Quote:
Originally Posted by DVaut1
It's OK but I still feel like anyone who is using internet message boards to craft a worldview probably needs a library card or something. There are definitely some smart posters here but let's not forget: 1) there's a huge, built-in provincialism here -- guessing it's mostly wealthier white dudes who largely had a middle-class or up western style education and 2) even if the top 5% of posters are pretty smart, the quantity of people really worth listening to is still less than like a dozen. There's not THAT many active posters here.
This sounds like the snooty 'read a book, get off my lawn' style but it's true. There's literally lifetimes worth of books on history, philosophy, and politics written by brilliant people or subject matter experts who dedicated a lifetime of study to the subject. Many of those works, especially books written in the last 100 years or so, usually have gone through some form of editing or peer review, even if it's informal.
Modern technology has allowed some of this to be distilled and summarized into podcasts or audiobooks, and even an hour on Google can provide a highly curated lists of books about these kinds of topics so you can even separate the wheat from the chaff there. All of those forms allow for far more depth than what a message board really allows. Tons of modern experts are accessible on twitter or email or whatever if you want interaction.
Minor anecdote: I got very interested in late Roman era depopulation/environmental determinism type arguments (e.g., basically the idea that the plague and ending of southern European/Mediterranean climatic optimums led to the degradation of the Roman Empire beginning in the 2nd century). You can email this guy -- a PhD with a speciality in late antiquity -- and he'll respond in like a day or less, and you can tell he's passionate about talking Rome and stuff.
2p2 is entertainment and should be treated as such. People who strive for 'actual progress' on the forum are almost surely doing it wrong. I don't doubt like genuine, meaningful discourse can happen but there's still a huge signal/noise ratio here.
There's really no reason people should be building their world views from forums or embracing something like anarchocapitalism or communism or liberalism because of what other posters on 2p2 are saying, other than laziness or being myopic. Those are understandable failures but let's admit they are failures. I get it if 2p2 is like an entry point to something better and deeper; but that's it's value, at most.
I am lifetime lurker, i almost never post here. You are missing a very important value of 2+2 (and similar venues): if you are smart, you find some solace reading posts in places like this.
Internet discussions are so full of ****, so often, that's it can be honestly really depressing. You can lose faith in humanity so easily without places like this. With that i don't mean some adolescent emo crap. I mean starting to think that humanity is really a bunch of mostly disgusting living beings that deserve nothing but pain and suffering for most of their existence because they choose to throw away what makes us different from every other living being (rationality). Following american politics, i started to hate, in a real sense, trump voters for example. With hate i mean i actively hope and desire their suffering. This happened so quickly, brexit was the first big shock to me, seeing other "normal" human being as active enemies, people whose activity, and political commitment, is detrimental in a real and direct way to my life (as an european living in a failry moderate society -italy- i am not accostumed to real political fight, with living with enemies, people that i would love to see die in an agonizing cancer as my neighbours). Sometimes you are simply filled by joy to find that someone answered in a rational way to something, in a very similar way to what you would have answered. I find this happening to me all the time i read this section of this forum.
I can also find smart people who are really committed to some topics in this forum, and reading them talking about what they know is always interesting.
In a way , a find strong similarities in this section of 2+2 with lesswrong forums of a bygone era. Very smart median poster, very smart answers (compared to normal internet discussion venues).
Some people don't have the luxury/luck of being in constant contact with "top minds "(top 1-5% iq-education-attitude minds, with a lot of spare time to chat about life and stuff), and places like this are nothing short of what makes them (me?) going on in a world filled to the top with human scum.
Back to the topic, i see Acism as a normal direction of exploration for inquisitive and rational minds, it makes sense on surface for hyper-rational people, and you need to dig deep to find its inconstincencies and mistakes.
And i disagree with the idea that crafting your worldview through conversation with other rational people is the wrong way to do it. Reading stale literature, even if top quality one, isn't the same as discussing almost in real time among smart people some topic.
Last edited by Luciom; 03-25-2017 at 06:54 PM.
