Conspiracy theory supporters make themself think that they think independent, free from a herd, but they just bleat with the other herd (of black sheep.)
I tend to see independent thinkers not as people free of influences on their opinions, but rather as people free from holding a partizan line, that are able to cross the aisles on an issue-by-issue basis and recognize when their traditional sides gets an issue wrong for the sake of seeking the truth rather then seeking to be right.
‘Street smart’ is something you only learn while living among the underclasses of society for a reasonable period of time. The way these people behave is somewhat different to how we behave. The ultimate prizes are the same but how they are achieved is different.
Thank you for uploading. From my experience, streets smarts is the "ability" to be successful in social spaces where basic human "necessities" have been taken away and/or being threatened. To comment on the issues of social construction and independent thinking that were mentioned. From Camus and my superficial understanding of other works within phenomenology, it becomes evident that most people do not understand the boundaries of their knowledge. I couldn't imagine trying to be "independent" without knowing from what I am independent . Lastly, it is possible that the "science explainer" phenomenon in the US is deeply rooted in their historical fascination with pragmatism.
Vlado, I absolutely adore you, but as an ex-Soviet citizen, you of all people should know that, especially among the philosophy graduates in Eastern European societies, being a bus driver until recently had a double digit chance 😉
well... my definition between "book smart versus street smart" is whether you want to live life or learn about life... in the end it's a balance... i like to "showcase" a little remembered fact of the american colonial history which has the story of the "salem witch hunt"... well, harvard educated persons instigated them, investigated them, prosecuted them and judged them as well as gained financial wealth and status from them ( harvard university was endowed with money from them as well )... and it took an uneducated old pirate to stop them.... point of it is that "highly educated person" does not equate to moral or good...
You strike me as a "Street smart-bookworm" 🤣 Honestly, your approach to open thinking has made me reevaluate my internal dialogue. Thank you for making me think!
I'm not even sure what the term street smart even means, to me it seems quite subjective, but then again intellectual probably is as well. I would imagine someone being street smart as being someone who knows how non academic people living in the real world and not in a bubble think. They can and do interact well with people on the street, hence where the term comes from, and so know how people in this kind of environment are thinking. Does this make them smart? I would say with the amount of disinformation and propaganda pumped in their direction maybe not. Maybe street smart really means being able to take this and analyse it to their own advantage so having the best of both worlds, but to be honest I will don't really know what it means, apart from not academia, although we you say Vlad seems to be both, although I don't know his background, apart from broadly from what he's told us about his life, so it's hard to know.
@@mattpotter8725 IMHO "street smarts" are a combination of common sense, emotional intelligence and situational awareness. It's knowledge that can't be taught in books. In my area of the world it's usually posed as "street smarts and book smarts". Other names are "town vs gown". For example, my Dad taught me to keep a baseball or glove if I'm carrying a baseball bat. Why would you do that? That's street smarts. Love from NYC ❤️
@@SlpBeauty333 Thanks for this, I've heard the term "town vs gown" before and I think it goes to confirm what I already thought, and even though I think I also implied that it was common sense, emotional intelligence, and situational awareness them you for putting it in a better way. When you say street smarts can't be taught I am guessing you mean in an academic setting because you then go on to say your dad taught you? This makes perfect sense to me. Street smarts is about being able to live well in a situation where you maybe don't have much money and therefore have to use other ways to survive and prosper, and even have respect from those around you? Finally I think I understand your comment about the casing carrying of baseball or glove when carrying a bat but just wanted to make sure (to check whether I'm street smart). I'm guessing that some people carry a bat for protection (or even as a weapon), but if you also have a ball of glove anyone might think you're on your way to play and not having the bat with you for protection? Maybe I'm wrong.
@@mattpotter8725 I'm so sorry for the delayed reply. I didn't see it right away. Yes, you're right about the bat vs bat and glove/ball! One of the lawyers for Dolt45 actually had one on his wall with "Justice" on it? Rachel Maddow had a field day with that one! Street smarts are just really hard to define but it's like a topic in my field called "number sense". No one can really define it but you know when you see it. It's a very amorphous thing! Love from NYC ❤️
A girl in Russia on 1420 channel was asked who is more free, people in USA 🇺🇸 or people in Russia 🇷🇺? She responded people in Russia 🇷🇺 because you can pay a bribe and get away with anything… not sure if she was being sarcastic. Is this a serious philosophical or moral position a person could take? How would you break this down philosophically?
@@VladVexlerPhilosophy Being English and often thinking, this was pre 2010 or thereabouts, that we were relatively low in terms of corruption, which the original comment by the Russian girl mentioned pointed at, it seems as the years have gone on that our corruption was just hidden behind the veil of the class system and privilege and that it just went on behind closed doors. Whilst I wouldn't want to live in Russia, and we are definitely more free, our levers on those in power are still controlled by vested interests, especially those who own large media corporations and donate large amounts of money to the election campaigns of those in power, so it takes a bit scandal or crisis to shift the needle of public opinion, and makes me wonder how free we are if we can be manipulated to vote against our own interests, en masse, so easily. I don't know if this is philosophical, it's my take. What do you think?
00:00 Book smarts vs street smarts 04:48 "Independent thinkers" and opinion capture 11:10 Social construction of knowledge & Individual vs collective explanation 19:45 Public intellectuals today 22:15 Legitimacy in politics Go to my main channel ruclips.net/user/VladVexlervideos You can now support Vlad's work on Patreon! www.patreon.com/vladvexler Support Vlad via PayPal www.paypal.com/paypalme/vladvexler?country.x=GB&locale.x=en_GB
Thanks Vlad, I liked your definition of political legitimacy. How would you handle the American Tea Party and Maga's claims regarding their electoral system? It appears to me that the college system is so flawed that regardless of one's political commitments, the legitimacy of the result of an election can be challenged? In Australia we have Institutionalized the removal Gerrymandering the vote. All political parties respect the vote.
7 min ish in.. Its all well and good being an independent thinker, but... It does not do you a lot of good if no one else agrees with the way you independently thought....my experience is that the loudest idiot in the room is usually the one who gets heard I am sure that there will be some bright spark in Russia who independently thought "hey, this Ukraine thing might not be such a good idea!"......eleven months later......?
Talking about “book” smart, what is your view on the role “books” will have in our society in the near future? With Apple, Microsoft, ZOOM, RUclips, Audiobook, etc…will “books” become obsolete? And could “that” give an opportunity to some people/government to “re-write” history? P.S. Agree with you on panacotta, but love tiramisu 😅
This is why I started collecting books in 1995, including uni texts along with science, history, economics, all with facts & dates. As a bonus, I have been able to show my son (in uni now) what things have _already_ been changed, how, why and what we need to do in order to obtain accurate information now. I was working in tech and could imagine active re-altering of history to suit the site owner's 'preferred' narrative. It started with media companies, but we've quickly skipped straight on up to the platform owner's preferred narrative with anything challenging it being hidden from the public's view. I don't think I have ever tried panacotta unless I know it by a different name.
