Intellectual Dark Web

Move along, nothing to see here!
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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Has the Word “Expert” Lost Its Meaning in 2019?

https://www.dictionary.com/e/expert-soc ... /?param=HP

WORD OF THE DAY
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2019

temerity
noun [tuh-mer-i-tee]
reckless boldness; rashness.

How is temerity used?

... he was taken aback by skeptical reviews that had the temerity to question his research methods or his conclusions. Jennifer Szalai, "Steven Pinker Wants You to Know Humanity Is Doing Fine. Just Don't Ask About Individual Humans." New York Times, February 28, 2018

The guys off the docks at the port who came in looking for engagement rings and wedding rings for their girlfriends would sometimes have the temerity to take the salesgirl's hand in order to examine the stone up close. Philip Roth, Everyman, 2006

After a couple of years reading about economics and investing, Mister Imperceptible had the unmitigated temerity to consider himself an armchair expert and critic of central banking.

daylen
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by daylen »

Not sure about what the written historical record says about innovation(*), but here is a hypothesis on what gives rise to the conditions for innovation or change. It seems that there is nothing to sustain a drive towards something new without some form of adversity. The adversity typically comes from individual humans or small groups of humans that are possessed by an idea or doctrine. The outsiders or humans with risk-oriented genetics avoid the consensus and attempt to replace it with a strategy that cannot co-exist easily with the traditional way of doing things. Eventually, if the strategy is successful enough to keep them alive, then they may try to impose it on everyone else. One of four things could happen at this point..
1. They are killed off somehow and their ideas die with them.
2. They manage to spread their ideas or preserve them in writing before the general population exiles them.
3. The attempt leads to a chain of events that triggers a different form of innovation or the development of a different idea.
4. Some of the ideas are accepted and eventually they stop trying to impose their ideas universally (perhaps mitigating their exile).

It seems that this process is more likely to occur for ideas that are less compatible with the general way of doing things, and all of the revolutionary ideas have likely already been assimilated into our culture (relativity, evolution, language, subjectivity, computation, complexity, chaos, equality of opportunity, currency, free market, free speech). Engineering and science knowledge have been built up from repeated failure and communication mostly, so the humans that are well socialized tend to be close to the edge of innovation and discovery. What pushes humans to this edge? I imagine that fear is a greater motivator than curiosity(**) for more socially integrated humans. Fear of natural disaster, disease, social exile, poverty, war, hunger, and ultimately death. Several of these seem to be emergent from risk-prone individuals that are helpless or frustrated as Jacob mentioned. No wonder reason is associated with the devil, but perhaps the devil is necessary in small doses to prevent larger organizations from becoming too rigid and fragile.

These thoughts lead me to two main questions..
1. How should conformity and non-conformity be balanced when the consensus is self-destructive?
2. Are genes that promote risk-taking necessary for a functioning society? ..or are they just remnants from our evolutionary history that allowed speciation(***)?

(*) This seems like a question where the answer would be skewed by historical data anyway due to how information is highly coupled to all an individual does.

(**) Maybe curiosity is emergent from tension in an individuals mind. A disintegrated mind may have many different neuronal chains that tend to fire in isolation. P-oriented humans may have less connectivity to the frontal cortex (or within the frontal cortex) where reasons can be constructed to promote action towards some objective. The brain has evolved two somewhat isolated hemispheres with a channel for some communication (this seems to be a good model for a healthy relationship where dominance/submission are minimized).

(***) Seems that the process by which new species are created has to do more with punctuated equilibrium or sudden jumps in phenotype/strategy than gradual genetic drift. Perhaps these jumps could be due to geographical isolation, change in food preference or preservation, new defense mechanisms, low-level changes in how new proteins are constructed or used, genetic expression, and so forth.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

daylen wrote:
Wed Feb 06, 2019 4:03 pm
1. How should conformity and non-conformity be balanced when the consensus is self-destructive?
The answer should be obvious.
daylen wrote:
Wed Feb 06, 2019 4:03 pm
2. Are genes that promote risk-taking necessary for a functioning society?
I hope you dare to be crazy, daylen.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0

daylen
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by daylen »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Wed Feb 06, 2019 5:55 pm
The answer should be obvious.
The problem is that any individual strategy is dependent on what the rest of society does. No individual can isolate themselves from the forces that humanity imposes on earth, and any degree of interaction with other humans requires some degree of rule-following to stay in the game.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

True, but avoid following the self-destructive rules the best you can, and push back against them when possible.

goodsir
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by goodsir »

I'm starting to really like Jordan Peterson. I thought it was a bit of a "conspiracy theory" at first that free speech laws are slowly being taken away but now I'm not so sure...

I'm a classic liberal but I like what a lot of people on the right (or seem to be on the right) are saying on issues like free speech right now.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by ZAFCorrection »

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have yet to see any possibility of government sanctions for speech. What I have seen is a good number of cases where people hanging out in the social spheres of SJW types end up getting burned (e.g. Scott Alexander's recent post on the SSC subreddit culture war thread). My attitude is you play with fire....

prognastat
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by prognastat »

ZAFCorrection wrote:
Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:56 am
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have yet to see any possibility of government sanctions for speech. What I have seen is a good number of cases where people hanging out in the social spheres of SJW types end up getting burned (e.g. Scott Alexander's recent post on the SSC subreddit culture war thread). My attitude is you play with fire....
It depends a lot on where you live.

