/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14172635]

I am starting to find it impossible to differenciate between intellectuals and psuedo-intellectuals nowadays. Everyone publishes their own thoughts and is constantly disproven. Is Taleb worthwhile to read? Is Pinker, Rosling, Diamond? I have no idea what to focus on anymore as it feels everyone is trying to sell me their own kind of scam.
I used to think pure rationality was interesting when I was younger, but if I take one more look at Yudkowskys book I am going to throw up. I keep thinking I want to educate myself but I feel surrounded by snake oil salesmen.

[Anonymous No.14172638]

Don't read anything new

[Anonymous No.14172643]

>>14172635
>differenciate between intellectuals and psuedo-intellectuals nowadays
The distinction doesn't really exist.
They are all doing basically the same, trying to get you into believing their ideological position which they have derived emotionally and now try to justify with "facts".

The "pseudointellectuals" are just bending the facts a bit more than the intellectuals, but neither has any interest in actually creating an unbiased overview and letting the reader come to a conclusion different from the one the author has.

[Anonymous No.14172646]

>>14172635
Try natural science, atleast it is self correcting as time goes by.

[Anonymous No.14172655]

>>14172643
Thanks for answering. But if it is as you say, why should I read any book which in any way relates to philosophy, ideology or even statistics nowadays. If they are all spouting bent facts, what should I read? Fiction? It just seems so hopeless. I work full time so I feel like I really can't read all of them one by one.

I tried following Bill Gates goodreads account and blog for a while, but even he seems to be bent on these subjects. Should I stick to fiction and history books?

[Anonymous No.14172659]

>>14172638
>>14172646
What would you guys recommend then? I appriciate the comment on natural science. It feels that it can't be spoutet as "feel good" bs by billionaires at least.

[Anonymous No.14172666]

>>14172635
Read up on basic statistics and philosophy of science/epistemology. From there on you should be able to start working it out yourself whether someone is bullshitting or not.

[Anonymous No.14172688]

Sometimes you cant. Not without reading them. Plenty of great intellectuals were eccentric, or ridiculous in their day to day lives. Some people are only talking sense when they are writing fiction or talking about their specialty filed. It's also possible to be a pseud or a snob in one area while talking perfect sense in another.

Still, i dismiss anyone who falls bellow some level of respectability. If they act like retards in public , or sperg out on twitter (or even have a twitter) i tend to write them off untill someone i respect attempts to convince me otherwise .

[Anonymous No.14172694]

>>14172643
I am sorry but this is a brainlet take, this is like when retarded boomers call everything a scam because they lack the brain cells to distinguish between ACTUAL scams, and risky investments. Someone like Richard Dawkins is a psuedo intellectual because he waves his credentials every ten minutes while make demonstrably, logically, untrue statements. Whilst someone like Guenon is a real intellectual because he is an outsider, no one really pushes him and he himself expresses sincerity.

[Anonymous No.14172724]

>>14172666
Do you have any books in mind? I feel like I am looking for needles in a haystack.

>>14172688
Thank you, however I am not sure I am able to see through them even when I have read them in all cases. If they reference a study for facts, I am physically not able to go through every different study these charlatans reference.

If one can be a pseud in one area and respectable in another, in what can can I set them apart? I realize this is gamified reality but I wish there was a reference "tier-list" for every different subject.

>>14172694
Are you referring to René Guenon? He has been dead for 70 years. Am I supposed to only take the word of dead intellectuals as they don't have twitter to communicate with?

[Anonymous No.14172746]

Pseuds write theory, intellectuals write satire

[Anonymous No.14172752]

Read game theory, memetics, system dynamics, speculative realism

Ignore all else

[Anonymous No.14172756]

Everyone is a pseud today except this guy http://orgyofthewill.net

[Anonymous No.14172788]

>>14172724
I could give a list of fundamental texts within philosophy of science and formal logic but I don't think that is necessary. For your purposes you could just read any introductory textbook in philosophy of science, logic and statistics.

Maybe supplement that with someone coming form a more critical perspective like Feyerabend or Foucault.

From there on you should have a broad enough grasp to start looking deeper into these subjects if you want to or just go ahead and read what you want to read.

Once you have some tools for critical thinking its more about developing the habit. You really don't need to start with the Greeks and read the entire canon of epistemology to discern that Rosling is a charlatan.

[Anonymous No.14172863]

>>14172788
Thank you, would you advise something like this then? Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings by Yuri Balashov and Alex Rosenberg?

