do much better at making future predictions that come true. - Hedgehogs become far more popular pundits, and generally wind up getting paid far better. Most pundits with popular shows are hedgehogs. Why? My theory is that we listen to pundits because it is comfortable to outsource our thinking to them. We find that comfortable if they are smart, well-informed, and certain. It is easy for us to think, "Well if this smart and well-informed guy is so certain, I'd surely agree if I did the work. So now I don't have to bother." There is a problem here. We become certain when it is easy for us to think a thing true, and hard for us to think it might be false. We feel that the evidence is truly overwhelming. It may be overwhelming. But it is more likely that we're simply being intellectually dishonest. So we actively choose intellectually dishonest pundits who agree with our presumptions, and then become sure that they are right. We enjoy listening to them. But, being intellectually dishonest, they are probably wrong. And now we're emotionally committed to their brand of insanity! Try this rule of thumb out. Assume that a person who is certain, is probably wrong. And when you find yourself feeling certain, nurse that little doubt about how you REALLY know. It takes time, but consistently making this choice can change your life. For a start, you'll start actually thinking about things that you currently only think you're thinking about.

tuatoru 3y ago
Just listened to half of an interview (the interview is long, and it's now bedtime) of John Gray. I think you'd class him as a fox, but perhaps he's more of a badger. Digs deep and wide into history to interpret the present and plot the future. Asks "what's similar and what's different, what's permanent and what's ephemeral?" Not afraid of being unpopular at the time. Some certainty is required when everyone is saying you're wrong, and is justified when ten years later they're saying that what you said ten years ago is obvious. That said, while he's solid on geopolitics snd the larger systems we are subject to, I wouldn't listen to him about what's happening with dating or something like that.

RagnarD 3y ago

"You’re basis for truth often relies on authority of your source." No. This is such a common logical error that it has an old name: Argumentum ad Verecundiam (often shortened to Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority in English.) Saying "I know this because authority X said so" - you don't know it at all. It has the epistemological status of outright faith. What counts is the connection of statements to reality and their logical integrated cohesion as a whole. And that's regardless of the source. Experts/Authorities are neither automatically right or wrong. No honest expert or authority ever demands that their statements be taken on faith. If they actually know what they're talking about, their statements can be logically defended and tied to reality. This is the standard that everyone should be held to.

andrewflnr 3y ago
When you can personally verify all the facts about biology, physics, and distant places that you rely on to make decisions every day, then you can throw stones about arguments from authority. The rest of us use a little bit of faith.
- Jensson 3y ago
  You can trim that down quite a lot by assuming things aren't magic and use some minimal trust. If people say that cars are designed using newtonian physics, and you see your car is working, then you can say you have tested newtonian physics even if you don't understand the calculations. Basically you test what you have and trust the description of the implementation. If it works you can trust the whole chain. This is of course not 100%, but it is about as reliable as it can get for an individual. What you shouldn't do is assume that stuff that aren't 100% for sure are equally bad.
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    It's quite easy to test this very assumption against chaos theory in a controlled environment and demonstrate why a system involving a complex chain of dependencies is increasingly unpredictable down the chain. As an uninformed consumer at or the bottom of the chain, you cannot trust that an interface that works today, will work tomorrow, for you do not have access to all of the chaotic variables which constrain the interface.

chefandy 3y ago

Get into ideas, not the people who introduce you to them. It's probably still an interesting idea well after the person loses their novelty to you. Don't lose yourself so readily to our bizzare celebrity worship/parasocial culture.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

itsnotabtmoney 3y ago

This post treats the constant stream of "new public intellectuals" as some kind of organic, natural phenomenon. It's not, these people reach the top of your YouTube feed because someone wants them there. There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman. People on this site are quick to call something "enshittification" when there are some obvious cash-grabs by megacorps, but are reluctant to admit that the algorithm feeding you content is manipulating you in a similar way. > And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest. I did, and they subsequently got banned from every social network, and even their website isn't linkable from Facebook or X or YouTube.

