
The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology (2005) [pdf] - pls2halp
https://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf
======
conatus
As I said on this forum before hearing people talk about postmodernism as if
it is the current "thing" within continental philosophy circles is really odd.
It hasn't been for a decade or more.

The backlash against these methodologies has been pretty severe within
continental philosophy itself. For example, Meillassoux's critique of
correlationism pretty much says that the whole epistemological manoeuvres,
perhaps vulgarised by postmodern turn, by which it is claimed there is nothing
"real" without a human correlated to it and that "reality" cannot be truly
accessed, only reality as it appears to human beings, distorted by power,
ideology etc etc.

There is a good description here though might be pretty high level.
[https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-
an-e...](https://euppublishingblog.com/2014/12/12/correlationism-an-extract-
from-the-meillassoux-dictionary/)

~~~
nkoren
I don't get the impression that its relevance is due to any particular
currency within actual philosophy circles, but rather because postmodernism is
the motte to which the more academic strains intersectional feminism retreat
when pressed -- and that very much _is_ a "thing" in contemporary left-wing
activism and internet flame wars.

On the street and in less academic varietals of intersectionalism, this just
consists of "you should shut the fuck up, because you are male / white /
heterosexual / cisgendered / wealthy / neurotypical / had good parents / some
other form of privileged that I just thought up".

In more respectable garb, this gets dressed up as "your arguments have no
validity, because <insert postmodernist gloss on ad hominem dismissal here>".
Which is no less toxic to having any kind of rational and inclusive dialogue,
and deserves to be taken down on its own terms.

(Note: this is coming from someone who is firmly left-wing and even has
considerable respect for many aspects of intersectional feminism when applied
in a philosophical / analytical context; I just _despise_ what it has done to
the tone of left-wing activism over the last 10 years.)

~~~
gizmo
You may despise the tone of left-wing activism, but arguments based on
identity aren't ad-hominem. Some people need to "shut up", as you put it, so
that other folks who have relevant experience and expertise can talk and be
heard.

Forms of privilege aren't just thought up on the spot, activists have been
talking about privilege for the better part of a century.

You complain about internet flame wars, but you have interpreted left-wing
activism in such an uncharitable way that almost no reasonable response is
possible.

~~~
stult
>arguments based on identity aren't ad-hominem

Well here's the problem. Arguments that discredit another perspective based on
the identity of who is making it are ad hominem. Arguments about the
discursive process itself that address representation of various identities
aren't. For example, if you tell me that privilege prevents minority voices
from contributing to a national dialogue on poverty alleviation, I would
agree. But that's not how people use identity in most online or casual
arguments. They use identity to directly discredit and silence their
opponents. Telling others to shut up isn't a good faith starting point for a
productive conversation. That approach is based on an unrealistic, zero sum
interpretation of how people interact, where it's only possible for one person
to speak on any given subject. Getting more black people involved in a
conversation on race doesn't mean silencing all the white people. Yet that's
where these conversations often progress to. It's extraordinarily unpleasant
to experience and completely useless for fostering dialogue.

~~~
gizmo
Of course "shut up" is not a good starting point for a conversation. The point
is that people can't talk and listen at the same time. When people are
ignorant about a subject because they don't have the relevant personal
experience they don't have anything to contribute to the conversation so they
should just listen. That's the only way to have the kind of productive
dialogue you claim to want. Otherwise discussions on these topics will never
go beyond the 101 level.

Your claim that white people are being silenced on race is absurd. In all
mediums, whether it's newspapers, blogs, TV, or anywhere else, you see white
people pontificating on race. It's people of color whose opinions are being
silenced.

