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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Matt Giles‏ @dmnshingreturns 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @dmnshingreturns @vgr @nils_gilman

      I feel like any suitable definition will also comprehend the phenomenon of the “rock star intellectual”. For instance, Jordan Peterson is an intellectual. Of a funny American televangelist type. But I think he has to count. Otherwise you’ll just end up defining philosophy etc.

      2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
    2. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @dmnshingreturns @vgr

      I agree that Peterson is an intellectual, albeit a crappy one: his current public persona mainly performs a popular image of intellectualism, “a non-intellectual’s idea of a intellectual” (to paraphrase the old saw about how 😡 is a poor person’s idea of a rich person)

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @dmnshingreturns

      One aspect of what I'm getting at (though not a key one) is to turn that particular kind of insult around. To the extent there is wisdom in a crowd, the crowd's judgment of intellectualism is a valid variable to consider.

      2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
    4. Matt Giles‏ @dmnshingreturns 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman

      I think any definition which does not explicitly contemplate the intellectual’s audience isn’t apt.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @dmnshingreturns @nils_gilman

      This is Corey Robin's definition of an intellectual: as someone who creates a "public". I think it's a good one. The difference between a mob and a public is the presence of legitimated spokespersons who turn crowd sentiment into arguments suitable for institutional contention

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
    6. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @dmnshingreturns

      The problem with Corey’s definition is that either it displaces the debate to some hoity-toity definition of the “public”; or it means that any entertainer with an audience counts as an intellectual. Is the Honey Boo-Boo child an intellectual? Ron Jeremy?https://s-usih.org/2013/02/what-is-the-subject-of-intellectual-history/ …

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @dmnshingreturns

      I think you're missing a nuance...Any spectacle can attract a crowd. I think he gets at a real sort of transformation of the crowd into a useful distributed computer through an act akin to programming. Though I get where you're coming from re: Robin from our private convos :D

      1 reply 1 retweet 1 like
    8. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @dmnshingreturns

      Corey’s definition also suffers from presentism. Is someone who writes “for the drawer” (4ex, in a dictatorship) not an intellectual because she creates no public? If she goes unappreciated in her lifetime, is she not an intellectual—but then becomes one once she’s “discovered”?

      2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @dmnshingreturns

      That weakness is shared by your institutional definition too :D Was Ramanujan a non-intellectual while he was an outsider mathematician disconnected from tradition and only became one when Hardy found him?

      1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes
    10. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @dmnshingreturns

      I actually don’t believe in institutional definitions (though it gets trickier with “scientists”) — my main definition, again, is that the intellectual writes within an explicitly identified intellectual tradition. And that is something Mr Crusoe can absolutely do.

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @dmnshingreturns

      Sure, so long as he arrives on the island with a brain primed with received knowledge etc and choose too. But if he arrives there with only basic literacy and no such membership, and becomes the island's only expert on breadfruitology from scratch... he still counts for me

      2:04 PM - 22 Apr 2019
      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 22 Apr 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman @dmnshingreturns

          I think this is where our relative subject matter biases are showing. Subjects like history fundamentally need a symbolic tradition to work with as raw material. Many subjects don't need such a symbolizing base layer, just observation of the environment.

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @dmnshingreturns

          That’s probably right. I do tend to think of intellectuals in symbolic terms. (“Scientist” is something else, because that depends not just on thinking and writing but on actually “doing” science — which in the contemporary world is very often a capital intensive pursuit.)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 22 Apr 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @dmnshingreturns

          Yeah, which is actually the case of Mr Crusoe. This isn’t just a idle idea. Gramsci wrote his exegeses on Marxism from jail with few of any texts available to him. Ezra Pound also wrote the Cantos from prison.

          0 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
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