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VoiceOfRa comments on Wild Moral Dilemmas - Less Wrong Discussion

17 Post author: sixes_and_sevens 12 May 2015 12:56PM

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Comment author: VoiceOfRa 19 May 2015 01:33:01AM 0 points [-]

The most common and general is probably anti-intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism may or may not be a bad thing depending on the type.

Comment author: Lumifer 19 May 2015 02:20:54AM 1 point [-]

I don't know, esr seems to be stretching the point here. His two "good" types of anti-intellectualism, Hayek and Sowell, I would probably call internecine warfare. Both his examples were intellectuals and I doubt they would object to more intellectuals like themselves.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 May 2015 11:43:58AM *  2 points [-]

One handy definition of intellectuals is that people who expect their opinions taken seriously in field X based on prestige built in an unrelated field Y. A classic example is Einstein writing about socialism based on the prestige he acquired in physics. More general example is writers, people-of-letters, literature and poetry folks engaging in politics. If we would accept it, Hayek and Sowell were not intellectuals, they never wandered too far from the field they actually had expertise in.

But why accept such a quirky definition? They logic behind is: when you are, say, an economist, and pontificate about economics, you are acting actually as an economist. When you are a physicist or writer and pontificate about politics or economics, you are obviously not acting as a writer or physicist but as a Generic Smart Person. Being a good writer or physicist proves you are smart (roughly: true enough), and you expect people to accept your opinion because you are smart. The unspoken assumption is that smartness matters more than expertise in forming correct opinions. Thus people who expect people to accept their opinions about economics because of their expertise are called economists, and people who expect people who accept their opinions about economics (or anything) because they are smart are called intellectuals: people whose defining (social) feature is the intellect, not the expertise.

On a more broader view, ideally, people should expect their opinions to be accepted because they are actually well evidenced and argued, not based on authority. But the "masses" tend to accept views based on authority. So the expert uses the authority of expertise and the intellectual uses the authority of generic smartness (which is proven by success in an unrelated field.)

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 20 May 2015 01:55:50PM 0 points [-]

Completely off-topic, but do you have a policy for when you emphasise with italics and when you emphasise with bold?

Comment author: Lumifer 20 May 2015 02:57:37PM 1 point [-]

A very vague one. Bold is a bit stronger than italics, plus italics are overloaded, they are used to signify other things than emphasis, too. In the grandparent post there are both italics and bold because the emphasis is somewhat different so I wanted two different ways to emphasize.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 19 May 2015 02:28:01AM 0 points [-]

He is talking about how the phrase "anti-intellectualism" is actually used in practice.

Comment author: Lumifer 19 May 2015 05:27:19AM -1 points [-]

Don't think I've seen it used in practice much and those times it was clearly derogatory.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 25 May 2015 04:19:07AM 1 point [-]

In particular, it's used in a way that intentionally conflates the various meanings.