US:
Not much from the political end as far as curbing free speech, but a lot of social pressure from progressives and corporations. Things like getting banned from social media platforms, forums or family/friends blocking you online or excommunicating you offline. This of course depends on where you live and who you hang out with. Offline if you live in the countryside you might not have this problem, but if you live in large city it's much more likely. Online though it's in lots of places.

To the point where I felt enough of a concern about doxxing and people possibly going after my job that I at least did a cursory review of my online moniker making sure it isn't too easy to track me down from it(probably never completely impossible, but can at least make it harder) after my experience on the MMM forums where I thought people could at least be somewhat rational. I was of the opinion that though I'm not a republican/right winger that they might not be completely wrong on everything and might also not be completely immoral/lacking in ethics, but rather believe they're doing the right thing just having a different perspective on what that would be. This eventually got me banned and branded a fascist nazi apologist by a mod there. This was quite the eye opener to me considering I figured I was still left wing like the forum generally was, the only thing being that I was standing up against some of the blatant hate that was being allowed to be posted towards right wing thought/people.

EU:
Definitely some suppression of free speech(of course free speech isn't really a legal right in most of Europe despite it being in the UN's declaration of human rights) with hate speech laws and laws against holocaust denial for example. You can be jailed/fined if what you say offends people most of all if the one(s) you offended are considered part of a protected group.

P.S.
Just linking the SSC post since it was mentioned:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/15/k ... ing-style/

I would disagree that it's completely hanging out with SJW being the problem. It sounds like it's some of it as he mentions some friends being a part of the problem. However a large portion seems to be targeted harassment by strangers of him, anyone involved with the thread(mostly moderators) and also in turn anyone he happens to relate with online or offline. People going after him, his job/employer, companies/groups he was a part of/interacted with etc. All this primarily for single post on a reddit(that he didn't create nor was and admin of) regarding his website that happened to allow discussion on topics where opinion that they didn't agree with were allowed.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by ZAFCorrection »

I think you might be referring to this link:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/r ... ar-thread/

My attitude is don't get internet famous, don't have a presence on areas where the plebs hang out (for example, twitter and reddit), and don't hang out with a large number of SJWs in real life. Do those and your chances of getting whacked are limited to the small chance of someone recording you doing something stupid irl, which is pretty low. Maybe the counter-argument is people shouldn't need to be so cloistered, but I don't find much is lost by abstaining from those areas.

For Scott, that dude lives in Berkeley, is internet famous, and dabbles in topics that are catnip for SJWs. It's definitely true people should leave the poor guy alone, but sometimes you just got to understand the reality of the situation and take some measures to protect yourself. Somehow that is blaming the victim.

prognastat
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by prognastat »

Yes that's the link, must have had the wrong one in my tab or clipboard.

The problem is that up until about 7 years ago none of these things were as much of a problem. Now they are though. You could say that when the topic become a thing on the reddit people could've known it'd lead to trouble in the end, but he is just an honorary mod there, not the admin. At the time he was building his internet fame though he probably didn't have a clue that things would someday be so polarised and that being internet famous would make him a target. So really all he did was get internet famous enough to have other people start a reddit in his(websites) name.

Thing though is it would even be sad if all this happened for him allowing calm discussion of volatile topics on his own website/space, but in this case it happened because he was loosely affiliated with a space that did.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Mon Feb 04, 2019 10:49 am
I'm waiting for a women's college basketball coach to put Thiel's concept into practice, and recruit teams full of "transgendered" 6 foot 7, 230 pound athletes and win every championship from here on :lol:
jacob wrote:However, working intellectually restricted to the short-list of being against what the establishment considers bad manners hardly makes for a complete/coherent intellectual framework. We're not talking Nietzsche upending the world here, although Kriegsspiel's basketball idea is nearing Sokal level. These aren't deep questions about the underpinnings of thought or reality as much as they are part of the culture wars. A simple foundation of "being against" is a non-starter as far as philosophy goes.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-con ... l/788/text

Section 6 would presumably modify the law to make it illegal to bar anyone identifying as a female to play female sports in a public school.

Which college is going to be first? :D

pukingRainbows
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by pukingRainbows »

I see the IDW as being individuals who are actually interested in honest, good faith discussion.

What I really enjoy about their conversations is how different their ideas can be and yet, they still have a stimulating conversation where each is working with the other to try and further their understanding.

Recently, I listened to Joe Rogan press Ben Shapiro on his religious belief against gays marriage and it was fascinating. I am pro-gay marriage but after hearing Ben explain his thought process about it, the opposition to the idea made a lot more sense to me. I still don't agree but at least I can understand where he's coming from.

I think that's hugely lacking in modern society which is why they have become so popular.

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Ego
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Ego »

The two men behind the curtain have a talk.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t ... 1469999563

prognastat
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by prognastat »

Ah sweet, I'm subscribed to the podcast. But you've alerted me to the first episode before I even saw it.

prognastat
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by prognastat »

It was a pretty interesting discussion, a shame Peter Thiel had to leave when he did as they were finally kind of going from discussing the situation up to this point to their ideas for moving forward.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Intellectual Dark Web

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Here's another Thieltalk from this week. Dude is a fount of interesting ideas.

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