[HN Gopher] The impotence of being clever
___________________________________________________________________
The impotence of being clever
Author : vitabenes
Score : 180 points
Date : 2022-12-03 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hedgehogreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hedgehogreview.com)
| eternalban wrote:
| I am watching Rossellini's _Cartesius_ -- the intellectual
| biography of Rene Descartes -- and was thinking of submitting a
| link to it; it is held to be a very accurate if not an exciting
| film. Watching this film I think I may have a clue as to when
| cleverness became a "public nuisance".
|
| One of the TIL moments for me in the film is learning _why_ the
| conservative intellectuals of the day were dead against "new
| planets" discovered by telescopes. It turns out, since _all_
| their natural sciences were governed by Zodiac hand-me-downs from
| Babylon via Aristotle and Avicenna -- ~ "all natural phenomena
| are caused by the movements of heavenly bodies" -- having their
| magic number Seven (7) be supplanted was a complete intellectual
| crisis.
|
| It was "cleverness", being "aloof" and "an outsider" that marks
| the man, Descartes (at least as depicted here). He repeatedly
| makes the point in the film as to why he chose to live among
| Dutch merchants and sailors instead of fellow geeks in Paris! ("I
| want to be left alone to think and reflect").
|
| I think pre-Enlightenment the conservative ethos was held to be
| 'godly' and 'true'. Then a sequence of brilliant clever men such
| as Descartes heedlessly began to question practically every
| received wisdom. And then by the time our witty man of letters
| comes around, it had become _fashionable_ and no longer the
| unique instrument of true wits and true minds.
|
| -
|
| A reviewer: _" At first glance this is the most tedious of
| Rossellini's portraits, double the length, with even more
| repetitive talk about a more abstract subject: the correct use of
| mind."_
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161382
|
| magnet:?xt=urn:btih:26FF01235DA0205BFA466939EED0EA5100CBB3BE
| whoami_nr wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Language expressing value judgements on the quality of
| intelligence:
|
| genius -> brilliance -> intelligence -> cleverness -> cunning
|
| I think Dungeons & Dragons character sheets were insightful in
| prodiving separate values for 'intelligence' vs. 'wisdom' (with
| the former being more valuable for wizards, and the latter for
| clerics).
|
| What exactly differentiates these categories is a matter of
| dispute, although many examples come to mind - such as, building
| FTX/Alameda took a lot of cleverness, though not much wisdom.
| Generally, wisdom implies the possession of an internal moral
| compass or at least incorporation of risk assessment into one's
| decision-making process.
|
| Coming up with well-regarded tests for both intelligence and
| wisdom in individual people, however, seems to be an unsolved
| problem. One issue in assigning such quantitative values to
| people is that, as with strength and dexterity, human beings can
| improve these characteristics to some extent. Some will claim
| that the _limits_ of character value development are genetically
| determined, but the reality is that most people don 't spend the
| time and energy training themselves up to any such limit.
| toolslive wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like a cyclops: being able to see the future of
| things, without being able to change the outcome, doesn't make
| you very happy.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| You are thinking of Kassandra of Troy.
| toolslive wrote:
| """ According to legend, the Cyclopes had only one eye after
| making a deal with Hades, god of the underworld, in which
| they traded one eye for the ability to see the future and
| predict the day they would die. """
|
| https://www.greek-gods.info/monsters/cyclopes/
| toolslive wrote:
| iirc it's also mentioned in "the never ending story"
| tunap wrote:
| I thought of Leto Atreides II in the 4th Dune book.
|
| edit: not the op.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| > Very often, this kind of cleverness comes in the form of seeing
| through illusions.
|
| I've been thinking about this a lot recently, especially seeing
| the same individuals bring an insane amount of attention to
| whatever they want. Most of it looks controversial to the general
| public, but is not so much based in their realities.
|
| I think most clever people are simply beyond the good and evil we
| define as a society and make up their own values & ethics (A very
| Nietzsche way to look at it). The Seinfeld example is great in
| this article because that's exactly what I think about when I
| think of Larry David. He's a very clever person given the best
| comedy is relatable, even if it is morally wrong as defined by
| society.
| pkoird wrote:
| Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes is also guilty of an
| unusual kind of cleverness. I remember reading this one story
| (whose name I forgot) where Sherlock essentially concludes that a
| person he's looking for is pretty intelligent just because the
| hat of the person is big and deep (after all, if the head is big,
| there's got to be more brains).
| politelemon wrote:
| That would be the Blue Diamond.
| https://targmne.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/thebluediamond_b...
|
| Page 4
| carl_dr wrote:
| > "It is a question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so
| large a brain must have something in it."
|
| That's from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
|
| There are at least a couple of other examples of this line of
| thought in the books :
| https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2011/03/skull-was-of-enormou...
| trabant00 wrote:
| This strikes home for me. The witty jokes I make to isolate
| myself from a world I often can make no sense of. The isolation
| that hides insecurities and the lack of courage to take leaps of
| faith and participate in an imperfect society rather than hang at
| the periphery and judge it.
|
| Whatever the reasons/excuses - genetics, upbringing, current
| social trends towards individualism, whatever - I can find no
| solution though. Whenever I force myself to get involved I end up
| disilusioned and eventually angry. Impotence describes it
| perfectly.
|
| So in the end one must asume that whatever is lacking, be it
| wisdom or faith, or humblesness, it really is lacking and
| preventing me from making any significant impact. And being only
| clever is similar to being a clown.
| yamrzou wrote:
| > Very often, this kind of cleverness comes in the form of seeing
| through illusions [...] But this kind of cleverness that cuts
| through illusions can become its own kind of illusion.
|
| Sometimes being clever is about the ability of self-delusion as
| long as it serves one's goal, as described in _On Self-Delusion
| and Bounded Rationality_ --
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html
| yason wrote:
| Cleverness, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The lack of self awareness in this piece was entertaining.
|
| Writing about impotent pretensions to cleverness on on the
| Internet on a site on the Internet hardly anyone will read,
| quoting Seinfeld, Raymond Chandler, a vintage movie script, and
| Kierkegaard, and name-checking Oscar Wilde and Einstein, all
| under the modest tag "Critical Reflections on Contemporary
| Culture" is... quite a look.
| sdwr wrote:
| Lack of self! The author is a ghost. I read it as a cry for
| help. "I am lonely", he says. But it's worse than that, because
| there is no him to be lonely. His cognition is bound up in
| fragments of other people's fictional lives.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >on a site on the Internet hardly anyone will read
|
| what does that have to do with the lack of self-awareness?
| drooby wrote:
| But your comment is the quintessential HN comment.
