"Intellectuals"

Post Reply New Topic

You are just too dumb to realize that no political opinion can be rational. ALL political opinions are value based by necessity. Politics is a bunch of monkeys arguing over who should get the best position at the water hole. It is fundamentally about power and that power is what determines who gets what.


Some right-wing people's values are fundamentally trollish and harmful to others and should be ridiculed. Deal with it and stop whining.


People like you need to be given something real to whine about so you can stop crying about being persecuted on an internet forum.

Politics is ultimately about resource management and distribution. The power is merely a means to control the resources and distribution. As resource management, distribution and maximal utilization are things that can be objectively measured, political standpoints can be utterly and completely rational.

The "red herring" issues that politicians use to gain power through their followers on the other hand are largely non-quantifiable, such as "gay marriage", "Jesus in Mosques", "The 10 Commandments in courthouses".



And most leftist values if pursued to their logical ends would land us in ruin back at barely staying alive, foraging and scrounging for food. I'll happily offend your feelings, your empathy and sympathy in order to keep us as the apex of this Earth.

I did feel the need to add that it's somewhat interesting that in reply to my post where I state that the "liberal crew" on this board are more adept at posting assertions than arguments, you follow it up with more assertions and no arguments.




I could whine about patriarchy, the rich, the military, racists, bigots, the government, the private sector, guns, the environment, factory farming, capitalism, libertarianism, individualists, but then I'd a part of the liberal consensus on this board

I do love that "me crying about being persecuted" started with you trolling a statement I made with nothing of value to add to the discussion and a complete and utter disregard for that fact that some may want to partake in an actual discussion rather than you acting as a mind-guard.

So, in essence you decided that your opinion of my post was more important than the opinion of everyone else on this board, a priori I may add, then you label me the narcissist? I'm somehow the bad guy despite you not only admitting to trolling, but encouraging and even advocating it?

Thumbs up to you.

Leftwing policy is animated by feelings. But the justification they use for their positions is that they are coming at it from a strictly objective angle, using rational thinking and pragmatism.

"We only care for what works," they may say, but that's more a call to rally the troops around the flag and end discussion, and opt instead for action. Action is what they need, the time for debates are long gone, and in the long march of history towards progress, do you want to be on the side of change, or on the side of the system that upholds inequality.

I love Portland. I am an artist. I love theatrics.

Where else would I have such a pool of people I disagree with to debate, especially Portland State, its just fantastic.

I love the culture of Portland as well in some regards, and absolutely despise it in other ways, but I suppose you can't have one without the other, or maybe you can?

I love the food culture here, it is more elevated then most conservative places who settle for chain restaurants, but you also have to put up with the absurdity such as people sending others to the emergency room for not using naturally raised, locally sourced pork at a culinary shootout.

Can there be a middle ground? Especially since most of my positions are far more moderate then most people in Conservative America, and those living in Portland? Conservative places that don't settle for mediocrity or a faux cookie cutter existence, and liberal places that are not hostile to Christianity or is not out to run my life? I am not Christian, but if you are hostile to Christianity, then you are unfree in my book, and I already have a sense of your agenda.

Yes, the left sees that as vindicating the left but the right sees academic leftism as a result of being out of touch with the real world and being coddled by the state etc. In other words education is good is it's for something practical or "useful" but staying in university too long is harmful.

Most academic economists these days are pretty neoclassical in orientation these days and have been so since the 1970s (Krugman and Stiglitz have emerged as public intellectuals but they are also largely critical of the profession). Who is an example of a "real world" economist?



I think the philosophy grad working at Starbucks and "you want fries with that?" is more urban legend than fact. Philosophy majors have very attendance rates in graduate and professional schools and are top scorers on the GRE, LSAT, etc.

Out of touch in the sense that their main application has been purely theoretical in nature, and often based on academic assumptions not real world ones. The M&M theorem on capital structure is an example where the academic assumptions vary from the real world application (capital structure doesn't matter in the conditions for the theorem, but do in the real world).

I made an analogy with weight training at one point, you can read every study on weight lifting and nutrition, but if you've never touched a weight, there will be gaps in your knowledge.



Mario Draghi the Chief of the ECB is an example, an economist who has largely been active outside of academia for most of his career. I'm not saying that academic economists are somehow worse, just that when you consider that there are disagreements between practical applicators of the theory as opposed to the pure theoretical economists it does indicate something.



I know, hence why I pointed it out as a joke.

So are you talking about the "Efficient Markets Hypothesis"? We can have a discussion of you show me how you define your "utility".

In the end though, even if I accept your economic theory, utilitarianism fails to solve the "is vs. aught" dilemma. You obfuscate when you pretend you are presenting a purely rational argument while presenting some ideal end of "maximal utility" as an a priori "Truth". A political argument cannot be rational if people disagree with the a priori end-game you present. Only once everyone agrees to the same end can we rationally discuss means.


Only when you erect a massive strawman of my "leftist values" and then proceed to make a massive unsupported assertion. I see individualist capitalism taken to it's most extreme end-game as just as big a threat to peace and prosperity as the collectivism you fear. Any real world political system requires checks on the power of concentrated wealth.


After you stop trying to pretend you don't make any assertions. I don't have time right now to reply to the rest... bye...

The efficient market hypothesis deals with financial markets and is not really relevant for this discussion, however I'll be happy to point out it's flaws at a later date.



So for an idea to be rational mass acceptance of it is required? Sounds much like argumentum ad populum to me. There is no need to agree on the ideal end-game, nor on the means to get there, they form naturally from the hypothesis of maximum efficient utilization, distribution and management of resources.