Besides, a real discussion on race needs to be uncomfortable for white people.
A pleasant conversation about race with white people doesn't result in minds
being changed. Coming to terms with the way society oppresses people of color
and favors white people is inherently unpleasant.

~~~
stult
>When people are ignorant about a subject because they don't have the relevant
personal experience they don't have anything to contribute to the conversation
so they should just listen

Well this is exactly the problem. You're assuming from the get go that white
people have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

>Your claim that white people are being silenced on race is absurd

I have never made any such claim. I argued that people frequently use identity
as a tool to silence opponents. That used to be a common tactic for
suppressing minority views. "Oh, he's just a dumb negro, what does he know,"
and similar statements used to be socially acceptable ways of dismissing
someone's perspective purely on the basis of their racial identity. Nowadays
that more often takes the form of what you just did: assuming that white
people have nothing relevant to contribute, where the reverse argument has
become socially unacceptable. That does not mean white people are universally
silenced, nor on the other hand does it mean that we as a society are devoting
enough time to listening to minorities. The whole point of this argument is
that you cannot discredit any individual person's argument on the basis of
what proportion of our national discourse is devoted to people who share that
person's identity. The argument and the arguer must be separated where the
arguer is acting in good faith. A problem with the mix of views available does
not detract from the individual truth or validity of any one person's
arguments.

>Besides, a real discussion on race needs to be uncomfortable for white
people. A pleasant conversation about race with white people doesn't result in
minds being changed.

I don't think that approach convinces anyone. You don't win political
arguments by alienating people. That sort of verbal aggression just provokes a
backlash. Movements make progress by making people feel good about themselves.
White people marched with MLK because he made them feel like they were part of
a grand moral crusade. Which they were. The gay rights movement has had
similar success by proactively recruiting and including allies. You catch more
flies with honey than with vinegar.

Ultimately this is the fundamental flaw in your thinking:

>The point is that people can't talk and listen at the same time.

That's true in a one on one conversation, not a national discourse. The
consensus that governs a democratic society is the product of a million
simultaneous and contradictory voices clamoring in a thousand separate media.
Me writing this post doesn't stop a black person from replying. My speech
doesn't detract from theirs. It's not a zero sum game.

------
TheAceOfHearts
Jordan Peterson has made a few great videos on postmodernism. If anyone is
interested, "Postmodernism: How and why it must be fought" [0] is fairly short
and to the point.

I try to apply the scientific method to my internal beliefs. I've changed my
mind many times when presented with a sufficiently strong argument and
evidence to back it up. I'm wrong about stuff all the time, and one of the
main ways to find out and fix it is to talk about it!

This is a large part of why I'm opposed to silencing people, instead of
letting them talk and honestly engaging with them. Righteous indignation might
make you feel good, but it probably won't convince anyone to change their
views. You can change someone's mind by being polite, doing your research, and
chatting with em. Daryl Davis shows us a prime example of this: How One Man
Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes [1].

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc)

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-
convince...](http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-
convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes)

~~~
d--b
Postmodern thinkers are not preventing anyone from speaking, are they? You
don't have to like Derrida today, and it's perfectly fine to disagree with
Deleuze, Guattari or Fanon...

What's this about?

