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> 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 th

> 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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  - 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.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      Musk spend fourty-four billion dollars on cementing his cult leader position.
  - anthk 3y ago
    No. Just the old idolization of people.
  - hnreport 3y ago
    I’ll accept that, but what’s the prevalence of it in the adult male demographic?
  - twic 3y ago
    It does feel like something like that. Maybe not that exactly, but many people have some sort of need for external authorities to tell them what to do, what to think, who to be, etc. Some lack of confidence in their own judgement? Insecurity about making their own decisions?
    - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
      People want certainty, and many are willing to let go of independence of thought to try to get it.
- littlelady 3y ago
  I think the term "para-social relationship" might help you.
  - twicetwice 3y ago
    Yes, this is a textbook parasocial relationship. No judgment—me too. I've been listening to the "New Heights" podcast a lot recently, so my most recent parasocial relationship is feeling like Jason and Travis Kelce are my friends. Of course I know they're not, it's just how these things work. Parasocial relationships are ubiquitous in the modern day. My favorite analogy is that parasocial relationships are the Doritos of socialization: appealing. delicious, addictive, can temporarily keep hunger at bay—but fundamentally not satiating, lacking in essential nutrients, and unhealthy when they displace their original natural & more nutritious alternatives.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      Genuinely I think a lot of these people would be better off if they got into k-pop or something rather than geopolitics.
      - hnreport 3y ago
        Bro, so what u saying, u saying millions of us are effectively Rogan simps in a parasocial relationship? These relationships are on both sides (e.g AOC on the left).
        pjc50 3y ago
        Yes, and yes? It's kind of inescapable in modern politics, because it's effective at getting people elected and/or making money. It's not the worst way to get elected; certainly better than relying on narrow donor class money. Just .. recognize the limitations of it.
        hnreport 3y ago
        I’m inclined to agree. The problem is, unlike High School where the kids just grow the fuck out of all the stupid teenage bullshit, adults seem to not have that kinda structure going on. So instead of being a Rogan stan for those weird years in High School, you are grown ass 30 year year old Stan who’s been stanning for 5 years now minimum. Adults today don’t know how to snap out of the high school shit they easily snapped out of after high school. It’s like we’re in a high school that never ends.
- kaashif 3y ago
  Somewhat weird comment...I thought it was obvious, I and others are occasionally interested in what e.g. Joe Rogan has to say because it's entertaining. I didn't think this was in any way confusing or surprising, and never thought this had anything to do with love. Isn't this the position of most people?
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > never thought this had anything to do with love Plenty of couples started with "oh he's so cute and funny" / "I love listening to her jokes", and few years later found themselves retelling those stories to a wide audience, at their wedding.
- gnz11 3y ago
  Maybe an "appeal to authority" type situation which is guiding an anxious brain? e.g. Rogan has a massive following, therefore you wonder: "why does this person have such a massive following? It must be because they have important things to say. I had better listen too."
- wincy 3y ago
  I think as men we have a deep seated need to have a strong leader we respect. If we went into the woods and made a tribe I’d for sure want Joe Rogan or Elon Musk making the decisions. Joe Rogan gives even the village idiot a fair shake to make their point on his podcast. It’s like watching a wise king preside over court. There’s not some big gay mystery here, it’s hardwired “if we go hunting a mammoth, I want Joe Rogan leading the hunt and presiding over the feast!”.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybook... "I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric." (if you've never read the whole thing, it's worth it, far beyond the list)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - _whiteCaps_ 3y ago
    I keep hearing this meme repeated lately (most recently by the My Pillow guy), and I guess my brain is wired differently, but oh boy, would I hate that society.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      "Great person" ideology never works. Nobody is right about most things, and nobody is an expert on more than a few things, it simply isn't feasible. I don't understand asking non-experts their opinion on basically anything.
  - staticman2 3y ago
    Really, you can't think of a better conceivable leader than Joe Rogan or Elon Musk, even in a fantasy scenario you've invented?
- pjc50 3y ago
