“Bullies” and “the educated” are not mutually exclusive.
You’re playing off stereotypes. The people who rise to the top are the smartest people in the room, but they’re also determined and can also be ruthless when it counts.
“Nerds” who don’t have the drive, confidence, or ability, end up no better than anyone else (maybe worse off), but you don’t need to be a nerd to be educated.
There's a fine line between pursuing your own interests and trampling over someone else's, and the two aren't mutually exclusive.
There are certainly driven and smart people who are also moral, with great "success". I'm assuming we are referring to success in more of a material/status kind of way. There are also lots of a-holes who get ahead by being a-holes. In many higher paying fields, being the a-hole bully is the skill.
While many smart people do succeed, there are lots of people at the "top" who aren't smart and got there through connections and/or screwing others over.
I think this snap back towards tribalism is culture shock due to the mass information being readily available at everyone's finger tips, nothing could have braced our culture for this transition and some sort of cultural spasm was bound to occur. I think it is inherent that knowledge breeds refinement and in the long run this is just a hiccup.
Are we really experiencing a "snap back".
It seems to me just part of the constant feeling that society is crumbling, that's existed all throughout history. To me, the bigger danger is using this false perception to rationalize taking away freedoms.
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If you can stomach Joe Rogan fawning over his man crush for that long. He loves JP.
Sounds like they are friends, but I was impressed that he pushed him a few times in this interview. It was refreshing to see someone push JP for explainations without outright attacking him. Called him out for getting too fired up sometimes, asked him about his answer on the Jim Jefferies bit, etc. Thought it was a good talk.
Especially the last half hour on his daughters diet. Which I think has been split out in a separate 30min clip. Very interesting. JPs diet sounds insane, but I read a bit of his daughters blog afterwards and she’s really turned things around solely on diet.
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If you can stomach Joe Rogan fawning over his man crush for that long. He loves JP.
I'm a huge fan of Joe Rogan's style of interviewing. I don't think he is "fawns" over his guest. He has a true talent for disarming people and letting them explain their positions, without himself getting argumentative. He's had far crazier and out there guests than Peterson, and he adopts a similar style of interview.
I do think Rogan's personal politics skirt the "intellectual dark web" a bit too much for me. But he's also very good at putting his own politics aside when speaking with guests. I wouldn't state that Rogan agrees with Peterson, but he definitely has respect for him. I personally think that Peterson is manipulative and definitely exploits the worst behaviour of the left to rationalize his own bigoted beliefs (a tactic common among the far left as well). You do have to respect Peterson's willingness to speak his mind and his ability to articulate himself. That's more where Rogan is coming from in the interview.
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Some of Rogan's recent guests include Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McGinnes, Ted Nugent, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. He loves giving a platform to the right wing and alt right guys but won't extend the same courtesy to anyone of substance on the left.
Some of Rogan's recent guests include Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McGinnes, Ted Nugent, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. He loves giving a platform to the right wing and alt right guys but won't extend the same courtesy to anyone of substance on the left.
More like Abby Martin... though I have no idea why you'd want to watch that, she certainly qualifies as the leftiest sort of lefty that ever left, and she's been on there a whole slough of times.
I'm just not sure how you get through 3 hours of basically shooting the ####. Rogan is just not a super interesting podcast, from my (admittedly limited) experience with it.
__________________ "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
I listen to Rogan only when he has interesting guests on, but generally I think he's a blowhard. I don't think he challenges his guests hard AT ALL.
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The appeal of guys like Rogan and Sam Harris is they have lengthy and in-depth discussions with people of different beliefs. We need more of that.
And if those guys are too 'dark web', then lets have some progressives step up to the plate and do the same. Long interviews, complex and contentious subjects, disagreements but no judging. Anyone have any links to where I can find that on offer from progressives?
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Last edited by CliffFletcher; 07-05-2018 at 06:11 PM.
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Sam Harris is actually intelligent enough to really get into a topic with his guests, though, and you get interesting information out of it. He can talk in a sophisticated way about complex topics, from genetics to epistemology. Rogan's just some guy. He operates at a superficial level.
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Some of Rogan's recent guests include Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McGinnes, Ted Nugent, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. He loves giving a platform to the right wing and alt right guys but won't extend the same courtesy to anyone of substance on the left.
