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many intellectuals with degrees to fill up a room Doesn't inspire confidence, and shouldn't. they cannot just be dismissed a priori Correct. They can (and sh

by javert 15y ago

many intellectuals with degrees to fill up a room Doesn't inspire confidence, and shouldn't. they cannot just be dismissed a priori Correct. They can (and should) be dismissed by observing that they contradict reality. That it happens to be considered "god given fact" in the society you might live in, is no proof that it is right. Don't know why you assume I'm just parroting something I've heard elsewhere. And it's not considered a "god-given fact" in the society I live in, anyway. Contrarian theories are also quite common elsewhere. Again, the standard of truth is not how many people hold a view, but whether ot not it is correct. The guy was alleging that there exists a small cabal of uber-rich who control the world. That's pretty clearly not the case.

batista 15y ago
>Doesn't inspire confidence, and shouldn't. Having qualified university expertise on something should inspire SOME confidence, all else being equal. But I wrote that for another reason: to show that one doesn't have to be an "idiot" to argue that, as the parent implied. >Correct. They can (and should) be dismissed by observing that they contradict reality. They should be dismissed IF they are found to contradict reality. And that's not as clear cut as the existence of gravity or the water becoming ice at 0 oC. >The guy was alleging that there exists a small cabal of uber-rich who control the world. That's pretty clearly not the case. Well, it depends on your definition of "small" and of "control". If I remember correctly, a small number of people do have a disproportionate amount of the total wealth, in the US and globally. A power-law distribution basically, right? And that wealth surely asserts lots of control. Surely SOPA and PIPA, for example, weren't proposed/passed with the insistence and for the benefit of Joe Sixpack or Joe Hacker.
- javert 15y ago
  If you think the rich are exploiting the poor and not the other way around, you are gravely mistaken.

by javert 15y ago

batista 15y ago

>Doesn't inspire confidence, and shouldn't. Having qualified university expertise on something should inspire SOME confidence, all else being equal. But I wrote that for another reason: to show that one doesn't have to be an "idiot" to argue that, as the parent implied. >Correct. They can (and should) be dismissed by observing that they contradict reality. They should be dismissed IF they are found to contradict reality. And that's not as clear cut as the existence of gravity or the water becoming ice at 0 oC. >The guy was alleging that there exists a small cabal of uber-rich who control the world. That's pretty clearly not the case. Well, it depends on your definition of "small" and of "control". If I remember correctly, a small number of people do have a disproportionate amount of the total wealth, in the US and globally. A power-law distribution basically, right? And that wealth surely asserts lots of control. Surely SOPA and PIPA, for example, weren't proposed/passed with the insistence and for the benefit of Joe Sixpack or Joe Hacker.

javert 15y ago
If you think the rich are exploiting the poor and not the other way around, you are gravely mistaken.