Please, if you have time I would be appreciative if you could provide a list of some fundamental texts. My email is [e-mail].
I feel lost at the moment and I know no way of finding books without looking at /lit/ charts.

[Anonymous No.14172882]

>>14172635
>I am starting to find it impossible to differenciate between intellectuals and psuedo-intellectuals nowadays.
Most often it's only possible if you're a professional in the field.

[Anonymous No.14172904]

>>14172724
>Do you have any books in mind? I feel like I am looking for needles in a haystack.

E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe
Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle
Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo
William James, Pragmatism
Gaston Bachelard, The Formation of the Scientific Mind and The New Scientific Spirit
Wilfred Sellars, various things
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty, and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (and anything else you're interested in, aside from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, unless you have a specific interest in reading that)
Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Essential Tension
Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method and various other books, especially For and Against Method (his debate with Lakatos)
W.O. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism
John H. Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour (this is a good, short touchstone for postpositivist philosophy of science)
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity
Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance and The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability

[Anonymous No.14172915]

>>14172882
Then what should I do? I studied a STEM subject, I have no idea about the validity of anything these authors mention. I wont ever become a professional either so best I can do is read recommendations.

>>14172904
I am grateful to you. Are they ordered in any way or is the reading order irrelevant?

[Anonymous No.14172924]

>>14172915
No real order. Made the list for a physicsfriend who was posting a while back so it's sort of geared toward phil/epist of modern physico-mathematical science.

Modern "public intellectuals" have actual child brains. If you study intellectual history at all you immediately notice that a D-grade thinker in 1900 is somehow an A+ today. Often not just in terms of raw power, but also in terms of rehashing the same ideas and currents of thought in badly diluted form.

[Anonymous No.14172926]

>>14172635
>I am starting to find it impossible to differenciate between intellectuals and psuedo-intellectuals nowadays

the former draw their conclusions from insight
and consideration. the latter parrot what others say

the former align their thoughts with truth
the latter cannot discern truth

[Anonymous No.14172946]

>>14172924
Alright, would you say you use your own foundation to differentiate D-graders from A graders as you put it? Should I just disregard any modern intellectual?

[Anonymous No.14172962]

>>14172924
>If you study intellectual history at all you immediately notice that a D-grade thinker in 1900 is somehow an A+ today
This is true. A few months ago I was researching men's self help books on archive.org that were published from the mid-to-late 1800s and sold by door-to-door salesmen. I was astonished at just how well written and organized they were. However in the time period they were considered trash.

[Anonymous No.14172990]

>>14172655
You need to read the bent stuff too, it's the only way to understand the BS from the truth. The inescapable truth is you WILL spend time reading BS, hundreds of hours on absolute trash, because it's the only way to know it's trash.

[Anonymous No.14172991]

>>14172915
>Then what should I do?
Read for fun?

You could push yourself to follow a structured curriculum using reading from universities, but I don't think will be enough without the testing and discussions and writing you're supposed to do.

>>14172924
>If you study intellectual history at all you immediately notice that a D-grade thinker in 1900 is somehow an A+ today.
It can be true sometimes, but that's because context matters a great deal.
For example, it's easy to consider some of Descartes ideas to be silly today, but there is world of difference of expressing those thoughts now and coming up with them for the first time from the medieval thought that preceded him.

[Anonymous No.14172994]

>>14172962
Interesting! I wonder what the root causes of the intellectual meltdown where. Also, is any self-help book worth to read?

[Anonymous No.14172996]

Taleb is fine the others avoid at all costs

[Anonymous No.14173001]

>>14172635

what is it you want to know about? tell me what you want to know, and i'll point you in the right direction.

[Anonymous No.14173005]

>>14172635
So you met artin lol

[Anonymous No.14173017]

>>14172643
This is a meaningless response.

>but neither has any interest in actually creating an unbiased overview and letting the reader come to a conclusion different from the one the author has
Why would anyone be unbiased towards their own writings? Why would anyone write an entire book for the express purpose of having the reader walk away thinking they were wrong? The way you talk about ideology and emotion makes me suspect that you think there is some collection of "pure facts" which is apart from their presentation.

>>14172646
Keep telling yourself this, as we are in the middle of a replication crisis, and most new scientific research (ESPECIALLY psychological) isn't worth the paper its printed on.

>>14172694
More or less correct, once you expose yourself to enough ideas you can use your judgment to see if various authors pass the sniff test.

>>14172904
My man this is a great list overall BUT I would caution OP to read some supplementary and introductory texts, or even just browsing SEP for a while. Going from a total novice to Quine and Kuhn, to say nothing of the Tractatus, is going to be a lot to swallow.