  A guy standing up every week declaming with moral authority? The word you are looking for is preacher. And that's what these people are. They provide a comforting sense of moral certainty and judgement; they define enemies, usually a nebulous Them; they're satisfying to listen to; and they publish on a schedule to reinforce the little ritual of listening to them. You've heard the adhan and you are called. > 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? People have somehow lost all the words for communicating relationships between people that aren't sexual. Although the "fan" relationship can get pretty weird at times. It's interesting to hear from someone who's liminal enough to realize that they're inside the experience but also knows what's wrong with it. Thank you for this post. > I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about See also "Gell-Mann amnesia" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
- Kye 3y ago
  This might be enlightening for you on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9K3WnyuyFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9K3WnyuyFo
throw_pm23 3y ago
Is it obviously a wrong approach? You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right. Clearly there is a middle ground, we should not blindly follow some authority, but some skills generalize, and some people may be worth listening to on general topics, and not just the ultra-specialized experts.
- farias0 3y ago
  It is an obviously wrong approach. There are plenty of intelligent people out there, this doesn't keep them from being occasionally wrong. If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    In the last couple years there was more than ample opportunity to see how badly this approach fails, you have droves of these "public intellectuals" as TFA calls them for every crisis (COVID, energy crisis, russian wars, gaza etc.) and almost all of them are just Average Joes dishing out their BBQ-level hot takes in public. Remember all the math and physics PhDs in 2020 suddenly being genius experts on disease modelling? The same people who suddenly became experts on warfare some time in early 2022? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
    - scruple 3y ago
      Yes. This was prominent when Russia invaded Ukraine. It was as if millions of people woke and decided, "I'm tired of being an infectious disease expert. Starting today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"
      - pjc50 3y ago
nonrandomstring 3y ago
It's the behaviour I notice rather than the stated motives; > But dear reader see this pattern for what it is... every 6 months I find someone new to obsess over... Without fail, each one of comes to disappoint. Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it? > says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. A rebel! One validated by popular opinion no less! The problem is, no matter how many rebellious public intellectuals we binge on, it will not take one any closer to being that rebellious and fascinating person. Escape from such a cycle is to jump directly to being that which you wish to be. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200. Find what is so odious in this "narrative" of which you speak, and loudly denounce it! But beware, if you like to have friends. Instead of being the cool, interesting person at the party, who knows all the latest, internet-celebrity-validated talking points, you will be the bus loony in the anorak who people avoid. Trust me, I've lived it for 40 years. With some guile you can go to ground disguised as university professor for a while.
- michpoch 3y ago
  > Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it? I do feel that the author has some interesting personality trait - but I'm not sure if he's in the minority. After writing my comment I have realised that maybe it's why I never understood the appeal of Twitter. I have never had any "gurus" or "authorities" that I'd universally respect. I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care? When I read that the author says he follows that "person" so deeply, watching their videos for hours, I completely can not relate. Neither on logical nor emotional level. I might dig into a topic, let's say, siege of Berlin during II WW, but I'd be focusing on the topic and the source / author will be completely irrelevant. I'll even probably select various ones, as I enjoy challenging my own perspective.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Old Twitter was much better for offering you a plethora of perspectives, especially of random individuals "on the ground", in whatever sense, who were not professional talking heads. That time is long gone.
bakuninsbart 3y ago
If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way. Both of your examples have a very strong technical component, either understanding the underlying biology/epidemiology or understanding war theory and practice. It is indeed unlikely that someone is an expert in both. But many important topics have far fewer, if any, objective truths attached to it. In the case of covid restrictions, opinions should obviously be founded on science, but science can only inform our moral choices, not make them for us. Is the damage done to developing minds worth locking down schools if it reduces the spread of covid? Can there be a state/societal mandate to force people to stay in their homes, or even to get vaccinated? You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
- michpoch 3y ago