|
| And my comment is the quintessential backlash to the snarky
| quintessential comment.
|
| Oh god. Are we becoming too self-aware. Someone shut us off.
| tonnydourado wrote:
| Where's the big eraser from looney tunes when we need it
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| Somebody here lacks self-awareness, but I'm not sure it's the
| author. To quote the article:
|
| > Another way to redeem passive lurking is by making a clever
| joke that shows that you are above the whole thing. Twitter's
| quote tweet function, especially, enables users literally as
| well as metaphorically to appear above the conversation and to
| cleverly one-up their opponents from this privileged position.
| The game, in effect, is this: Who can appear the most above it
| all? But the circumstances of posting--alone at the controls
| with no one around but everyone watching--all but guarantee
| that posts are alloyed with insecurity, however clever they
| might be. Like the too-clever detective whose need to exhibit
| command tends to result in more chaos, the clever poster's
| attempt to stand above the medium's stupidity merely reveals
| dependence on its meager pleasures. Cleverness devolves from
| the output of analytical acuity into a transparent show put on
| to allay the anxieties of passive consumption.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't think this is correct. You're conflating
| pretentiousness with cleverness, and also making the claim that
| quoting or name-checking a few pillars of western culture is
| pretentious. It's not: if you're writing a piece about culture,
| it's sort of par for the course. Whether it's being written on
| a "site on the Internet hardly anyone will read" is irrelevant
| to whether it's being clever or not, but it's certainly ironic,
| because you read it, and I read it, and it's on the front page
| of HN.
|
| And, if you still think that it's trying to be clever, and you
| think that invalidates its point, doesn't that argue for its
| thesis?
| randcraw wrote:
| If a thing is clever, doesn't that define it as essentially
| superficial and insubstantial? And isn't cleverness that
| serves only to elevate the author, pretentious? Given the
| meandering focus of the piece and the author's penchant for
| dropping names rather than making clear points and
| reinforcing them via reason or contrast, 'pretentious' seems
| apropos.
|
| IHMO, cleverness always lacks substance; it's superficial,
| droll, better-than-banal -- but never synonymous with
| brilliant or everlasting. Pretension is cleverness that
| serves only the author. Both apply here, I fear.
| overbytecode wrote:
| There is nothing in it to indicate a lack of self awareness.
| Even if it is "clever", in the detached, above-it-all sense, it
| doesn't make the premise any less valid. Sometimes a piece can
| not escape being _hypocritical_ if the object it is
| scrutinizing is so ever-present that includes the article
| itself.
|
| It's like if you wrote an essay on the limitations of language,
| and then someone went "But you're using language to write it".
| Well that part is inescapable, isn't it? Just like you can't
| really scrutinize _cleverness_ (in the sense the author
| intended), without being clever, without being _above it all_ ,
| at least for the duration of the article. You need that vantage
| point for any sweeping reflections on current culture.
|
| Funny enough, I didn't consider quoting Seinfeld or Oscar Wilde
| as symptoms of the particular strain of cleverness the author
| is referring to.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Is quoting Seinfeld a pretension to cleverness? If so, the
| times have changed!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I am afraid they did. I have seen quotes from that on the
| Spectator to defend a pro-abortionist stance, in a text where
| the actual argument was a pelvic taunting.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Maybe I don't understand what a pretension to cleverness
| is. I can believe that someone might misquote _Seinfeld_ ,
| or any cultural resource, to appear to lend support to an
| argument that it doesn't (although why someone would think
| even an argument actually supported by _Seinfeld_ was made
| stronger thereby I don 't know--the show is famously and
| intentionally about awful, shallow people). However, to me,
| a pretension to cleverness involves an attempt to signal
| some sort of cultural cachet--here, I think of cleverness
| as being synonymous with a sort of tricky or practical
| intelligence. Does _Seinfeld_ carry that cachet?
|
| > ... in a text where the actual argument was a pelvic
| taunting.
|
| I don't understand what this means, but I suspect that
| better understanding it would not make my life any better.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I don 't understand what this means, but I suspect_
|
| I interpret it that while afraid, you do not mind me
| explaining, also/at least for others that may not have
| understood.
|
| Argument: "We adopt this stance, because it allows X and
| doing differently would cause Y and Z".
|
| The Spectator, a few months ago: "It is like in that
| Seinfeld episode where she expressed her concerns and he
| replied that all [slur] are [slur]. Yeah, take that,
| [slur], because this [vulgarity] has met your
| [relative]".
|
| Edit: and when I read that, I thought that the current
| decadence, each day more evident, is abusing boundaries.
|
| Edit: ...although, I suspect that this type of articles
| that The Spectator has so horribly decided are
| acceptable, could actually be tolerated, under the
| circumstance that they are read and acted by Mike Meyers
| in a costume.
| starkd wrote:
| What an odd comment to make. His central thesis about
| "cleverness" allowed him to tie together a number of disparate
| elements. It is what writers do strive to do. If this was in
| the New Yorker would that confer legitimacy? That feels very
| elitist.
|
| The flow of the writing reminded me a lot of Paul Graham's
| essays.
| sdwr wrote:
| If it was in the New Yorker, it would be grounded much
| better. It would include an interview with an academic
| invested in the subject, or a profile on someone in the news
| (but not too popular!), or frame it through the writer's home
| life.
|
| That confers legitimacy in a way that a frozen block of
| quotes does not.
|
| Same thing with Paul Graham. He actually did things, and wove
| those experiences into his writing. The exact same thoughts
| coming from nobody mean a hell of a lot less.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| > it would include [access to intellectual elite] or a
| profile on someone [from the political or cultural elite]
|
| > Same thing with Paul Graham. He [is part of the financial
| elite]. The exact same thoughts coming from [some pleb]
| mean a hell of a lot less.
|
| So... _actual_ elitism. This isn 't a very charitable way
| of engaging with literature, and it's your own loss.
|
| Plenty of "nobodies" had thoughts that became legitimate
| well after their own lifetimes.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _tie together a number of disparate elements. It is what
| writers do strive to do_
|
| Very hopefully not. A game of associations ("first", "test",
| "try", "feel", "skin"...) is already <<t[ying] together a
| number of disparate elements>>. But randomly, in idleness,
| possibly decadent.
|
| Writers (should be supposed to) try to present a coherent
| complex idea - defending a thesis, modelling a description,
| disclosing potentially fruitful relations - by making its
| ideal structure explicit through some relatively fixed
| perspective form. That remains, structuring information (and
| in a loop of criticism checks), in a set of globally (as
| opposed to locally) strong relations (between the nodes).