hnreport 3y ago
There's nothing organic about Eric Weinstein or Lex Fridman. Do we know how this was done before? Let’s say you are a hit broadcast network, and you have these new hit shows called Friends and Family Matters. What’s your plan as a broadcast company now? Should the TV company organically wait to see what kind of TV shows audiences want to see? Or should they create 10 shows that copy Friends and Family Matters, each targeting a different demo (you know, like black people, or women). So, if you want to build a loose network of content creators, with your fulcrum being like a Rogan for the general demographic, with a contrived character like a Friedman being the “nerd”. So the loop here is you cast a wide net with Rogan, then niche them down to your Jocko’s, Friedman’s, etc. Rogan doesn’t disclose when he does Ad drops anymore either. So he’s a really bad actor at this point. Like yeah Joe, you just talked about McDonalds for 10 minutes for free again on an episode with 10 million listeners huh? Oh, talking about the latest movie in theaters again? As if that’s not a 5 minute ‘hey McDonald’s, we can leave this 7 minutes in about how your Coca Cola tastes better than regular Coca Cola, or we can just edit it out. I’m sorry? Did we say edit out? What we meant was, how about like 30 million for 6 month campaign? No? Okay, see ya. No, we never recorded anything about McDonald’s soda tasting better.
petesergeant 3y ago
> these people reach the top of your YouTube feed because someone wants them there Who wanted Lex Fridman there, and how did they achieve getting him there? (I've only a passing knowledge of who that is, and haven't heard of Eric Weinstein at all)

graphe 3y ago

I'm surprised he didn't mention lex Friedman or Joe rogan. The people I admire on YouTube still continue to resonate with me. If anyone is looking for 'leftist Jordan Peterson' I suggestion Gabor mate, he's a much more holistic and less authoritarian, and continues to inspire me.

pauldenton 3y ago

Intellectuals undermined their credibility when they said protesting lockdowns was killing grandma, but protesting the police didn't kill grandma and is more important than lockdowns https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette... Reminds me of another letter that has aged just as gracefully https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-former-intelligence-officials-warn-ny-post-story-sounds-like-russian/ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521823-50-former-intel...

m0llusk 3y ago

What is most off here is the analysis. The idea is that either someone is totally right about everything they assert because of extreme caution and care, or they are terribly wrong and flawed in a way that makes all of their ideas poison. But most intellectuals are in between there in a way this piece almost describes. Take this specific example of Peter Zeihan. He dares to get out of his areas of expertise and gets somethings wrong and some things very wrong. But much of his core analysis is extremely relevant and useful. He tends to start from population demographics and the raw material sources of industrial supply chains. There is a lot of interesting stuff there and much of what Peter Zeihan points out is quite right and well ahead of the curve. For example, he was talking about Chinese demographic shrinkage well before it started to make major economic and political impacts. So the idea here is that because Peter Zeihan tries to go as far as he can with what he has and ends up in the weeds much of the time that all of his work can be dismissed as foolish wandering about in the weeds. But that is false. The core issues of demographics and industrial supply chain roots remain and have very large impacts that are not particularly well hidden from careful examination. This implies that the real challenge is not deciding if a public intellectual is truly great or disgracefully fallen, but rather defining which points they make are solid and where it is that their reasoning falls off.

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michpoch 3y ago

> The story goes something like this, I get recommended a clip on YouTube, there’s a man who is calm, articulate, and says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. Is my understanding of the world completely wrong?! I need to read everything this man written. I think author understanding of the world is not wrong, but his approach - definitely. He expects to find some "wise man" who would have answers on all the world problems, sort of a panacea-man, which is clearly not a smart approach. If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? That makes zero sense.

hnreport 3y ago
why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? So I do this, a lot. Rogan is a good example I struggle with. I regularly go I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about. It isn’t relegated to just Rogan. Musk was another awful one when you first get into him. This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people? I almost have to shake my head and snap out of it. Edit: I’ll add that I’ve gotten extremely good at filtering his guests but still weak to filtering him (it’s kinda like still having feelings for your first). Anytime he puts on a comedian I always go “yeah whatever, who cares what some random comedian thinks about ______”, but I wasn’t able to do that with Rogan. No sir, I listen with both ears as he describes like … nuclear fusion.
- raincole 3y ago
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  - wincy 3y ago
    That’s not what it is. People are looking around, shaking their heads, with an vague feeling that things *aren’t right* and waiting for someone to be like “alright everyone we’re heading off to start a new life frontier, let’s go!”, and Joe Rogan and Elon Musk feel like the charismatic alphas/cult leader you should be hitching your wagons to. Because sometimes the crazy cult leader ends up being right, revival (much like the religious revivals of the 1830s in the US) and making a big change when society is in flux is just something in our blood. Problem is right now nobody wants to actually buy 60,000 acres of undeveloped land to get it all started, they just want to profit off of people via parasocial relationships.

