Rationality Quotes September 2012

Jayson_Virissimo

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

I was curious why the Baudrillard comment was downvoted when it expresses the same idea as the Nietzsche comment, it just uses a different style and approaches the problem from a different direction. Ideas, anyone?

Well, I'm not even sure whether Boudrillard's quote is grammatically well-formed, so there's that. Then again, postmodernist texts tend to be imbued with near-poetical and mystical qualities. Much like Zen koans, they're more about exemplifying a particular mind-posture and way of thinking than they are about straightforward argumentation. I think it's unfair to expect LessWrongers to be familiar with such texts.

2[anonymous]14y

Priming? Beaudrillard is associated with humanities, pomo and academic philosophy; Nietzche is associated with atheism, contrarianism and the idea of the ubermensch. The comment doesn't seem to be very strongly downvoted; possibly you're just dealing with detractors here (I daresay LW has more fans of the latter than of the former).