| With a so implied Purpose in the statements.
|
| Which by the way seems to have been an intended target of
| TFA. Compromising a lot with its enemy, though.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Writers (should be supposed to) try to present a coherent
| complex idea - defending a thesis, modelling a description,
| disclosing potentially fruitful relations - by making its
| ideal structure explicit through some relatively fixed
| perspective form. That remains, structuring information
| (and in a loop of criticism checks), in a set of globally
| (as opposed to locally) strong relations (between the
| nodes). With a so implied Purpose in the statements.
|
| I remember reading something similar from an old Ernest
| Hemingway interview.
|
| Does anyone who knows what I'm talking about have a link?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I'd like just to specify that I composed that paragraph
| on the spot. _Rem tene, verba sequentur_.
|
| If Hemingway said something similar, I'd say it is not
| specifically because great minds think alike - also that
| -, but because we described the same thing. There is an
| infinite number of ways to describe, say, a glass through
| <<relatively fixed perspective form[s]>>, but a pretty
| limited number of <<ideal structure[s]>> pertaining.
| jancsika wrote:
| > If Hemingway said something similar
|
| Sorry, I shouldn't have written similar. It's literally
| word for word equivalent.
|
| Have you ever considered rewriting the complete works of
| Ernest Hemingway, but for different reasons?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Well, since I in fact have written it from scratch, as an
| original - though saying nothing new but an actual state
| of things -, please do find the exact quotation, so we
| will wonder upon the "magic" that allegedly happened.
|
| Incidentally: I checked, because I was intrigued - though
| probably "<<for different reasons>>", i.e. to compare the
| views - and I could not find it. I saw that there exists
| an "Hemingway on Writing", 2019. But I do not know. I
| admit I never read Hemingway (owing to queues). Though I
| can guess we have pretty different styles: syntactic vs
| paratactic.
|
| Edit: but if that "magic" happened - /if/ -, I know the
| trick, and I can already tell you. If, e.g., "a
| circumference is the set of points equidistant from a
| centre", the ways in which you can say that idea will
| collapse into that.
| civopsec wrote:
| As if such an obvious observation needed to be stated.
| bloqs wrote:
| Looks like someone didnt read the article, or indeed the
| headline properly
| civopsec wrote:
| Clever observation.
| calculated wrote:
| If this is sarcastic and you wrote it after reading the full
| article I get it. If not no offence but maybe you should read
| it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I read all the way to the end and concluded much the same.
|
| The sort of cleverness that the essay is complaining about
| seems to me to be summed up in the phrase: "you're so sharp
| you'll cut yourself".
| civopsec wrote:
| Too clever by half?
| marcovvssr wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT to summarize it after reading the whole thing and
| made a pretty good job. Maybe is better to read the part about
| being humble in the full version but still...
|
| Cleverness is often seen as a positive quality, but it is also
| associated with being an outsider. In modernity, this has led to
| the proliferation of cleverness in public life, often in the form
| of contrived knowingness and irony. This has led to cleverness
| becoming a currency online, with people competing for likes and
| subscribers with clever jokes and analyses. There is an affinity
| between cleverness and alienation, as exemplified by the
| detective archetype, who is a detached and calculating outsider.
| This kind of cleverness often takes the form of seeing through
| illusions and can be found in popular media, online commenting,
| and in fiction. The proliferation of cleverness in public life
| has led to it becoming a nuisance and being criticized by figures
| such as Oscar Wilde and Soren Kierkegaard. It is important to
| distinguish between genuine wisdom and cleverness, and not to
| value the latter over the former.
| starkd wrote:
| This is one of the problems with chatGPT. Good writing is not
| just a way to communicate ideas. It is also a way to develop
| ideas that are worth exploring. Being proficient with language
| - good language skills - means being proficient with ideas. It
| is easy to lose site of this when you're profession is a
| technical one that mostly reads instruction manuals or
| technical documentation.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Now the matter becomes to identify the unintelligence expected
| of ChatGTP in its product.
|
| I see a few (e.g. linking 'Kierkegaard' and 'proliferation'),
| but it would be probably more interesting to do the same on an
| article presenting some solid argument.
|
| > _Pretty good job_
|
| Do you think the summary is really structured? Does it present
| an argument? Does it identify its nodes?
|
| Or is it more like Woody Allen having made that speed-reading
| course and concluding that War and Peace is about Russia?
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| I think it's about as cogent as the original article. Which
| is to say, a ball of mud.
| marcovvssr wrote:
| I tried to ask ChatGPT to make a more comprehensive summary
| but it gave me a very similar output, i think because
| "summary", to the model, has to match certain conditions of
| length, it is a very limiting factor; to my understanding,
| this tool wasn't meant to be used for this type of article
| (at the moment), instead, i find it perfect for summarizing
| long blog posts optimized for SEO.
|
| However, if your goal was to just know what to expect from
| the article and then read it, it made a 'Pretty good job'.
| sdwr wrote:
| I like that summary better than the actual article. The article
| read as floaty and artificial. ChatGPT's sickly sweet tone
| peeks through a bit here, but the pacing is much better.
| crims0n wrote:
| Really enjoyed this essay, the parallels between the flaneur of
| old and modern lurkers is a brilliant connection. Really makes me
| question how much time I should be spending on twitter and
| reddit.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _question how much time_
|
| Advice: question /why/. The rest should follow.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _" Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the
| voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage."_
|
| Lewis Hyde "Alcohol & Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze
| Talking"
| cateblanchett wrote:
| love john berryman, shout out john berryman
| hprotagonist wrote:
| it's usually attributed to DFW, but that's because he quotes
| it approvingly in "E Unibas Pluram"
| Konohamaru wrote:
| From the essay:
|
| > Think of the way adolescents try a knowing remark to project
| worldliness when their egos are threatened.
|
| What does this mean?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| >Our popular media are drenched in contrived knowingness and
| irony. And cleverness has become something like a currency
| online, where hordes of commenters and commentators compete for
| likes and subscribers with world-weary analyses and smug jokes.
| What should we make of this apparent degradation?
|
| That those people are clearly not clever at all and most can't
| think for themselves so they just parrot whatever they heard from
| others? Trying to feign cleverness and actually being clever are
| not the same thing.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Interesting read
|
| > Another way to redeem passive lurking is by making a clever
| joke that shows that you are above the whole thing. Twitter's
| quote tweet function, especially, enables users literally as well
| as metaphorically to appear above the conversation and to
| cleverly one-up their opponents from this privileged position.
| The game, in effect, is this: Who can appear the most above it
| all?
