/lit/ - Literature

The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in this one.

It really blows my mind that people are willing to make such fools of themselves in public.

Please do not post links directly to bad articles.

http://archive.is/ZuVyc

>>10110820
>these are america's best and brightest

Lmao the Ivy League is trash

Let me explain why I'd recommend this book to everyone: Plato is stupid.

Seriously.

And it's important that you all understand that Western society is based on the fallacy-ridden ramblings of an idiot. Read this, understand that he is not joking, and understand that Plato is well and truly fucked in the head.

Every single one of his works goes like this:

SOCRATES: "Hello, I will now prove this theory!"
STRAWMAN: "Surely you are wrong!"
SOCRATES: "Nonsense. Listen, Strawman: can we agree to the following wildly presumptive statement that is at the core of my argument?" {Insert wildly presumptive statement here— this time, it's "There is such a thing as Perfect Justice" and "There is such a thing as Perfect Beauty", among others.}
STRAWMAN: "Yes, of course, that is obvious."
SOCRATES: "Good! Now that we have conveniently skipped over all of the logically-necessary debate, because my off-the-wall crazy ideas surely wouldn't stand up to any real scrutiny, let me tell you an intolerably long hypothetical story."
{Insert intolerably long hypothetical story.}
STRAWMAN: "My God, Socrates! You have completely won me over! That is brilliant! Your woefully simplistic theories should become the basis for future Western civilization! That would be great!"
SOCRATES: "Ha ha! My simple rhetorical device has duped them all! I will now go celebrate by drinking hemlock and scoring a cameo in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure!"

The moral of the story is: Plato is stupid.

>dude plato's most trenchant insights are common knowledge now because you've been taught them from birth, what an idiot that guy was amirite

>>10110820
>quasi-deep
>the allegory of the cave
This is the first time anything on 4chan triggered me.

Plato's ideas aren't perfect, and I think you'd struggle to find someone that would say otherwise, unlike what the author seems to imply. But people still read Plato to understand the concepts that future philosophers built on.

>tfw too smart to realize this.

>confusing intelligence with education.
Brainlet detected. Of course we know more than Plato did 2k years ago, that does not mean that we are smarter than he was.

>>10110820
>Of course, we all know—or we all should—that what tradition dictates as best has very little to do with what’s worth keeping.

Jesus Christ. What a frightening scentence.

>The author is a sophomore in Columbia College majoring in economics and creative writing

I've seen only a handful of harder science majors appreciate the subtler philosophic points at a young age. Something about math breeds arrogance, a certitude that you've seen the bones of the universe and everything else is just fat.

What a fucking idiot. I hope he looks back at this article ten years from now and winces in shame at his pretentious stupidity.

I love the Plato was an idiot meme. Does anyone have the screenshot of the goodreads review of The Republic (I think)?

>>10111045
Most people in thos fields tend to ridicule philosophy as they consider it useless. It's just egoism.

>>10110834
Thank you, anon. Also, holy fucking shit.

>>10111045
>economics
>hard science
lul economists are fucking clowns.

>>10110820
>Plato, were he to read this, would say I’m wrong. He’d harp on about reading books for the sake of reading books, and probably throw in something about how calling the Core useless means I’ve missed the point of education. But Plato was also a man who believed it was right for a small group to determine what the point of everyone else’s lives were, and that it was permissible for him to label those who disagreed with him unfit to even think.
Maybe just maybe that Plato called it a dialogue because he wanted his students to argue about things. It's not like Plato ended his philosophizing at the Republic either his most complex stuff comes after.

This is why I don't go to college.

>>10111111

>>10111045
>>10111118
It might be true that most STEM majors believe that philosophy is useless, but that is only because they, correctly, see that the vast majority of philosophy is fake.

Studying the higher levels of math and philosophy, you eventually realize that all math is simple and it's actually the real world that is complicated. Also, the only way we may understand the real world is in terms of mathematical reasoning which will always be incomplete. Let that sink in for a minute.