This sounds to me that Peterson is pissed because people in humanities tend to
oppose capitalism. But I think that's mostly because people in humanities have
a role in criticizing the system in which we live, instead of trumpeting to
the world that what Western societies have achieved is the best thing humans
have ever created...

~~~
lliamander
> Postmodern thinkers are not preventing anyone from speaking, are they? You
> don't have to like Derrida today, and it's perfectly fine to disagree with
> Deleuze, Guattari or Fanon...

Depends on who you include under the definition of "postmodern thinkers". I
don't hear a whole lot of noise coming from Academic Philosophers per se, but
the intellectual heirs of the postmodernists as expressed in the social
sciences and various intersectional "studies" programs certainly seem to make
a big deal of deplatforming people these days.

> This sounds to me that Peterson is pissed because people in humanities tend
> to oppose capitalism.

No. he tells you why he is mad, why invent reasons?

He is mad because of the lack of gratitude at the improvements in absolute
standard of living (even though he admits that relative inequality is a
problem). As a clinical counselor for many years he has seen the harms caused
by persistent resentment.

He is mad because his colleagues in the humanities and social sciences have,
in recent decades, consistently opposed the free exchange of ideas on college
campuses. He is far from the only academic to voice such concerns[0].

He is mad because of the dearth of good scholarship in the humanities and
social sciences.

[0][https://heterodoxacademy.org/](https://heterodoxacademy.org/)

------
samirillian
These straw man arguments always annoy the hell out of me. Please give me some
textual evidence that postmodernists and co are anti-rationalists! How does
Deleuze, the postmodernist philosopher par excellence, undermine rationality?
He wrote two worshipful books on Leibniz and Spinoza, who were both
rationalists. These "takedowns" always read like someone who has never
attempted to grasp postmodernism either philosophically or sociologically, and
someone who certainly has never attempted to grasp Leibniz!

People seem to talk around the simplest postmodernist theses, usually by
knowing nothing about postmodernism. In my mind, there are two:

1) Doubting the truth of all knowledge, and 2) an incredulity towards all
metanarratives.

Now, please, please recognize, that disbelieving the truth of knowledge is not
the same as disbelieving truth! The Popperian concept of verisimilitude could
easily be construed as an extremely rational form of this doubt. Is any
scientific theory, strictly speaking, true? Or are they all models that
approximate a reality we can never ultimately reach? If you think I'm being
too kind towards the postmodernists with this interpretation, then you don't
understand postmodernism.

With respect to 2), incredulity towards metanarratives was not an assertion in
Lyotard's essay, but an observation about the state of our society. And is
this not, obvjectively, what we observe? Don't kill the messenger! Certainly
not when the messenger is Lyotard, a man who was extremely politically engaged
in the Algerian revolution and whose disillusionment ultimately led him to
question all grand ideologies.

tldr; these essays are strongman arguments that show they don't understand
postmodernism or even their own terms.

------
Emma_Goldman
This is embarrassing and supercilious.

The alarm-bells began to ring from the point at which I realised that the
author thought too much of himself to bother to actually engage with any post-
modernist. It's easy to impute a series of highly contrived 'rhetorical
manoeuvres' to someone if you don't do the hard work of unpacking their
thought.

As for the substantive first-order claims, it's hard to know where to even
start.

The author describes the 'troll's truism' as an equivocal statement that rides
on a truism to make wild claims that it cannot in fact support. When the wild
claim is pushed, the proponent retreats to the truism. The truism here is
social constructivism, and the wild claim that illicitly rides on this truism
is the denial of a mind-independent world. First of all, I don't know in what
possible sense social constructivism is a 'truism'. It only rose to any kind
of institutional prominence during the 'linguistic turns' of the 20th century.
And it probably remains - in philosophy departments, certainly - a minority
position. I suppose that perhaps depends on what one takes to be social
constructivism; but the brevity of the author's treatment does not allow for
this kind of basic detail. The statement quoted from Fish is not 'trivial' in
the least.

Second, the real question is the one that Wittgenstein struggled with between
his early and late works: is language a device with a single veracious use for
the naming of objects in the world, or is it something that is defined by its
use as a protean tool of social communication among humans groups through
historical time. I have never since any convincing response to Wittgenstein's
defence of the latter in the Philosophical Investigations. And if that follows
then, whether one has the ontological view that a mind-independent world
exists, one is nevertheless committed to a form of linguistic contextualism,
i.e. a given statement only has force relative to the criteria of language-use
that prevails in the particular social context in which one is speaking. But
the author simply collapses the ontological admission of a mind-independent
world into an admission that linguistic contextualism has no epistemological
purchase - which is completely _not_ the case.

I can't be bothered to sift through the rest of the paper. The treatment of
Foucault is especially vacuous.

P.S. I am not a post-modernist.

~~~
specialist
I so wish I understood what you've written.

I've tried to grok philosophy a few times. The reading makes me anxious. Just
like when I try to understand poetry and complicated software. I hate knowing
that I'm missing something. On the plus side, I have deep empathy for people
who don't grok stuff that seems to come easily to me.

Why I'm writing: I think my core mental defect is impaired short-term memory.
Most people can keep 7 things (+/\- 2) in their head at once. Allegedly
geniuses can keep 10 (+/\- 2). I suspect that my capacity is 5, or maybe 4,
though I'm afraid to check.

In both philosophy and complicated software, the levels of indirection, the
nested subclauses, quickly leave me behind. I'm more a Gettysburg Address
kinda thinker.

So. If in your travels you find any kind of clue about short-term memory, or
IQ in general, and ability to understand philosophy, poetry, code, please show
some extra patience for people like me who are struggling to keep up.