Given your skepticism of the worst excesses of identity politics, it is probably quite a good thing that you are not currently attached to an academic institution in London! I speak from experience having just completed my PhD in a Conservatoire where I also teach.
I have close ties to some departments and it’s a problem. In the U.K., most academic DO realise it’s a problem but are keeping quiet. The potential for a challenge to it NOT from the right is huge.
@Vlad Vexler Philosophy I genuinely think academica is out of the loop here. And some don't readily realise the danger they are in, simply by being and doing. And it goes all the way to the top.
It seems to me that a public figure who claims to be an "independent thinker", rather than letting their discourse demonstrate it as a fact, is more likely engaged in marketing than description.
Hello Vlad! Thank you for very interesting points. It might be just a truism but I think the best part is that street-smart and book-smart aren’t mutually exclusive. Although I also think there’s a challenge in grasping both on many occasions.
What do you mean, survived? It was interesting, as always. (I expect to be expelled from my Twitter bubble any day because I don’t share all views of the canon.)
I enjoy your channels because you're the first youtuber I've found who clearly has the knowledge of somebody deeply steeped in the humanities or liberal arts. There are many university lectures but few dynamic discussions of depth, maybe none concerning current events. I like John Vervaeke because his thinking is on the right track concerning the meaning crisis, but I have trouble playing close attention to him due to his abstractions. Jordan Peterson seemed to fill that enormous gap in the culture for a while. I could tell he wasn't exactly a heavyweight thinker compared to what what was available in the Western Canon, but he still had a lot to offer at this particular moment that is overwhelmed with science and technology. I think his own personality got the best of him, speaking as a small town guy myself, like him, but I was truly appalled at his throwing Ukraine under the bus as soon he joined the Daily Wire and have avoided listening to him ever since. I have a lot more to say, but this is already too long. I suppose this channel is the one where one can make run-on comments if one were so inclined, though. Also: Adam Curtis.
After having always been a great empire, would you say that Russia has a sort of identity crisis since 1991? How do you think this imperial past (tsarist or soviet) that seems deeply rooted in Russian culture and also self-perception today, will adapt to modern times? Where are the common points and differences compared to the "US empire" with its ~750 military bases around the globe - and how the US is adapting to our rapidly changing world? Where can Russia get pride from, without doing harm? Russians have so much energy, it is deeply saddening to see the destructive behaviour in Ukraine. Why doesn't Russia just establish colonies and technological leadership in space? This kind of expansionism does not hurt anybody. Here they can get pride, fame, admiration and historical immortality. Furthermore, in what has been called Space Race 2.0. many nations, also smaller ones, are now competing to achieve commercial and technological leadership in space - a pole position in the 21st century.
Dear Vlad, Could you please share some reflections on the moral grounding problem in metaethics in a future video? Which answer do you find most convincing - subjectivism, naturalism, or theism?
the debate about human history on the internet can be pretty interesting, people really dig into their own theories, there is a lot of disagreement, especially when different disciplines ,or not, come into conflict, engineers and archeologists, tend to have certain views due to their education in a field,and can disagree on the origins of an artifact for instance.
I've never heard a "good" description of street smarts. Mostly has had to do with how to walk in a dangerous part of town after dark and how to respond to dangerous and often unhinged folks or frogged up situations. I think "street smarts" is situational and often involves swapping whatever your own morality is to that of the person or agency that is confronting you for the sake of physical survival. When in Rome. . . Experientially acquired wisdom, however is something else. Have met plenty of blue collar intellectuals who understand the dangers of the bad part of town, understand how the folks who were raised there think, have sympathy of the plight of people in those walks of life, have educated themselves as to "why?", and may even have formulated possible social, moral and economical changes that would help mitigate the danger in the "bad part of town." And can walk/shop/do business in the bad part of town, but don't do it at night.
Most intelligence is highly contextual in that we cannot avoid being shaped by our experiences. But without curiosity as the willingness to gently look and listen to everything in the people and the world you around you, then being open to exploring what you find, book- or streetsmarts don't matter. There's a really good talk by Ramsey Dukes about Reality Tunnels. These are our cone of vision within which we exist, and define "all there is". Within that space is everything we consider to be real. But this is a mental tool, because everything we encounter is mediated by the senses and processed by the mind. For example, much like a photograph our eyes capture an image which is processed by the mind. It wasn't until we could discover through science that light was energy and made up of different wavelength, we did not realise that the human eye was pretty limited as a tool. For instance, we cannot see heat, we cannot see the infra red range of light. We can't see a lot of things. We have to rely on technological tools like books, technology, theories, and experimentation as maps to see things from different perspectives. So, as soon as we discovered that, we realised that our cone of vision, our understanding of what is real, was limited by the tools we had before technology, we could not see "all there is." Plato's allegory of The Cave is about this. Not only might our noses be pressed up to the cave's walls, but even then our vision might be too limited to see the walls. We might be too close to the wall to see the exit from the cave. The walls of the cave is the limits of our percept reality, the Reality Tunnels Dukes refers too. Booksmarts is some knowledge of the different ideas to how to get to the cave exit, but streetsmarts is the knowledge of how to practically use that knowledge to get you're way out of the cave, and negotiate what lies beyond. This why philosophy teaches you how to think most of all. What we think determines how we pass through the work, and the quality of the experience. If you want to imagine the difference between the two, think of Nelson at Trafalgar turning his telescope the wrong way round and stating the he saw no ships, to protect the morale of his crew, then think of the Eye of Providence image, the image of the mysterious eye that can see everything above a brick built Pyramid. Think how far one could see than the other. Likewise, we can see far outside our own mental structures, as well as choose to what to focus on. The key is to realise that you can switch your focus, as in narrowing or expanding your cone of vision as needed, because its a tool to handle the input from the environment. And the key to using it is to be curious, think out of the box, and treat everything as an experiment in finding your truth. Don't over identify with your ideas, because we can never capture "all there is" in reality. And so we must speak our truth compassionately and humanely, as not to assault the Reality Tunnels of others. Be a guest when invited into the reality tunnels of others, and treat others like a guest in yours.
Sounds like a book smart answer 😂 jk love the channel. I went through a period in life - I’m out of thank god! - but I ran around legit gangsters and it was fascinating seeing street smarts from street people. These folks were playing games of life and death and one of the silliest book smart person I’ve ever met was able to survive and (for now) get out of a very very very dangerous world , as a woman , and just maneuver her way through all elements of the underworld (We went to school together a posh private school her dad is a rich real estate guy hahahah) I changed my view on street smarts vs book smarts the years we were close.
lets put the war and all this chaos aside for a moment, who is your favorite philosopher ? i got 4 Kant, Schopenhauer, adi Shankara and shakyamuni. however, at this point, i cant find anything to build up on this anymore? do you got some suggestions perhaps ?
