View Single Post
Old 04-10-2018, 10:11 AM   #478
CorsiHockeyLeague
Franchise Player
 
CorsiHockeyLeague's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Exp:
Default

I'm not sure what it has to do with Jordan Peterson, but that debate is fairly pointless. Harris's game is pop philosophy, while Klein's game is politics. The two games have very different rules. Philosophy is aimed at a sober analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of ideas, while politics is about winning - ensuring that the ideology you think will do the most good (however you define good) wins prevalence in society and does its work. Those two games have entirely different sets of rules for discourse as a necessary result of having different aims. In politics, virtue signalling and tasting opponents to the greatest degree you can manage to get away with is all to the good. In philosophy, it's irrelevant and obnoxious behaviour.

People like Harris who want to play the philosophy game are understandably pissed off when someone tries to come after them playing politics. However, this is where the "pop" side of his philosophical bent comes in: he's applying philosophical methods of discussion to current events that are clearly primarily going to be treated politically. He's essentially coming into Klein's home turf and throwing his weight around, then acting surprised and hurt when Klein treats him like anyone else in the politics sphere. The right response, if you want to do philosophy about current events but not get caught up in this, is to simply state outright that X person is dishonestly smearing me for political reasons, and we have different interests that don't overlap even though we happen to be discussing some similar topics. Then leave him to do his thing for his own audience. And if it rises to defamation, fine; sue him. But stop taking these people so seriously.

I mean the guy literally came on and said he'd tallied up the number of black and white guests on Harris's show and found those numbers to be a problem. What more do you need to hear from him before you stop wasting your time?
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
CorsiHockeyLeague is offline   Reply With Quote