Comment by vlehto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vlehto | Hacker News Reader

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There is also more annoying version of this. Previously people with stupid ideas didn't get much practice in rhetorics. In live conversations you get demoralized very quickly when people don't respond in any way.

Today people with stupid ideas are the ones who get most practice in rhetorics. And practice makes you good.

As a result you find very specific kinds of stupid. If you know Nassim Talebs IYI (intellectual yet idiot) there exist supermutants of that phenomenon. For example I just argued with self proclaimed Marxist who managed to have opinions of fascists straight from 40's. He had absolutely delusional view of multitude of things like not believing in industrial revolution, or that machines could outproduce people when making bulk materials. Yet he could muster huge array of minutiae from history, usually correct and supporting whatever weird point he was making. This dude actually was rhetorically decent and very passionate about.. I don't really know what.

Such individuals are far from stupid despite their stupid ideas and they seem to be able to shut down intelligent discussion on niche boards. Specifically because nothing seems to stick: they are not trolls, not really malevolent, not really belonging to any definite camp. Just really twisted, bored and eager to engage others.

>For example I just argued with self proclaimed Marxist who managed to have opinions of fascists straight from 40's.

Is this really a bad thing? Do fascists become less objectionable with time? I'd say they still hold the same abhorrent ideas as they did in the 40s.

>not believing in industrial revolution

As a Marxist myself, that's an odd thing for a Marxist to be saying, but Marx himself does not use that term, so there could be some confusion there - we should be careful with terminology, since they can and do convey particular histories and prejudices and ideologies.

>or that machines could outproduce people when making bulk materials

That's absurd, since Marx makes exactly the opposite point in the first 3 paragraphs of Capital.

Now before you categorise me as twisted, bored and eager to engage others, I'd like to do it first - I really am bored, and at least eager to engage others. When I see a post on a topic I'm relatively familiar with (in this case Marx) I feel the need to comment on it. Now I pledged that I would do that less, but I felt a kind of draw to reply to your comment. Why, I'm not even sure. Perhaps to correct the record on a topic I feel passionately about. But I hope you don't see me as shutting down intelligent discussion, anyway.

Since getting into philosophy I've started to become skeptical of calling people stupid if I don't have any grounds to disagree with them, even if Taleb would group such people, ideas we often think are bad or false at first sight can actually be very reasonable once we peer under the ideology.

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