"Ivan next door" ! 😂 And even though I saw it coming as clear as day... I had to pause to laugh, with tissues, then come here to relax and tell you. I'm so glad to have you.
Thank you very much for your pointers to public intellectuals in this video. I just watched a conversation and then a talk with Mark Lilla on RUclips, whom I had not heard of before. I find what appears to be his central insight very compelling, which is that the success of democracies depends on sufficient social cohesion to maintain an engaged citizenry, and I agree with him that the nation state is the polity of the correct size for such cohesion to be effective in maintaining a functioning democracy. I have followed the work of the social scientist Peter Turchin, where particularly in his early work he stressed the importance of asabiyyah - the Arabic term he uses for social cohesion - as an objective predictor of the longevity of states and empires throughout history.
Public comentators like the ones you comment on are very good to understand street smarts, because not only they present certain succesfull consensus, which are important to understand, even if only as how groups think and approach things (and how these groups are going to interact, how to interact with them), but also they present a very simple explanation of economics of the context of these groups.
I think a simpler way to address the street smarts vs book smarts is to say: everyone _starts_ out as street smart. There were no book smart people in the beginning. There were no books. But, the smartest people almost universally _finish_ by being both. Meaning, no matter how intuitive or natural or talented one might be at any domain, it stands better chances of performing in that domain if experience, and knowledge is also used, as opposed to just talent. And if a person can assimilate its own knowledge and the experience of others it's even better. Also in regards to independent thinkers, I take it to be code for uneducated. People that are smart enough to catch some things, but not all things. People that Kremlin sometimes refers to as "useful idiots". Funny enough, the man that coined that frase might have been an idiot himself. Someone that was street smart enough to fool others, but not book smart enough to fool everyone, or to actually matter. My mom used to say: you don't eat everything that flies.
I agree that plenty of people can think for themselves and that this is different to being an original thinker. However, I'd put forth that too much stature is given to being an original thinker. More important is to be correct or put differently, close to truth. And there's always going to be a very high chance that the correct answer has already been thought of by someone.
I'm very fond of Brett and Heather but saddened to see how embittered they've become, and the way so many involved in political discourse independently are incentivised to grind off it. Jordan Peterson I used to love long before his infamy but he has become a tragic parody of himself after he couldn't come to terms with how he was crucified exactly as he wanted to be. Edit- also both the examples you raised in these two channels are classic liberals who discovered they were treated as pathogens by what passes for mainstream liberalism today because they held against new dogmas
More like this please. I loved your take on Panna Cottas - they certainly are the worst. I cant't say I care much about sour dough or sellery juice - but I don't harbor any strong emotions about them either. Well I can't argue for or against potatoes, for I am german and my perspective would be biased - but Panna Cotta being the worst, you're right on spot. What's your take on Pork Pie? I never had an authentic british one, yet I saw them mentioned in some UK christmas movie last december - they tickled my fancy, so I baked some and liked them quite a lot. Better than Panna Cotta, any day of the week. So would you agree that Pork Pie is philosophically supireor to Panna Cotta and may this view be biased by you being an UK resident?
@@begr_wiedererkennungswert Well I agree with the food video part, without hesitation. The Berry part is obvious to me though. Chocolate with berries is obviously just something someone would put on a Panna Cotta.
Great Q re: book smarts vs. street smarts. I think that we all have an internal and experience-driven ‘Unified Theory of Everything’ that we constantly update. How things work, what to expect at a given moment. A person with street smarts is driven to integrate experiences into their Theory according to internally-developed rules, influenced by people they actually know. A person with book smarts has the benefit of knowing how strangers through history have solved all sorts of problems according to the collective evolution of a set of rules, some of which they may choose to integrate into their personal Theory. But book smarts without the internal, integrative drive of street smarts doesn’t create much, and is susceptible to ideas that are appealing for the wrong reasons.
Am I an independent thinker if I have a absolute rock solid religious belief that I have never heard nor read anyone else express? (There may be others who have the same thoughts, but I have not been informed about them.)
Are you a collector of various religious beliefs from which you have formed your opinions (as I am) or are your beliefs generally independent of such outside thought systems? This debate may help to internally
@@begr_wiedererkennungswert Aw… safety in numbers is a popular route with most religions? But is it possible to not be delusional and to stand absolutely firm in the truth as an individual without the need of approval from other?
Ouch... I hold such tremendous respect for you Vlad that i will give a better shot to Taylor's work, but honestly as a Québécois i've seen him being so inconsistent and contradictory despite a very good in-depth understanding of issues he takes a position on, so many times, that i've come to see him as impertinent and to doubt about the honesty of many of his stances. His most recent stance on the debate around Amira Elghawaby is the most explicit demonstration of his increasing contradictions and lost of credibility.
It's good for me to listen to this channel more. Reminds me why I subscribed to any of your channels. I'm intellectually inclined but increasingly wary of the faculty. You're definitely one of the good ones though. I'd love to know who you think legitimate evo-psych thinkers are.
Plato lived his life well? Odd that you say that. Good company, admittedly, if one was also an Athenian aristocrat. ("Slave, fetch us another ewer of wine!")
@@DJWESG1 My comment was elliptical. I am challenging the reverence commonly held for Socrates and his boys. Do read "The Trial of Socrates" by the distinguished independent journalist, I. F. Stone. He elucidates in damning detail their contempt for non-aristocrats, their contempt for democracy. Socrates doted on the reflected glamor of the Athenian equivalent of upper-class frat-boys. Alcibiades, an exemplar of narcissistic-personality-syndrome, used his glamor to persuade the Athenians to launch themselves on the unprovoked, utterly disastrous Sicilian Expedition. Then the 30 Tyrants, led by Critias, ruled Athens as a cruel, authoritarian, aristocratic junta. Socrates, his cozy fantasy life destroyed , Socrates, crushed by despair and shame, deliberately chose to be "executed", i.e., he committed suicide. The cult of Socrates and his boys is an empty shell created by the flattering, uncritical portrait created by Plato's dialogues. And Plato's "Republic" is exactly the kind of snarky, cynical joke that an upper-class frat-boy would play on the gullible, aristocrat-idolizing hoi polloi.
I find that a person who would describe himself as an "independent thinker" often believes that he already knows The Truth and therefore can express indignant opinions without first educating himself, without even admitting that he needs to educate himself on the complexities and subtleties of the issue at hand. For example, such a person might contend that the war in Ukraine is a product of the devious manipulations of the American military-industrial complex. Period. Such a person would congratulate himself on his street smarts ("It's all about money, money, money.") and would dismiss the laborious requirements of book-smarts.
@@Sjanzo Thank you for the confirmation, my friend. For a while now, I have been in conversation with such a fellow. It's frustrating. In light of the fact that the West did not pour a huge influx of weapons into Ukraine until Putin's ever-escalating invasion, it must be obvious, from his point of view, that Putin is secretly in the pay of the American military-industrial complex. Oh, how cunning is that?!? And how long has this cunning plot been going on? Was the Cuban Missile Crisis really just a marketing ploy for these corporations? Was Khrushchev in their pay? And Castro? Oh, those corporations. Tricky, tricky.