>>10111156
>He’d harp on about reading books for the sake of reading books
Since when does Plato approve this much of writing lmfao

>>10111183
How can philosophy be "fake" when it is such a intagible concept in the first place? People are obsessed with the truth, and yet when they study the art which allows them to discern it in a more scientific way, they reason that alternative ways of arguing are useless.
How can a mathematician argue about the meaning of life (for example) by only using math? You need philosophy for some matters, even if you don't like it. I don't like math but I do accept its importance.
And no, I don't think that's their reasoning. They just consider it worthless without ever reading anything on the subject (this is what I have gathered from all those years of arguing about the subject in university).

>>10111201
>Since when does Plato approve this much of writing lmfao
Proof that she never even bothered to read deeper, Plato hated writing.

>>10110820
>smart
Does Mr. Vera even know what Philosophy means?

>>10111208
Not to mention how much of the Republic is Plato ranting against the canonical texts of the poets and their use in education, i.e. agreeing with this retard more than either would ever be comfortable with.

This is depressing.

I need a drink.

>>10111043
The best part is he probably didn't even consider the meaning of it. Just thinks it is intuitive.

>>10111231
Plato
>hurfdurf Illiad must not be tought
Luis Vera
>hurfdurf Plato must not be tought
You think Socrates would be laughing his ass off with all that irony.

>>10110820
>But Plato was also a man who believed it was right for a small group to determine what the point of everyone else’s lives were, and that it was permissible for him to label those who disagreed with him unfit to even think.

>I choose to think more highly of myself, and of my fellow students, than Plato would have. I choose to believe that we’re bright and courageous enough to recognize when ancient philosophy is outmoded and obsolete, and to say it in no uncertain terms. And I choose to believe that I go to a school that can take that criticism and improve itself, to give its students the education it promised them. Columbia students deserve better, a Core that’s worthy of our talent and drive, but ultimately it’s up to us to be daring or insightful—or even just bitchy—enough to make it so.

This is Columbia material wow. Someone throw the Apology at this guy in the slim chance he'd get more humble and think less highly of himself.

>>10110820
>someone was so utterly full of themselves they actually and unironically wrote this article
The fucking delusion.

>>10110820
>an economist offers his life changing view on Plato
Just go and solve your equations lmao Plato is too hard for you

>>10110820
>Imagine theorizing Forms in an age where people's inner thoughts were heard and listened to with the presence - and reality - only schizophrenics attribute them today
>moresmartsquantizedwisdomLUL.png

Faggot Columba-OP should have gone for bigger Sokal Hoax dimensioned bait and subjected him to some post-structural literary critique while claiming to have salvaged the Western metaphysical tradition (and science/technology) from its bigoted Hellenic cave boundaries.

The Athenian Revolution and its consequences has been a disaster for the global proletariat.

>>10110851
Plato BTFO, how can he ever recover?

>>10110820
>"I'm smarter than Plato"
>thinks 'Ethics' is one of Plato's works

>>10110820
>Luis Vera
Affirmative action

>Imagine CC as a class in which 20 of the brightest minds in the country are locked in a room and given the same questions Plato and Aristotle set out to answer. What is justice? How do you organize the best society from scratch? What do we owe to one another? We’d read Plato and Kant and Hobbes as research, and yet the class wouldn’t just be about interpreting those texts, but about building on them, using them to solve the problems of Western philosophy, or at least to try.

Isn't this how philosophy works? Is he pissed off at Plato, or how Plato's taught?

>>10110851
God I fucking love Goodreads so much. Where else would you see things like this? It’s like watching a dog hump a pillow, but thousands of people are watching with that special “inquisitive” look that suggests their heads are lodged so firmly up their collective rectums that they can’t see it for what it really is.

