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The Intellectual yet Idiot

medium.com

13 pointsBerislavLopac12 comments

Note to mods: this has been submitted 10 times in the last week, getting from 20 to 1 point. Something should be done about Medium's URLs.

I think every person sometimes behaves just like IYI. IYIs are just a good illustration of human ignorance. Remember Robert Sheckley's Ask a Foolish Question book? Two clever scientists challenged The Answerer with their questions. This machine knew everything about the world, but failed to give any answer, because their questions were wrong. Anyone can read a clever book and think he/she knows something without really knowing it at all.

This post reads like word salad.

Is the author trolling?

It's not word salad. It's written idiosyncratically, to be sure, but the author's points are laid out clearly and in an ordered way.

There's certainly room to attack this piece, but incoherent it ain't.

Moreover, I bet the author is ESL. I see there's some dropping of the definite article (ie, "the"), and the use of the word "intelligentzia" in quotes. I think the author isn't aware of the English word intelligentsia and is dropping in another language's spelling. Also, note the plurality-agreement stuff in "attended more than one TEDx talks in person"; everybody knows "talk" is singular and "talks" is plural, and "more than one" is greater than "one", but only native speakers always remember the exception.

I don't see it as an exception, but rather as a matter of priorities.

It means "(more) than (one TEDx talk)" and not "(more than one) (TEDx talk)s".

And it works the same way in one of the author's native languages. It is even more obvious and you cannot get it wrong in that language.

Also, the definite article is used in this language much more regularly than in English. The problem with English is that, on the contrary, it does not use it everywhere. So you have to drop it sometimes, but not always, and the "rules" can be a mystery for a foreigner.

He uses large scare words without any context.

To wit:

"But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. "

Wtf is Coconut Island? And what are circularities, and what do they have to do with the topic at hand?

This sentence does not parse for me. If you shredded an intellectual thesaurus, loaded it into a shotgun, and shot the contents out in the form of HTML, you'd get roughly the same thing. The rest of the article is just like that. "They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule." What the fuck?

> coconut on Coconut Island

He means "missing the obvious".

> circularities

He means being unable to define something in terms of its referents, instead defining it in terms of the properties you've already prescribed as being the thing. Can you define what love is without using terms like "affection"? Typically you need to start giving examples.

Overall he's using rhetoric to make fun of self-proclaimed intellectuals that can't, won't, or don't actually think.

> ensemble modulus linear aggregation

Sometimes, a collection of things is more than just the sum of its parts. I think his "minority rule" chapter was about how if you have a majority willing to make concessions and a minority unwilling to make concessions, the minority can control the actions of the majority. So their effect is more than the sum of their presence.

Trust me when I say he's intelligible. But it looks like his writing style is not for everyone.

It's well-organized, but exhausting to read. I can't help but think that the ideas would be communicated more clearly if the author wrote in plainer language.

> Trust me when I say he's intelligible.

I shouldn't have to trust you, his writing should speak for itself.

There are multiple reasons to write. One is to, you know, actually communicate ideas. I guess that wasn't his goal.

Another reason is to virtue signal. "Hey, I know more big words than you do and can string them together, therefore I am cultured." Maybe that's his motive. His essay reads like every single post-modern paper that dresses up simple ideas in big words to try to make them seem profound.

Like putting spinning rims on a Toyota Corolla.

Rhetoric has been a key part of communication for quite literally epochs and is used to entertain us while making a point. I think that may be where the difference between us lies. Taleb has an axe to grind and is quite boisterous about it. For me watching Taleb go is like watching an intellectual WWF, the showmanship itself is thrilling and aggressive. For someone who brands himself as, and in terms of his ideas actually is, a contrarian, this aesthetic befits the material. But I understand if that's a turn off for some.

Either way I don't think it's something to become upset about.

I'm almost positive that's not what virtue signaling means.

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