@@zeitgeist5134 true. The problem in the information age is that many people cannot cope with the avalanche of information available. Therefor they resort to conspiracy theories to A. create some order in a complex world, and B. Dismiss any conflicting evidence as compromised and therefor not relevant. Since the start of the pandemic, i have seen conspiracies step out of the shadows, into the main streets, and have wondered how even intelligent people could fall for things they are way too smart for... My theory is that Santa Claus is to blame: Little Johnny got angry at his classmates when they said Santa wasnt real. My papa says its real, youre liars !! Johnny went home and daddy asked whats the matter. Johnny said "i have an argument with Jake and Pete, they say Santa isnt real, i played on my own for three days now" Daddy laughs at little Johnny "haaa haa i had you fooled didnt i ? Youre an idiot, everybody knows Santa isnt real!" So since that day, Johnny never ever believed anything said by authority figures from his own social circle, he'd rather believes outsiders because it doesnt hurt as much when youre wrong. That, sort of. I think complot thinking can be both an emotional or social deficit (trust and the pain of being wrong), as well as an intellectual deficit (coping with information overload). Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been in prison in Nazi Germany over it, so he had way more time than me to theorise it.
@@Sjanzo I think that most people, over the centuries, have always been happy to seize upon simplistic (often bigoted) answers to what are actually complicated questions. In the USA, I blame the current malaise of simplistic conspiracy theories on our mediocre public secondary schools. My frustrating conversation, described above, is with an intelligent guy whose formal education ended with high school (due to our shamefully expensive public university tuition). (And...RIP, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, alas.) (As for Santa...when I was a kid, I really resented the adults insulting my intelligence with this idiotic myth.)
I pulled myself up by the bootstraps I did not make, drove the road to success that I did not pave, and take full responsibility for the gender and ethnicity I was born to! Self made 'Merican!
For my money the individual constitutes the appearance of any explanation. All criticism is self-criticism, and all understanding relies on the tromping and stamping of grounds not clearly there to many who know well the same area. Feels as-if we are automatically adding to the socius, mostly only aware of how each one collection of territories function. What really is explanation but virulent content? An attempt at claiming the coherency of a set of ideas by one mind relies on self-reference to prove any connection, and decides that connections start and end to satisfy the self-relation of outside drives. For me it's a worthwhile contradiction to consider asking the question: "inside or outside?" fully self-reference, since what's being asked isn't about reality, but how concepts connect with reality.
Re: book smarts vs street smarts - one analogy that I've heard drawn is the difference between intelligence and intellect. Intelligence depends on the ballance between faculties while intellect is the measure of the amount of one particular faculty. I think smarts in general is dependent on the balance between and interconnectivity of brain hemispheres / regions - noth their size. I think breadth and diversity of experience is also a large factor as it stimulates this interconnectivity and provides emotional and mental hooks ho hang facts on. Reading a diversity of books is good but it's still just reading books. Without relevant experience to integrate that book reading into, it's empty. I'm scared of ChatGPT 🤯
I enjoyed the first five-minutes and the last three minutes, most of the questions in the middle were a bit too abstract for me and didn't get much from it,but still this was interesting,thanks!hoping you are having a good run with your health,stay well Vlad!🧡
Amazing video, really interesting questions and insightful answers. The video really made me think and made a little bit more clear some of the confusing and contradictory ideas that I find myself swaying between. Those ideas depending on the book I am reading, the lectures or professor I am having or the real life events that are happening.... Thank you for the great video
I’ve always made sense of the book smarts vs street smarts distinction by mapping the sophrosyne vs phronesis distinction from Aristotle upon that where you need street smarts/phronesis to carry out what book smarts/sophrosyne dictates needs to be done. I am curious if there’s an error I am making here that you could point to me. Phronesis after all grows by putting yourself at the mercy of those who have more of it than you.
Enjoyed your thoughts. AC Grayling wrote a scathing review of one of John Gray's books... How do you rate Grayling? I thought his popular introductory texts are competent but he's no Tom Stoppard.
John is a very stylised public intellectual - arguably, every third or fourth sentence he writes is false, if we read it like it’s written in an academic text. His work now is very much intended for the general public only. And his work is very seductive and manipulative - but not unethically so. That transition was very clear for him - in 2002 he wrote Straw Dogs. I remember walking up and down a philosophy department then and finding almost everyone in the department scandalised. Ps of course I am not endorsing all his views by praising him highly.
I loved what you said about “independent thinkers”, I was told the other day that I didn’t understand Russia if I haven’t watched Oliver Stone’s interviews or documentary as they were described, not that I think I understand Russia. I’ve been trying to for years though.
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People who call themselves independent thinker are often just not aware of what influences their thinking.
Conspiracy theory supporters make themself think that they think independent, free from a herd, but they just bleat with the other herd (of black sheep.)
Yes we need to attend to the Discourses from which we speak.
I tend to see independent thinkers not as people free of influences on their opinions, but rather as people free from holding a partizan line, that are able to cross the aisles on an issue-by-issue basis and recognize when their traditional sides gets an issue wrong for the sake of seeking the truth rather then seeking to be right.
@@ivanlaplante i'd like to see myself as such. Or as Winston Churchill put it : I'd rather be right than consistent!
@@Sjanzo unfortunately, Churchill was top fash.
I grew up book smart rather than life smart. I remember the horrifying day I realised that life was not like books. I felt betrayed.
Because you kinda were 👍
I was on the streets at 14. I later picked up a book. And I felt betrayed.
‘Street smart’ is something you only learn while living among the underclasses of society for a reasonable period of time.
The way these people behave is somewhat different to how we behave.
The ultimate prizes are the same but how they are achieved is different.
Thank you for uploading.
From my experience, streets smarts is the "ability" to be successful in social spaces where basic human "necessities" have been taken away and/or being threatened.
To comment on the issues of social construction and independent thinking that were mentioned. From Camus and my superficial understanding of other works within phenomenology, it becomes evident that most people do not understand the boundaries of their knowledge. I couldn't imagine trying to be "independent" without knowing from what I am independent .
Lastly, it is possible that the "science explainer" phenomenon in the US is deeply rooted in their historical fascination with pragmatism.
Thank you, Vlad, for helping me to exercise my brain cells. I appreciate your insights. Hope you are well.
Vlado, I absolutely adore you, but as an ex-Soviet citizen, you of all people should know that, especially among the philosophy graduates in Eastern European societies, being a bus driver until recently had a double digit chance 😉
Thanks again.
is that an ember mug you are using? 😀
well... my definition between "book smart versus street smart" is whether you want to live life or learn about life... in the end it's a balance... i like to "showcase" a little remembered fact of the american colonial history which has the story of the "salem witch hunt"... well, harvard educated persons instigated them, investigated them, prosecuted them and judged them as well as gained financial wealth and status from them ( harvard university was endowed with money from them as well )... and it took an uneducated old pirate to stop them.... point of it is that "highly educated person" does not equate to moral or good...