>>10110952
good greentext

We see OPs with this level of pretense daily on lit. Why are you surprised to find a nonanon who thinks the same

>>10110851
The interesting thing about such naive criticism of classical texts is how often the original text has already presumed this kind of thinking. What you posted is exactly what Callicles accuses Socrates of, in Gorgias.

Reminds me of attacks on Christianity by people who unknowingly express arguments already included in Job or Ecclesiastes.

>>10111411
He thinks the brightest students in the country locked in a room would would do something when it wouldn't even make a dent to philosophical questions. They've been already tackled by some of the smartest who have ever lived but let's leave it up to a bunch of ignorant and arrogant 19 years olds who think they have all the answers while disregarding those who made great lifelong efforts. Any "research" would be just for show only so that we can blessed with the culmination of their efforts.

>>10111111

>>10110820
low-quality bait in my opinion
can't believe americans are this stupid

>>10111043
maddening, isnt it

>>10111411
>20
>brightest
>minds
How very democratic. He almost sounds like a certain greek pedophile...

>>10111155
Exactly, it's 'mathematics' where one of your variables can be "the satisfaction received from consuming a good or service." Baseless assumptions. Economists consider themselves to have some kind of higher insight into human behavior, to the point that they can graph their insights, considering them not theoretical but factual. There's really no justification beyond, "I know."

>>10112347
Not saying economics involves complex math, but this sounds more like what some marketing or sales person would do, rather than an economist.

>>10112255

>>10110820
>now you too can be smarter than one of history's greatest philosophers, and you didn't even have to do anything!

>>10112367
Utility is what I was referring to and it is one of the underlying concepts of economics. Utility maximization is one of the early problems you learn about AKA "how to get the most satisfaction for my money." Seems like a very reasonable thing to prove mathematically, "human satisfaction." That's why I think it takes a certain kind of person to assume they could ever define such a thing much less take it as cold hard fact.

>>10111183
The vast majority of math is fake.

>Luis Vera
That doesn't sound like a white name, tell me again why we should listen then?

>>10112370

>>10111183
I'll take 1,5724 watts of good ethics and maybe a whole kilogram of justified true belief to go. I'm having a mathematics party later today with all my mathematician friends where we will be solving all the philosophical problems of the world in one night solely with mathematics.

>>10111411
They would just respond with spoon-fed non sequitors and claim victory

>>10110820
Sounds like the kind of person who barely understood a line of Parmenides and now needs to tell themselves it's just stupid nonsense anyway

>>10111675
God doesn't actually provide a very satisfying rebuttal in Job, though.

I mean I'm no fedora but that book always seemed a bit unsatisfactory.

>>10110851

>>10111381
>he hasn't studied the lost works of plato, inscribed on stone tablets that he dug up in his backyard

>>10112456
Psalm 73

>teaching Plato in the classroom
>Parmenides, struggling to make them understand
>student in the front glances over
>''Are you an intellectual ?''
>''Not really''
>''That's why you teach Plato''
>he smiles and leaves the classroom a few minutes later
>come home and try thinking of comebacks in the shower

what the fuck

>>10112568
jej

>>10110851
This is an accurate summation of the one Platonic dialogue that I read. I don't remember which one it was but it was incredibly stupid.

>>10111675
>Reminds me of attacks on Christianity by people who unknowingly express arguments already included in Job or Ecclesiastes.

That's because every possible argument against the system is contained within the system, and all you have to do is analyze and enumerate them.

>The harp is objectively the most beautiful musical instrument, Plato tells us, because my arbitrary set of values dictates it so, your opinions be damned.
what the fuck? has this person never run into a metaphor in their life?

>>10112347
Economics employs basic mathematics but it's largely ideological shitflinging, and is a humanties field. Hopefully someone will develop a purely empirical network of how society/economy interacts and functions, eventually. Shit, the sets of AI that run the world will probably understand and manage actual economics while we still retain the generalist and rigorousless piece of shit that is "economics". Being as that those pieces of software are the ones interacting with the actual data and events, actively updating themselves in accordance.