Maenads said: @Meusnier So far as I know, the distinction between scientists and intellectuals stems from the field of economics. When self conscious economists were trying to figure out what the study of economics was - was it a soft science? A hard science? Does it even qualify as science? They came to recognize a difference between the work of scientists, and the work of intellectuals - these being the words they use to distinguish the two. A scientist studies the real, or the material - however you would like to call it. The scientists hypothesis are testable. There are, ultimately, answers to the questions of science - even if they are not yet known. The intellectual creates the ideas which are not verifiable by the scientific methods. Science is not deemed intellectual because scientific facts pre-exist their own discovery. The laws of physics, for example, don't come into existence only when they are discovered. However, being an academic does not relate much with being an intellectual or not. The ones who introduce such and such concepts may be historians or sociologists and need not be intellectuals at all. Indeed, a better definition and I think a more commonly accepted one of intellectuals would be of people who are able to think outside of their own narrow field of expertise (something many academics are simply unable to do), and write on the real or social consequences of their work for example (as Grothendieck brilliantly did). Well that is more in line with being called a polymath isn't it? Which is a word very much out of fashion. I know mine isn't the most common usage of the word intellectual, so if you would like to provide me with a different terminology to make the scientist/intellectual distinction - that is fine. I will use it instead. Just being curious here. In which fields? Biology and evolutionary psychology seem to be at odds with the humanities. Economics is largely isolated from everything else. Like I said before - I wish I knew of someone who had compiled all the instances of such disagreements, but I do not. I only know that I have seen it many times. I was not aware of that, where did you read that? My economics teachers in college were quite attached to the "soft science" label by the way. But those ideas created by the intellectual, they can be analysed by their peers and deemed self-contradictory and worthless for example, so the criterium does not seem very clear to me. The main difference to me is that the intellectual works at a meta level. Needless to say, I agree that the facts pre-exist to their own discovery (it would be absurd to think otherwise), but the theories elaborated to explain them can be seen as mere approximations or rather model of the real, which makes them seem slightly arbitrary. Not really arbitrary, but there is a "creative" part in them, and dreaming about how the real should behave seems definitely an intellectual work. That requires a vision that sometimes pre-exist to any experience, like string theory which was already successfully applied to... mathematics! Things are a bit more complicated when it comes to describing the mathematical real, so I will not write more on that. Well that is more in line with being called a polymath isn't it? Which is a word very much out of fashion. I know mine isn't the most common usage of the word intellectual, so if you would like to provide me with a different terminology to make the scientist/intellectual distinction - that is fine. I will use it instead. It may indeed to refer to this notion (I like very much this word by the way), but more simply, I would simply call an intellectual someone who is able to think of his own field of expertise at a different (higher) level as the one of a simple practitioner. But that does not mean that he is supposed to know about many things outside of his field, Grothendieck (sorry to keep using the same example, but it fits there) had basically no knowledge outside of his mathematical fields of expertise, did not know much of physics or biology either, but was certainly well knowledgeable of religion and mysticism and his philosophic and sociological analysis of the mathematical milieu are very interesting to read. A counter-example would be someone who is just happy being a craftsman and has no interest whatsoever for the implications his work could have in real life. I would have to check precisely to be certain, but a counter-example would be someone like Ulam who never really realised the harmful implications nuclear weapons could cause. Biology and evolutionary psychology seem to be at odds with the humanities. Economics is largely isolated from everything else. Like I said before - I wish I knew of someone who had compiled all the instances of such disagreements, but I do not. I only know that I have seen it many times. But the humanities are not scientific fields so I do not really see the issue here. As would Pascal say: "Contradiction is a bad sign of truth; several things which are certain are contradicted; several things which are false pass without contradiction. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth." Pensées, 384. Only in mathematics is the contradiction impossible to overcome, but even physical theories are contradictory. Economics is in fact more problematic because of the numerous assumptions that are typically made to make possible the use of mathematical models (rational agents, perfect information, etc), which are clearly contradicting what we know about psychology (say). |
