/lit/ - Literature

>>14599529
No. Fuck off back to twitter.

Are they literally teaching people to be midwits now?

>>14599529
Irrationality is the basis of everything we do. Reason only exists to support our irrational purposes. With reason alone, there would be no reason to do anything.

I am a Harvard undergrad, should I do it?

>>14599550
Yes and then get up and shout "Imbecile! Read Gigerenzer!" repeatedly until security drags you out of the room.

>>14599529
is a "harvard course" categorically different from a "course"

>>14599529
>taleb
Fuckoffarino with this hack.

>>14599529
>Taleb
arab pseud
>Pinker
jew pseud

>>14599540
You're not a midwit if you actually understand the material

>>14599550
don't enroll but sit in on the classes

>>14599529
>basis of we ought to think and do
it's been already shown that it's not and that emotions are what starts any action, the quicker autismos like him understand that the quicker they can emotionally mature and move on

>>14599529
based Maghrebin, Pinker is an Epstein-circle pseud ideologue

>take class
>print out pic related
>show it to him
>"got some explaining to do, buddy?"

So, what's the matter with the course?

>>14601937
>Maghrebin
He's Lebanese. Do you even know what Maghreb means

So this is just a logic course but it's taught by a pseud or am I missing something?

>>14601970
Put it on the board in front of the class

>>14602240
he´s a berber, colonized by british ideals

إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللّٰهُ

Its because retard conspiratards have bastardized the term scientism, it is about the scope of science and scientific ideas into other realms of social life and fields like politics, not like idiots use it e.g. "the globe earth is scientism"

so yes

>>14602580
?

Here is the larger course description from the Harvard site:

>How can members of a species that discovered symbolic logic and the double helix also believe that the earth is flat and that Hillary Clinton ran a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria? Human rationality is very much in the news, as we struggle to understand how an era with unpreceded scientific sophistication could harbor so much fake news, conspiracy theorizing, and “post-truth” rhetoric. Rationality has also long been a foundational topic in the academy, including philosophy, psychology, economics, mathematics, and government.

>Part I of “Rationality” covers the nature of rationality, including logic, statistical decision theory, Bayesian reasoning, game theory, expected value, critical thinking, and common logical and statistical fallacies.

>Part II covers the cognitive science of rationality, including classic writings by psychologists and behavioral economists. Are humans a “rational animal”? Can machines be artificially rational? Could our irrational heuristics and biases be evolutionary adaptations to a vanished world? Could beliefs that are factually irrational be socially rational as expressions of loyalty to a cultural or political tribe? Can people be cured of their irrationality?

>Part III covers applications. How can our opinions and practices be made more rational? Examples may include policy (Nudge), crime (Compstat), development aid (Randomistas), sports (Moneyball), reporting (Politifact), polling (538.com), health (Quality-Adjusted Life Years), psychotherapy (Feedback-informed treatment), forecasting (prediction markets & tournaments), and philanthropy (Effective Altruism—a major focus). Some topics will be presented by expert guest lecturers.

>Assignments will include a midterm exam, class quizzes, and a capstone project, in which students will choose a cause or concern and explore how principles of rationality could make it more attainable.

>>14602583
scientism is not a new or fringe topic in the philosophy of science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbu3634j0MA

>>14602595
>discovered symbolic logic
>discovered
The absolute state of Harvard

>>14602595
>How can members of a species that discovered symbolic logic and the double helix also believe that the earth is flat and that Hillary Clinton ran a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria?
>>14601970

>>14602644
>philanthropy (Effective Altruism—a major focus).

>>14599529
harvard stopped accepting people who could think about 20 years ago

>>14599529
Why does Taleb think that rationalism and empiricism are the same thing? He should take an introductory class to western philosophy.

>>14602650
The rationality that Pinker is talking about isn't the same as early modern rationality.