You strike me as a "Street smart-bookworm" 🤣
Honestly, your approach to open thinking has made me reevaluate my internal dialogue. Thank you for making me think!
I am grateful to hear.
I'm not even sure what the term street smart even means, to me it seems quite subjective, but then again intellectual probably is as well. I would imagine someone being street smart as being someone who knows how non academic people living in the real world and not in a bubble think. They can and do interact well with people on the street, hence where the term comes from, and so know how people in this kind of environment are thinking. Does this make them smart? I would say with the amount of disinformation and propaganda pumped in their direction maybe not. Maybe street smart really means being able to take this and analyse it to their own advantage so having the best of both worlds, but to be honest I will don't really know what it means, apart from not academia, although we you say Vlad seems to be both, although I don't know his background, apart from broadly from what he's told us about his life, so it's hard to know.
@@mattpotter8725 IMHO "street smarts" are a combination of common sense, emotional intelligence and situational awareness. It's knowledge that can't be taught in books. In my area of the world it's usually posed as "street smarts and book smarts". Other names are "town vs gown". For example, my Dad taught me to keep a baseball or glove if I'm carrying a baseball bat. Why would you do that? That's street smarts.
Love from NYC ❤️
@@SlpBeauty333 Thanks for this, I've heard the term "town vs gown" before and I think it goes to confirm what I already thought, and even though I think I also implied that it was common sense, emotional intelligence, and situational awareness them you for putting it in a better way. When you say street smarts can't be taught I am guessing you mean in an academic setting because you then go on to say your dad taught you? This makes perfect sense to me. Street smarts is about being able to live well in a situation where you maybe don't have much money and therefore have to use other ways to survive and prosper, and even have respect from those around you? Finally I think I understand your comment about the casing carrying of baseball or glove when carrying a bat but just wanted to make sure (to check whether I'm street smart). I'm guessing that some people carry a bat for protection (or even as a weapon), but if you also have a ball of glove anyone might think you're on your way to play and not having the bat with you for protection? Maybe I'm wrong.
@@mattpotter8725 I'm so sorry for the delayed reply. I didn't see it right away. Yes, you're right about the bat vs bat and glove/ball! One of the lawyers for Dolt45 actually had one on his wall with "Justice" on it? Rachel Maddow had a field day with that one!
Street smarts are just really hard to define but it's like a topic in my field called "number sense". No one can really define it but you know when you see it. It's a very amorphous thing! Love from NYC ❤️
A girl in Russia on 1420 channel was asked who is more free, people in USA 🇺🇸 or people in Russia 🇷🇺? She responded people in Russia 🇷🇺 because you can pay a bribe and get away with anything… not sure if she was being sarcastic. Is this a serious philosophical or moral position a person could take? How would you break this down philosophically?
It's a non political conception of freedom which perfectly captures the pre political, population-not-citizen psychology of 50+% of Russians
@@VladVexlerPhilosophy Being English and often thinking, this was pre 2010 or thereabouts, that we were relatively low in terms of corruption, which the original comment by the Russian girl mentioned pointed at, it seems as the years have gone on that our corruption was just hidden behind the veil of the class system and privilege and that it just went on behind closed doors. Whilst I wouldn't want to live in Russia, and we are definitely more free, our levers on those in power are still controlled by vested interests, especially those who own large media corporations and donate large amounts of money to the election campaigns of those in power, so it takes a bit scandal or crisis to shift the needle of public opinion, and makes me wonder how free we are if we can be manipulated to vote against our own interests, en masse, so easily. I don't know if this is philosophical, it's my take. What do you think?
The translation on the channel was: we are free because we have corruption - which makes it even worse. I didn't see a trace of irony on her face.
00:00 Book smarts vs street smarts
04:48 "Independent thinkers" and opinion capture
11:10 Social construction of knowledge & Individual vs collective explanation
19:45 Public intellectuals today
22:15 Legitimacy in politics
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All together now in unison, "we are all independent thinkers"
It took me two times through to understand most of it, but I survived! Thank you for stretching our minds.
So sorry it was hard going. Please never feel the need to persist.
No, I love trying to grasp new understandings and new ways of thinking! Thank you!
Thanks Vlad, I liked your definition of political legitimacy. How would you handle the American Tea Party and Maga's claims regarding their electoral system? It appears to me that the college system is so flawed that regardless of one's political commitments, the legitimacy of the result of an election can be challenged? In Australia we have Institutionalized the removal Gerrymandering the vote. All political parties respect the vote.
7 min ish in..
Its all well and good being an independent thinker, but...
It does not do you a lot of good if no one else agrees with the way you independently thought....my experience is that the loudest idiot in the room is usually the one who gets heard
I am sure that there will be some bright spark in Russia who independently thought "hey, this Ukraine thing might not be such a good idea!"......eleven months later......?
Talking about “book” smart, what is your view on the role “books” will have in our society in the near future? With Apple, Microsoft, ZOOM, RUclips, Audiobook, etc…will “books” become obsolete? And could “that” give an opportunity to some people/government to “re-write” history?
P.S. Agree with you on panacotta, but love tiramisu 😅
This is why I started collecting books in 1995, including uni texts along with science, history, economics, all with facts & dates. As a bonus, I have been able to show my son (in uni now) what things have _already_ been changed, how, why and what we need to do in order to obtain accurate information now.
I was working in tech and could imagine active re-altering of history to suit the site owner's 'preferred' narrative. It started with media companies, but we've quickly skipped straight on up to the platform owner's preferred narrative with anything challenging it being hidden from the public's view. I don't think I have ever tried panacotta unless I know it by a different name.
Given your skepticism of the worst excesses of identity politics, it is probably quite a good thing that you are not currently attached to an academic institution in London! I speak from experience having just completed my PhD in a Conservatoire where I also teach.
I have close ties to some departments and it’s a problem. In the U.K., most academic DO realise it’s a problem but are keeping quiet. The potential for a challenge to it NOT from the right is huge.
@Vlad Vexler Philosophy I genuinely think academica is out of the loop here. And some don't readily realise the danger they are in, simply by being and doing. And it goes all the way to the top.
@@VladVexlerPhilosophy I am so reassured to hear you say that.
I love your channels so much Vlad. Thank you. 🧡
Thank YOU! 🌻
Nutella panna cotta? tHe EnD oF CivILIzAtIOn?
It seems to me that a public figure who claims to be an "independent thinker", rather than letting their discourse demonstrate it as a fact, is more likely engaged in marketing than description.
You ended with a nice frenetic energy today Vlad!
Hello Vlad! Thank you for very interesting points. It might be just a truism but I think the best part is that street-smart and book-smart aren’t mutually exclusive. Although I also think there’s a challenge in grasping both on many occasions.