| I don't know I've only been here for 1 year lol. But as for me? I've always had a super curious mind with many different interests, and if something particularly interests me enough, I want to know more about it myself (or just go to other sources or read more books on it etc) rather than the one person's opinion, I like to have my own opinion on it, or have some form of actual experience with it also. And often I respond to other users with my knowledge that I've accumulated over a number of years, and I don't think they always know how to respond to me exactly?. Quite alot simply seem to just see one or 2 articles on Google or Wikipedia and come in all guns blazing. No offense to anyone, but that's my observations on it. |
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xLoop said: JustaCrat said: Can we make CD a more intellectually stimulating place? We can but we won't. Why should we put in the efforts when there are better communities to have those conversations? I disagree with the forum rules so from my perspective MAL isn't worth saving. Better communities like?... I would like to know please, recommend me some |
Hydrolik_Ito said: xLoop said: We can but we won't. Why should we put in the efforts when there are better communities to have those conversations? I disagree with the forum rules so from my perspective MAL isn't worth saving. Better communities like?... I would like to know please, recommend me some League of Legends! Try that out, lol. MAL intellectuals? Since when was that a thing? We're just bunch of nerds that loves a medium and we have our own opinions. We express it through ratings, reviews, and forum discussions. That's all there is to it. |
 -[ ~♫~ ll Credit ]- |
| Speaking for the past 7 years that I have been here, the forums are basically the same. |
| You speak as if people have not degraded in general in recent years. Some believe that the American government is a secret pedophile satanic cult, some believe that every white man is obsessed with rape and hatred of women. It's 2021, buddy. |
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me smart other person dumb lololol People don't argue about pseudo-intellectual shit these days because 90% of the arguments on this board just result in an instalock. Flaunting big words you learnt on psychology wiki is a tough profession in the year of our lord 2021. |
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| It was already shit by 2017. Most people on this site lean heavily basic bitch democrat so you're never going to get anywhere "intellectually stimulating" with them or have some honest debate. even back in 2016, the last year that it was really active, most people on CD or CE were bad faith actors. You had an outright refusal to acknowledge real world events and implications of them by numerous people, and then unironic /pol/ refugees poisoning every well they could find. MAL is not the place for intellectual discussion, i have seen everything from TERFs starting page-long flamewars with tankies, to hitler apologist threads. |
 Oh maybe, maybe it's the clothes we wear The tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair Or maybe, maybe it's our nowhere towns or our nothing places But we're trash, you and me We're the litter on the breeze We're the lovers on the streets Just trash, me and you It's in everything we do It's in everything we do |
| @Maenads I am sorry about the very long delay, I had not forgotten about your reply. Maenads said: I read about it from those who would be considered to be successors of the classical schools of economics. So the likes of Friedman, Mises, Hazlitt, Sowell etc. In a lot of places they might not be considered worthy of inclusion into the school curriculum, but I think there is a lot that can be learned from them. Their concern was a methodological one: How should economic theories be formulated? The classical method was that economic theories would be created through deductive reasoning, and then great historical study would be undertaken in an effort to prove or disprove the theories. Keynes general theory turned the study of economics on its head though, and popularized a different way of creating economic theories. The new way was much more in line with the hard sciences - the usage of mathematical models and real world data to extrapolate economic theories. Mises especially insisted that the real world economy was too complex to be accurately represented by any specific mathematical model. There would be so many factors left out that that the predictive power of the model would be so low as to render it effectively untrue, even though the model had been created by honest and legitimate means. So here first the distinction between scientists and intellectuals is born, the scientist discovers reality through experimentation and modeling, while the intellectual first comes to a theory through deductive reasoning, and then studies the reality afterwards. Obviously most fields of study, economics included, will utilize both means, and even possibly at the same time. The second part of the distinction between scientists and intellectuals is, I believe, most well established by Thomas Sowell. He is not speaking about economics but about all academic fields. In the academic fields where the scientific