|
| This sounds like the proletariat mimicking their leadership, in
| that the above is a description of how politics seems to work. We
| need a better class of example-setters before we're going to see
| better behaved societies.
|
| The topic of discussion is quickly lost, and any hope of progress
| towards a resolution along with it, amongst a competition of
| witticisms.
|
| I'm quite happy with this cleverness of mine:
|
| "I'd rather be right than popular, and I often am."
|
| But this could just be an intellectual hedging of my bets against
| whatever the real-life-vulnerability equivalent of down votes is;
| Stern, disapproving glares.
| starkd wrote:
| I think this is the downsides of cleverness that Oscar Wilde
| eludes to. Its overuse can be hollow, snide and become
| downright mean and cynical. Very emotionally draining.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| "Is there really something wrong with being clever? ...
| cleverness functions more as a cover for vulnerability ...
| reframe forced alienation ... use forms of cleverness to evade
| such suffering ..."
|
| I appreciate cleverness in others when it helps me avoid my own
| suffering. Unfortunately I still suffer most of the time.
| mounceyboy wrote:
| And kierkegaards aphorisms are a master collection of witticisms
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Thanks for the advice!
|
| _The humor of Kierkegaard: an anthology_ (edited by Thomas C.
| Oden)
|
| https://archive.org/details/humorofkierkegaa0000kier
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I completely disagree with this piece, and I think the author is
| missing a few key details that lead him wrong.
|
| The author focuses a lot on the trappings of cleverness - the
| witticisms and the "outsider" nature of the clever individual.
| This is the wrong thing to focus on. People with conventional
| ideas today exploit these trappings (with the help of
| professional marketing and PR teams) to give themselves an air of
| importance and brilliance. It's no surprise that when you focus
| there, you will find cleverness to be "impotent."
|
| Instead, cleverness defined as a cross-disciplinary ("outsider")
| perspective is incredibly valuable in the modern world. A lot of
| cleverness comes from people who otherwise seem very boring -
| they are clever in their specialty and in their own way, but not
| the supposed "renaissance men" that media personalities seem to
| be attracted to.
| starkd wrote:
| I don't think cleverness is quite the same as inventiveness or
| a skill that equips you for a job. It is more a psychological
| tool people often use to navigate the world. I think that's
| what the essay was getting at.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| You're hitting the right point in that it's focusing on the
| first type of cleverness, but that's because that's the type of
| cleverness that society and social networks find to drive
| "engagement" and therefore it's treated as far more important
| than your second definition of cleverness, which is the type
| that provides progress to technology and society and politics
| and so on - but it's boring because society's issues that need
| solving are so deep and complex and niche that any cleverness
| in the solution is lost to anyone but experts in the same
| field.
|
| And so what the layperson sees, because it's what's chosen by
| the engagement maximising algorithm, is only ever type 1
| cleverness. Hence it's the topic.
|
| Which is ironic in itself, a well written article about the
| focus being wrong because the focus is wrong.
|
| (My pithy summation is also such an example, it's clever but
| adds or solves fucking nothing, welcome to my career).
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > "renaissance men" that media personalities seem to be
| attracted to
|
| I believe the word you're looking for is "dilettante".
| spicyusername wrote:
| > Who can appear the most above it all? But the circumstances of
| posting--alone at the controls with no one around but everyone
| watching--all but guarantee that posts are alloyed with
| insecurity, however clever they might be.
|
| It definitely feels like much of always-online culture is a
| defense mechanism against feeling scared and powerless, even as
| it presents itself as anything but.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I believe I got a programming job once because, after
| interviewing applicants, I said, "Programmers should be capable
| of being clever, but not relying on it." And I meant it in the
| Einsteinian sense, after many interviews of duds. It was then
| gently suggested that perhaps I ought to fill the role.
|
| However, the other form of being clever, the _Fight Club_ "How's
| the working out for you? -- Being clever?" is shallow and often
| contagious, in the sense that a clever turn of phrase or a meme
| might replace rational thought. I'll give an example: whenever
| someone might suggest that someone else who is mentally ill might
| be violent, the stock response (I'll give you a bit to think of
| it) is some variant "Mentally ill people are in more danger of
| having violence inflicted on them than average people."
|
| It's interesting as a response, it might even be true, but it in
| _no way answers_ the actual question: is there a statistically
| larger incidence of violence from the mentally ill as compared to
| the norm? And then if you press further, you can get something
| like "The vast majority of people with mental health problems
| are no more likely to be violent than anyone else," which is yet
| another clever evasion and still doesn't answer the question.
|
| This is just one example, but a lot of "memetic politics" contain
| such obscuring cleverness. It's a magic trick, at best, and
| should be stamped out wherever it appears, as a terrible shim
| jammed in, separating us just a little bit more from the real
| world.
| fullshark wrote:
| Chock full of pop culture references but no reference to this
| great scene from Fight Club: https://youtu.be/vX8Zc8UGGu4. Which
| basically makes the same point in 15 seconds.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _What should we make of this apparent degradation?_
|
| Make it apparent. Oh, but in a way the author did.
|
| Bad signals: <<Even if it can get on our nerves sometimes>>;
| <<associations>>; <<positive>>; <<is seen>>; <<many will
| identify>>; <<we tend to use>>; ... <<redeem ... by making a
| clever joke ... that shows>>; <<to appear>>; <<the game>> ...
|
| The accusation of levity is circular, acted from a perspective
| firmly installed in levity.
|
| Very little appears of any constructive consideration of the
| Point: we have to manage a World, we need well processed
| information, we had been since the dawn of time, playing is for
| spare time - and Stern is mostly playing.
|
| --
|
| > _the medium's stupidity_
|
| In spite of a number of faults, let us hold HN dear for the goods
| it offers.
| [deleted]
| cateblanchett wrote:
| the most unintentionally meta essay ever written
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| These comments are meta too.
| cateblanchett wrote:
| i just dont entirely agree that cleverness should be classed
| as 'bad'. cleverness is entertaining. it's ok for things to
| just be fun.
| mrwh wrote:
| Entertaining article. For all the references to pre-Internet
| things and people, I can't help but feel it's mainly about a
| certain sort of Twitter cleverness. The witty reply to this or
| that outrage that, in the end, changed absolutely nothing. Not
| cleverness, then (and really, of all places, tech very much
| rewards cleverness), but impotent wit.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was tormented by the
| thought that he was "merely clever" and criticized himself and
| others for valuing cleverness over genuine wisdom.
|
| This torments me too. Growing up I was top of my class/district
| (same as my parents and theirs, which really suggests a genetic
| component), but then when I started working with other smart
| people I realized that only gets you so far.