Haha that was entertaining, hope you get better! Good luck with your book :]
LOL! Congratulations, if we survived this lot?! If you sat there and recited several chapters of "War and Peace", I'd still pay attention.😄
That was really good -much to look up and ponder. Thank you Vlad
Thought that was fried chicken in the thumbnail at first glance
Me too lol
Fried chicken in the thumbnail, but celery juice in the video.
So did I.
What do you mean, survived? It was interesting, as always.
(I expect to be expelled from my Twitter bubble any day because I don’t share all views of the canon.)
Interesting, but..?
"Freshly squeezed celery juice". Oh my God, eweee, gak, I wish you had not said that.
I enjoy your channels because you're the first youtuber I've found who clearly has the knowledge of somebody deeply steeped in the humanities or liberal arts. There are many university lectures but few dynamic discussions of depth, maybe none concerning current events. I like John Vervaeke because his thinking is on the right track concerning the meaning crisis, but I have trouble playing close attention to him due to his abstractions. Jordan Peterson seemed to fill that enormous gap in the culture for a while. I could tell he wasn't exactly a heavyweight thinker compared to what what was available in the Western Canon, but he still had a lot to offer at this particular moment that is overwhelmed with science and technology. I think his own personality got the best of him, speaking as a small town guy myself, like him, but I was truly appalled at his throwing Ukraine under the bus as soon he joined the Daily Wire and have avoided listening to him ever since.
I have a lot more to say, but this is already too long. I suppose this channel is the one where one can make run-on comments if one were so inclined, though.
Also: Adam Curtis.
Coincidentally, "Panna Cottas and The Collective Epistemic Crisis" is the next Zizek book.
One of the most interesting topics you have covered! Keep up the great work.
Much love from Poland! I discovered this channel just recently.
Welcome!
I survived, but just barely! Lol
Wow!
@@VladVexlerPhilosophy It was just a joke. I was able to follow just fine. Love your stuff, yes I’m an American (stuff). Lol
After having always been a great empire, would you say that Russia has a sort of identity crisis since 1991? How do you think this imperial past (tsarist or soviet) that seems deeply rooted in Russian culture and also self-perception today, will adapt to modern times?
Where are the common points and differences compared to the "US empire" with its ~750 military bases around the globe - and how the US is adapting to our rapidly changing world?
Where can Russia get pride from, without doing harm? Russians have so much energy, it is deeply saddening to see the destructive behaviour in Ukraine.
Why doesn't Russia just establish colonies and technological leadership in space? This kind of expansionism does not hurt anybody. Here they can get pride, fame, admiration and historical immortality. Furthermore, in what has been called Space Race 2.0. many nations, also smaller ones, are now competing to achieve commercial and technological leadership in space - a pole position in the 21st century.
Liked this a lot, it's the kind of stuff missing for me at the moment. The last question was a bit difficult, eg, too big for the time given...
Dear Vlad,
Could you please share some reflections on the moral grounding problem in metaethics in a future video? Which answer do you find most convincing - subjectivism, naturalism, or theism?
the debate about human history on the internet can be pretty interesting, people really dig into their own theories, there is a lot of disagreement, especially when different disciplines ,or not, come into conflict, engineers and archeologists, tend to have certain views due to their education in a field,and can disagree on the origins of an artifact for instance.
I've never heard a "good" description of street smarts. Mostly has had to do with how to walk in a dangerous part of town after dark and how to respond to dangerous and often unhinged folks or frogged up situations. I think "street smarts" is situational and often involves swapping whatever your own morality is to that of the person or agency that is confronting you for the sake of physical survival. When in Rome. . . Experientially acquired wisdom, however is something else. Have met plenty of blue collar intellectuals who understand the dangers of the bad part of town, understand how the folks who were raised there think, have sympathy of the plight of people in those walks of life, have educated themselves as to "why?", and may even have formulated possible social, moral and economical changes that would help mitigate the danger in the "bad part of town." And can walk/shop/do business in the bad part of town, but don't do it at night.
Most intelligence is highly contextual in that we cannot avoid being shaped by our experiences. But without curiosity as the willingness to gently look and listen to everything in the people and the world you around you, then being open to exploring what you find, book- or streetsmarts don't matter.
There's a really good talk by Ramsey Dukes about Reality Tunnels. These are our cone of vision within which we exist, and define "all there is". Within that space is everything we consider to be real. But this is a mental tool, because everything we encounter is mediated by the senses and processed by the mind. For example, much like a photograph our eyes capture an image which is processed by the mind. It wasn't until we could discover through science that light was energy and made up of different wavelength, we did not realise that the human eye was pretty limited as a tool. For instance, we cannot see heat, we cannot see the infra red range of light. We can't see a lot of things. We have to rely on technological tools like books, technology, theories, and experimentation as maps to see things from different perspectives. So, as soon as we discovered that, we realised that our cone of vision, our understanding of what is real, was limited by the tools we had before technology, we could not see "all there is." Plato's allegory of The Cave is about this. Not only might our noses be pressed up to the cave's walls, but even then our vision might be too limited to see the walls. We might be too close to the wall to see the exit from the cave. The walls of the cave is the limits of our percept reality, the Reality Tunnels Dukes refers too. Booksmarts is some knowledge of the different ideas to how to get to the cave exit, but streetsmarts is the knowledge of how to practically use that knowledge to get you're way out of the cave, and negotiate what lies beyond. This why philosophy teaches you how to think most of all. What we think determines how we pass through the work, and the quality of the experience.
If you want to imagine the difference between the two, think of Nelson at Trafalgar turning his telescope the wrong way round and stating the he saw no ships, to protect the morale of his crew, then think of the Eye of Providence image, the image of the mysterious eye that can see everything above a brick built Pyramid. Think how far one could see than the other. Likewise, we can see far outside our own mental structures, as well as choose to what to focus on. The key is to realise that you can switch your focus, as in narrowing or expanding your cone of vision as needed, because its a tool to handle the input from the environment. And the key to using it is to be curious, think out of the box, and treat everything as an experiment in finding your truth. Don't over identify with your ideas, because we can never capture "all there is" in reality. And so we must speak our truth compassionately and humanely, as not to assault the Reality Tunnels of others. Be a guest when invited into the reality tunnels of others, and treat others like a guest in yours.
Street smart simply refers to someone of high IQ with no education whatsoever .
Sounds like a book smart answer 😂 jk love the channel.
I went through a period in life - I’m out of thank god! - but I ran around legit gangsters and it was fascinating seeing street smarts from street people.
These folks were playing games of life and death and one of the silliest book smart person I’ve ever met was able to survive and (for now) get out of a very very very dangerous world , as a woman , and just maneuver her way through all elements of the underworld
(We went to school together a posh private school her dad is a rich real estate guy hahahah)
I changed my view on street smarts vs book smarts the years we were close.
lets put the war and all this chaos aside for a moment, who is your favorite philosopher ? i got 4 Kant, Schopenhauer, adi Shankara and shakyamuni. however, at this point, i cant find anything to build up on this anymore? do you got some suggestions perhaps ?