\---

I'm totally on board with the abstract of that SHATVO paper. If I wasn't
overly, unreasonably optimistic, I wouldn't get out of bed every day. Whatever
the paper's logical failings, denial is what keeps me going.

~~~
cerealbad
philosophers are used word salesmen, you aren't missing much.

------
superpope99
Found this interesting after recently listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson
talks - especially the latest Joe Rogan Experience episode #1006
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI)

~~~
etplayer
I've found that Peterson has the habit to confuse postmodernism with "neo
Marxism" (itself a term reminiscent of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy
theory) while they could not be further from each other, except as being
originated from conitental philosophy. I've written about one such instance
here[0] and as far as I can tell it applies to this video too.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077128)

~~~
mnglkhn2
> has the habit to confuse postmodernism with "neo Marxism" (itself a term
> reminiscent of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory)

Because that is the most prominent application of postmodernism: to push
forward neo-Marxist ideology.

~~~
etplayer
That's actually not true. What is "neo Marxism"? As I understand it, it is the
application of Marixist class theory to other non-class power structures.
However I have seen nor have been able to find any evidence that this is an
actually existing group that has grown out of Marxism. Furthermore,
postmodernism denies the very structures in the materialist understanding of
history which is essential to Marxism. So how are they compatible? These and
other issues are discussed in my post and in the article I linked therein.

There's simply no evidence for it; Peterson's confusion is his own and I hope
that others do not follow him on this and instead choose to do their own
research into philosophy.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
They are not compatible - Peterson's argument is not that neomarxism and
postmodernism are natural bedfellows, but that people espousing postmodernist
positions nearly always reveal a belief structure based in neomarxism when
challenged by an intellectual equal.

His evidence is presumably his own conversations with postmodernists, and his
theory as to why this is seems based more in a psychological than
philosophical framework.

------
jstewartmobile
Argggh. Professors!

You could nitpick the absolute shit out of any non-trivial work in the
humanities--even the great ones--but most people have enough sense not to.

BTW, Foucault is actually readable. Who knew?!

~~~
Emma_Goldman
"BTW, Foucault is actually readable. Who knew?!"

This suggests that you have never bothered to read Foucault. He is extremely
readable.

~~~
igravious
Come on _Emma_Goldman_. Don't do that. Why possibly alienate a potential
reader of Foucault? You don't know what path _jstewartmobile_ took to get them
to this point. Though it may not be universally true – and it certainly might
be unjustified – the Continentals (Derrida & co.) aren't exactly known for
their lucid crystalline prose.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
What? Well, given their dismissal of the whole of the humanities, and the
ridicule with which they spoke about Foucault, I doubt they're going to be
reading _The History of Sexuality_ or _The Archaeology of Knowledge_ anytime
soon. Or am I being too defensive, and mis-judging the post?

