/lit/ - Literature

The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI.

Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry.

The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”. What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club.

>>17691100
he'll never be relevant/discussed/remembered

Based Taleb blowing leftists the fuck out

More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI). Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only did he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.

The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism.

Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).

The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.

The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t even know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba (which in Brooklynese is “can’t tell sh**t from shinola”); he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.

He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.

But a much easier marker: he doesn’t even deadlift.

>>17691100

Let’s suspend the satirical for a minute.

IYIs fail to distinguish between the letter and the spirit of things. They are so blinded by verbalistic notions such as science, education, democracy, racism, equality, evidence, rationality and similar buzzwords that they can be easily taken for a ride. They can thus cause monstrous iatrogenics[1] without even feeling a shade of a guilt, because they are convinced that they mean well and that they can be thus justified to ignore the deep effect on reality. You would laugh at the doctor who nearly kills his patient yet argues about the effectiveness of his efforts because he lowered the latter’s cholesterol, missing that a metric that correlates to health is not quite health –it took a long time for medicine to convince its practitioners that health was what they needed to work on, not the exercise of what they thought was “science”, hence doing nothing was quite often preferable (via negativa). But yet, in a different domain, say foreign policy, a neo-con who doesn’t realize he has this mental defect would never feel any guilt for blowing up a country such as Libya, Iraq, or Syria, for the sake of “democracy”. I’ve tried to explain via negativa to a neocon: it was like trying to describe colors to someone born blind.

IYIs can be feel satisfied giving their money to a group aimed at “saving the children” who will spend most of it making powerpoint presentation and organizing conferences on how to save the children and completely miss the inconsistency.

Likewise an IYI routinely fails to make a distinction between an institution (say formal university setting and credentialization) and what its true aim is (knowledge, rigor in reasoning) –I’ve even seen a French academic arguing against a mathematician who had great (and useful) contributions because the former “didn’t go to a good school” when he was eighteen or so.

The propensity to this mental disability may be shared by all humans, and it has to be an ingrained defect, except that it disappears under skin in the game.

literally me

>>17691130
Lol I love this guy

>>17691110
>makes fun of centre-right academics, journos, bureaucrats, and cultural figures
>Wow he’s owning those leftists so hard!
Why is fourchan retarded, bros?

Holy shit, he’s calling out the jews

>>17691147
>makes fun of centre-right academics, journos, bureaucrats, and cultural figures
They're all retarded leftists you mongrel

>>17691158
How did we get to this point where NYT-subscribed liberals are considered leftists, in what fucking world? You’re literally a retard dude. You’re just fucking dumb.

>>17691125
>But a much easier marker: he doesn’t even deadlift.

How can pseuds ever recover?

He’s talking about western neo-libs (who also are often neo-cons)

>>17691169
Liberal democracies are leftist, get over it.

>>17691147
>academics, journos, bureaucrats, and cultural figures
All leftists by definition.

>>17691180
this, right wingers cannot into academia or journalism and cannot into culture either, that's why they always go out in a shooting spree leaving behind a cringe manifesto or something while the left produces art of cultural significance

>>17691187
Based

>>17691187
>the left produces art of cultural significance
LMAO

>>17691172
>>17691180
unbelievable cringe, but i guess we live in a post-truth world so whatever.

>>17691100
That's what a smart person who didn't read marx look like. Just call out financial capitalism, neoliberalism, and liberals already, please. Also, the replication crisis is caused mainly by capitalism.

How can one man be so unfathomably BASED?

>>17691251
>this is your brain on Marxism

>>17691295
This guy is creating acronyms and writing books just to say what some 20 yr old who just read some marxist literature can see clear as day. He's obviously a bit on the left but he's knee deep in the investor community(and is one) so he can't just say the fucking obvious.

>>17691319
So you're outing yourself as a 20 year old fan of Marxist literature? Not everything circles back to capitalism, holy shit.

>>17691327
No, but everything circles back to resource

>>17691187
>Academia or journalism
>art of cultural significance
Select the odd one

>>17691375
Complete pseud. Go back to bunkerchan

>>17691253
Good Lord Taleb stop skipping leg day, fuck.

>>17691158
They're status obsessed middle-classers trying to affect the correct credentials and opinions so they can feel like they made it.

>>17691147
>centre-right academics
Literally who? Have you been to a university.

>>17691820
He likely believes that anyone who isn't an evangelical Leninist is center-right

>>17691125
>But a much easier marker: he doesn’t even deadlift.
I kneel

>>17691180
Way to out yourself for being a retarded know-nothing

>>17692334
Better the company of Socrates than a journalist

i wish taleb would be on lit

>>17692701
he is op and posts a thread about himself at least once a day