"Ivan next door" ! 😂 And even though I saw it coming as clear as day...
I had to pause to laugh, with tissues, then come here to relax and tell you.
I'm so glad to have you.
Thank you very much for your pointers to public intellectuals in this video. I just watched a conversation and then a talk with Mark Lilla on RUclips, whom I had not heard of before. I find what appears to be his central insight very compelling, which is that the success of democracies depends on sufficient social cohesion to maintain an engaged citizenry, and I agree with him that the nation state is the polity of the correct size for such cohesion to be effective in maintaining a functioning democracy. I have followed the work of the social scientist Peter Turchin, where particularly in his early work he stressed the importance of asabiyyah - the Arabic term he uses for social cohesion - as an objective predictor of the longevity of states and empires throughout history.
Public comentators like the ones you comment on are very good to understand street smarts, because not only they present certain succesfull consensus, which are important to understand, even if only as how groups think and approach things (and how these groups are going to interact, how to interact with them), but also they present a very simple explanation of economics of the context of these groups.
I think a simpler way to address the street smarts vs book smarts is to say: everyone _starts_ out as street smart. There were no book smart people in the beginning. There were no books. But, the smartest people almost universally _finish_ by being both. Meaning, no matter how intuitive or natural or talented one might be at any domain, it stands better chances of performing in that domain if experience, and knowledge is also used, as opposed to just talent. And if a person can assimilate its own knowledge and the experience of others it's even better.
Also in regards to independent thinkers, I take it to be code for uneducated. People that are smart enough to catch some things, but not all things. People that Kremlin sometimes refers to as "useful idiots". Funny enough, the man that coined that frase might have been an idiot himself. Someone that was street smart enough to fool others, but not book smart enough to fool everyone, or to actually matter.
My mom used to say: you don't eat everything that flies.
I agree that plenty of people can think for themselves and that this is different to being an original thinker.
However, I'd put forth that too much stature is given to being an original thinker. More important is to be correct or put differently, close to truth. And there's always going to be a very high chance that the correct answer has already been thought of by someone.
I'm very fond of Brett and Heather but saddened to see how embittered they've become, and the way so many involved in political discourse independently are incentivised to grind off it. Jordan Peterson I used to love long before his infamy but he has become a tragic parody of himself after he couldn't come to terms with how he was crucified exactly as he wanted to be.
Edit- also both the examples you raised in these two channels are classic liberals who discovered they were treated as pathogens by what passes for mainstream liberalism today because they held against new dogmas
Sometimes I just can't work out what you have said. Meaning illudes me.
More like this please. I loved your take on Panna Cottas - they certainly are the worst. I cant't say I care much about sour dough or sellery juice - but I don't harbor any strong emotions about them either. Well I can't argue for or against potatoes, for I am german and my perspective would be biased - but Panna Cotta being the worst, you're right on spot. What's your take on Pork Pie? I never had an authentic british one, yet I saw them mentioned in some UK christmas movie last december - they tickled my fancy, so I baked some and liked them quite a lot. Better than Panna Cotta, any day of the week. So would you agree that Pork Pie is philosophically supireor to Panna Cotta and may this view be biased by you being an UK resident?
I still try to figure out which moral objections Vlad has against chocolate with berries (comment somewhere). We need a food-video.
@@begr_wiedererkennungswert Well I agree with the food video part, without hesitation. The Berry part is obvious to me though. Chocolate with berries is obviously just something someone would put on a Panna Cotta.
@@Sebastian_Niedermeier nooo... chocolate fondue with blueberries.
Am I the only person who thought those were fried chicken legs in the thumbnail?
The thing about potatoes is no matter where you go you are never more than a stone’s throw away from a potato. 🤔
Let’s put a couple of things on the table 😎😎🔥🔥😎😎
That professor of logic you referred to, is he with the University of science?
I was often left in awe when I observed those I perceive as knowing less than I.
For it was I that did not know.
Great Q re: book smarts vs. street smarts. I think that we all have an internal and experience-driven ‘Unified Theory of Everything’ that we constantly update. How things work, what to expect at a given moment. A person with street smarts is driven to integrate experiences into their Theory according to internally-developed rules, influenced by people they actually know. A person with book smarts has the benefit of knowing how strangers through history have solved all sorts of problems according to the collective evolution of a set of rules, some of which they may choose to integrate into their personal Theory. But book smarts without the internal, integrative drive of street smarts doesn’t create much, and is susceptible to ideas that are appealing for the wrong reasons.
Why do you not link to your twitter in the description section? :)
Oh good idea!
I suvived it and the rapid good bye. Thanks again sir.
Am I an independent thinker if I have a absolute rock solid religious belief that I have never heard nor read anyone else express? (There may be others who have the same thoughts, but I have not been informed about them.)
No, you're prob a gnostic of sorts.
Are you a collector of various religious beliefs from which you have formed your opinions (as I am) or are your beliefs generally independent of such outside thought systems? This debate may help to internally
@@arianeterry9877 Formed early on before I really explored the religious landscape.
If only you believe it, it’s called delusional disorder, so better get some followers.
@@begr_wiedererkennungswert Aw… safety in numbers is a popular route with most religions? But is it possible to not be delusional and to stand absolutely firm in the truth as an individual without the need of approval from other?
RUclips showed me this video with a delay of 7 days.😖
So, was Kant street smart?
A punctual walker of said streets, but apart from that, probably not.
On my definition, yes! But mine is a definition that is designed for special purposes. I will have a go at this again in the next one! Sending a hug.
For what it's worth, there's an "Immanuel Kant Strasse" in Altenbochum. I read that in a book.
@@beorlingo 😄
Grey is "ex" Thatcherite. Suspect to say the least
Ouch... I hold such tremendous respect for you Vlad that i will give a better shot to Taylor's work, but honestly as a Québécois i've seen him being so inconsistent and contradictory despite a very good in-depth understanding of issues he takes a position on, so many times, that i've come to see him as impertinent and to doubt about the honesty of many of his stances.
His most recent stance on the debate around Amira Elghawaby is the most explicit demonstration of his increasing contradictions and lost of credibility.
I would be happy to give further details into my toughts about this issue if it interests you.
It's good for me to listen to this channel more. Reminds me why I subscribed to any of your channels. I'm intellectually inclined but increasingly wary of the faculty. You're definitely one of the good ones though. I'd love to know who you think legitimate evo-psych thinkers are.
I understood everything you said but vehemently disagree with your opinion about pana cotta
I disagree with myself too!
Just gonna say that this happens to be very relevant to me right now and its a very happy coincidence that you happen to have spoken about it
Oh God not panacottas
Plato lived his life well? Odd that you say that. Good company, admittedly, if one was also an Athenian aristocrat. ("Slave, fetch us another ewer of wine!")