>>14599529
Based Taleb

>>14601746
You don’t understand what a midwit is

>>14602660
Of course it couldn't possibly remain so after subsequent Kantian and post-Kantian influence, yet they still do not purport to subscribe to empiricism.

>>14602660
>early modern rationality
*Meant rationalism.

>>14602685
What I'm saying is that the anon above is confused about two separate terms (fixed my post with "early modern rationalism"). Pinker is talking about "rationality" in terms of the cogsci descriptive and normative project to model human reason/decisions and give advice about it. Taleb decries this as "pseudo-empiricism" probably in the original skeptical sense that Taleb usually talks about (the empiricism of Sextus Empiricus). Anon above is saying that Taleb is conflating the two. But he isn't, because both terms are not referencing anything to do with the early modern debate of rationalism and empiricism for the above reasons. One can disagree with the content of what is being spoken about here, and also disagree with either Taleb or Pinker, but he definitely isn't thinking they are the same thing.

>>14602580
Spherecucks honestly make me sick, go spew your garbage elsewhere, ideologue.

>>14599550
as a /lit/ poster you have a unique opportunity and duty to lawfully troll Pinker for an entire semester, it is mandatory

>>14602595
looks like garbage

>>14602580
THE STEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON

>>14599529
>I can't remember ever believing in God. But there was always an atmosphere of debate, good-natured argument, a willingness to discuss. The rabbinical tradition evolved into an intellectual give-and-take that I found both in my family and in my reformed Jewish education. Atheism is positive in the sense that the ultimate value is human flourishing. I have to grant the same goals I have to every human being, on pain of being a hypocrite: happiness, fulfilment, friendship, love.

>>14599543
We are completely rational in that we follow a mathematical process of life.

>>14599550
Ask questions by using the good stuff

>Two weeks later, as if Jeffrey was trying to lighten my spirits, he told me I would be going to his island to meet a new client. He is a Harvard Professor, named Stephen [REDACTED]. I would be spending two days with him showing him around the island, dining with him, and treating him to a massage whenever he wanted. Without Jeffrey even verbalizing the need to have sex with him, he told me to keep him happy like I had my first client.

>Stephen was a quirky little man with white hair and a mad scientist look about him. We arrived separately and greeted him when one of the housekeepers picked him up from the airport and arrived by boat, instead of helicopter as Jeffrey and Ghislane often arrive on. We made our acquaintances and he looked as if he was tripping over himself with words, obviously delighted with his company and location for the weekend. I showed him around as Jeffrey had asked and took him on an adventurous quad bike ride around the small curvy paths, leading the way and letting loose my hair, doing something that gave me a natural high instead of the prescription one.

Reminder that rationalists are NOT empiricists

reminder that science is about modelling whatever they measure with their machines

>>14602896
>I asked the housekeeper Kathy that had been serving us that night to please have someone set up a massage bed in one of the cabana's. I went to my room to down a few Xanax, telling him I wanted to freshen up after dinner but to meet me in his cabana in twenty minutes or so. I was ready to go as I had said, twenty minutes later, with the effects of the tablets mixed with the red wine, and I would be free not to feel anything. He was still dressed when I got in the cabana, obviously not accustomed to this and a lot shyer than what I had been used to, I told him he'd need to undress and lie face down on the table, putting a towel to cover his bare bottom to prevent him feeling embarrassed during the massage. I gave the massage my earnest as I always had, and quickly got through having intercourse with him. Not wanting to make any foreplay or anything extravagant out of it, I let him think that's as good as it got, and by the smile on his face, I thought I had done enough.

>>14602595
>members of a species
i love how the bourgeois always use we and us to include me as soon as they talk about their mental masturbation in their academia that they try to pass as knowledge.

>>14601970
Holy shit! Thomas Gottschalk!

>>14602919
We are all made of stars anon.