  > If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way. Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion. It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey. So if I see someone describing, with full confidence, that this is good and that is bad, without all that load of middle-tones, it just makes me feel that they either are not too smart or do not have good intentions. > You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it. I can see the appeal here. What I do not understand is, why would you approach that person as an authority?
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    > It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey Yes, it's much easier to paint the whole world one color than trying to paint it in two colors: you'd have to make distinctions and that's quite hard. But on the other hand, if two colors are not enough to paint the whole world, surely one color is even less enough?
sokoloff 3y ago
> why would you even watch this [person’s] videos analysing Ukraine war? Because that was how you began life. Your parents (and later/lesser, primary school teachers) were the source of answers on nearly everything. There’s probably something quite natural about transferring a belief of being competent/knowledgeable in one area into some expectation of the same in another area. It's the underpinning of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy. It certainly works in the opposite direction: someone whom you know to pontificate out their backside on one topic, that expectation holds for the next, randomly chosen topic as well.
naveen99 3y ago
Violating the narrative is irrelevant. But if someone writes something interesting, logical, that I didn’t already know, I usually look for more, whether it’s hn comments , github projects, youtube videos, arxiv papers etc. once I see something particularly dumb or illogical from them, I stop. Especially if I found some other rabbit hole to follow.
hattmall 3y ago
That's difference in knowledge vs intelligence though. We see repeatedly that people with expert knowledge are frequently wrong because they shape what they see to fit their knowledge. Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently. It's the adage of "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail." Intelligent people have a full toolbox to analyze things with but domain experts tend to only have increasingly large hammers.
- twic 3y ago
  > Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently. Citation needed. This sounds like a Rationalist power fantasy which doesn't fit my experience of the world at all.
ivanhoe 3y ago
If someone is a free thinker and person of knowledge and eloquence that I respect I'd probably be interested in hearing their position on pretty much any topic, not just their narrow field of professional interest. Take Noam Chomsky for instance, I seriously doubt that that many people online listened to his lectures on linguistics, right?
- memonkey 3y ago
  This is very true. I think part of the issue is that there's an element of critical thinking skills that you would hope to eventually acquire _AS_ you continue to listen to any attributed public intellectual. Otherwise you can go your whole life reading Christopher Hitchens from when he was a great rhetorician and contrarian of US foreign policy to his transformation of racist war-mongering anti-theism days.
stainablesteel 3y ago
> If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this person's videos analyzing the Ukraine war? That makes zero sense. it does make sense, you can understand multiple things. especially after researching it.
britzkopf 3y ago
I'd agree, but then the number of people that I meet who are otherwise intelligent and thoughtful, but have a casual, uncritical belief in the ability for Elon Musk to lead humanity forward on multiple fronts is shocking. Have you ever heard of the "all in" podcast?
jimmydddd 3y ago
A cousin of mine in her 20's has a podcast. I listened in on one and was surprised to hear that whe was giving out financial and investing advice. For context, she lives with her husband in his childhood bedroom with her inlaws, and works two or three days a week as a health professional. She has virtually no savings or investments, relies on her inlaws for food, and has an expensive Jeep on a 6 year loan. Interesting to think that folks are listening to her advice as though she is an expert.
- snorkel 3y ago
  I can believe it. There are those skilled at performative intellectualism, i.e. sounding very smart and insightful, but the performance itself is the product, it is all they sell and offer. Whenever I hear a public speaker appealing to supposed ancient wisdom of obscure tribes and traditions who had better-than-modern diets, laws, monetary policy, medicine, footwear (or lack iof), etc then that tells me that it’s just more hucksterism
  - chubot 3y ago
    Also, it just takes a lot of time to produce that kind of content The people with the knowledge/experience are often busy doing real world stuff For others, producing that content is the "best" thing they can do with their time, but ironically that means you probably don't want to listen to them
  - civilitty 3y ago
    I’ve begun noticing this performative art play out more and more often on HN lately, especially in threads regarding medicine and healthcare. Apparently everyone became an armchair doctor and got their public policy degrees while on lockdown. It usually leads to a deep discussion with just one comment buried in the middle of the stack going “uhm, wtf?” I should start a list of red flags in my notes. “Inflammation” comes to mind as well as any sort of explanation that invokes evolutionary biology or neuroscience.
    - meindnoch 3y ago

