Comment by silcoon
5 days ago
Agree with the author. Most rationalist material I've tried to read it's incredibly lengthy and frequently boring. It's also true that they are using verbosity and a certain academic style to hide the lack of precision and correctness. They are prolific writers, but not great.
It reminds me a bit of elaborate theological arguments that build up in denominational seminaries. The authors just have an obsessive compulsion to catalogue and resolve every minute detail, details that only really matter if you've already accepted many other dubious and compounding premises. IE, the articles are really for existing converts.
Ironically very similar to LLM output.
hmm... maybe that's where they got it from in the first place!
lol, Jordan Peterson comes to mind
> How are you today, Jordan?
> What do you mean with 'how'? What is being? Who am I, truly?
The semantic bollocks that man ties himself into sometimes
Let's start with the premise that I'm not okay. So what am I going to do about that? Well I could say woe is me. Where the bloody hell is that going to get me? Now let's presuppose that I am destined to—
Ughh!
He manages to bring every discussion back to: how it's good to believe literally in religious fairy tales, tidying your room, only eating meat, no one else apart from him should decide the meaning of words, and some fever dream he had about lobsters.
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What’s even worse is that the man has a huge following who all think that he isn’t a bullshitter.
People are quite right criticise him. However he did help me (indirectly) when he was on first on Joe Rogan years ago and was talking about addiction. It got me seriously thinking about quitting drink.
I wish he kept to talking more about those subjects and the Bible as I found that much more interesting.
Peterson fallen in a profoundly sad, but also illuminating, way. He obviously had a bit of NPD even from the start, which is true of virtually every public figure. The crack widened and finally split with the help of powerful drugs - fame, money, and Xanax, with a side of audience capture. He quickly went from "liberal Canadian rationalist with the gumption to push back against the left on principle" to just another unthinking right-wing parrot. His view of strength hurt him here, because he was in a crucible that broke him and yet he clearly could not admit it. Contrast him with someone like Sam Harris who, IMO, has been in the crucible for longer but who is far less pugnacious and has managed to maintain his sanity and his nuanced principles despite the forces that want bimodal commentary only.
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