[HN Gopher] The Cult of Mary Beard (2018)
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       The Cult of Mary Beard (2018)
        
       Author : revolucien
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2021-08-18 08:31 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | calderapenguin wrote:
       | "Last year, when a far-right conspiracy theorist attacked a BBC
       | cartoon...."
       | 
       | lol. You mean Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Who is probably better known
       | than Ms. Beard?
       | 
       | Good Lord, is there any reason to even read a newspaper anymore?
       | They're all just propaganda pamphlets.
        
       | cafard wrote:
       | I wasn't aware there was a cult of Mary Beard: perhaps you have
       | to be in Great Britain to be aware of it. The author certainly
       | seems to be a paid-up member.
       | 
       | I did recently read and enjoy _SPQR_.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | calderapenguin wrote:
         | Her shows too easily slip into Historian's Fallacy.
         | 
         | It pays the bills I guess, but there's always something
         | untowards about TV intellectuals. It's like getting your
         | science news from Neil deGrasse Tyson.
        
         | the_biot wrote:
         | Just because The Guardian has an article saying so, doesn't
         | make it true. It's a propaganda rag, not a newspaper.
         | 
         | Getting your news from multiple sources is a good thing, but
         | exclude the extremes from all sides.
        
           | andybak wrote:
           | Judging the extremes rather depends on deciding where the
           | center lies.
        
           | somewhereoutth wrote:
           | The Guardian would only appear extreme to those who's world
           | views have fallen off the other side.
           | 
           | A simple question helps get things back on keel:
           | 
           | "Do you care about other people beyond those that directly
           | benefit you?"
        
           | thrower123 wrote:
           | The Guardian ought to be blacklisted here. The articles are
           | terrible and predictably devolve into flamewars in the
           | comments.
        
       | js290 wrote:
       | "One nonwhite can substitute for another. If that's not racial
       | supremacism, what is?" https://medium.com/east-med-project-
       | history-philology-and-ge...
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Discussed at the time:
       | 
       |  _How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain's most
       | beloved intellectual_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269954 - Jan 2018 (92
       | comments)
        
       | jimnotgym wrote:
       | When all of thay stuff between her and the black swan bloke
       | (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) happened, I was amazed with how he sought
       | to bully her with his opinion, how he tried to drum up hate
       | towards her, and his utter contempt for field other than
       | statistics. I realised then that this was exactly why she had to
       | write 'Women and Power' etc.
        
         | AzzieElbab wrote:
         | I think he just called her a fraud, and honestly, I never seen
         | him making a mistake in this regard. Here:
         | 
         | https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and-ge...
         | 
         | pretty entertaining twitter thread
         | https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/892567659342114816
        
           | marcellus23 wrote:
           | Mary Beard is absolutely not "a fraud" just because you
           | disagree with her view on diversity. (fwiw I also don't
           | particularly like that tweet of hers, but come on.)
        
             | AzzieElbab wrote:
             | well, I guess neither of us is a member of same ethnic
             | group as Taleb. For him that was personal
        
               | marcellus23 wrote:
               | So? That makes it okay to call a distinguished scholar a
               | fraud? (is that a claim Taleb ever made? or just you?)
        
               | AzzieElbab wrote:
               | absolutely. He demonstrated her claims to be both
               | baseless and racist
        
               | booleandilemma wrote:
               | Part of Taleb's philosophy is "if you see fraud and do
               | not say fraud, you are a fraud".
               | 
               | I don't think he calls people frauds lightly.
        
           | andybak wrote:
           | It's possible that she's nice and wrong and he's right but a
           | dick about it.
           | 
           | It's also possible that there's more nuance to this than
           | that.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-18 23:01 UTC)