Some 'continental philosophers' are difficult to read. Derrida is a
spectacularly bad writer, for instance. Foucault is not one of them however.
_Discipline & Punish_ is about as readable as Dickens IMO.

~~~
igravious
> Or am I being too defensive, and mis-judging the post?

I think so? :)

Read it again – You could nitpick the absolute shit out of any _non-trivial
work_ in the humanities--even the great ones--but most people have _enough
sense not to_.

(Emphasis mine.) They are saying that there are trivial and non-trivial works
in the humanities. Some non-trivial works are great works. You could nitpick
those non-trivial works--even the great ones-- but you'd be wrong to because
while you're busy at that you're missing the wood for the trees. To me it
sounds like they've read quite a few texts from the humanities, just not
Foucault.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
Ah okay, I'll go with your more charitable reading!

I'm just very used to people dismissing an entire cultural and philosophical
movement based on hearsay. It's not that hard to just pick up and read
Foucault, Derrida, etc., and find out for yourself.

------
raldu
As long as analytical tradition keeps reducing philosophy into "logical
programming," it'll always fail to appreciate the meaning and value of
interesting continental ideas such as postmodernism.

This paper is just a very typical example of that failure. Getting buried
under `P and Q, therefore R` statements, nitpicking individual examples,
missing the whole, thinking _mechanically_ and all...

For example, the author confuses Foucualt's notion of "truth" with basic
"truth conditions" and refers to Tarski's "material adequacy condition" to
"debunk" Foucualt's reasoning as "false theory."

The author also mechanically replaces the word "truth" in Foucault's quoted
writing with Foucault's so-called "definition" of truth and expects a fairly
reasonable reading to come out as if English semantics was as mechanical as
_Lisp_.

Sorry, the paper has failed to pass the _facepalm_ test while attempting to
"expose" the most cited author in the whole field of Humanities as "false."

This kind of mechanical, logic based reasoning ignores the poetic style,
metaphors, and most importantly, the whole _context_ of writing by focusing on
the details and missing the whole.

It's like teaching an AI to understand Shakespeare's poems but AI constantly
finding "contradictions" that "does not compile."

Foucault's philosophy is mostly "political philosophy" and has nothing to do
with truth conditions. He also deliberately does _not_ ground his arguments on
definitions after definitions. Rather, it is more like an ongoing, deep, open
reflection on power, truth and subjectivity in general.

As to "social construction" of truth, you would be amazed at how beautifully
Foucault traces back the emergence of "free market" as a "site of veridiction"
for "truth" starting from 18th century and how that interacts with "power,"
"governance" and "subjectivity," all constructing a "regime of truth,"
covering multitude of implications that a "syntactic analysis of English
grammar" cannot explain.

I think there are more things to be found that would interest a hacker in
postmodern thought yet gone missed.

~~~
vslira
>He also deliberately does not ground his arguments on definitions after
definitions.

Isn't that intentional? Words that have no fixed meaning can't be refuted by
logic.

------
igravious
It is a shame this fell off the front page so quickly.

I'll tell you my problem with this paper. It's not that it doesn't seem, to a
certain extent, well reasoned. That it does. My problem is that it does not
correlate with what meagre bits of Foucault and Rorty I've encountered. (I've,
uh, never heard of Bloor and to this day I haven't read Lyotard) I've come
away from these encounters enriched. Certainly I get a sense of the respect
that they have for the millennia-hulking colossus that is the history of
ideas. I want to say to Shackel, yes, you _may_ be correct but so what?

Here is Rorty on Truth, 1m:41s long:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzynRPP9XkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzynRPP9XkY)

I dare anyone not to be seduced by that. Whatever could he mean? What could he
be getting at? There goes five years of your life.

These interrelated issues are not as simple as Shackel make them out to be.
The game is not to pick out crappy definitions of Truth or Knowledge from your
opponent's texts and to shred them into little pieces, douse them in gasoline,
and then set fire to them. That's not the game. That game is _boring_.

Speaking of Truth and Power, and speaking Truth to Power, here is Shackel on
Wikileaks:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/29...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/29/wikileaks-
free-speech-discretion-bearing-witness)

“There is no precedence between them and in this case how they balance is
heavily influenced by questions over who is our neighbour and how close they
are. Whose side are you on? How much discretion do you owe? How much
indiscretion must we tolerate? The answers to these questions matter a lot and
are hard to agree on.”

I'd say we have a good idea whose side Shackel would be on if push came to
shove. Does that make his philosophical arguments about t/Truth invalid? No.
But if one doesn't want to rock the boat then the kind of t/Truth you're going
to like is a very apolitical asocial truth thank you very much. And that's not
the kind of t/Truth a lot of Continentals and Post-modernists are interested
in.

------
d--b
Wow, looking at all the comments here, I am amazed by all the negativity
around post modern theories.

It's strange to me to see this on hacker news, especially since we as computer
scientists, do understand much better than anyone else the complexity of the
human mind.

Post-modernism is first and foremost a realization that modernism was a
failure. In modern times, people thought that we could find some universal
mechanism that describes nature, and that from there we could find a logical
language (or structure) that could explain the way everything works.

Great. But then we realized that things were way more complex than they
appeared. We found that combining a large number of simple rules quickly
resulted in a mess that was nearly impossible to describe. Take for instance
the double-rod pendulum or 3-body problem. Physicist admit they don't fully
understand what glass is, let alone playdoh, etc.

