> No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. Okay, so then what exactly is your objection to me saying that what Parfit said was stup

> No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. Okay, so then what exactly is your objection to me saying that what Parfit said was stupid? > But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. Again, I'm not anti-intellectual. I'm anti calling this nonsense intellectual. > the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars That's just an appeal to authority[1]. A group of philosophers patting each other on the back can all be wrong. Ideas get evaluated by their logic and evidence, not by the reputation of who said them. There are plenty of philosophers I respect. Darwin, Chomsky, or Orwell, for examples. But I respect them based on the ideas they came up with (which doesn't mean I always agree). I haven't read any Parfit besides what you've posted, but nothing there warrants any respect. There are plenty of other "reputable" philosophers who deserve no respect. "If everyone was a philosopher, there would be no farmers and we would starve to death; therefore being a philosopher is wrong." Sound familiar? Why is no philosopher talking about how stupid that idea is? > that have thought about this much more than you have. I really do not know why you think that "thinking about something a lot" matters. A program that runs for a long time and then spits out the wrong answer is not a good program. > Try reading a paper sometime. I read 3 papers in the last week. Each of them contained data which tied their conclusions to reality. Try reading a paper critically sometime. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/