mikewarot 3y ago

(Edited/extended per nonrandomstring's comment below) Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but it seems to me that the Author expects to find a human that is to be right on their subject matter, all the time, and never goes beyond that narrow scope. It's quite possible to be right in a carefully enclosed area, but you have to expand that area as much as possible to make it applicable to the modern world. Thus, mistakes (and the experienced gained from them) are part of the territory. I see the authors quest as one bound to be fruitless in the long run. I curate my information sources, and I readily accept their flaws. I know that Peter Zeihan sometimes gets out over his skis intellectually, but that's a part of his schtick. I know the general biases, strengths and weaknesses of those I pay attention to. I give them authority with my attention, they didn't get it from anywhere else. I believe everyone should take similar care.

andyjohnson0 3y ago
> Why would anyone expect a human to be right on everything, all the time? Thats not the claim re public intellectuals - just that they have expertise and the ability to explain it. Don't straw-man yourself.

mjburgess 3y ago

I'm not seeing a very sympathetic analysis of this. This phenomenon is as old as time, with Socrate's students hanging on his every word. In my view its an entirely reasonable thing: you encounter a person who can articulate a coherent ideology, method, system (etc.) which is entirely new to you. You use that person as a means of learning this system; and when you've learnt it all, you move on. The key thing is you arrive at a critical point where you have seen their pov and can criticise it; and that you dont end up in a cult-like following of their ideas. This cultishness is everywhere in academia, see, eg., all the departments that are "Kantian" or "Wittigensteinian" --- people forever trapped in the work of one author. I am very suspicious of "History of"-type disciplines for this reason. I dont see this as having to do with social media, but if at all, maybe it accelerates it. I certainly think you need much more than 6mo with any substantive person.

barrysteve 3y ago
Some people fall into careers where they have one hammer and use it forever. You can see it on youtube for channels to be setup on a sole concept and then the creator drives it home forever.
shusaku 3y ago
The social media part exacerbates the issue because the intellectual has direct access to their listeners. In the past, if you wrote an influential book, indeed your fans might go back and comb through your back catalogue. And the basic idea of you needing to write your next great book on the next hot topic to maintain your fame is there. But social media cuts out the book writing cycle, instead you can spend five minutes on a tweet, a few days on a YouTube video, etc. The loop is much tighter, and the effect is accelerated.

Borrible 3y ago

Cult of Personality. The strong man for one, the celebrity for the next, the intellectual for the other.It presumably makes one's own lack of power,fame and significance bearable. Egoprothesis in a deficient mental model of the world.

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simongray 3y ago

Zeihan's synthesis view of geopolitics is pretty interesting, but he does display glaring faults when he ventures beyond that niche, e.g. when he tries to summarise the economic systems of the world in his most recent book he says all of Europe is socialist, which is what I would consider a very basic American layman's take on economics, not really fitting for any kind of public intellectual in the social sciences. I try to look past it, though, since his demographics and culture-focused geopolitics analysis is still interesting to me.

DavidPiper 3y ago
This was my take on Zeihan too. He's one of the few I've approached in the way the OP is talking about (minus the worship part). I bought and read one of his books. I completely agree with your take: his demographics work was a new model of thought for me, and interesting to think about and apply. A lot of his extrapolation felt really off, though. For Zeihan in particular I went a bit deeper in trying to figure out why a lot of his analysis didn't sit well with me. Part of it was the America-centricity - the superficial non-interest for Europe and other continents. The second part, though, was that I don't think he really considers that the people making these systems work also suffer if the systems collapse. At a societal level, we are motivated to keep our global systems maintained because they sustain our ways of life - not because somebody signed an agreement. The signing was just a means of getting it started. Anyway, end rant, but I guess his ideas feel too far down the isolationist line. My analysis of which probably proves the OP's worshipping point. It's designed to pull you in.
- helpfulclippy 3y ago
  I think of Peter Zeihan commentary as having two parts. The first part is where he takes a current event and contextualizes it with a bunch about the geography, demography and supply chain stuff, or maybe some history. I'd say he has an overall pretty high level of quality here, helped along by the fact that everyone's geography and demography is usually pretty stable from week to week. In the second part, he takes everything from the first part and fits it into his career-long public storytelling project, where he's writing a thriller novel out loud 5 minutes at a time, set in the near future where Eurasia is now Mad Max except without all the gas, and pirates rule the seas. I happen to love Mad Max AND pirates, so I have fun, but I don't take it as seriously as the first part.

layer8 3y ago

I have a similar effect with TV series, getting excited at a new premise at first, but then often losing interest midways once the pattern-matching kicks in and I get a grasp on what their shtick is. The magic is usually only in the beginnings.