Nature is not neat and tidy, and neither is the human brain or human
societies. That's mostly what postmodernism is about.

I don't really see what the problem is with that...

~~~
titzer
> Physicist admit they don't fully understand what glass is, let alone
> playdoh, etc.

People love to throw around junk like this, and it's maddening to try to argue
against such vague statements. Which physicists? Have you interviewed all of
them? How many material science PhDs do you know? What properties of glass are
not well understood? Is it not possible to engineer structures and objects out
of glass? When in fact, physicists know tons about glass. What is made of, how
its crystalline structure looks, its tensile strength, shatter resistance,
acoustic and thermal properties, molecular weights, melting points, optical
properties. I could go on and on and on, and it'd eventually be clear that
physicists know a hell of a lot more about glass than /you/ do, and then you
could still make that vague statement with a derisive smile.

It's just absurd argumentation to say some group doesn't /really/ understand
something.

What is memory, what is an atom /really/? For that matter, what is language?
Art? Feeling? Love? Hackernews?

------
dalbasal
TBH, I've never been able to form a coherent picture of "postmedernism," I
don't really understand what either proponents or oponents mean when refering
to it.

That said, I think the place where postmodernism enters normal (non academic)
human thought is not disimilar to funkier parts enlightenment era philosophy.

Take Des Cartes famous meditations, remembered mostly for his "stage 1" of
rejecting all knowledge of anything but ones existence. He then attempts (IMO
fails) to rebuild a foundation of knowledge based on pure reason, without any
faulty assumptions.

What impact did des cartes have on normal people's thought? Almost no one is
convinced by his proof of god. No one is convinced to reject all knowledge and
stop there. People are still better for going through the exercise.
Challenging assumptions & knowledge authorities. Aknowledging knowledge
dependencies, how do I know this.

Des Carte's solipsism doesn't end anywhere concrete, but it opens the door to
less ambituous but much more practical epistimology like Karl Popper's.

Likewise, I don't think that enlightement (and subsequent) ethics goes
anywhere concrete. Utilitarianism, deontology or whatnot all lead to their own
little absurd conclusions if you go down the rabbit hole. Very few people
"adopt" them. But, the process does sometimes result in usable ethical frames
for situations that do not involve a fat man in a cart.

So that's essentially (oops, no essences!), a lot of modern philosophy in a
nutshell (are nutshells structures?). Reject earlier thoughts. Attempt to
rebuild with mixed success. Meanwhile, get a better understanding of the
limits of knowledge.

So... postmodernism... Like I said, fuzzy on what postmodern means......

But....I think it's a similar contribution. Reject existing frames. Criticize
traditional systems. Try to find alternatives. Hopefully evolve in the
process.

I think postmodernism opens up some doors to ideas like Yuval Noah Harari's
description of human history. A big part of his ideas start with recognizing
"fictions," all the things which aren't really real. Things that were made up
by people. Tribes, nations, corporations, named places, kingships.... He then
asks what are these for? When were they invented? What role do they play..

Postmodernism probably contributed something towards this way of thinking, or
the public interest in it.

As to the methods used by postmodernist academics.... I've got no idea.

------
daptaq
Why was this posted on HN?

 _Edit:_ this was not meant in a pejorative way, it was a sincere question. I
thought it was Off-topic.

~~~
telesilla
At first glance without a thorough read it appears to me to be a discourse on
_constructed meaning_ , relevant to the zeitgeist concept we might know as
"truthiness". An easier read on the topic:

[http://theconversation.com/truthiness-and-alternative-
facts-...](http://theconversation.com/truthiness-and-alternative-facts-
meaning-is-a-moveable-feast-71900)

Pertinent text from the submitted article:

    
    
        “But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knockdown argument,’” Alice objected.
    
        “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 
    
        “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

~~~
pls2halp
I felt like the paper’s concept of a ‘Troll’s Truism’[1] would be particularly
relevant to here. I also remember seeing a similarly structured paper on
Scientism here.

[1]“A Troll’s Truism is a mildly ambiguous statement by which an exciting
falsehood may trade on a trivial truth.”

~~~
Hasknewbie
So it's what Daniel Dennett refers to as a 'deepity' then?

Source:
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity)