|
| To make wise decisions, you need to have the proper mindstate to
| make genuine "human" decisions, rather than using just your
| intelligence. In fact, if you're smart enough, you can
| "logically" prove wrong things to yourself like "this is
| impossible". Wisdom is knowing that whenever you say that, you
| have made a mistake in your logic at some point.
|
| It's very hard to teach people to start thinking like this. The
| junior engineers who can think on their feet are usually mentored
| better since that's the part you can't teach..
|
| The tormenting part is this: the same can be said of most other
| areas of life. I've seen so many genuinely smart people
| completely mess up personal areas of their life by refusing to
| think, or do things differently. Despite having a strong
| apparatus for thinking, they don't "wake up" and use it, they
| just form all kinds of delusions that they can prove to
| themselves using their strong proving abilities. Despite being
| wise in some areas, this wisdom doesn't extend to the others.
|
| I think this is why depression rates are higher in more
| intelligent people. There's a better ability to comprehend and
| change your life, but that usually doesn't translate to the
| willpower and wisdom needed to do so. Those are separate things
| one has to have/train. An inbalance in the two causes great
| upset/lost potential.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > To make wise decisions, you need to have the proper mindstate
| to make genuine "human" decisions, rather than using just your
| intelligence.
|
| I recognize this as empathy. It is something of a superpower
| when used to its full potential.
| nwienert wrote:
| It's more than that. I'd argue there are "IQs" for culture
| (what's the best outcome in a meta sense), power (what
| words/actions lead to maintaining dominance), social (how
| does everyone likely feel and react to what I say, related to
| power) and many more.
|
| So undervalued by many.
| tonnydourado wrote:
| > same as my parents and theirs, which really suggests a
| genetic component
|
| Does it? Could be as much a product of a privileged upbringing
| and generational welth reproducing themselves. Do you have an
| adopted sibling you grew up with, that had the same
| environments and opportunities, but turned out to be a moron?
| As a control group, you know.
|
| I find odd how people are so quick to jump to genetics to
| explain a thing so complex as a human being inside a society.
| There's SO many forces acting on it at all times, picking genes
| over all the others feels like an oversimplification.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming that's the only factor, but
| it does seem that some people have higher natural aptitudes
| for some modes of thought, at least to me.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I said suggests, not proves. It can't prove anything, it's
| just one data point. It does seem very unlikely for a dozen
| people to score so well academically if genetics wasn't a
| factor at all, or? Why didn't other, richer people score
| higher than any of them? And why did they marry other
| intelligent people?
|
| > privileged upbringing and generational welth reproducing
| themselves
|
| I come from an ex Soviet satellite state, I don't think your
| assumptions of what my parents/grandparents' life was like is
| accurate. I had a more privileged upbringing, but that
| doesn't explain 2 generations away.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > (same as my parents and theirs, which really suggests a
| genetic component)
|
| I am not at all put off by genetic explanations (go
| genes!), but it does equally suggest environment and
| upbringing as a common element, it's a series of poster
| children for it.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I concede you have a point there. My opinions are colored
| by my experiences.
|
| As a personal story that I will share since it also has
| value as an experiment: I did not see my father between
| the ages of 0-3 and 7-19. That means he was not there for
| a large part of my developmental phase, in which I formed
| a lot of my viewpoints on the world (at the time,
| obviously).
|
| What astounded me was that when I met him, he shared a
| lot of those viewpoints. A lot of my behaviour that I
| thought was specific to me, was not. Even small things
| like preference for walking etc. I will not list
| everything obviously but it really ingrained in me that a
| lot of what I considered "my identity" was not chosen in
| any way by me. We grew up in rather different
| environments/countries too.
|
| I think most humans would rather not face the fact that
| their identity is scarcely chosen. But learning to accept
| that means you can experience a lot more, since your ego
| doesn't mind losing parts that aren't "really part of it"
| anyway. Or at least it's less scary.
| sophacles wrote:
| I drive a pickup truck. Like my dad, grandpa and uncles. Do
| you think there might be a genetic compent to my choice of
| vehicle? Its strongly suggested as such, according to you.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I see your point, but choice of transportation vehicle is
| more obviously dependent on environment than
| intelligence.
| riversflow wrote:
| Is it? You are supposing that people don't choose their
| environment.
| zosima wrote:
| I think there is a strong genetic component for owning a
| pickup truck. Just like for dog ownership:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44083-9
|
| Obviously, there is also a strong environmental factor.
| But lacking either, will probably result in no pickup
| truck.
| [deleted]
| archsurface wrote:
| Wealth and privileged upbringing do not result in
| intelligence. On the contrary, children brought up being able
| to goof around in comfy surroundings often turn out to be
| mediocre regardless of the standard of their education.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| "Growing up I was top of my class/district (same as my parents
| and theirs, which really suggests a genetic component).
|
| No it doesn't. It implicates an inheritable component, just not
| necessarily a genetic one. Education, wealth, culture,
| prosperity, etc.
| eastbound wrote:
| > Education, wealth, culture, prosperity, etc.
|
| Wow, would you think it's possible that there is a
| correlation between intelligent people and groups which
| create education, wealth, culture, prosperity, etc.?
| jmcgough wrote:
| Ironic that there's several assumptions around things you've
| tried to logic out without looking at research.
|
| >I think this is why depression rates are higher in more
| intelligent people. There's a better ability to comprehend and
| change your life, but that usually doesn't translate to the
| willpower and wisdom needed to do so.
|
| Other possibilities:
|
| - intelligent people have a history of being bullied and
| develop anxiety/depression from that
|
| - they struggle with impossibly high expectations placed on
| them
|
| - genes associated with intelligence increase risk of mental
| illness
|
| - they rely too much on their intellect at an early age and
| fail to develop other important skills
|
| - intelligent people may be more arrogant and have difficulty
| maintaining friendships
|
| - a higher correlation of neurodivergence and the difficulties
| of living in a world not designed for them
| janeerie wrote:
| The other alternative is that this is not actually true. I'm
| having trouble finding any evidence that intelligence is
| correlated with depression.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Maybe it's sampling bias, then.
|
| Intelligent people are more likely to realize they're
| depressed, go online, talk about depression, and meet other
| intelligent people who are also depressed?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > Ironic that there's several assumptions around things
| you've tried to logic out without looking at research.
|
| Yes, exactly! I'm aware of it and can't stop doing it. You do
| it too I bet. It's a very annoying flaw in the human psyche.