hackandthink 3y ago

My relationship with "intellectuals" is more stable. From time to time I'm looking what's up with: Nassim Taleb Andrew Gelmam Adam Tooze Scott Aaronson John Mearsheimer Noam Chomsky Bernard-Henri Lévy

justanotherjoe 3y ago

Im no longer catholic, but i use Jesus as a comparison to thrse figures. It's what i call the jesus principle: "Would jesus have this many things to say?" Jesus was 'the son of god' and yet he didn't have that much to say when it comes down to it. Really. When you compile all the things he said, without duplication, it would probably fit in a one hour podcast. Now, take joe rogan's guest. Let's say Alex Honnold. He lives a really interesting life and one hour into the podcast he would be struggling for things to say. Should you listen to these public intellectuals you mentioned? sure. But after one hour or so, thats really enough to get an abstraction. Because when it comes down to it : There's really not much to say.

justanotherjoe 3y ago
im explaining it poorly. What i mean is that the principle is "if jesus didn't have that much to say,who is this guy that he talks for thousands of hours?"
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  Yours is a bad example. Jesus said that the old law was still valid, which means that in fact you have to study the entire OT to get the full message. He just left it to the reader as an exercise
  - justanotherjoe 3y ago
    That's my point though. He didn't need to say it again cause he wouldnt add anything to it.
    - Almondsetat 3y ago
      You are again making a mistake. Jesus didn’t have to add much because it was implicit that everything written in the OT was the truth. Unfortunately if you don’t believe in Christianity there is no book or philosopher that has told the whole “truth” about the universe, so any new kid on the block might indeed have many things to say

activitypea 3y ago

Might be worth taking a step back and considering how people like Peterson and Weinstein become public intellectuals in the first place.

seydor 3y ago

Popularity is not a good filter for importance, especially about future importance. In old times, editors would decide what gets popular, now algorithms do and they are quite dumb and don't take risks.

lionkor 3y ago

Why does this fucking article keep lagging my entire browser and keeps reloading? I have a constant loading bar. Just let me read the damn text. Of course reader mode is broken. Decide what you want to do: Do you want to publish content, or visual art? Don't try doing both when you're not great at either.

GnarfGnarf 3y ago

This post has sloppy editing: then it i was Eric Weinstein You’re basis for truth (should be "Your") Hasn't been corrected in ten months?

squirrel23 3y ago

I really like the text. Short, concise and to the point. I also felt like you were describing a little bit of me lol. The one thing I fail to capture is, what is the solution to this problem? How can these intellectuals not "die"?

squirrel23 3y ago
One thing to point out, I meant I related to you in the obsession to follow someone like say Peterson.
- pjc50 3y ago
  I think in the case of Peterson the answer to not dying is "not getting addicted to benzodiazopene".

meindnoch 3y ago

Tell me about your relationship with your father.

teknico 3y ago

WARNING: libertarian content ahead. > And take note when one doesn’t fall, study them the hardest. Here you go, all three of them (including Ludwig Von Mises too): Hans-Hermann Hoppe on “For a New Liberty” by Murray Rothbard at 50 https://mises.org/wire/hans-hermann-hoppe-new-liberty-50 https://mises.org/wire/hans-hermann-hoppe-new-liberty-50

Kye 3y ago

It might help to expand your horizons a bit. I see a lot of dudes on there I easily spotted for having limited range from the start. The trouble is people like this float too far off the ground and never come down to catch up. They usually lose their touch long before they gain the limelight, but are able to cruise a bit. The big tell: is "being a public intellectual" all they have? Do they have no experiences with the real world to temper flighty, assumption-based beliefs? Bad news. Even Zeno of Citium saw the world as a merchant while Stoicism was cooking in his head. You can't create or benefit from philosophy isolated from people who challenge your assumptions. Here's some people to get you started: On Malik (some interesting photography too): https://om.co/ https://om.co/ Anil Dash (appreciates a good Prince pun): https://www.anildash.com/ https://www.anildash.com/ Judith Butler, just about anything they put out in public. bell hooks (deceased, but has a lot worth reading) Adam Savage (lots of good life advice in Q&As): https://www.youtube.com/@tested https://www.youtube.com/@tested Wil Wheaton (yeah I know, but he hit a new gear once he got past alcohol and started really dealing with his childhood trauma): https://wilwheaton.net/ https://wilwheaton.net/ Michael Rosenbaum (played a solid Lex Luthor and now does great interviews): https://www.youtube.com/@InsideOfYouPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@InsideOfYouPodcast Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating (from Enterprise to interview show): https://www.youtube.com/@ShuttlepodShow/ https://www.youtube.com/@ShuttlepodShow/

