HN submission title is missing the "of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,'" bit.
How could anyone think that "intellectual dark web" is any accurate to describe him?
There's nothing secret about what he does. He has podcasts, public talks and university classes that he uploads to his youtube channel.
It seems that the only way to create controversy around him is to clickbait stories and not actually listen to or describe his actual content.
Other than a profile / link aggregator called "intellectualdark.website" that hosts his profile, I don't see any relation at all.
Am I missing some details? Anyone has the full explanation?
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Edit:
This is about the article's full title: “Top Patreon creators, of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,' say they're launching an alternate crowdfunding platform not 'susceptible to arbitrary censorship'”.
I am scouring the internet in the search of any snippets of information that actually links those youtubers / podcasters together.
Other than being at the center of controversies and having a lot of public notoriety, I'm not seeing anything. Even their ideologies and philosophies are not the same.
From my point of view, it almost seems like a huge misunderstanding... or perhaps a smearing campaign but I'm not one to cry wolf.
The situation is somewhat similar to that time mainstream media was implying relationship between youtubers based on 3rd degrees connections that occurred after collaborations. "X worked with Y. Y also worked with Z who is evil. X must be evil".
Would Sir Roger Scruton, The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and the Ralston College be considered part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for hosting Jordan Peterson? (I'm not well versed in Peterson's career, this is the latest video on his youtube channel).
Perhaps Channel 4 News is also part of the conspiracy for hosting him on TV. Channel 4 is operated by Channel Four Television Corporation which is a public corporation of UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Does that means that the UK is at the head of the "dark intellectual web"? ...
I'm obliviously kidding, but there's no limit on how far you can spin this situation.
Thanks for answering. I'm leaving it at that, now I know more but this is not a rabbit hole I want to dive in any further.
They all seem to share an interest in science and truth.
They also seem to share a willingness to enter debate, and an aversion to smearing.
The intellectual dark web isn't about having the same ideas. It's about being willing to talk about and debate those ideas in a civil, calm way. They invite each other onto their Youtube channels/shows/podcasts, and are invited together into more formal events to do the same.
That's basically it, as far as I can tell. They're heretics that weren't sufficiently shut-up by the societal forces working against them.
I think Scott Alexander explains the phenomenon pretty well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu...
Peterson mostly discusses religion (from a philosophical point of view), self-improvement, identity politics. He tends to be more on the conservative side but outside of identity politics doesn't discuss politics that much. His videos are all on his youtube channel [1]. A good way to make your own opinion is to watch the channel 4 interview, which I think is the way many people discovered him [2]
Harris is a Democrat, furiously anti-religious and anti-Trump, talks about quite a variety of topics. You can browse through his podcasts [3]. He also doesn't like identity politics and islamist extremism. To get a good idea of his position on a touchy topic, you can try his interview of Charles Murray [4], which is very interesting and I think is a good example of how a relatively balanced point of view can get unfairly attacked.
I am less familiar with Rubin [5]. My understanding is that he is more of a libertarian.
Also less familiar with Eric Weinstein (and his brother Bret Weinstein). But you can listen to his discussion on the Intellectual Dark Web with Sam Harris [6]. Harris also has some interesting discussions with Bret Weinstein.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54
[3] https://samharris.org/podcast/
[4] https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJdKr0Bgd_5saZYqLCa9mng
[6] https://samharris.org/podcasts/112-intellectual-dark-web/
As for where Peterson fits: he's the father figure of the alt-right. His rhetoric is slightly more palatable to the main stream, so he can be the face of alt-right media while also providing shelter to his rowdier alt-right children (in this case, Milo Y). This arrangement provides the necessary veneer of legitimacy to the platform while ensuring the protection of hate speech.
I'm sure Peterson sees himself as a conservative and a moderate, just as I'm certain Carl Benjamin used to think of himself as "actually a leftist". But the "moderates" and "centrists" obsession with "SJWs" has shifted the Overton window and some former alt-right creators have recognised this and since reoriented themselves.
Peterson and Harris are useful figureheads because they register as moderates or centrists if not liberals in most people's minds, but they're extremely close to conspiracy nuts like Paul Joseph Watson, race realists like Stefan Molyneux, or people like Ben Shapiro.
I used to watch a lot of YouTube "skeptics" (mostly former YouTube atheists who left that movement over the "Atheism+" debate) and I experienced the progression first-hand, with anti-SJW panic, Buzzfeed obsession and other nonsense resulting in self-described centrists aligning themselves with the right by seeking out the more presentable right-wing extremists (and maybe a few center-left moderates "for balance"). Quickly there were videos about race realism, white genocide, and even "the Jewish question".
Luckily I managed to jump off that train but it wouldn't have take much to nudge me over that "centrist" stop gap (especially with Peterson and Damore normalising the rational disconnect I experienced).
Also it's worth mentioning that even at my most "centrist" I never got as much hate online from "SJWs" for incredibly dumb statements as I got from "liberals" as I shifted back to the left. Leftists just blocked me. "Liberals" trolled me, downvoted me and drowned me out with vapid memes (all in the name of "free speech").
EDIT: Case in point, here's YouTube atheist CultOfDusty who joined the alt-right until he realised that put him in the company of people supporting Mike Pence, who stood against everything he believed in. Note that he's still "anti-SJW" but other YT atheists don't make that distinction and have since tried to slander him by taking him out of context or putting words in his mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thliETccJss
[0] https://intellectualdarkweb.site/vanguards-of-the-intellectu...
Similar to the "alternative influencer network" that they coined for YouTubers.
The whole thing is grasping at straws really. The medias seems to think that everyone who is in the edgy/troll/internet/meme culture are working together for some nefarious purpose.
Their latest smearing campaign is against free thinkers, podcasters and debaters... or using their words, the "Intellectual Dark Web".
The only relation those people (both thinkers and influencers) have is that they use the Internet to 𝐚) spread their content and 𝐛) reference each other and sometimes collaborate together. Both of those actions are done by every content creators online no matter their intentions. Collaborations and networking is the basis of the internet.