|
| edit: to be clear, you can stop. It requires some energy to
| open up your mind though, so you can't do it forever or
| you'll burn out, at least in my experience.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >genuinely smart people completely mess up personal areas of
| their life by refusing to think
|
| This really reminds me of some guy I used to work with. He
| would spew random madness like people don't really need to eat
| because alive is an arbitrary state. I really have no idea how
| he functioned outside of his CS job.
|
| He was also annoying at work because I would say things like
| the customer needs this then he would retort with some more
| madness like "well if you think about it blah blah the customer
| doesn't really matter." An I would just have to be like "ok
| thats great just get your feature assignments done on time".
| through gritted teeth. He did always get his work done.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The pedant is like a man living zeno's paradox of Achilles
| and the Tortoise.
|
| You'll never get anywhere pedantically deconstructing things
| with no bounds.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Yeah I always said he is either going to be dead in a
| dariwin award level situation or destroy the world.
|
| He currently works at Northrop Grumman so not looking good
| for us.
| szundi wrote:
| Not only genes, but certain memes can be inherited also without
| any DNA.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Interesting bit about limits, I'm in a similar boat. But beside
| the social aspect of reaching groups of stronger people,
| something that changed is that my brain used to grok everything
| out of the blue, and one day.. it didn't.[0] It's not that
| things became harder but as if a big wall of confusion
| appeared, while other were still seeing clearly (or so it seems
| to my panicked eyes). During the years I managed to climb
| stairs I couldn't before, so it's not a matter of being able to
| grok things, but what became out of phase with college level
| content in my brain that killed any speed.
|
| [0] for instance, I was top of my class not by choice but
| merely because I enjoyed reading all the things all the time
| because it was so natural, so pleasurable. That pleasure is far
| away most of the time now.
|
| The emotional / personal aspect of abuse of "thinking" is also
| interesting.
| ip26 wrote:
| _they just form all kinds of delusions that they can prove to
| themselves_
|
| Perhaps this is another manifestation of the fear of failure
| that prevents some smart people from taking chances. E.g.,
| admitting they were wrong and the normies were right would mean
| they aren't smart after all, so they entrench and apply every
| brain cell to convincing themselves they are right, to the
| point of delusion.
| xyzelement wrote:
| The contrast between cleverness of this form and religion
| resonates with me as someone who's gone from atheism to deep
| appreciation of the truth of religion.
|
| Our love of our own cleverness is the ego's attempt to assert its
| relevance. "I am smart. I can figure out the world on my own. I
| am right in what I think and believe" whereas religion puts us in
| our place, as mortal and limited beings in an infinite and
| eternal universe, whose knowledge and even theoretical ability to
| grasp the ultimate truth is limited.
| riskable wrote:
| xyzelement wrote:
| I haven't seen religion truncate the search for truth. In my
| understanding, many of the men to whom we owe our
| understanding of the world were religious.
|
| Newton and Darwin were driven to understand how G-d
| implements his designs.
|
| The Big Bang was theorized by a Catholic priest scientist who
| was looking for (and found) the moment of creation. Edward
| Hubble who proved the big bang through observation was a
| deeply religious Christian.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Careful. The purpose is not epistemic.
| mangamadaiyan wrote:
| Either that, or you could be fooling yourself by thinking "I'm
| smart, I've realised that religion has all the answers". Who
| knows?
| xyzelement wrote:
| I haven't encountered religion to claim to have _all the
| answers_. I have seen it deeply acknowledge man 's
| limitations and the resultant profound awe of the mystery.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The poster and you are talking about different things. You
| are describing the reaction of a class of practitioners and
| he is describing the reaction of a different class of
| approachers. You have identified two different real
| profiles.
| svnpenn wrote:
| I dont know if Reddit has always been like this, but it is now.
| Essentially 90% of all top level comments are some dumbass joke,
| or some pop culture reference, or some winking cutesie reply. It
| makes me sick just thinking about it. I'm not saying it all has
| to be high minded essays for every comment, but what you have now
| is the equivalent of elementary school playground talk. Grow the
| fuck up.
| fullshark wrote:
| It was like that before, but the jokes were in-jokes that made
| it feel like a community, e.g. a reference to bacon, narwhals,
| or some other nonsense. This was interspersed with genuinely
| thoughtful replies. Eventually the site got too big, the LCD
| quips won out and the conversation became junk food for the
| mind.
| brudgers wrote:
| Possibly related:
|
| _Too Clever by Half_
|
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079369
| skybrian wrote:
| The article doesn't really get at how wittiness works in social
| media, where clever jokes tend to work against actually
| explaining things and genuine curiosity about what's going on. We
| know less than we pretend, but the knowing attitudes often hide
| the gaps in our understanding. Better to ask sincere questions
| and look for their answers. And if you're not actually curious,
| at least support the people who are.
| maksimur wrote:
| Be clever but be humble too. There's not a lot to it. The first
| will propel you very far and the second will help when the first
| doesn't suffice anymore.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I'm reminded of a line from comedian John Mulaney: "Just
| because you're accurate doesn't mean you're interesting."
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| They're almost inversely related in practise, because
| accuracy requires understanding of the subtleties, so if you
| have to explain the accuracy then the audience already
| doesn't understand the subtleties, and if they don't
| understand the subtleties it's usually because they don't
| find them interesting.
|
| The above is also an example.
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| The irony of the witty. The cleverest of quips. To be more sure
| of yourself by standing above the rest. For the clever themselves
| may just find it was the loudest whom made the news that day.
|
| What a breathe Omm
| the-printer wrote:
| Am I the only one who found this essay to be meandering? It's
| frustrating because I felt from the headline that it was going to
| make a valid point about the odd gloss of humor as a way of
| social/existential self-defense that is permeating our time. And
| I think that that's what the author may actually be getting at. I
| found the quotes pulled into the comments here to be great re:
| quote tweets, but I felt like the essay itself was almost like a
| granite obelisk of one cultural reference after the other.
| Veen wrote:
| It is meandering, but that's a good thing so far as I am
| concerned. It's an essay in the old-fashioned exploratory
| Montaignian style where the journey matters as much as the
| destination, not the sterile persuasive plod of the modern
| style.
| the-printer wrote:
| Are you referring to "Classic" style of prose as it is
| portrayed in the book "Clear and Simple as the Truth"? If so,
| good point. But in my opinion, taking your observation into
| consideration, the piece now falls even flatter if I were to
| interpret it as an attempt at that style of writing.
|
| If the author stuck to just dissecting only Twitter or
| Seinfeld or Kierkegaard or Einstein using some supporting of
| details derived from just one of of those references, or even
| tied in one extra reference for robustness, that'd be great
| in my opinion. But this essay reads like it was constructed
| from a bunch of transcluded notes from an Obsidian vault or a
| zettelkasten (where reference upon reference can be taking
| due to bi-directional links between notes).