ubermonkey 3y ago
I can't hit the link --- getting a 503 -- but I'd add a few. Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things To Me, widely awarded) Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me, MacArthur Fellow) Ibrahim X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist, MacArthur Fellow)
- Kye 3y ago
  Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" was eye-opening on a topic I thought I was already well-informed on, and it barely scratched the surface. So much stuff boiled to the surface in the almost 10 years since.
- migro23 3y ago
  Once I heard Kendi's definition of racism (1) I could no longer take that guy seriously. He is a social justice warrior public intellectual of the post modernist variety leading me to think he is either innocently and unknowningly deluded or an intentional and nefarious grifter profitting from giving apparent credence to the hard left hardliners. A similar role that Jordan Peterson leverages to make a living arguing or giving theoritical support for the religious right. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc (it's a 2 minute video and totally worth it!)

d_burfoot 3y ago

The author has completely the wrong approach to absorbing wisdom from public intellectuals. Yes, of course every thinker is limited. They produce some beautiful work, some good work, and some mediocre work, some bad work. The trick is to consume the former and avoid the latter. Furthermore, we ought to evaluate writers based on their best work (use max(..) instead of average(..) as the aggregation operator). Of course Nassim Taleb, after getting famous, became cranky and overeager to engage in tawdry public insult-slinging. That does not detract from the beauty and depth of his best work. Of course George RR Martin's later books are not very good, and he will probably not finish the series. That does not reduce the magic of Tyrion Lannister's defense of King's Landing. I could produce an endless stream of examples like this.

kukkeliskuu 3y ago

"This guy had something interesting to say" is not a good heuristic for finding people who you can trust on multiple subjects. A little bit better heuristic is if the person can publicly admit they have been wrong about something and change their mind. I have been more and more disappointed by analytical analysis, in other words "wiseacring" of all kinds of intellectuals, so I have started to believe the problem is more in the analytical approach itself, and less in the person doing the analysis. I am gravitating towards people who talk from experience, not from analysis. I expect them also to not appear to be reactive, talking from fear. An example of a person talking from fear would be a kind of junior developer who can never admit they are wrong, and who tries to cover up their mistakes.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago

Kill your heroes; every single “intellectual” on YouTube can and should be ignored. Follow the field, not any individual. This need to have some special, unique insight, the hottest take, is death to understanding.

bparsons 3y ago

The author seems to only be interested in people who appear on podcasts targeting lonely men between the ages of 20-40. I can assure him that there is a whole world of serious thinkers and authors that have never appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast.

iammjm 3y ago

What’s wrong with Peter Zeihan?

alphazard 3y ago

The only difference between a public intellectual and an entertainer or other content creator, is that the public intellectual had at least one novel idea about something important. I mean idea very broadly here, it can take the form of a reframing, an intuition pump, a system for reasoning, etc. That makes them known as "the guy who came up with x" vs. "the guy who makes videos about y". Rogan has a podcast, Taleb is the fat tails guy. But even the best public intellectuals only have a few novel, high quality ideas a year. Most have only a few during their whole career. If someone only writes a book when they have something to say (a rarity for professional authors, more common amongst people who don't like writing). That book probably contains a few, maybe only one, novel idea. That's the case for books, what about tweets or videos? Entertainers and public intellectuals compete for the same bandwidth. They show up in the same feeds. In order to compete, the intellectuals have to lower their standards, and the result is that many public intellectuals are only in the intellectual business 1/100 of the time, and in the hot takes business the other 99/100.

momirlan 3y ago

oh ye people, you always need a golden bull to worship. turn your attention inside and listen to the truth that is always there. that's where the revolution starts. otherwise, you're just a consumer of the latest YouTube fad.

virtualritz 3y ago

It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'. This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text of the most basic ideas, frequently completely missing the point, into sophisticated-sounding language. The other names tell me nothing; but having the former in the list kept me from looking up the latter. [1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-d...