Unfortunately Rogan has attracted more of a right wing audience. It started with his criticisms of Hillary Clinton and the "safe "spaces". I don't think you have to be right wing be to see the problem she those issue. Since YouTube revenues are all about views, many of his recent guests have been leaning right. He was also using the "intellectual dark media" label to his benefit, so he invited most of that group to his show.
That being said, he consistently brings on guests who are pro-evolution, pro-recreational drug use, pro-gun control, etc.. and some are quite far left. Upcoming guests include Elon Musk, Chris Hatfield, and several left wing comedians. I don't think it's fair to say that his show doesn't give prominent left wing figures a chance.
Last edited by blankall; 07-05-2018 at 07:18 PM.
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We're so accustomed to media echo-chambers that people can't get their heads around the idea of genuinely diverse guests and topics. You aren't tainted with sin just because you have a right-leaning guest or provocateur on your show.
And pretty much all of the 'intellectual dark web' people are pro-evolution, pro-recreational drug use, pro-gun control, etc. I honestly don't get why the label conservative gets slapped on them. Are we really so far gone that whether you subscribe to identity politics is the one true barometer of whether someone is left or right?
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The appeal of guys like Rogan and Sam Harris is they have lengthy and in-depth discussions with people of different beliefs. We need more of that.
And if those guys are too 'dark web', then lets have some progressives step up to the plate and do the same. Long interviews, complex and contentious subjects, disagreements but no judging. Anyone have any links to where I can find that on offer from progressives?
For one, pairing Rogan and Harris on the same level is ridiculous to the point of parody.
Two, “disagreements but no judging” doesn’t not accurately describe either of these two, when met with people they disagree with on particular issues. Maybe you meant “disagreeing without disparaging,” which could be said about Harris, but certainly not about Rogan.
Third, I find it odd that you keep pulling out the red herring, “Where are the progressives? Where are the progressives?” You yourself have said you find the left, or “progressives” much more worth addressing than the right, but it seems like Harris (and Rogan, again if you feel he’s even remotely worthy of being in the same breath) disproportionately gives conservative and right-leaning guests an audience over progressive or left-leaning guests.
Doesn’t it seem odd to you that someone like Harris, who rejects progressives and tribalism as you do, has a guest-list of people that primarily agree with that stance?
Basically all you need to do to understand that is to try to listen to his podcasts with Maryam Namazie or Omer Aziz. I just listened to his latest one, which is with Masha Gessen, who is pretty solidly left-leaning on basically every issue besides MeToo, but he has explained that when he has right leaning guests on - Peterson, Shapiro - he spends most of his time disagreeing with them, but the conversation proceeds in good faith. It's honest disagreement. That simply isn't the way much of the left does business these days... try watching him talk to Cenk if you need another example.
__________________ "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
Basically all you need to do to understand that is to try to listen to his podcasts with Maryam Namazie or Omer Aziz. I just listened to his latest one, which is with Masha Gessen, who is pretty solidly left-leaning on basically every issue besides MeToo, but he has explained that when he has right leaning guests on - Peterson, Shapiro - he spends most of his time disagreeing with them, but the conversation proceeds in good faith. It's honest disagreement. That simply isn't the way much of the left does business these days... try watching him talk to Cenk if you need another example.
Except guests like Peterson and Shapiro, who he spends time disagreeing with, agree with Harris’s large focus centred around progressives and “the left.”
Essentially, Harris seems to choose people that agree with him on some topics he finds most important, and disagrees on a few others, to round out a debate amongst friendlies. If he was as concerned with addressing the left head-on, he’d put in a bigger effort to have more left-leaning guests, but he doesn’t because “it’s harder”?
How can we confront this scary version of the left, if it makes even the most intelligent podcasters to uncomfortable to do so? Why can’t Harris control a debate with progressives he disagrees with?
I guess it depends on how you define “control” of a debate. At a certain point, as someone like Harris, you have to consider the quality of the product you’re putting out as well as how you’d actually like to spend your time. In his case, it seems that his greatest interest lies in mindfulness meditation, consciousness, and things along that line. In any case, his range of guests is pretty diverse.
The aforementioned podcast with dweebs like that Omer Aziz speak to the “quality” element I’m referring to, though. It’s not that engaging with nefarious progressives always has to go that way - and it often doesn’t - but as a podcaster you want to be mindful of not frequently miring your listeners in hours of conversational stalemate.
