Re:The Death of a Public Intellectual
by jimmydddd on Monday October 30, 2023 @11:21AM
(#38070573)
A cousin of mine in her 20's has a podcast. I listened in on one and was surprised to hear that whe was giving out financial and investing advice. For context, she lives with her husband in his childhood bedroom with her inlaws, and works two or three days a week as a health professional. She has virtually no savings or investments, relies on her inlaws for food, and has an expensive Jeep on a 6 year loan. Interesting to think that folks are listening to her advice as though she is an expert.
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I can believe it. There are those skilled at performative intellectualism, i.e. sounding very smart and insightful, but the performance itself is the product, it is all they sell and offer. Whenever I hear a public speaker appealing to supposed ancient wisdom of obscure tribes and traditions who had better-than-modern diets, laws, monetary policy, medicine, footwear (or lack iof), etc then that tells me that it’s just more hucksterism
Also, it just takes a lot of time to produce that kind of content
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’ve begun noticing this performative art play out more and more often on HN lately, especially in threads regarding medicine and healthcare. Apparently everyone became an armchair doctor and got their public policy degrees while on lockdown. It usually leads to a deep discussion with just one comment buried in the middle of the stack going “uhm, wtf?”
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.
The gut is the second brain. I've learned this after I've cured my self-diagnosed ADHD via peptides. (I still take Adderall tho)
Anyway, basically what I'm saying is, if the CO2 levels go above 500ppm in my room, I get extreme brain fog.