
The Intellectual yet Idiot - BerislavLopac
https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
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MaysonL
Note to mods: this has been submitted 10 times in the last week, getting from
20 to 1 point. Something should be done about Medium's URLs.

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alex_lubinsky
I think every person sometimes behaves just like IYI. IYIs are just a good
illustration of human ignorance. Remember Robert Sheckley's Ask a Foolish
Question book? Two clever scientists challenged The Answerer with their
questions. This machine knew everything about the world, but failed to give
any answer, because their questions were wrong. Anyone can read a clever book
and think he/she knows something without really knowing it at all.

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jimmywanger
This post reads like word salad.

Is the author trolling?

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bertiewhykovich
It's not word salad. It's written idiosyncratically, to be sure, but the
author's points are laid out clearly and in an ordered way.

There's certainly room to attack this piece, but incoherent it ain't.

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jimmywanger
He uses large scare words without any context.

To wit:

"But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described
members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning
they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into
circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by
people like them. "

Wtf is Coconut Island? And what are circularities, and what do they have to do
with the topic at hand?

This sentence does not parse for me. If you shredded an intellectual
thesaurus, loaded it into a shotgun, and shot the contents out in the form of
HTML, you'd get roughly the same thing. The rest of the article is just like
that. "They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation
of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule." What
the fuck?

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bordercases
> coconut on Coconut Island

He means "missing the obvious".

> circularities

He means being unable to define something in terms of its referents, instead
defining it in terms of the properties you've already prescribed as being the
thing. Can you define what love is without using terms like "affection"?
Typically you need to start giving examples.

Overall he's using rhetoric to make fun of self-proclaimed intellectuals that
can't, won't, or don't actually think.

> ensemble modulus linear aggregation

Sometimes, a collection of things is more than just the sum of its parts. I
think his "minority rule" chapter was about how if you have a majority willing
to make concessions and a minority unwilling to make concessions, the minority
can control the actions of the majority. So their effect is more than the sum
of their presence.

Trust me when I say he's intelligible. But it looks like his writing style is
not for everyone.

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jimmywanger
> Trust me when I say he's intelligible.

I shouldn't have to trust you, his writing should speak for itself.

There are multiple reasons to write. One is to, you know, actually communicate
ideas. I guess that wasn't his goal.

Another reason is to virtue signal. "Hey, I know more big words than you do
and can string them together, therefore I am cultured." Maybe that's his
motive. His essay reads like every single post-modern paper that dresses up
simple ideas in big words to try to make them seem profound.

Like putting spinning rims on a Toyota Corolla.

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bordercases
Rhetoric has been a key part of communication for quite literally epochs and
is used to entertain us while making a point. I think that may be where the
difference between us lies. Taleb has an axe to grind and is quite boisterous
about it. For me watching Taleb go is like watching an intellectual WWF, the
showmanship itself is thrilling and aggressive. For someone who brands himself
as, and in terms of his ideas actually is, a contrarian, this aesthetic befits
the material. But I understand if that's a turn off for some.

Either way I don't think it's something to become upset about.

