In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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I don't mean to offend you but what characterizes the discourse of this forum as more sophisticated than whatever you would find on any other similar forum? It seems like the reoccurring topics here are usually politics, IQ and the internet. You can find people talking about these things in a lot of places, and I think the only difference is people will use more big words here than in any other place. And most of the people here are pretty similar to people you'd find in any other internet community - they're usually somewhat addicted to the internet and have careers as software engineers or some other computer adjacent thing. Nothing discussed here is neither really worthwhile or impactful (albeit entertaining), since you can't really move past shady thinking or come up with anything new when most of the people here kind of think and act similarly. But these are shortcomings of the prevalent medium of discussion. Any attempt to facilitate communication between people without face to face interactions will inevitably fall short, and any further moderation or regulation on top of this attempt will have an impact on discourse that may be considered marginally effective at best and detrimental at worst. Don't you think that your unawareness of this means that your perspective is too narrow for you to consider that the people you speak of don't care about anything that goes on in any internet people forum - much less a forum comprised of people who refer to themselves as high brow rationalists with a straight face?
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