means of discovery are possible (the most apparent being the hard sciences), the intellectual means are ultimately not needed, at least in the end. Where they contradict, the scientific means are presumed to refute the intellectual means, and not vice versa (even though Mises asserted that, only in the study of economics, precisely the opposite was true - which is a claim accepted by seemingly few people.) What this leaves as the primary refuges for the intellectuals are those academic fields which are not scientific in nature to begin with. Think of things such as philosophy, political theory, art critique and so on. To try and come full circle, I started by asking Ryuk why he would call himself an intellectual (not as an insult). The reason for this is because Ryuk is an outspoken social conservative. A general concern from conservative circles is that the intellectuals - the ones who create theories in fields which are unmoored from scientific rigor - are prone to proposing ideas that are hostile to conservatism itself, and also not disprovable. Not many people would willingly style themselves as an anti-intellectual, but if it were possible to clearly define a subset of intellectual (returning to the common interpretation of an intellectual being anyone who makes use of the intellect) pursuit, separate from the scientific studies, it could then become viable to label oneself as such. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of economics (and finance) I have learnt in University (I had a minor in economics), a very mathematical one. Even in the 70s when my father was a student in economics, it was not as mathematical as today. Mises's point is very accurate, and one could argue that people that the degree that people have in some models is closer to the faith than to the rational trust. I did not know of this distinction either, thank you for mentioning it. It is true that in "hard sciences", sometimes, people have a vision that ends up being disproved which clearly proves the superiority of the "scientific side" (as opposed to the "intellectual side"). However, without a vision, people would not have any idea where to go and such influential and ambitious visions were and are still quite common in mathematics for example; Thurston proposed in 1982 a geometrisation conjecture that aimed to classify are three-dimensional spaces (compact manifolds without boundary) falling into only eight models, which was a far generalisation of known results about surfaces known since the beginning of the century (the uniformisation theorem for surfaces that classifies them by a single parameter called the "genus" which is the number of "holes" the surface has). His program prompted many people to work on this topic, develop new tools (Hamilton's Ricci flow) until Perelman solved the conjecture in 2003. And even if his conjecture had been false, the amount of work on this area that was considered hopeless would not have been negligible. I see, it does not seem intellectual under this definition to hold to every past traditions without examining the new proposals that come to contradict with them. Maenads said: Regrettably, I am not familiar with Grothendieck, seeing as anything I do know was self taught. I did not receive any kind of university education. At a first glance, he does appear to be very impressive. I would say (and forgive me for speculating) that Grothendieck was certainly both - an intellectual and a scientist. I realize I am now contradicting what I wrote in an earlier post (which may have been what got your attention) because earlier I wrote in way too absolute of terms. The level of rigor in my earlier posting was not so high, it has to be admitted. I took the shorthand of referring to scientists and intellectuals as if they were two distinct groups, but really what I was referring to was the different methods of inquiry which I explained above. In my own defense, the economists I referred to above also used this shorthand in their own writings. What I know about him (or most of mathematics) is also self-taught, so I do not believe that there is anything negative about that. Thanks a lot for your explanations, I was mistaken about what you truly had in mind. Needless to say, I find this distinction meaningful when it comes to the different methods used in research. Maenads said: A lot of what I wrote above is unintentionally a reply to this part. The issue with non-scientific fields contradicting scientific fields is that scientific discoveries are generally assumed to (and they should be) refute anything that contradicts them. If there is anything to be learned from our discussion - it is that economists are poor at using words in the common sense. "Human action is necessarily always rational. The term 'rational action' is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man...However one twists things, one will never succeed in formulating the notion of 'irrational' action whose 'irrationality' is not founded upon an arbitrary judgment of value." "When applied to the means chosen for the attainment of ends, the terms rational and irrational imply a judgment about the expediency and adequacy of the procedure employed. It is a fact that human reason is not infallible and that man very often errs in selecting and applying means. An action unsuited to the end sought falls short of expectation. It is contrary to purpose, but it is