So I do this, a lot. Rogan is a good example I struggle with. I regularly go I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about. It isn’t relegated to just Rogan.
Musk was another awful one when you first get into him.
This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
I almost have to shake my head and snap out of it.
My favorite analogy is that parasocial relationships are the Doritos of socialization: appealing. delicious, addictive, can temporarily keep hunger at bay—but fundamentally not satiating, lacking in essential nutrients, and unhealthy when they displace their original natural & more nutritious alternatives.
These relationships are on both sides (e.g AOC on the left).
It's kind of inescapable in modern politics, because it's effective at getting people elected and/or making money. It's not the worst way to get elected; certainly better than relying on narrow donor class money. Just .. recognize the limitations of it.
So instead of being a Rogan stan for those weird years in High School, you are grown ass 30 year year old Stan who’s been stanning for 5 years now minimum.
Adults today don’t know how to snap out of the high school shit they easily snapped out of after high school. It’s like we’re in a high school that never ends.
I think the issue with being an adult is that you often think you've outgrown childish inclinations. In actuality, I find adults will act childishly and then assume, because they are adults, their behavior must be mature and taken seriously.
Until I dropped social media, I was getting Rogan links all the time.
Because sometimes the crazy cult leader ends up being right, revival (much like the religious revivals of the 1830s in the US) and making a big change when society is in flux is just something in our blood. Problem is right now nobody wants to actually buy 60,000 acres of undeveloped land to get it all started, they just want to profit off of people via parasocial relationships.
I didn't think this was in any way confusing or surprising, and never thought this had anything to do with love.
Isn't this the position of most people?
Plenty of couples started with "oh he's so cute and funny" / "I love listening to her jokes", and few years later found themselves retelling those stories to a wide audience, at their wedding.
"I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric."
(if you've never read the whole thing, it's worth it, far beyond the list)
I don't understand asking non-experts their opinion on basically anything.
And that's what these people are. They provide a comforting sense of moral certainty and judgement; they define enemies, usually a nebulous Them; they're satisfying to listen to; and they publish on a schedule to reinforce the little ritual of listening to them. You've heard the adhan and you are called.
> This has to be a form of non-sexual attraction I think. I’m not gay, but how is this not gay? Like, what the fuck, am I in love with these people?
People have somehow lost all the words for communicating relationships between people that aren't sexual. Although the "fan" relationship can get pretty weird at times. It's interesting to hear from someone who's liminal enough to realize that they're inside the experience but also knows what's wrong with it. Thank you for this post.
> I wonder what Joe Rogan thinks about this, on subjects I know he doesn’t know shit about or is just plain wrong about
See also "Gell-Mann amnesia" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
You see someone make sense of a complex topic, be able to cut through bullshit and appearances, you can use that as a "character witness". Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too. There are a few people who I see to be often proven right.
Clearly there is a middle ground, we should not blindly follow some authority, but some skills generalize, and some people may be worth listening to on general topics, and not just the ultra-specialized experts.
That people do pay attention to the Tomas Pueyos of the world is a problem - but not because it's impossible not to, just because they're doing it!
Scientific people who are outside of a field that has institutional scientific blindness problems are absolutely allowed to call out that bullshit when we see it. We don’t get upset when a non chiropractor says that chiropractors are hucksters. I should not be lumped in with Covid deniers for pointing out that most disease experts massive undervalued and underutilized air ventilation techniques (an example technique would be doing regular activities, like classes, outside)
Meanwhile I saw a friend of mine who actually is an immunology PhD get driven off Twitter in 2020 by angry mobs.
Is considering oneself an omniscient Oracle the right approach?
> If you have access to the opinion of people who devoted their whole lives to the field in question, why would you seek it from an influencer that perhaps gained fame from being an authority in a couple of non-related fields?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)
For myself, the domain(s) that the "influencer" has skills within is crucially important, as certain domains encompass or intersect with almost all others.
This is an interesting comment section from certain specific perspectives, but if one lacks the necessary background you could miss out on the show entirely.
But do they really cut through bullshit and appearances? The individuals that the author has mentioned are mostly oversimplifying the world.
> Maybe that person has solid thought processes and may get other complex issues right too.
That's the issue here - treating real world issues as a though experiment. It creates solutions that are very appealing to people who perceive themselves as thinkers. The ideas are usually simple, round, fair, based on some fairness coming from nature or math, but they completely discard the complexity of the problem. As soon as you start adding corner cases it solution fails.
You can see that as well in software engineering - if only we could simplify the problem we're trying to solve, the solution would be so clean!
> But dear reader see this pattern for what it is... every 6 months I find someone new to obsess over... Without fail, each one of comes to disappoint.
Serial obsessive fixation seems a problem right there in itself. There's a deep need that isn't being satisfied. What is it?
> says something that completely violates the narrative. How fascinating.
A rebel! One validated by popular opinion no less!
The problem is, no matter how many rebellious public intellectuals we binge on, it will not take one any closer to being that rebellious and fascinating person. Escape from such a cycle is to jump directly to being that which you wish to be. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200.
Find what is so odious in this "narrative" of which you speak, and loudly denounce it!
But beware, if you like to have friends. Instead of being the cool, interesting person at the party, who knows all the latest, internet-celebrity-validated talking points, you will be the bus loony in the anorak who people avoid. Trust me, I've lived it for 40 years. With some guile you can go to ground disguised as university professor for a while.
I do feel that the author has some interesting personality trait - but I'm not sure if he's in the minority.
After writing my comment I have realised that maybe it's why I never understood the appeal of Twitter. I have never had any "gurus" or "authorities" that I'd universally respect. I could never understand why would I follow some individual on twitter - why would I care? When I read that the author says he follows that "person" so deeply, watching their videos for hours, I completely can not relate. Neither on logical nor emotional level.
