Originally posted by EgosXII
Because of this, they can't tell the difference between someone totally bullting (in your example Theresa), and someone who actually knows what they're saying, and says it for a reason
whats that one movie where a guy is on a show and the host confronts him
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
General public idiots can't understand what a truly intelligent person is talking about. Because of this, they can't tell the difference between someone totally bullting (in your example Theresa), and someone who actually knows what they're saying, and says it for a reason (Arbiter).
yeah there's a degree of this for sure. but at the same time, i think a really, truly bright person can bring the noise in a way your average pleb can understand. (while we're using TA examples) that's why i always had such an erection over Renegade. could talk the most whacked out yet still made it relatively simple to grasp.
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
Idiots making statements (Theresa) however, are idiots; and so their statements are simplistic, and usually pointless (for the intelligent community). However, since they are simplistic, they are easily absorbed by the masses, outside of the intelligent community.
yeah again i agree, but as above. there's a reason why marx changed the world. and it wasn't because Capital was a bestseller.
Vector A
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Lira
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
That's exactly the problem though, and why celebrities in every field are always plebs compared to truly talented people in those areas. General public idiots can't understand what a truly intelligent person is talking about. Because of this, they can't tell the difference between someone totally bullting (in your example Theresa), and someone who actually knows what they're saying, and says it for a reason (Arbiter).
I disagree. Truly talented people quite often get the credit they so rightfully deserve.
I'm not sure anyone around here would compare the two intellectually and not favour Arbiter when it comes to coherence and/or depth of analysis, even if for some reason Theresa's insights could be more productive in the long run (e.g. I opposed her when she said even grammar was biased against women in Romance languages because that's based on a series of misconceptions regarding linguistic structures, but I'm not sure Arbie's usual ruthlessness would compare favourably to Theresa's more egalitarian hopes).
In this sense, Juanita (aka Arbiter) is a bit of a celebrity here - not Theresa.
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
Idiots making statements (Theresa) however, are idiots; and so their statements are simplistic, and usually pointless (for the intelligent community). However, since they are simplistic, they are easily absorbed by the masses, outside of the intelligent community. Because of this, these people get some kind of popular status, even though they are idiots. Meanwhile, actually intelligent people (Arbiter) are indiscernible to people who aren't like them, so they are generally not recognised by the masses, since the masses have no idea wtf they're talking about.
I know you like continental philosophy, so let me get an example to illustrate why I don't agree.
Take Derrida - the guy misread Saussure in so many ways it's not even funny. His writings were anything but simple. Yet his convoluted nonsense helped spark the post-modern movement that was seriously misguided from the beginning, because po-mo loving intellectuals were so lost trying to fight logocentrism that its ineffectiveness (and subsequent parodies) quickly brought the whole movement to a halt.
If you're talking about people outside academia, this is precisely why I'm against ordinary misconceptions of science and religion (which I believe PKC takes to be a fluffy defence of absurd myths and moral upetry). Instead of taking scientific findings as the successes of fallible tentative hypothesis and religion as an equally fallible political system embedded in a narrative system of justification, laypeople tend to think of scientific findings (and, worse yet, religious dogmas!) as established truths. This haste people have to "seek the truth" making wholesale generalisations instead of piecemeal observations/experimentations is the problem that leads philosophical grifters like Osho being as popular as great scientists that have shaped our era, such as Charles Darwin:
However, if you're just a little into biology, there's no way you think Charles Darwin (a truly talented scientist) and his theory of evolution is less popular than Trofim Lysenko's clusterbollocks.
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
I reckon this is true in every field, and in the way the masses interact with every field. Every field has some kind of poster child, but its rare they're that important (with notable exceptions of course!). Happens all the time in academia, and in music and things...
Actually, I think it's more likely to happen in music than in academia because scientists (and philosophers) are judged by the results they produce, whereas in music appeal to the public seems to matter the most.
You can turn the city upside down
Like an umbrella
But who knows what you'll find?
Be careful if you try
Anxieties
quote:
Originally posted by Aureliou
whats that one movie where a guy is on a show and the host confronts him
You mean Billy Madison? This is the scene where he receives the "ultimate insult" after he improvised a nonsensical answer to a question.
EgosXII
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
yeah there's a degree of this for sure. but at the same time, i think a really, truly bright person can bring the noise in a way your average pleb can understand. (while we're using TA examples) that's why i always had such an erection over Renegade. could talk the most whacked out yet still made it relatively simple to grasp.
yeah again i agree, but as above. there's a reason why marx changed the world. and it wasn't because Capital was a bestseller.
that's true also, and really I ignored the fact that really intelligent peeps will be able to be contextual, and 'talk down' to their audience if necessary, and thereby provide help to the plebs. Perhaps my ramblings are unfounded, though I think it is true on occasion. I can't figure out (otherwise) why cutting edge people/ideas/styles (in things like music as well) are never popular until some idiot comes along and 'popularises' (read simplifies, systematises, and cliches) it...
EgosXII
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
Actually, I think it's more likely to happen in music than in academia because scientists (and philosophers) are judged by the results they produce, whereas in music appeal to the public seems to matter the most.