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.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Musk spend fourty-four billion dollars on cementing his cult leader position.
- anthk 3y ago
  No. Just the old idolization of people.
- hnreport 3y ago
  I’ll accept that, but what’s the prevalence of it in the adult male demographic?
- twic 3y ago
  It does feel like something like that. Maybe not that exactly, but many people have some sort of need for external authorities to tell them what to do, what to think, who to be, etc. Some lack of confidence in their own judgement? Insecurity about making their own decisions?
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    People want certainty, and many are willing to let go of independence of thought to try to get it.
littlelady 3y ago
I think the term "para-social relationship" might help you.
- twicetwice 3y ago
  Yes, this is a textbook parasocial relationship. No judgment—me too. I've been listening to the "New Heights" podcast a lot recently, so my most recent parasocial relationship is feeling like Jason and Travis Kelce are my friends. Of course I know they're not, it's just how these things work. Parasocial relationships are ubiquitous in the modern day. My favorite analogy is that parasocial relationships are the Doritos of socialization: appealing. delicious, addictive, can temporarily keep hunger at bay—but fundamentally not satiating, lacking in essential nutrients, and unhealthy when they displace their original natural & more nutritious alternatives.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Genuinely I think a lot of these people would be better off if they got into k-pop or something rather than geopolitics.
    - hnreport 3y ago
      Bro, so what u saying, u saying millions of us are effectively Rogan simps in a parasocial relationship? These relationships are on both sides (e.g AOC on the left).
      - pjc50 3y ago
        Yes, and yes? It's kind of inescapable in modern politics, because it's effective at getting people elected and/or making money. It's not the worst way to get elected; certainly better than relying on narrow donor class money. Just .. recognize the limitations of it.
        hnreport 3y ago
        I’m inclined to agree. The problem is, unlike High School where the kids just grow the fuck out of all the stupid teenage bullshit, adults seem to not have that kinda structure going on. So instead of being a Rogan stan for those weird years in High School, you are grown ass 30 year year old Stan who’s been stanning for 5 years now minimum. Adults today don’t know how to snap out of the high school shit they easily snapped out of after high school. It’s like we’re in a high school that never ends.
kaashif 3y ago
Somewhat weird comment...I thought it was obvious, I and others are occasionally interested in what e.g. Joe Rogan has to say because it's entertaining. I didn't think this was in any way confusing or surprising, and never thought this had anything to do with love. Isn't this the position of most people?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > never thought this had anything to do with love Plenty of couples started with "oh he's so cute and funny" / "I love listening to her jokes", and few years later found themselves retelling those stories to a wide audience, at their wedding.
gnz11 3y ago
Maybe an "appeal to authority" type situation which is guiding an anxious brain? e.g. Rogan has a massive following, therefore you wonder: "why does this person have such a massive following? It must be because they have important things to say. I had better listen too."
wincy 3y ago
I think as men we have a deep seated need to have a strong leader we respect. If we went into the woods and made a tribe I’d for sure want Joe Rogan or Elon Musk making the decisions. Joe Rogan gives even the village idiot a fair shake to make their point on his podcast. It’s like watching a wise king preside over court. There’s not some big gay mystery here, it’s hardwired “if we go hunting a mammoth, I want Joe Rogan leading the hunt and presiding over the feast!”.
- pjc50 3y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybook... "I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric." (if you've never read the whole thing, it's worth it, far beyond the list)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- _whiteCaps_ 3y ago
  I keep hearing this meme repeated lately (most recently by the My Pillow guy), and I guess my brain is wired differently, but oh boy, would I hate that society.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    "Great person" ideology never works. Nobody is right about most things, and nobody is an expert on more than a few things, it simply isn't feasible. I don't understand asking non-experts their opinion on basically anything.
- staticman2 3y ago
  Really, you can't think of a better conceivable leader than Joe Rogan or Elon Musk, even in a fantasy scenario you've invented?
pjc50 3y ago
A guy standing up every week declaming with moral authority? The word you are looking for is preacher. And that's what these people are. They provide a comforting sense of moral certainty and judgement; they define enemies, usually a nebulous Them; they're satisfying to listen to; and they publish on a schedule to reinforce the little ritual of listening to them. You've heard the adhan and you are called. > 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? People have somehow lost all the words for communicating relationships between people that aren't sexual. Although the "fan" relationship can get pretty weird at times. It's interesting to hear from someone who's liminal enough to realize that they're inside the experience but also knows what's wrong with it. Thank you for this post. > I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about See also "Gell-Mann amnesia" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
Kye 3y ago
This might be enlightening for you on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9K3WnyuyFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9K3WnyuyFo

