Just some rambling on the "intellectual dark web"... after watching Piers Morgan have Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein debate.
I used to think Eric Weinstein was a reasonable and smart person. As I did Sam Harris and Doug Murray and Jordan Peterson. Back around 2016 with the "intellectual dark web". I agreed with them all about identity politics, political correctness, free speech, wokeness, etc.
But all of these people have fallen in my estimation.
Eric Weinstein is embarrassing. Like a child desperately trying to prove he is smart. Sticking to some ideas he had in college but isn't smart enough to put together anymore... desperately trying to make his mark on the world and prove himself. Hoping physics works in a way to make us multiplanetary rather than taking reality for what it is. I watched part of a video of him lecturing to a classroom. Except there were no questions from students, no coughs, no sniffles, no sounds of paper shuffling... I'm pretty sure he was videoing himself lecturing to an empty classroom. And his scatterbrain couldn't keep on any one subject he would say something he thought was deep and profound and then jump to something else without connecting his ideas. And he blames physics gatekeepers for blocking out his ideas. Sad, really sad. He has some great abilities to think out of the box, but too far out and disconnected, pathologically so. His brother Bret is far more healthy. I'm sure his wife has a major stabizing influence on him. He's not always right, but he's can explain himself coherently, his thinking remains connected, and his creativity is properly bounded by logic and reason and data.
Sam Harris I can't even be bothered to critique here. But I don't think he is worthy of being listened to.
Douglas Murray... just listen to his Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith. I found Dave Smith through that, and I learned who Douglas Murray really is... two improvements in one.
Jordan Peterson started to look bad when he tried to redefine "truth" and redefine everything in terms of Jungian theory and "stories". I think he helped lost young men, to his credit, and I am absolutely on his side about the Canadian law of compelled speech. But he started to fall off my radar when he started tweeting "Glass Gaza", and went on about how great Europe is and European things... and how other cultures essentially suck. And then his latest debate with 20 athiests was enlightening.
Anyhow... the intellectual dark web wasn't really very intellectual. I'm glad they pushed back against the cultural woke nonsense when they did, but each member is not really the intelligent person they might have appeared to be at the time. Never could compete with the intellectual prowess of the new athiests: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens.