I might dig into a topic, let's say, siege of Berlin during II WW, but I'd be focusing on the topic and the source / author will be completely irrelevant. I'll even probably select various ones, as I enjoy challenging my own perspective.
Not me. What I would like to follow is a topic that interests me, with discourse predominantly populated by subject matter experts. "User-based" follow systems like Twitter only make sense insamuch as the user sticks to their expertise, and as soon as they start veering away into new topics their comments are just as likely to be noise as the average schmuck, and I don't know why I would want to waste my time deliberately consuming noise.
What you describe wanting, is what academic journals are. Subject matter experts discussing that subject matter with one another. Social media is not for you, and that's fine.
What other people are describing, is more like, an author writes a book you enjoy; so you read another book of theirs. There is enjoyment in their prose style and personal voice, and so they seek out more of the same.
And maybe the first book was a scifi or mystery novel, and the next book you find by that author is a non-fiction history of egypt, or a genetics textbook. You will likely still enjoy reading that book.
Sometimes that author can even be an expert on all such topics; Issac Asimov existed, after all. But when people are reading for entertainment, they'll be less picky.
Not really. I'd rather follow a site with news in topics that are of my interests (e.g. https://electrek.co/) than some short-form messages of an individual. If these tweets would be containing links to their blog then I'd rather check the blog occasionally.
Because if someone puts out good tweets at a reasonable frequency, then following them means you will have good tweets in your feed at a reasonable frequency.
You might also get a lot of terrible tweets in your feed, but that's fine, that's how Twitter works, you just scroll past the terrible stuff.
It's not a million miles of subscribing to a newspaper. You don't expect every piece to be good, but as long as there are a few good things every week, it may be worth it.
It's an odd word.
What I found is that almost every random bore at the pub has a wealth of interesting stuff to say. You just have to tease it out. You have to work at conversations. It's a bit of a lost art imho.
The first step is always to get the topic off the mainstream (stop exchanging platitudes) by showing an interest in some marginal personal remark. Doesn't work for everyone of course. And some people just don't want to.
Living in Finland I learned the art of just being quiet around others and that "interesting company" can be hanging out without words, say just appreciating a walk together.
Conversations (on the surface level) have become narrow.
It's the pursuit to reveal a very specific meaning, and the connections around it. It won't go anywhere.. people will want freedom from it.
Both of your examples have a very strong technical component, either understanding the underlying biology/epidemiology or understanding war theory and practice. It is indeed unlikely that someone is an expert in both.
But many important topics have far fewer, if any, objective truths attached to it. In the case of covid restrictions, opinions should obviously be founded on science, but science can only inform our moral choices, not make them for us. Is the damage done to developing minds worth locking down schools if it reduces the spread of covid? Can there be a state/societal mandate to force people to stay in their homes, or even to get vaccinated?
You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
Maybe that's the issue with me. The more I learn, over years, the more cautious I become about forming an opinion. It's very rare that things are black or white, I can see it being all very grey. So if I see someone describing, with full confidence, that this is good and that is bad, without all that load of middle-tones, it just makes me feel that they either are not too smart or do not have good intentions.
> You can come to very different conclusions based on how your worldview is constructed, and I think the sign of a true intellectual is that they can coherently describe theirs, and make other intellectuals understand it, even if they are diametrically opposed to it.
I can see the appeal here. What I do not understand is, why would you approach that person as an authority?
Yes, it's much easier to paint the whole world one color than trying to paint it in two colors: you'd have to make distinctions and that's quite hard. But on the other hand, if two colors are not enough to paint the whole world, surely one color is even less enough?
Yep. Naturally, there is a weird social pressure to have an opinion now even if it ends up being just wrong later. Somehow just waiting is not acceptable. You need to take a stance and declare yourself as team A or team B ( or more ), which only adds to the further tribalization of our discourse.
When I was a teen I saw the world as black and white.
When I got in college I knew they are all grey.
And now I understand there are different shades of grey. Most of time we have no enough information to tell, but sometimes it's worth to look closely to distinguish them.
Opinions are not based on knowledge or certainty.. they're opinions.
I miss when opinions were a thing you said to get the 'nothing' out and a probative suggestion that started conversations.
Locking opinion down to knowledge and certainty is essentially non-sensical in English.
The old saying was 'opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one'. Perfectly encapsulates how serious opinions are.... not at all serious, by design.
Because that was how you began life.
Your parents (and later/lesser, primary school teachers) were the source of answers on nearly everything.
There’s probably something quite natural about transferring a belief of being competent/knowledgeable in one area into some expectation of the same in another area. It's the underpinning of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy.
It certainly works in the opposite direction: someone whom you know to pontificate out their backside on one topic, that expectation holds for the next, randomly chosen topic as well.
It's the adage of "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail."
Intelligent people have a full toolbox to analyze things with but domain experts tend to only have increasingly large hammers.
Citation needed. This sounds like a Rationalist power fantasy which doesn't fit my experience of the world at all.
it does make sense, you can understand multiple things. especially after researching it.
The people with the knowledge/experience are often busy doing real world stuff
For others, producing that content is the "best" thing they can do with their time, but ironically that means you probably don't want to listen to them
I should start a list of red flags in my notes. “Inflammation” comes to mind as well as any sort of explanation that invokes evolutionary biology or neuroscience.
Anyway, basically what I'm saying is, if the CO2 levels go above 500ppm in my room, I get extreme brain fog.
I think author understanding of the world is not wrong, but his approach - definitely. He expects to find some "wise man" who would have answers on all the world problems, sort of a panacea-man, which is clearly not a smart approach.
If someone was an expert for covid-related topics, why would you even watch this peron videos analysing Ukraine war? That makes zero sense.