@prologic@twtxt.net hmm, dunno about the recency of that line of thought. I suspect though that given his (recent or not) history, if someone directly asked him “do you support rape” he would not say “no”, he’d go on one of these rambling answers about property crime like he did in the video. Maybe I’m mind poisoned by being around academics my whole career, but that way of talking is how an academic gives you an answer they know will be unpopular. PhD = Piled Higher And Deeper, after all right? In other words, if he doesn’t say “no” right away, he’s saying “yes”, except with so many words there’s some uncertainty about whether he actually meant yes. And he damn well knows that, and that’s why I give him no slack.

There are people in academia who believe adult men should be able to have sex with children, legally, too. They use the same manner of talking about it that Peterson uses. We need to stop tolerating this, and draw hard red lines. No, that’s bad, no matter how many words you use to say it. No, don’t express doubts about it, because that provides justification and talking points to the people who actually carry out the acts.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci So.. Glad we’re talking about something I can relate to, instead of the “man” (which I care little for really). So tell me… Let’s assume for a moment that an answer to a question would be met with so many words you don’t know what the answer was at all. Why? Why do this? Is this a stereotype of academics and philosophers? If so, it’s not a very straight-forward way of thinking, let alone answering a simple question.

There are people in academia who believe adult men should be able to have sex with children, legally, too

That’s disgusting. I take great offense to this. Don’t ever let me meet such persons 🤣

@prologic@twtxt.net

Let’s assume for a moment that an answer to a question would be met with so many words you don’t know what the answer was at all. Why? Why do this? Is this a stereotype of academics and philosophers? If so, it’s not a very straight-forward way of thinking, let alone answering a simple question.

Well, I can’t know what’s in these peoples’ minds and hearts. Personally I think it’s a way of dissembling, of sowing doubt, and of maintaining plausible deniability. The strategy is to persuade as many people as possible to change their minds, and then force the remaining people to accept the idea because they think too many other people believe it.

Let’s say you want, for whatever reason, to get a lot of people to accept an idea that you know most people find horrible. The last thing you should do is express the idea clearly and concisely and repeat it over and over again. All you’d accomplish is to cement people’s resistance to you, and label yourself as a person who harbors horrible ideas that they don’t like. So you can’t do that.

What do you do instead? The entire field of “rhetoric”, dating back at least to Plato and Aristotle (400 years BC), is all about this. How to persuade people to accept your idea, even when they resist it. There are way too many techniques to summarize in a twt, but it seems almost obvious that you have to use more words and to use misleading or at least embellished or warped descriptions of things, because that’s the opposite of clearly and concisely expressing yourself, which would directly lead to people rejecting your idea.

That’s how I think of it anyway.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Well I think its stupid. It doesn’t fool me (even if some ideas I find “okay” and “acceptable”, and others I find questionable at best). Using too many words is frankly inefficient and just confusing, I actually think of people that cannot speak concisely and clearly (as you put it) as not confident in what they’re saying, or just non-articulate in the first place.

@prologic@twtxt.net maybe it doesn’t fool you, but it fools lots of people and has for thousands of years. That’s why politicians (for instance) keep doing it.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Oh yes, if we’re talking “rhetoric” or what I like to call “talking a whole bunch of nothing”, politician are exceptionally good at this. THey can dorna on for ~20mins or more and say absolutely fucking nothing of value or meaning. It’s hilariously sad to watch.

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s a fun challenge to see how many words you can say without expressing any ideas at all. Maybe this GPT stuff should be trained to do that!

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I would agree, but it feels like GPT already does that. :)

Indubitably, it would be an intellectually stimulating and intellectually invigorating exercise to endeavor to craft a prose devoid of any substantive idea or notion. To partake in such a linguistic activity, one must embrace the aphorism that the beauty of language lies not in its utilitarian function but rather in the aesthetic pleasure of its form. The pursuit of such an objective requires a mastery of language that transcends the pedestrian concerns of conveying meaning and instead focuses on the artful arrangement of words and phrases into a mosaic of syntactical structure. One must be cautious, however, not to fall into the trap of mistaking verbal acrobatics for genuine intellectual profundity. For while it may be entertaining to indulge in a linguistic parlor game, it is ultimately through the substantive and coherent expression of ideas that we achieve true intellectual enlightenment.

@shreyan@mstdn.social Ahahahahah 🤣 Did you write that or generate it? 🤔

@prologic@twtxt.net Generated haha 😆