In our modern service economy, this happens on a daily.
@@DJWESG1 My comment was elliptical. I am challenging the reverence commonly held for Socrates and his boys. Do read "The Trial of Socrates" by the distinguished independent journalist, I. F. Stone. He elucidates in damning detail their contempt for non-aristocrats, their contempt for democracy. Socrates doted on the reflected glamor of the Athenian equivalent of upper-class frat-boys. Alcibiades, an exemplar of narcissistic-personality-syndrome, used his glamor to persuade the Athenians to launch themselves on the unprovoked, utterly disastrous Sicilian Expedition. Then the 30 Tyrants, led by Critias, ruled Athens as a cruel, authoritarian, aristocratic junta. Socrates, his cozy fantasy life destroyed , Socrates, crushed by despair and shame, deliberately chose to be "executed", i.e., he committed suicide. The cult of Socrates and his boys is an empty shell created by the flattering, uncritical portrait created by Plato's dialogues. And Plato's "Republic" is exactly the kind of snarky, cynical joke that an upper-class frat-boy would play on the gullible, aristocrat-idolizing hoi polloi.
I find that a person who would describe himself as an "independent thinker" often believes that he already knows The Truth and therefore can express indignant opinions without first educating himself, without even admitting that he needs to educate himself on the complexities and subtleties of the issue at hand. For example, such a person might contend that the war in Ukraine is a product of the devious manipulations of the American military-industrial complex. Period. Such a person would congratulate himself on his street smarts ("It's all about money, money, money.") and would dismiss the laborious requirements of book-smarts.
I just had a conversation with one of those...
@@Sjanzo Thank you for the confirmation, my friend. For a while now, I have been in conversation with such a fellow. It's frustrating. In light of the fact that the West did not pour a huge influx of weapons into Ukraine until Putin's ever-escalating invasion, it must be obvious, from his point of view, that Putin is secretly in the pay of the American military-industrial complex. Oh, how cunning is that?!? And how long has this cunning plot been going on? Was the Cuban Missile Crisis really just a marketing ploy for these corporations? Was Khrushchev in their pay? And Castro? Oh, those corporations. Tricky, tricky.
@@zeitgeist5134 true. The problem in the information age is that many people cannot cope with the avalanche of information available. Therefor they resort to conspiracy theories to A. create some order in a complex world, and B. Dismiss any conflicting evidence as compromised and therefor not relevant.
Since the start of the pandemic, i have seen conspiracies step out of the shadows, into the main streets, and have wondered how even intelligent people could fall for things they are way too smart for... My theory is that Santa Claus is to blame: Little Johnny got angry at his classmates when they said Santa wasnt real. My papa says its real, youre liars !! Johnny went home and daddy asked whats the matter. Johnny said "i have an argument with Jake and Pete, they say Santa isnt real, i played on my own for three days now" Daddy laughs at little Johnny "haaa haa i had you fooled didnt i ? Youre an idiot, everybody knows Santa isnt real!" So since that day, Johnny never ever believed anything said by authority figures from his own social circle, he'd rather believes outsiders because it doesnt hurt as much when youre wrong.
That, sort of. I think complot thinking can be both an emotional or social deficit (trust and the pain of being wrong), as well as an intellectual deficit (coping with information overload). Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been in prison in Nazi Germany over it, so he had way more time than me to theorise it.
@@Sjanzo I think that most people, over the centuries, have always been happy to seize upon simplistic (often bigoted) answers to what are actually complicated questions. In the USA, I blame the current malaise of simplistic conspiracy theories on our mediocre public secondary schools. My frustrating conversation, described above, is with an intelligent guy whose formal education ended with high school (due to our shamefully expensive public university tuition). (And...RIP, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, alas.)
(As for Santa...when I was a kid, I really resented the adults insulting my intelligence with this idiotic myth.)
Tx as always
I pulled myself up by the bootstraps I did not make, drove the road to success that I did not pave, and take full responsibility for the gender and ethnicity I was born to! Self made 'Merican!
For my money the individual constitutes the appearance of any explanation. All criticism is self-criticism, and all understanding relies on the tromping and stamping of grounds not clearly there to many who know well the same area. Feels as-if we are automatically adding to the socius, mostly only aware of how each one collection of territories function. What really is explanation but virulent content? An attempt at claiming the coherency of a set of ideas by one mind relies on self-reference to prove any connection, and decides that connections start and end to satisfy the self-relation of outside drives. For me it's a worthwhile contradiction to consider asking the question: "inside or outside?" fully self-reference, since what's being asked isn't about reality, but how concepts connect with reality.
Re: book smarts vs street smarts - one analogy that I've heard drawn is the difference between intelligence and intellect. Intelligence depends on the ballance between faculties while intellect is the measure of the amount of one particular faculty. I think smarts in general is dependent on the balance between and interconnectivity of brain hemispheres / regions - noth their size. I think breadth and diversity of experience is also a large factor as it stimulates this interconnectivity and provides emotional and mental hooks ho hang facts on. Reading a diversity of books is good but it's still just reading books. Without relevant experience to integrate that book reading into, it's empty.
I'm scared of ChatGPT 🤯
I enjoyed the first five-minutes and the last three minutes, most of the questions in the middle were a bit too abstract for me and didn't get much from it,but still this was interesting,thanks!hoping you are having a good run with your health,stay well Vlad!🧡
Amazing video, really interesting questions and insightful answers. The video really made me think and made a little bit more clear some of the confusing and contradictory ideas that I find myself swaying between. Those ideas depending on the book I am reading, the lectures or professor I am having or the real life events that are happening.... Thank you for the great video
This is my favourite of all your channels, happy to see another upload.
I’ve always made sense of the book smarts vs street smarts distinction by mapping the sophrosyne vs phronesis distinction from Aristotle upon that where you need street smarts/phronesis to carry out what book smarts/sophrosyne dictates needs to be done. I am curious if there’s an error I am making here that you could point to me. Phronesis after all grows by putting yourself at the mercy of those who have more of it than you.
Enjoyed your thoughts. AC Grayling wrote a scathing review of one of John Gray's books... How do you rate Grayling? I thought his popular introductory texts are competent but he's no Tom Stoppard.
John is a very stylised public intellectual - arguably, every third or fourth sentence he writes is false, if we read it like it’s written in an academic text. His work now is very much intended for the general public only. And his work is very seductive and manipulative - but not unethically so. That transition was very clear for him - in 2002 he wrote Straw Dogs. I remember walking up and down a philosophy department then and finding almost everyone in the department scandalised. Ps of course I am not endorsing all his views by praising him highly.
@@VladVexlerPhilosophy I liked Straw Dogs too. Nice to see Jim Crace liked it - his wife taught me French.
I loved what you said about “independent thinkers”, I was told the other day that I didn’t understand Russia if I haven’t watched Oliver Stone’s interviews or documentary as they were described, not that I think I understand Russia. I’ve been trying to for years though.