BryanLegend 3y ago
I'm sure I'll get downvoted here, but I think Peterson is brilliant. His books have absolutely given me insightful ideas that have improved my life and relationships.
- alwyn 3y ago
  12 Rules for Life was mostly good, it definitely helped me with some things. I liked his earlier podcasts on JRE and other shows. However, I couldn't get through Beyond Order at all; I had to drop it fairly early. I think I still like the Peterson from 5-ish years ago. How he currently is, and how he has _mostly_ been for the past 2 years or so does not align with me anymore.
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    Can’t help but feel like something happened to him during the rehab years. It is miraculous he came through, but he seems very different. Might be the fame, aging, the need to build an audience, or the rehab process. Who knows.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  Yes, not to mention his (completely free) lecture series on the Bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn.... an incredibly scholar he is.
  - deleted 3y ago

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

> The story goes something like this, I get recommended a clip on YouTube, there’s a man who is calm, articulate, and says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. Is my understanding of the world completely wrong?! I need to read everything this man written. Read books. Watch Harvard/Yale lectures on humanities. Write notes on them. Think for yourself and write essays on the those topics. Once you get comprehensive education, random YouTube celebrities will stop being deep and fascinating to you. Or at least you will have 30-40 other perspectives from renowned thinkers to complement your worldview.

gwern 3y ago

A much better-written essay on a similar thesis: https://scholars-stage.org/public-intellectuals-have-short-shelf-lives-but-why/ https://scholars-stage.org/public-intellectuals-have-short-s...

y0ssar1an 3y ago

> First it was Jordan Peterson, then it i was Eric Weinstein, then Chamath, the list goes on. Most recently, it’s been Peter Zeihan. Man repeatedly falls for the worst "public intellectuals" (really, pretentious charlatans), discovers that they're not trustworthy, and runs to the internet screaming "THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IS DEAD." nah brah, you just have bad tase. Jordan Peterson -> an incoherent rambler. He's incapable of putting together straightforward premise1-premise2-premise3-->conclusion arguments. If you ask him "how's the weather?", you'll get an hour long brain spew about Ancient Rome, Napoleon, woke feminism, and the worst Holocaust takes you can imagine. Eric Weinstein -> a narcissist mathematician who came up with a theory of everything, but refused to publish it because real physicists might criticize it and hurt his feelings. He wanted to be recognized as the new Einstein based solely on a video of a talk to a non-physicist audience. His podcasts are mostly rants against the Physics Deep State and Big Science, which he calls the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex", because they're all in a big conspiracy to suppress his genius ideas. Chamath -> don't know him. Peter Zeihan -> just another hyper-caffeinated prognosticator who claims to know the future.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> which he calls the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex", because they're all in a big conspiracy to suppress his genius ideas. I don't say this sarcastically or ironically... but isn't that one of the big things proper science actually does? Think about it for a moment, science is the business of suppressing all the stupid ideas humans have come up with over the centuries. And until it got started doing that, those ideas were everywhere, keeping everyone ignorant. It has a somewhat careful methodology to this suppression. It designs experiments to falsify everything it can, conducts those experiments rigorously and exhaustively, until everyone is convinced that those ideas are wrong and the ideas are as dead as doornails. But, if somehow it comes across one that is falsifiable but that can't be falsified by experiment, it moves on... plenty of other ideas to suppress. Hell, science should adopt that moniker and run with it. Be proud of it. It's one of the things it gets right. If that's his worst jab at science, he's just lazy and not very clever.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago

A lot of negative comments in here. It seems that everyone has their own whipping boy "public intellectual" in mind that once loudly said a thing that they disagreed with, and this is the opportunity to really stick it to them for that audacity. Here's my hot take: consume what you want, just don't let it consume you. All of these people have probably said something worth mulling over, whether you ultimately end up agreeing with them or not. Learn what you can and then move on.

bannedbybros 3y ago

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rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago

Can anyone actually explain what philosophy or worldview Jordan Peterson is selling?

slothtrop 3y ago

My idea of a public intellectual is someone like Scott Alexander or maybe Eliezer Yudkowsky, but I suppose being on camera makes you more public than anything else.

jfax 3y ago

This article refers to "public intellectuals" as only being men.

nerddadnear40 3y ago

Peterson seems strongly influenced by Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau who are doing quite a job at restoring meaning to the western world, linking rational and irrational thinking into a kind of universal theory with mathematical notations across verticals. It's really mind-blowing and imho, Matthieu Pageau is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time and he remains quite isolated and hidden. His content is infrequent, freshly brilliant, and challenging for those curious to learn it.

defgeneric 3y ago

The debate about the "public intellectual" is a very old one by now. Most date the emergence of the public intellectual to the Dreyfus affair. I read the author's list here with sadness, thinking that the younger generation is being cut off from the history of an important modern phenomenon by youtube's algorithm. Youtube videos just aren't a good medium for this. Sustained, in-depth conversation across journals and magazines and periodicals was much better.