>>14599550
Don't sign up just sit in and see what its about

>>14602936
>>14602919
>tfw most stemtard "fuck yeah science" platitudes are no different to liberal yoga mom memes on instagram

>>14602595
>common logical and statistical fallacies.
>philanthropy

>"Mr Pinker, I believe you were at that philanthropy dinner with noted pedo and Mossad asset Jeffrey 'Egg-dick' Epstein. Can you talk more about the illuminati's policy on effective altruism and the role of such altruism in the ancient elder's blood bank network?"

>"Ad hominem fallacy. Also petitio pedonem fallacy."

Can you imagine actually wasting your time with this crap?

I fucking hate the way he looks and sounds, like imagine unironically being hat person.
Also he talks as if he's lecturing tiny children

>>14602595
I thought #1 was a joke but it's not. lmao. anglos. everyday they reach new lows.

Imagine being an anglo: You pay $50,000 a year to study at Jerusalem Central, also known as Harvard, meaning you get to sit idly in front of anglojews teaching you about rationality (?) The rational axiom trumps all, and if you disagree it's the equivalent of holocaust denying. If you don't include black oppression in your essays you're fired, and your credit score goes down.

Meanwhile in France, some leather wearing BDSM drugged up faggot teaches at the college de france freely, no tuition, no classes, no grades, no school basically, you just come and learn (institutions are fascist anyways), and he teaches you that everything is a conspiracy, that's the basis of liberalism. Power does not operate in overt ways, but through seemingly apolitical institutions. Modernity is perverse, so says the double-fisting LSD-taking bald homo.

>>14603160
>Imagine being an anglo: You pay $50,000 a year to study at Jerusalem Central

damn the New Jerusalem LOoks LIke THAT?????

>>14599540
You cant be taught to be a midwit you're born into it newfriend.

>>14602929
kek

They're preparing a select few to become the God-Kings of reddit.

>>14603160
>Meanwhile in France, some leather wearing BDSM drugged up faggot teaches at the college de france freely, no tuition, no classes, no grades, no school basically, you just come and learn (institutions are fascist anyways), and he teaches you that everything is a conspiracy, that's the basis of liberalism. Power does not operate in overt ways, but through seemingly apolitical institutions. Modernity is perverse, so says the double-fisting LSD-taking bald homo.

this is incredibly based though

>>14599529
Good Lord what an list....

Can someone explain me the appeal of Pinker?
He´s seems to me like a obnoxious smug person with milktoast liberal opninions.

What is his nice in the media landscape??
He doesnt seem very entertaining to me

>>14601970
Damn I hate these fuckin guys on a visceral level. The countenance of a person on whom social and material capital, on the scale at which it circulates in 21st America, has been heaped without merit or justification, is truly one of the most disgusting things to behold. Unfortunately, I can't go along with the antisemitic stereotypes, as I am myself a member of the Chosen People and I'm fairly certain that we don't really have it all figured out. But it does make me feel the way tumblr they/them's feel when talking about "white males" in general

>>14603523
>to become the God-Kings of reddit.

is that a good thing?

>>14599529
Why is Richard Dawkins going to be a guest lecturer to a course that teaches rationality?

>No Vermeule

Dropped

>>14599550
Please fuck with the a s s for me. You have an opportunity even most Harvard students in the past did not.

>>14603621
He doesn't look as bad as Larry King, at least.

>>14599550
ask him what Epstein's favorite race/age of cunny was.

>>14599529
Yes, that would probably help me land a comfy public job where I would just write bullshit to justify everything my government does, or a job as an "expert" where I would do essentially the same thing but on TV

>>14603160
based france

ass

>>14603955
Larry King's also a psycho, but he tells interesting stories sometimes

>>14604427
this

>>14602595
>How can members of a species that discovered symbolic logic and the double helix also believe that the earth is flat and that Hillary Clinton ran a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria? Human rationality is very much in the news, as we struggle to understand how an era with unpreceded scientific sophistication could harbor so much fake news, conspiracy theorizing, and “post-truth” rhetoric.
Oh man, just wait until he finds out about the Nigerian and Libyan slave trade! Can you imagine slavery in the CURRENT YEAR? How could the SAME species that discovered symbolic logic still be doing such a thing?? If only they had read Enlightenment Now™ I'm sure this wouldn't be happening.