I don't really have a response to the bigger part of your post Lira, as I think you're right, but I don't think you really understood what I was trying to say (which is fair enough because it made almost no sense! haha)
I was talking about the 'inside' and 'outside'; the 'educated' and the 'public'. In the educated there are better and worse, and I was trying to talk about how that difference is understood by the lay-public. I was suggesting that idiots (within the educated community) are often poster kids for the public, though they may not be that relevant in the educated community. I think that's quite true in academia. In philosophy; Bertrand Russel, was a ing king in society. He was not a great philosopher though (honestly), and was only really good for providing introductory texts. While this was really useful, and he was really good at it, he would be considered an "idiot" compared to many of the contermporary philosophers at the time who were not receiving such wide press from the public! Sartre is another example. The public actually knew his name, though the educated community didn't think that much of him...
So yeah, WITHIN the community you're judged on what you do, but I was trying to point out that how the public (lay/idiots) perceive those communities is almost always fairly wrong...
edit: even in communities, look at the history of ideas. How often people are only appreciated hundreds of years after their deaths... Its the whole Paradigm Shift thing really. Even Darwin; there were tons of precursors to evolution; hundreds of years earlier; there were even a few greeks who came pretty close to prophetically nailing it. Yet, they were considered crazy (even though they were right!) until Darwin came along (at the right time), and boiled it into an understandable thang.
trojans14
Kinda like Ron Paul on economic issues. A lot of the public that supports him thinks his ideas are genius. Most economists think he's been reading too much Ayn Rand, which is another person that is look down on by most academics but adored by some of the public. Hope there aren't too many Ron Paul supporters that I offended here lol.
Lira
I suspect the whole "Objectivist" hype is due to a poor educational system... but that's a different problem altogether.
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
I was talking about the 'inside' and 'outside'; the 'educated' and the 'public'. In the educated there are better and worse, and I was trying to talk about how that difference is understood by the lay-public. I was suggesting that idiots (within the educated community) are often poster kids for the public, though they may not be that relevant in the educated community. I think that's quite true in academia. In philosophy; Bertrand Russel, was a ing king in society. He was not a great philosopher though (honestly), and was only really good for providing introductory texts. While this was really useful, and he was really good at it, he would be considered an "idiot" compared to many of the contermporary philosophers at the time who were not receiving such wide press from the public! Sartre is another example. The public actually knew his name, though the educated community didn't think that much of him.
Although I agree Sartre got a great deal more attention than some more interesting philosophers from his own tradition (no one seems to know Husserl outside academia, and Merleau-Ponty seems to have been a more competent philosopher from the little I know about him), I've got to defend Russell.
Being something of a crypto-pragmatist myself (so I'd be more prepared to criticise Rorty, yet another strangely popular name), I'm not exactly the best person to defend the 3rd Earl Russell, but:
Had it not been for Russell, Frege would've died in oblivion, and Wittgenstein wouldn't have influenced the logical empiricists and analytic philosophy just wouldn't exist the way we know it;
I believe his penchant for logic went way overboard, but "On Denoting", as John Searle put it, became a template for philosophers in the anglophone tradition because it presented - with outstanding clarity - a problem (even if it was sort of blown out of proportion), offered a solution, and then showed why that problem could be solved by the solution he proposed. Even if Strawson arguably refuted his solution, it's still a standard for a students all over the world (including yours truly);
Principia Mathematica is apparently one of the greatest contributions to mathematical logic of the previous century. It's unfair, as far as I know, not to give him and Whitehead some credit for that.
Same with Dawkins, on biology. As an atheist, he's a great biologist. And, as a biologist, although he didn't take part in any ground-breaking discovery, he earned his credentials with a simple yet appealling way of thinking about ideas.
Come to think of it, there just aren't enough public intellectuals nowadays. Even in linguistics, despite my methodological disagreements with Chomsky, the only person who could really teach the public about linguistics is more known as... a political thinker :p
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
So yeah, WITHIN the community you're judged on what you do, but I was trying to point out that how the public (lay/idiots) perceive those communities is almost always fairly wrong.
Much of the problem, I believe, stems from (bad) science journalism or "hatewaves". I don't believe I need to talk about the former but, as an example of the latter, so many people make fun of Skrillex that even before I found out what brostep was, I already knew he existed. Within academia, Rorty is widely known outside pragmatist circles because of how much criticism his views triggered... so much so that even Sam Harris, in what seems to have been the oddest attempt to criticise a school of thought, decided to quote him (of all people!). Needless to say, he flogged a horse who happened to be long dead.
quote:
Originally posted by EgosXII
edit: even in communities, look at the history of ideas. How often people are only appreciated hundreds of years after their deaths... Its the whole Paradigm Shift thing really. Even Darwin; there were tons of precursors to evolution; hundreds of years earlier; there were even a few greeks who came pretty close to prophetically nailing it. Yet, they were considered crazy (even though they were right!) until Darwin came along (at the right time), and boiled it into an understandable thang.
To be fair, Lucretius had a great insight, but he didn't know how to prove it. Darwin wasn't even alone in his quest - that Wallace bloke who presented the idea along with him to the Royal Society had reached a very similar conclusion. The reason why Darwin was awesome is because he painstakingly collected as much data as he could (religious zealots, take note!) in order to prove his point.
I find it more troublesome that Mendel's research went unnoticed for much long, and America's greates logician (Charles S. Peirce) died in poverty. This is among the reasons why I think it's actually kind of cute that people buy the stuff Carl Sagan used to say... but, as a scientist, I know for a fact it's not that simple.