|
| I can go as far as to say that this is less classic prose,
| than it is prose in the manner of a Family Guy episode.
| Veen wrote:
| > Are you referring to "Classic" style of prose as it is
| portrayed in the book "Clear and Simple as the Truth"?
|
| No, although that's an excellent book. I'm referring to the
| essay-writing tradition that started with Michel de
| Montaigne (who first used the word 'essay' in that sense).
| He was a skeptic and thought of essays as wandering and
| exploratory, not probative.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_(Montaigne)
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montaigne
| nostromo95 wrote:
| However, in Montaigne's essays he often doesn't have a clear
| thesis at the beginning of the essay. You are reading his
| (magisterial) thinking transcribed onto the page.
|
| The OP gestures towards a thesis ('here's why society's
| championing of cleverness is bad') and then spends paragraphs
| meandering around it.
| dgreensp wrote:
| I agree, the writing is entertaining, but it doesn't stick to
| any particular points. If it did, there would be more
| accountability for the author to say things that lead to useful
| conclusions, I think. At times I found myself wondering what
| the author was getting at, but then they would move on.
|
| Is talking about "culture" a way of lumping fiction and reality
| together? Fictional always-right, wisecracking detectives
| aren't real, but there are real detectives, and presumably some
| clever ones whose actual cleverness is of real practical use.
| Fictional scientists who are more passionate than logical
| aren't real, but there are real scientists, whose cleverness is
| presumably valuable. Realistic work of professionals doesn't
| make for good reading. Fiction is entertainment in the first
| place.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't intend this meanly, but do you read much non-technical
| nonfiction? New yorker articles, memoirs, things like that?
| This one is not particularly an outlier, but also not a ton of
| that stuff gets posted to HN.
| allgreed wrote:
| This is quite an interesting phenomenon, though it's more
| unique. I find those kind (can't come up with a sensible
| qualifier... the best thing that comes to mind is "upper
| middle class normie journalism") of pieces incomprehensible
| on the higher strata of the parsing tree. I understand the
| words (which is not always the case with fiction, eg
| Blindsight - there are pages where I need to do multiple
| dictionary lookups, English is not my native tongue thou),
| the sentences more or less clearly denote facts or ideas,
| but... the more I read of them the less they make sense
| together.
|
| Yet another funny thing occurred to me: I'm not sure I'm
| enjoying much non-technical non-fiction. Is Bret Devereaux[0]
| technical? Well, tekhne, the root word hints at craft, art or
| skill. The articles focus on the "how to" (move armies,
| organize settlements or even write better fiction) merely
| using "how it was" as a teaching aid and inspiration. So the
| conclusion would follow that all kinds of guides are
| technical.
|
| Then if a published piece of writing is neither technical
| (guide / manual) nor fiction (art) - what is it? Isn't it
| just... data?
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I'm not necessarily trying to endorse that style of
| writing either, and I think "upper middle class normie
| journalism" is a pretty good name for it.
|
| But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time
| with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis
| and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its point
| "between the lines" or through braiding apparently
| unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to
| finish the splice are not well received here.
|
| I also think that, like consuming only social media
| probably atrophies your attention span, reading only
| "direct" prose atrophies your ability to experience the
| ride of other styles and receive what they have to give.
|
| And again I don't really intend this as a value judgement.
| Both styles have their place and there is no moral
| imperative to enjoy all approaches to writing. But having a
| limited palate accidentally, being blind to that, and
| thinking the fault is entirely in anything that lies
| outside of it is in a very literal sense pathetic. And here
| I often sense that it is perceived as virtuous distance
| from foolishness instead.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time
| with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis
| and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its
| point "between the lines" or through braiding apparently
| unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to
| finish the splice are not well received here.
|
| I think that reaction's a combination of that sort of
| writing _sometimes_ being amateurish wankery poorly-
| imitating better writers with better ideas, and an awful
| lot of tech- and science-nerd sorts having decided around
| 5th grade that they were already expert readers and
| literature and language classes were just a bunch of
| time-wasting made-up bullshit that couldn 't possibly
| teach them to be better readers or writers. "It's this
| entire field that's wrong, not me!"
|
| Poor literacy is almost as prevalent as poor math skills,
| folks are just less comfortable owning up to it. Plus a
| lot more people overestimate how good they are at it, I
| think, than do with math skills.
| randcraw wrote:
| HN's content is entirely nonfiction, which demands a
| focused and discuplined style of writing: claim, defense,
| conclusion. Because its goal is to entertain, fiction
| frees the author to meander, muddle, or mislead -- all of
| which impede making or defending a thesis.
|
| If an article is nonfiction, then get to the point and
| stay there, dammit.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah see this is the sort of very narrow-minded view of
| nonfiction I'm talking about. It's fine if that's the
| only thing you can bring yourself to value but it doesn't
| put the fault in the writing.
| tpmx wrote:
| A ton of that stuff _does_ get posted to HN.
|
| There's meandering with multiple sometimes subtle qualities
| along the way and there's ... meandering.
| raldi wrote:
| Based on the fact that this is the top-rated comment, it
| would seem to be a position shared by a significant chunk of
| the HN readership.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think a significant chunk of the HN readership doesn't
| frequently read non-technical nonfiction, yes.
| raldi wrote:
| Is that not also a true statement about the population at
| large?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Maybe I don't know. But we've self-selected into a forum
| where the main activity is the discussion of writing so I
| would expect us to be more practiced and open-minded
| about it than average.
| starkd wrote:
| It reminded me of one of Paul Graham's essays. It is
| important to hone writing skills as a way of looking more
| deeply at issues and understanding them.
| bnralt wrote:
| I did to. I actually find a lot of writing meandering these
| days (for instance, almost all of the stuff from
| SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen).
|
| I think part of the issue is that these kinds of essays serve
| both as an argument and jumping off point for discussion, but
| also as a form of entertainment. If you enjoy the
| entertainment, you might enjoy the argument being padded and
| meandering. But if you're mostly interested in hearing the
| argument and responding, this type of writing can fell like
| it's intentionally wasting your time.
| randcraw wrote:
| I think the rise of meander is more likely a sign of
| inattention and the inability to focus. An essay is much more
| powerful and memorable if it can state a clear thesis and
| defend it memorably and undeniably.
|
| In today's writing, perhaps because we demand so great a
| volume of it, purposeful prose financially rewards the
| author's extra effort less than ever before, and is less
| appreciated by readers because they're less willing to pause
| their pace of consumption to reflect on subtleties and
| unobvious insights. The online written word has evolved into
| a 24x7-driven ehpemeral commodity, where cleverness alone is
| the desiderata that makes or breaks the work and its auteur.