>>14602595
>that discovered symbolic logic and the double helix
>and the double helix
Heh, funny you should mention that, Mr. Rationality Man

>>14604714
I have zero doubt Pinker knows that, he's just never going to come close to saying it. The guy wrote a book called the fucking blank slate.

>>14599578
Yes Harvard doesn't require you to back up your claims with evidence

>>14603621
Have you read Culture of Critique?

>>14599529
Why is Taleb so based bros?

>>14599529
How much do i need to bust my ass to be able to transfer into Harvard or an ivy?

>>14602595
>Hillary Clinton ran a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria
this conspiracy is infinitely more interesting than anything being taught in this boring-ass course

>>14604755
No I haven't, because it seems like a vicious little piece of ideology and I figure I need to read more standard literary/social theory before I trouble myself with fringe works like that. Not that there is never anything good in scholarship outside of mainstream academia, but it seems like a waste of time if I'm not even very familiar with the intellectual tendencies that he claims to be reacting against.

Anyways, I will never be convinced that the Jews are to blame for the persecutions they have suffered throughout history, sorry. Obviously, the history of the Jewish people should not be used as cover for any individual's bad behavior either, and indeed it is denigrated whenever someone tries to do so. But I have no patience for anyone who privileges ethnic divisions over common humanity, regardless of whether they do so from a position that is simplistically "right" or "left."

also I'm lolling at how he uses symbolic logic—which I've never found particularly interesting, even when you get into metalanguages—as the ultimate example of human triumph, when it is precisely the development that Adorno cites as embodying the life-abnegating power of late Enlightenment

I don't know this memey nassim guy but Pinker can't go three sentences without saying something intellectually dishonest. I'm glad he got btfo.

>>14604871
>Anyways, I will never be convinced that the Jews are to blame for the persecutions they have suffered throughout history, sorry.
you dont find the pattern a bit...odd

>>14602595
A multidisciplinary course on the idea and history of reason, covering a bit of science, philosophy, and psychology, could be really interesting. But you know that isn't what this is gonna be.

>>14599529
>Taleb BTFOs Scientism and Pinker
fucking based

>>14604932
Of course I don't. They were a permanent religious minority for 2000 years, with a faith that is perhaps the most resistant to conversion out of any the world has known. With human nature being what it is, how could they avoid the cruelest treatment? Don't really know why I'm arguing with you to begin with though: it's disgusting how you champions of the white race have made insinuation and innuendo your primary means of argumentation. Get real.

Getting massive deja vu right now, like, post for post, I swear i've read this thread before. I think I'm stuck in the eternal recurrence bros.

>>14599529
why is this arab so asshurt over pinker, is it antisemitism?

>>14605307
arabs are semites

>>14599529
>guest lecturers
>dawkins

why the fuck does this brainlet still hang around

>>14605180
W a k e u p

>>14605348
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>>14605307
Phoenician wrath

>>14604728
I've read the first 100 or so pages of the Blank State, and it's a decent book.
But Pinker is an absolute coward and intellectually dishonest bastard. He basically mull the whole book about how intelligence is mostly genetics, but then when the obvious conclusion that differences in intelligence between various populations must also be mostly genetic he fucking avoid the whole topic by citing Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Liberalism is such a ridiculous ideology.

>>14599540
>now
Please

>>14603523
>They're preparing a select few to become the God-Kings of reddit.
lmfao

>>14604714
I love the relapse of 4 seconds before he answers what the difference is.

>>14603523
>God-Kings of reddit.
What the hell means that?

>>14607006
To be a modern progressive, exemplary of the current state of the University system and the major leftist parties, is to be idiosyncratic and self contradictory. They are the biggest hypocrites in this world. They assault others for being ignorant, close minded, or against progress, yet they themselves repeat, almost word for word, the same tired cliches from an identical set if dogmas about each social issue. Anyone with nuanced and critically thought views, even if they agree with them in this or that, is never what we now call, "a liberal.'