rational, i.e., the outcome of a reasonable — although faulty — deliberation and an attempt — although an ineffectual attempt — to attain a definite goal." -Ludwig Von Mises The term "rational" in the economic world simply means that humans utilize means at their disposal to pursue ends that they desire. It is a non-falsifiable statement. Which is why the efforts of behavioral psychologists to demonstrate that humans are capable of behaving 'irrationally' - are laughable. They haven't even bothered to understand what it is they are trying to disprove. I did not know either of this definition which at least makes a little more convincing the axioms used in economics that agents are rational. However, in the mathematical modelisation, this assumption necessarily translates into statements such that "agents maximise their utility", which means that they always adopt the most rational choice, and this could be criticized in practice since human beings often make poor choices or at least sub-optimal ones. Not at all, thank you for your detailed reply. |
| Idk about four years ago, try a decade. There were actual discussions going on over random things because people were bored. People would play devil's advocate and weren't retarded. It seems all of the actual discussions nowdays are between incels and sjws, and I don't think any of them are trolling. Seems this place went down the shitter. Cya fucking nerds. |
| OK, now that that’s over and done with I must ask @Meusnier for a reply to my comment exchange with you, if you will oblige. |
| Intellectuals. are rare just in general. The way I see it the people that usually fancy themselves "intellectual." usually are not. We tend to have more people that try to shove there egos in peoples faces and pass it off as "intellectualism." nowadays. You can use as many fancy words as you like write as neatly as you want. and be as obsessed with as many ancient peace's of /art/literature/music/movies/anime/etc. as you want. That doesn't make you an intellectual. I don't pretend to be Right about everything. I only speak for my own opinion and world view. And personally if there's one thing we could have less of it is Egotism. Ego is disrespecting others. Self esteem is respecting yourself. Egotism is to believe you are fundamentally right and to try to force everyone else believe that. Self esteem is to know what you like and don't like and accept that not everyone will agree with it. but still hold your ground. I would not call my self an intellectual for the simple fact that I'm a cynical ass and I accept that. |
| "among monsters and humans, there are only two types. Those who undergo suffering and spread it to others. And those who undergo suffering and avoid giving it to others." -Alice “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” David Hume “Evil is created when someone gives up on someone else. It appears when everyone gives up on someone as a lost cause and removes their path to salvation. Once they are cut off from everyone else, they become evil.” -Othinus  |
| i haven't been here in a while but now that CE is gone, MAL's resident crybabies got their wish. the IQ of this place has officially gone down by 40 points. |
Oh maybe, maybe it's the clothes we wear The tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair Or maybe, maybe it's our nowhere towns or our nothing places But we're trash, you and me We're the litter on the breeze We're the lovers on the streets Just trash, me and you It's in everything we do It's in everything we do |
Yomiyuki said: It was already shit by 2017. Most people on this site lean heavily basic bitch democrat so you're never going to get anywhere "intellectually stimulating" with them or have some honest debate. even back in 2016, the last year that it was really active, most people on CD or CE were bad faith actors. You had an outright refusal to acknowledge real world events and implications of them by numerous people, and then unironic /pol/ refugees poisoning every well they could find. MAL is not the place for intellectual discussion, i have seen everything from TERFs starting page-long flamewars with tankies, to hitler apologist threads. >TERFs vs Tankies Trust me, it's still happening today... Also am surprised now that there are other tankie in this site other than me. |
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| it's all the new gen z kids coming of age ;p |
| Buncha fuckin nerds smh Dunno where OP's been these past few years but there's always been plenty of self-proclaimed intellectuals to go around on CD. I'm guessing the problem is that they're all too self-absorbed to communicate with each other. |
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Erg_Orgy said: I'm guessing the problem is that they're all too self-absorbed to communicate with each other.  caught photo of the self proclaimed "MAL intellectual." |
| "among monsters and humans, there are only two types. Those who undergo suffering and spread it to others. And those who undergo suffering and avoid giving it to others." -Alice “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” David Hume “Evil is created when someone gives up on someone else. It appears when everyone gives up on someone as a lost cause and removes their path to salvation. Once they are cut off from everyone else, they become evil.” -Othinus |
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