[Anonymous No.14173023]

>>14173001
I don't know what I am looking for. Intellectual works which help me find meaning and understranding of the world we live in. I don't want to chase the next bestseller like some sheep but actually learn about the value and application of knowledge in this post-industrial time where everyone is trying to hand me their own form of medicine WHICH (and this is where I feel lost) I have no idea is valuable to me or not and I am too unknowledgeable to tell the difference. Currently I might as well read Rosling and accept that world view. I have no idea on how spot faults in the information which is presented. As >>14173017 points out, I am not exposed to enough ideas to use my own judgement but I am afraid of exposing myself to any ideas at all currently as they may be ones which cause my foundation to be shaky and false to begin with.

>>14173005
I'm sorry, who is Artin? I googled and the only thing I found was the mathematician.

>>14173017
Do you have any introductury or supplementary texts in mind? I am a total novice but I feel like the "read the greeks" is not a modern approach to what I am looking for.

[Anonymous No.14173029]

>>14172635
It's easy: if someone is commonly called - or even worse, calls themselves - an intellectual, they are a pseud.

[Anonymous No.14173054]

Is /lit/ just a bunch of undergrads at this point, all the threads are fucking pathetic

[Anonymous No.14173101]

What if I had told you, that all intellectuals are pseudo-intellectuals?

[op No.14173102]

>>14173054
I have my master thank you very much but as stated, it is not in a literary subject. Do you consider it surprising then that my post in this board is sub-undergrad level?

[Anonymous No.14173150]

>>14172635
ok boomer

[Anonymous No.14173161]

>>14172635
>I used to think pure rationality was interesting when I was younger, but if I take one more look at Yudkowskys book I am going to throw up.

Yudkowsky has a lot of good shit to say, and a lot of autistic garbage. If you can't judge this for yourself than that's your problem.

[op No.14173180]

>>14173161
That's fair.

[Anonymous No.14173215]

>>14172635
intellectuals kill themselves

[Anonymous No.14173230]

>>14173017
>Why would anyone be unbiased towards their own writings? Why would anyone write an entire book for the express purpose of having the reader walk away thinking they were wrong?
I don't think you got my point. I responded to OP asking why he can't differentiate between pseudointellectuals and real ones.

If you see my response as a prescription on what it means to be a real intellectual you are missing the point. Obviously everything is biased and there is nothing inherently wrong with having a certain perspective, but if you are trying to differentiate between real and pseudointellectuals, you will have a really hard time, because both do essentially the same thing, they push their perspective and what mostly differentiates them is how far they bend the facts.

>that you think there is some collection of "pure facts" which is apart from their presentation.
Obviously, see eg. Mathematics.

[Anonymous No.14173239]

>>14173054
>at this point

[Anonymous No.14173521]

>>14173215
Schizo

[Anonymous No.14173739]

>>14172635
Taleb is absolutely necessary. Also avoid hacks like Pinker. Pinker was already refuted by Taleb.

[Anonymous No.14173757]

>>14172746
>peabrain material determinist theorist
>normie brain nihilist satire
>big brain radical traditionalist theorist
>galaxy brain metaphysical orthopraxicist

[Anonymous No.14173761]

>>14173739
And Taleb was refuted by Pinker and then went on a twitter metldown.

[Anonymous No.14173778]

>>14173761
Pinker was BTFO by Taleb Multiple times

[Anonymous No.14173786]

>>14173761
>>14173778
And yes, Taleb has read over 200 psychology books and is perfectly capable of ripping apart Pinker.

[Anonymous No.14173791]

>>14173761
>>14173778
>>14173786
Another refutation of Pinker's junk science by Taleb
1/2

[Anonymous No.14173796]

>>14173761
>>14173778
>>14173786
>>14173791
2/2

[Anonymous No.14173801]

>>14173761
>>14173778
>>14173786
>>14173791
>>14173796
Another debunking of Pinker by Dr. Taleb
https://www.academia.edu/26772813/The_Decline_of_Violent_Conflicts_What_Do_The_Data_Really_Say

[Anonymous No.14173807]

>>14173801
Go to bed Nassim, you're both faggots

[Anonymous No.14174102]

