Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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I've noticed an interesting internet trend over the years.

1) I spent several hundred hours chasing down some topic I like, such as ethics, philosophy of science, global warming, The Crusades, whatever

2) Joe Blow the famous internet guy gets a bug stuck in his butt about the same topic -- perhaps he saw it on Oprah or read it on a discarded cocktail napkin. Who knows.

3) Joe does a TED talk, writes a blog, or some other way tells us his deep thoughts, most of which sound like a spin-off of The Matrix. Very cool. Very shallow. And without any historical context.

Everybody oohs and ahs and talks about how cool Joe is.

I'm not saying that has happened here. I'm not saying that I have some kind of deep insight. God knows I'm Joe to some other schmuck. All I'm saying is that reading blogs or watching videos in which people say trivial things while others applaud is getting a bit tiring. I love everybody participating in a debate! But I wish there was some way to rank the content of the material so I wouldn't have to go over elementary material -- many times arguing with people who don't know better. Talk about a waste of time for everybody.

Some kind of difficulty-rating system for internet material would be really cool. Save us all a lot of time on mis-matched conversations.

I don't think Sam Harris is your Joe. He has an undergrad in Philosophy and a PhD in neuroscience. He's also written several books, some of which are quite controversial. He's not as well known as Dawkins or Dennett, but he's not a quack from the internet either.

But that's beside the point, because I don't think you have to have degrees or write books to have valid opinions on topics. Some of the most insightful people I know have no formal education at all and I gain a lot by listening to them. Some are overconfident and lacking in topical knowledge, but if that is the case, then I still don't attack that person (sometimes I do if they attack others -- or me, I'm still learning how to communicate effectively). I just talk to them and try to get their opinions. In a debate like this, opinion is, for now, just about the best we can expect to share no matter how educated you are or how many books you've read -- there are no clear answers -- only choices.

I know my opinions of morality really differ quite a lot from most -- that doesn't make me wrong and it doesn't make them wrong. Moral relativism is the first the we should accept before engaging in a debate about morals or ethics.

I wish really, we'd address the arguments rather than resort to ad hominem, which in this case definitely isn't valid. Many would consider him to be an expert on the topic of modern secular morality.

I highly doubt he hasn't read the famous philosophical discourse on the topic of morality. Your implication that you need to go over elementary material with someone as well versed in it as Sam Harris is quite funny really. IMO, you're Joe right now. No offense.

No offense taken. The comment wasn't about Sam at all. It was responding to the feelings of the parent comment and making an observation. Heck I didn't even RTA.

(Although I continue to make the observation that if by some miraculous means Sam were Joe to me, we would be having the same conversation. Hence the frustration in the GP)

3) Joe does a TED talk, writes a blog, or some other way tells us his deep thoughts, most of which sound like a spin-off of The Matrix. Very cool. Very shallow. And without any historical context.

I doubt that any average Joe Blow would be invited to give a TED talk, so it's weird to compare it with a blog post, which anybody can upload. If you look at the list of people invited to TED, they are usually fairly prominent people in their fields.

If you feel like the material you are finding is too basic for you it probably means you are looking in the wrong places for your knowledge level. At some point there won't be many records available for the things you don't already know and you will have to dig into journals or follow the experts more directly for new material. You could also try to find conference recordings from events that the experts themselves like to attend. That and just avoid places like the Daily Mail like it has the plague.

Examples I enjoy:

University material:

MIT: http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT

Standford: http://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity

UCLA: http://www.youtube.com/user/UCLACourses

Techtalks:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks

http://media.ccc.de/

http://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives.html

General interest (beyond TED):

http://www.youtube.com/user/iGNiTe

http://www.youtube.com/user/igniteboulder

http://www.youtube.com/user/ignitenight

http://www.youtube.com/user/ignitesault

http://www.youtube.com/user/plan8ts

I don't think that's as big a problem as you find it, currently. Maybe you just chase down more topics than others.

There is definitely an abundance of introductory material on the internet, but more importantly, there is an abundance of topics people have never encountered and ooh/aah over decent introductions to. Just assume everything you find accidentally is introductory.

However, as the niches get filled out, in-depth articles and commentaries may start emerging. At that point, a difficulty ranking system will have to emerge, and the associated conversation will fall naturally in the same difficulty category. A more relevant problem, imho, would be connecting the more demanding material to the introductory stuff without subjecting people to discouraging information deluge, draining directory shoveling, or a shallowing wikipedia scatter effect.

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