Unfortunately our society’s sorting processes take the people with the most fluid intelligence and train them to be IYI gentlefolk[1], who yes-and each other and cannot abide offense, while the remaining ornery disagreeable people are less likely to be good talkers. So if you want to find relatively rational people good to talk with, you’d do better looking for the remaining pockets of clever disagreeableness relevant to your object-level interests, or conscientious dissidents bearing some real social costs for refusing to live a lie, than a cozy philosophy meetup.
The greatest idiot of an intellectual I’ve ever read or heard a word from is Taleb himself. As with much of his writing, the concept has immense memetic value but no predictive value.
The concept has a specific definition, but yeah, many people just use it as an excuse to call their opponents idiots. Not sure how much to blame Taleb for that, and how much it’s just that every concept gets diluted when the masses notice it. Would different words be more resistant against misinterpretation, but perhaps less memetically virulent? Probably yes; calling your opponents “idiots” is just too tempting.
The originally intended meaning is something like “people who fail/refuse to notice second-order effects, and often fail to do even the most obvious sanity checks, because they are completely focused on the fact that their first-order conclusions are supported by ScienceTM”. (Imagine a less stupid version of someone claiming that it impossible to clean up their room, because it is a scientifically proven fact that entropy always increases. But the statement would typically be made about e.g. economy.)
Taleb—who is an idiot in some different ways—does not match this. He has eyes on the ball; his goal is to increase the sales of his books, and he is doing that skillfully.
Hm, I wonder what would be better words for the concept. A “first-order intellectual”?
I guess that disqualifies him as an intellectual? But when he does the same thing on purpose that the people he’s accusing do by accident—ignore any subtleties or higher-order effects and just go with the simple idea—I submit that it makes him part of the category he’s described. If you don’t want to be grouped with the people you’re insulting, stay well clear of behaving like them.
Unfortunately our society’s sorting processes take the people with the most fluid intelligence and train them to be IYI gentlefolk[1], who yes-and each other and cannot abide offense, while the remaining ornery disagreeable people are less likely to be good talkers. So if you want to find relatively rational people good to talk with, you’d do better looking for the remaining pockets of clever disagreeableness relevant to your object-level interests, or conscientious dissidents bearing some real social costs for refusing to live a lie, than a cozy philosophy meetup.
See also https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-debtors-revolt/ and https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/guilt-shame-and-depravity/
The greatest idiot of an intellectual I’ve ever read or heard a word from is Taleb himself. As with much of his writing, the concept has immense memetic value but no predictive value.
The concept has a specific definition, but yeah, many people just use it as an excuse to call their opponents idiots. Not sure how much to blame Taleb for that, and how much it’s just that every concept gets diluted when the masses notice it. Would different words be more resistant against misinterpretation, but perhaps less memetically virulent? Probably yes; calling your opponents “idiots” is just too tempting.
The originally intended meaning is something like “people who fail/refuse to notice second-order effects, and often fail to do even the most obvious sanity checks, because they are completely focused on the fact that their first-order conclusions are supported by ScienceTM”. (Imagine a less stupid version of someone claiming that it impossible to clean up their room, because it is a scientifically proven fact that entropy always increases. But the statement would typically be made about e.g. economy.)
Taleb—who is an idiot in some different ways—does not match this. He has eyes on the ball; his goal is to increase the sales of his books, and he is doing that skillfully.
Hm, I wonder what would be better words for the concept. A “first-order intellectual”?
I guess that disqualifies him as an intellectual? But when he does the same thing on purpose that the people he’s accusing do by accident—ignore any subtleties or higher-order effects and just go with the simple idea—I submit that it makes him part of the category he’s described. If you don’t want to be grouped with the people you’re insulting, stay well clear of behaving like them.