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gog  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   6433 thread views

Where are the people smarter than us hanging out?

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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s. Not in terms of sheer intelligence; but discourse norms, clarity of thought/argument, good faith, generality, and breadth of topics.

Clarity? Not really. Huge walls of text that can be succinctly spelled out in a few sentences is not clarity. Smart, yeah. Motte posters are pretty smart.

Skews older. Culture is moving too fast to not have enough smart young people taking part in the CULTURE war discussions. I am surprised at the number of people who don't use social media in this blog or have no idea of the current memespace developments even though social media is the defining feature of our times culture. Yes, I am aware that the discourse norms are discriminating against them heavily.

Social media is too hard to get momentum, too much based on luck and connections, too much noise. Posting on The Motte means you have an audience right here. Twitter is known to censor for using certain words or tone, which isn't the case here.

Huge walls of text that can be succinctly spelled out in a few sentences is not clarity.

It reduces the chance of being misunderstood, lowers inferential distance to everyone. I'm not claiming it's universally good ofc.

Clarity? Not really. Huge walls of text that can be succinctly spelled out in a few sentences is not clarity.

Nobody's perfect at this, but I think we do pretty well for what we discuss.

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