>>14602595
>discovered symbolic logic
ASS

>>14602595
>strawmanning pizzagate this hard
Anyway for a good laugh look at this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysrationalia
>muh heidegger

>>14607154
It means redditors will do this course and then prepare to quote epic fallacies or cognitive biases at you in a much more sophisticated way than the usual "THAT'S CONFIRMATION BIAS BRO" when they're responding to someone who noticed something.

>>14607006
Biological determinism is a feature of liberal ideology.

>Big Boys of English Speaking academia
>Singer
The philosophical equivalent of Judge Judy, Singer's self-contradictory pap ("abortion and infanticide are acceptable because these immature humans are incapable or rational preference" vs. "rationality is not a requirement for ethical conduct. Any irrational being will avoid pain, which is why cruelty to animals is unethical", which are flatly contradictory positions). Makes money by writing books that tell Liberals 'doing what you want is A-OK"
A buffoon.
>Chomsky
A decent linguist, his work in every other field is no more (or less) than self-serving rent seeking which he publicly admits that he, himself, does not believe.
Darn good at making a buck of gullible college students, but (unless you are speaking of linguistics, where he is very good) not a big academic.
>Dawkins
A mediocre-at-best scientist who will leave exactly zero mark on actual science, he became popular as a writer of PopSci books. When that income source dried up (because his theories were soundly thrashed by scientists) he switched to a series of popular books trashing what he thinks religious people might believe.
Never was a great thinker, never will be.
>Rorty
A man who counted on his readers having never heard of Gorgias, Rorty took facile rhetoric, relabeled it neopragmatism, and sold it like snake oil.
>Chalmers
About time an actual academic appeared. although, to be fair, while he does a fine job of reminding everyone of the hard problem, he has no answers. Which is no one's fault.
>Dennett
Refuses to use proper terms, mainly to hide that, deep down, he he knows any clear statement of his theories leads to eye-rolling
Not a serious academic.
.
This list is a list of "People that stupid people think are smart"

>>14599529
The idea is good, but not from him

>>14607542
>Singer
If there's I anyone I hate, called a philosopher or thinker that's living today, it's this fucker. He is the most duplicitous intellectual I've ever encountered. For all their faults, you can at least believe that guys like Dawkins have some genuine convictions. But Singer? He is a model double mouthed hypocrite. A simultaneous nihilist who believes in a dogmatic morality that should be applied in mass, and he knows it.
There's an essay, somewhere, where a keen writer makes a good argument on why Peter Singer should be or should've been aborted, using his own reasoning. I unironically agree that Singer ought to be aborted as a full grown man.

>>14607006
Derbyshire Rule. Ignore the last chapter of any sociological study, anthropological study as the conclusions contained in it will contradict the valid data presented in the preceding chapters. Instead of drawing obvious conclusions the author will drone on using boilerplate liberal piety. You have to apply this rule to the letter with Pinker's books - with the Blank Slate as you describe, with Better Angels (read Nicholas Wade's critique in A Troublesome Inheritance) and with Enlightenment Now (read Ricardo Duchesne's critique).

The whole point is in all three books Pinker assembles a stunning array of evidence that highly heritable traits extend well beyond intelligence, that no environmental interventions will ever have better than middling success (Blank Slate), that we're less violent because we probably evolved to be (Better Angels), and that white people have literally dragged the entire world out of the dark ages (Enlightenment Now) but in every case he abruptly swerves right before reaching the obvious conclusions that all his evidence is leading to so he can continue being a Public Intellectual and get massive advances for his books

>>14599550
Yes and ask about Epstein

>>14607542
>Chalmers
I recently got filtered hard by his essay regarding conceptual analysis and a priori entailment. Wew this dude goes into the details of the details of the details.