That check is supposed to be the democratic system you cherish, but the gaps in that is becoming painfully apparent, and quite glaring. Reductio ad absurdum is also not a straw man, a straw man is a charicature of an opponents position erected purely with the intent of easily dismantling it. Reductio ad absurdum simply shows how bad the idea is if you take it to it's logical extreme.




I make conclusions, but neglect to post the entire argument behind them there is a difference. If asked to present the argument, I can do so. It's a flaw of mine to expect everyone else to know what I do and reason in the same manner.

Sorry if I'm not being clear but you're not understanding me at all. You seem to be making the blind assumption that every "rational" person must agree with your own definition of "maximum efficient utilization, distribution, and management of resources". You're not going to be able to use logic to convince someone to agree that executing the unemployed is inherently "good" even if you could demonstrate that the increased efficiency of bringing wealth and happiness of those that remain would somehow more than compensate for the loss of the potential happiness of the dead unemployed. That's the problem with utilitarian morality. I don't know if it is argumentum ad populum to say that if you, as the ultimate rational utilitarian technocrat leader, were to proposed such a policy you would likely be quickly removed from power by an angry mob.

Now don't accuse me of making a straw man. Reducto ad absurdum, remember?


What gaps? Should I point out that unregulated free-market extremism can also have disastrous consequences? Why the double standard?


What makes you think it isn't the same for me? It looks like a lot of the time you simply don't understand my arguments and then use this to claim that I have not backed anything up.

Last edited by marshall on 24 Oct 2012, 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

The term "intellectual" is generally dated to 1890s France during the Dreyfus affair, and it was applied (in a derogatory manner) to those writers who took an 'inappropriate' political stance (they were supposed to not be 'political') by defending Captain Dreyfus (most famously Emile Zola).

Well I think intellectuals at the core, since the 1900's in America, and earlier in Europe, have all been about remaking society. It is about pragmatic action for social change. It is not enough to have a passion for scholastic pursuit.

That was one of the many critiques of early 1900 progressives who would then take over the term intellectual of the professors of the time, their useless study of history when they could instead be making history by teaching progress and change was of no use to anyone. You need to be a social engineer in belief, and follow that up either by teaching it or engaging in work that brings about progress.

it's not about being smart as some on here like to reduce it to. A lawyer can be an intellectual, very often that entails fighting injustice in our unequal judiciary that favors whites over blacks, or the rich over the poor, but not all lawyers are intellectuals, no matter how brilliant they are or their ability to win cases.

Intellectuals have created their own class today by intermarrying only with each other, they have decent pedigree, their children make great artists.

An interesting piece on C.P. Snow's "two cultures" (humanities and sciences), from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, March 1983 (available in full on Google books). This is a critique of a book about the American intellectual elite (by Charles Kadushin) which included social scientists and "men of letters" but excluded scientists:

"Although science has attained a powerful place in academia over the past century, it is still regarded by many intellectuals and humanists as an alien realm of merely technical knowledge. They apparently see themselves as the true concierges and connoisseurs of high culture, who alone formulate, establish, purvey and preserve the standards of creativity. They fail to appreciate the extent to which science as a model of thought has been put into general circulation, humanity has been freed from the shackles of ignorance, blind fear, superstition, dogmatic authority and sheer drudgery. They nostalgically yearn for a return to an age of private aestheticism - an age that never was and never will be...

...The humanities have been portrayed traditionally as "the great human achievements" as exemplified by the masterworks of literature, the arts and philosophy. But if we are to look at "the great human achievements," how can we exclude the sciences and technology from the humanities? The answer is that the humanists have portrayed the humanities as being concerned with values, whereas the sciences are allegedly concerned only with objective knowledge..."

Wait, so all asexuals are automatically intellectuals?

A position that says only humanists and "men of letters" are the only "real" intellectuals while scientists are "technocrats" is indeed one I have a problem with. At the same time though they claim that having an engineering degree makes one ipso facto an intellectual is also problematic!

In terms of occupations that constitute "intellectuals" we could perhaps include the following:

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm

Education:
Postsecondary teachers: 1,756,000 jobs
Instructional coordinators: 139,700

Arts, media, etc.:
Writers and authors: 145,900
Editors: 127,200
Art directors: 73,900
Craft and fine artists: 56,900
Reporters, correspondents and broadcast news analysts: 58,500
Curators: 12,000
(subtotal: 474,400)

Social and natural sciences:

Medical scientists: 100,000
Biochemists and biophysicists: 25,100
Physicists and astronomers: 20,600
Economists: 15,400
Political scientists: 5,600
Historians: 4,000
Sociologists: 4,000
Mathematicians: 3,100
(subtotal: 177,800)

I decided to include scientists where the Ph.D. was the main "entry-level" degree, social scientists and mathematicians as these occupations I felt could be said to deal primarily with ideas/more introspective. In the arts, I felt including all would be too broad. Many actors and musicians could be considered intellectuals but many could not, while photographers, set designers, etc. are really more technicians.

So the "intelligentsia" so to speak numbers about 2.5 million in the US, I think about 2% of the labor force, with a majority being in higher education.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVskhzJR6NU[/youtube]


(Foward it to about 15 minutes in)
I enjoyed this little bit by Charles Murray on this new class upper class, and if you wait out, the new lower class. It is a unique culture they have, it is new in American history, an I do consider them the bearers of Intellectualism.


The new lower class, btw, gets richly detailed here in City Journal:
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_f ... kdown.html
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0125kh.html