throw_pm23 3y ago

Is it obviously a wrong approach? You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right. Clearly there is a middle ground, we should not blindly follow some authority, but some skills generalize, and some people may be worth listening to on general topics, and not just the ultra-specialized experts.

farias0 3y ago
It is an obviously wrong approach. There are plenty of intelligent people out there, this doesn't keep them from being occasionally wrong. If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  In the last couple years there was more than ample opportunity to see how badly this approach fails, you have droves of these "public intellectuals" as TFA calls them for every crisis (COVID, energy crisis, russian wars, gaza etc.) and almost all of them are just Average Joes dishing out their BBQ-level hot takes in public. Remember all the math and physics PhDs in 2020 suddenly being genius experts on disease modelling? The same people who suddenly became experts on warfare some time in early 2022? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
  - scruple 3y ago
    Yes. This was prominent when Russia invaded Ukraine. It was as if millions of people woke and decided, "I'm tired of being an infectious disease expert. Starting today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"
    - pjc50 3y ago

nonrandomstring 3y ago

It's the behaviour I notice rather than the stated motives; > But dear reader see this pattern for what it is... every 6 months I find someone new to obsess over... Without fail, each one of comes to disappoint. Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it? > says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating. A rebel! One validated by popular opinion no less! The problem is, no matter how many rebellious public intellectuals we binge on, it will not take one any closer to being that rebellious and fascinating person. Escape from such a cycle is to jump directly to being that which you wish to be. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200. Find what is so odious in this "narrative" of which you speak, and loudly denounce it! But beware, if you like to have friends. Instead of being the cool, interesting person at the party, who knows all the latest, internet-celebrity-validated talking points, you will be the bus loony in the anorak who people avoid. Trust me, I've lived it for 40 years. With some guile you can go to ground disguised as university professor for a while.

michpoch 3y ago
> Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it? I do feel that the author has some interesting personality trait - but I'm not sure if he's in the minority. After writing my comment I have realised that maybe it's why I never understood the appeal of Twitter. I have never had any "gurus" or "authorities" that I'd universally respect. I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care? When I read that the author says he follows that "person" so deeply, watching their videos for hours, I completely can not relate. Neither on logical nor emotional level. I might dig into a topic, let's say, siege of Berlin during II WW, but I'd be focusing on the topic and the source / author will be completely irrelevant. I'll even probably select various ones, as I enjoy challenging my own perspective.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Old Twitter was much better for offering you a plethora of perspectives, especially of random individuals "on the ground", in whatever sense, who were not professional talking heads. That time is long gone.

bakuninsbart 3y ago

If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way. Both of your examples have a very strong technical component, either understanding the underlying biology/epidemiology or understanding war theory and practice. It is indeed unlikely that someone is an expert in both. But many important topics have far fewer, if any, objective truths attached to it. In the case of covid restrictions, opinions should obviously be founded on science, but science can only inform our moral choices, not make them for us. Is the damage done to developing minds worth locking down schools if it reduces the spread of covid? Can there be a state/societal mandate to force people to stay in their homes, or even to get vaccinated? You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.

michpoch 3y ago
> If you are trying to be a well-rounded person with well-founded opinions on different topics, it makes sense to believe that there are others like you who are further along the way. Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion. It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey. So if I see someone describing, with full confidence, that this is good and that is bad, without all that load of middle-tones, it just makes me feel that they either are not too smart or do not have good intentions. > You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it. I can see the appeal here. What I do not understand is, why would you approach that person as an authority?
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  > It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey Yes, it's much easier to paint the whole world one color than trying to paint it in two colors: you'd have to make distinctions and that's quite hard. But on the other hand, if two colors are not enough to paint the whole world, surely one color is even less enough?