>>14172635
>I am starting to find it impossible to differentiate between intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals nowadays
All the real intellectuals know the difference as night and day. Look, there's some tools of the trade. You have to know enough background literature in philosophy or whatever other academic discipline first. Then you need to know the methods at play. Even if you're going to dissent, you really need to know the methods, and then the arguments and why they're supported and/or opposed. In formally-trained philosophy you learn formal logic(s) and develop (by practice) a keen sense of discernment that people lack. The latter means you can look at two things that don't look different to the untrained eye, and tell them apart. So you need those skills, and then you need a lot of background knowledge, to be a true intellectual. Yudkowsky isn't like that, he's the opposite, he's shut himself off from that and reinvented the wheel a lot. People who do that have potential to be good intellectuals, but their autodidact self-circlejerking really keeps them at pseud status forever. Don't bother with Taleb or Pinker, probably don't bother with the others either. True intellectuals are usually less polemical than pseuds, which means a) some people will never find them as interesting, because they won't find them as engaging, and b) you'll never come across them if you're scavenging the surface.

[Anonymous No.14174113]

>>14172635
>I am starting to find it impossible to differenciate between intellectuals and psuedo-intellectuals
you must be retarded

[Anonymous No.14174171]

>>14172635
Intellectuals can tell the difference. Pseuds either can't, or otherwise they get the difference wrong, and invert it, saying pseuds are intellectuals, and intellectuals pseuds.

[Anonymous No.14174215]

>>14173023
OP, the best I can tell you, since you seem to be interested in a coherent worldview (which is admirable) is to not be worried about amending your position once or twice or even a dozen times. You hone your bullshit detector by figuring out what the real deal looks like and occasionally getting some bullshit. For example, by the time someone finally convinced me to read Eckhart Tolle, I had already read a lot of early Christian mystics, the DDJ, the Bhagavad Gita, and quite a few other classics of mysticism. Tolle was easy to root out as a pseud for this reason, and I didn't have to necessarily be a Christian or a Buddhist or a Hindu to make this determination. Being exposed to the texts was enough and appreciating them for what they were gave me a proper base. This principle applies to scientific texts, political texts, and whatever else. Read a lot and you will understand a lot, even if you don't agree with everything. The classics are a good place to start because they have stood the test of time and you can be reasonably certain that you will be reading something worthwhile. I may not be a Kantian, but Kant was not a pseud and this is patently obvious. What specifically are you interested in right now?

>>14173230
>how far they bend the facts
I am still unclear what the relationship is between some collection of facts and someone's being a pseud or not. Not every piece of intellectual work even appeals to facts about the world. Higher level metaphysics (or physics for that matter) is essentially divorced from empirical facts, dealing instead with how to approach and interpret possible facts and how to best form a picture of the world from them. Having facts to appeal to already implies you have made several meta-level epistemic decisions. Using facts as a pseud checker is good for airport gift shop books, but not much more.

>Obviously, see eg. Mathematics.
This isn't even consensus among mathematicians. For example, whether or not numbers are real entities or just placeholders for useful concepts and relationships we have managed to make work.

[Anonymous No.14174340]

I personally think that the ideal you are all looking for is just another in the long line of those who possess the trait of acute self-examination.

Someone who studies themselves must eventually come to terms with their own flaws, and will always be a step ahead of others in understanding the reasons they act.

[Anonymous No.14174485]

>>14172635
>Is Taleb worthwhile to read? Is Pinker, Rosling, Diamond?
All no. If they're a "public intellectual" then they're an establishment pedant of some kind. Just read people specific to actual fields.

[Anonymous No.14174647]

>>14172635
Read the Western canon first.

[Anonymous No.14174698]

>>14172635
>falls for the right wing lit meme
>wonders why all the authors are pseuds

[Anonymous No.14174757]

>>14172635
>intellectuals
You mean pretentious insufferable twats. Yeah sure, keep reading your intellectuals and become '''''cultured'''''. You really are improving yourself as a human being by becoming a fart sniffer.

[Anonymous No.14174799]

>>14172635
You're right, it's impossible to tell anymore. Who cares? There's no fucking point any more. Enjoy what you enjoy. Read some Tolstoy. Read Twilight. Read Adam Marek. Read Donald Barthelme. Read Candia Nickerson. Read Stephen King. Who fucking cares? In a world of farce and pretention, you might as well enjoy yourself and go full Diogenes.

[Anonymous No.14175031]

>>14172638
Based, let time filter for you.

[Anonymous No.14175055]

>>14172638
Gay. A hard rule like this will butt fuck you and you'll convince yourself you enjoy it even though all you wanted was a sweet blowjob from David Foster Wallace.

[Anonymous No.14175484]

>>14174698
Rosling is not even close to right-wing

[Anonymous No.14175508]

>>14175484
Neither is Pinker, or Diamond for that matter. People here don't know shit about shit.