| starkd wrote:
| You do not have to respond to everything. Some writing is an
| opertunity for reflection. If you respond without some
| reflection, you become more of an NPC.
| bnralt wrote:
| On a forum I could give things a couple of days and then
| write a response. Or I could start my own thread on the
| topic. But that's less of an option in places like HN. If I
| write a comment here two days from now, there's a good
| chance that zero people will see it. If I want to discuss
| the topic but not the essay, what are my options? I could
| start my own blog, write my thoughts on the matter, submit
| it to HN, hope that I'm one of the 1% of the submissions
| that make it past the screeners who hang out on "New," then
| hope I actually generate some discussion and don't
| immediately fall off the page.
|
| I actually agree with you that more reflection in general
| is a good idea (though I don't necessarily agree that these
| kinds of essays engender that kind of reflection, but
| that's a separate topic). However, the online communities
| that exist now are designed to dissuade people from doing
| anything (reflection, research, editing, etc.) that take
| more time.
| starkd wrote:
| This kind of writing has its own rewards. It is just as
| valuable to the writer as the reader. Paul Graham makes
| the point that developing writing skills also develops
| your ideas. If you cannot articulate your ideas well
| enough for others to understand it, it is likely the case
| your idea is still fully undeveloped.
| bnralt wrote:
| I mean, certainly there are plenty of things people want
| to comment on without writing a blog post on it. This
| discussion, for example. We're discussing this with
| relatively quickly written comments, not as blog posts
| that we spend a great deal of time on, put away for a
| day, come back to edit, etc.
|
| It's also the case that time is limited, and there are
| some topics we don't want to spend much time on. It's
| common to see people argue that if you don't spend as
| much time on the topic as them, then your opinions on it
| aren't as worthy, but I can't really agree with that.
| It's very often used as a way to defend poor beliefs
| against obvious criticisms. You see it a lot with
| conspiracy theories. "You can't dismiss this unless
| you've read all of the writings on it!" But only true
| believers are going to subject themselves to dozens of
| books on a crank theory.
| mannykannot wrote:
| There is no reason to expect you will find the sort of
| dialogue you want unless you take some steps to initiate
| it yourself. The people who regularly appear on the front
| page of HN did not start off doing so.
| [deleted]
| astroalex wrote:
| I found the writing beautiful. Sometimes if writing "gets to
| the point" too directly, it can fail to make an interesting
| point at all. Weaving together lots of references and ideas
| provides a lot more nuance and richness IMO.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| It was hard not to read it and think "this guy is analyzing
| cleverness? Like this?" It's hard to read it and not feel the
| author themself wasn't peacocking their cleverness. And I'm not
| entirely fond of the attempt at reinforcing a point this
| abstract trying to use quotes or excerpts from sources. It's an
| idea; it doesn't need evidence. It's just meant to evoke
| thought. I'm ok with that and don't need you to try to prove it
| by something Kierkegaard said.
|
| I think the piece does resound a bit if you can clean off the
| gunky verbal tripe and look at what they're trying to say.
| There's a definite problem regarding people trying to be
| clever. I'm just not convinced that's the source of the
| problem. Just a symptom.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > It's an idea; it doesn't need evidence. It's just meant to
| evoke thought. I'm ok with that and don't need you to try to
| prove it by something Kierkegaard said.
|
| The point of citing Kierkegaard is to make use of the
| insights of others to try to explain something and to shed
| light on it. What the author is examining starts as a vague,
| confused, and murky impression that requires refinement,
| analysis, and effort to get to the essence of the thing.
| Clarity is not a given. Do you presume to know all there can
| be said about a thing? If not, then looking at what others
| have said is an opportunity to grow in wisdom and break out
| of the provincialism of one's own limited perspective, if
| only by the very act of wrestling with their material. I
| thank the wise who came before me for showing me the way and
| enriching my understanding of reality.
| randcraw wrote:
| Agreed. Curiously that meander makes the implicit point that
| the author never made explicitly, that cleverness is shallow.
| It's all about witty one-liners that lead no deeper than
| eliciting a smirk and a mote of respect for the joker's
| facility with an unobvious turn of phrase. Little surprise that
| Wilde wanted to be remembered for more than merely that, which
| alas, he isn't.
| Konohamaru wrote:
| It was extremely good reading. It read like something Scott
| Alexander would write if Scott Alexander were a four-
| dimensional thinker.
| xianshou wrote:
| The title reads to me as a tautology - we use "clever" as opposed
| to "intelligent" or "formidable" to connote self-contained,
| puzzle-like displays of intellect. If you are clever but also
| pragmatic and effective, people will start using very different
| words to describe you.
| randcraw wrote:
| I think clever is also used differently among Brits than Yanks.
| Brits equate it with intellect and imagination. Americans see
| cleverness less charitably, as an self-serving tactic in a game
| that leads to winning. A clever person in the States is often
| just a trickster.
| herodotus wrote:
| When I was managing programmers I sometimes warned them about
| being careful to distinguish between cleverness and wisdom. Never
| realized that Wittgenstein had made this remark.
|
| In the context of programming, the best person on my team was
| wise, but he sometimes could not resist being clever to the
| detriment of the readability of the code. To me, clever code is
| the stuff you might find (admittedly these are extreme) on the
| The International Obfuscated C Code Contest. "Wise" code is code
| that does what it needs to do but is clear. The weakest person on
| a team should be able to read and understand (and maybe fix bugs
| in) this code.
|
| We had one example where the person in question had just read
| about multiple inheritance in C++ and just could not resist the
| urge to use it in some key code that none of the rest of us
| understood at all! I made him rewrite it without multiple
| inheritance.
| remram wrote:
| I can't help but think of a parallel between "wisdom vs
| cleverness" and "difficulty vs complexity". (from Rich Hickey's
| definition: https://paulrcook.com/blog/simple-made-easy)
|
| Being clever rather than wise will push you to find those
| simple/elegant solutions that are not easy to understand or
| maintain. In reverse being wise rather than merely clever you
| will go with the boring or seemingly complex solution if it is
| easier for the team to understand and maintain.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I'm clever enough to at least know I'm stupid.
| levinb wrote:
| I've always told myself that, "I'm smart enough to know I'm not
| as smart as I think I am."
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Indeed, self-evaluating your smartness precisely seems
| unlikely: you are more likely more or less smart.
| tartoran wrote:
| Say that outloud and often and some people will use it against
| you.
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