sokoloff 3y ago

> why would you even watch this [person’s] videos analysing Ukraine war? Because that was how you began life. Your parents (and later/lesser, primary school teachers) were the source of answers on nearly everything. There’s probably something quite natural about transferring a belief of being competent/knowledgeable in one area into some expectation of the same in another area. It's the underpinning of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy. It certainly works in the opposite direction: someone whom you know to pontificate out their backside on one topic, that expectation holds for the next, randomly chosen topic as well.

naveen99 3y ago

Violating the narrative is irrelevant. But if someone writes something interesting, logical, that I didn’t already know, I usually look for more, whether it’s hn comments , github projects, youtube videos, arxiv papers etc. once I see something particularly dumb or illogical from them, I stop. Especially if I found some other rabbit hole to follow.

hattmall 3y ago

That's difference in knowledge vs intelligence though. We see repeatedly that people with expert knowledge are frequently wrong because they shape what they see to fit their knowledge. Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently. It's the adage of "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail." Intelligent people have a full toolbox to analyze things with but domain experts tend to only have increasingly large hammers.

twic 3y ago
> Intelligent people can give more insight on a variety of topics without having expert level knowledge just because they are smart and can put the puzzle together differently. Citation needed. This sounds like a Rationalist power fantasy which doesn't fit my experience of the world at all.

ivanhoe 3y ago

If someone is a free thinker and person of knowledge and eloquence that I respect I'd probably be interested in hearing their position on pretty much any topic, not just their narrow field of professional interest. Take Noam Chomsky for instance, I seriously doubt that that many people online listened to his lectures on linguistics, right?

memonkey 3y ago
This is very true. I think part of the issue is that there's an element of critical thinking skills that you would hope to eventually acquire _AS_ you continue to listen to any attributed public intellectual. Otherwise you can go your whole life reading Christopher Hitchens from when he was a great rhetorician and contrarian of US foreign policy to his transformation of racist war-mongering anti-theism days.

stainablesteel 3y ago

> If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this person's videos analyzing the Ukraine war? That makes zero sense. it does make sense, you can understand multiple things. especially after researching it.

britzkopf 3y ago

I'd agree, but then the number of people that I meet who are otherwise intelligent and thoughtful, but have a casual, uncritical belief in the ability for Elon Musk to lead humanity forward on multiple fronts is shocking. Have you ever heard of the "all in" podcast?

jimmydddd 3y ago

A cousin of mine in her 20's has a podcast. I listened in on one and was surprised to hear that whe was giving out financial and investing advice. For context, she lives with her husband in his childhood bedroom with her inlaws, and works two or three days a week as a health professional. She has virtually no savings or investments, relies on her inlaws for food, and has an expensive Jeep on a 6 year loan. Interesting to think that folks are listening to her advice as though she is an expert.

snorkel 3y ago
I can believe it. There are those skilled at performative intellectualism, i.e. sounding very smart and insightful, but the performance itself is the product, it is all they sell and offer. Whenever I hear a public speaker appealing to supposed ancient wisdom of obscure tribes and traditions who had better-than-modern diets, laws, monetary policy, medicine, footwear (or lack iof), etc then that tells me that it’s just more hucksterism
- chubot 3y ago
  Also, it just takes a lot of time to produce that kind of content The people with the knowledge/experience are often busy doing real world stuff For others, producing that content is the "best" thing they can do with their time, but ironically that means you probably don't want to listen to them
- civilitty 3y ago
  I’ve begun noticing this performative art play out more and more often on HN lately, especially in threads regarding medicine and healthcare. Apparently everyone became an armchair doctor and got their public policy degrees while on lockdown. It usually leads to a deep discussion with just one comment buried in the middle of the stack going “uhm, wtf?” I should start a list of red flags in my notes. “Inflammation” comes to mind as well as any sort of explanation that invokes evolutionary biology or neuroscience.
  - meindnoch 3y ago