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[Mindmaker]

Well, I guess I try hard to fall in the second category.
I'm the first person in my family, who is going to attend university and escape from the "working class".

[MonkeyHead]

A psuedo-athlete is more akin to a person such as a model that works to appear more athletic while not actually being so, in order to appear to be better than others who actually are athletic

A good distinction might be the person who buys and wears £80 pound trainers for no practical purpose other than for the image... like how I get my students coming to me stating they have read brief history... as if I am then meant to give them an A.

[Kay12]

A psuedo-athlete is more akin to a person such as a model that works to appear more athletic while not actually being so, in order to appear to be better than others who actually are athletic.

(cut the pyramid)

But again, how to make the distinction?

I see pseudo-intellectualism as just one way to be elitist, not a separate phenomenon.

[Aqizzar]

Now you may be asking why I use objectivist in a derisive tone - it's because moral objectivism is a very scary thing, from a compassionate humanist standpoint. Think Ayn Rand and eugenics, which are sanctioned by certain objectivist thought.

See, this is the problem I have with labels in intellectual academia.  I'd like to think it's possible to be a moral objectivist without being Ayn Rand.  The ability to answer the question, "Why do these morals exist in society?", with answers like, "because they are demonstrably beneficial to not just the individuals but society as a whole in these ways."  And if that's not related to moral objectivism, then that's one more problem I have with the field, because when I hear the phrase "moral objectivism", what it sure as Hell sounds like is either "a rational/objective explanation of morals" or "the study of object-based moral concepts".

[PsyberianHusky]

A psuedo-athlete is more akin to a person such as a model that works to appear more athletic while not actually being so, in order to appear to be better than others who actually are athletic.

(cut the pyramid)

But again, how to make the distinction?

I see pseudo-intellectualism as just one way to be elitist, not a separate phenomenon.

Someone had to have said this already in the thread, or at very least alluded to it, but a reason to behave in a manner that we might appear to some as "Pseudo-intellectual" would be to have the ability to have authority over others?
That is the way I am seeing it right now.

[KaelGotDwarves]

See, this is the problem I have with labels in intellectual academia.  I'd like to think it's possible to be a moral objectivist without being Ayn Rand.  The ability to answer the question, "Why do these morals exist in society?", with answers like, "because they are demonstrably beneficial to not just the individuals but society as a whole in these ways."  And if that's not related to moral objectivism, then that's one more problem I have with the field, because when I hear the phrase "moral objectivism", what it sure as Hell sounds like is either "a rational/objective explanation of morals" or "the study of object-based moral concepts".

The simple problem of moral objectivism is that it slides into treating people as objects.

That's just like, my opinion, man.

[Reelyanoob]

There is no such thing as a single centered reality.

Save the paradoxical center which says "there is no center."

Are we talking philosophy or Einsteinium physics?

Both are united by the foundations of mathematics, which also say that there is no centered reality.

See: Godel's papers.

Godel was mean. The formalist school of mathematics didn't stand a chance. Poor David Hilbert.

Here conservapedia comes to the rescue.

http://conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.

Get it? General relativity => Moral relativity => heinous liberal goings-on.

See, this is the problem I have with labels in intellectual academia.  I'd like to think it's possible to be a moral objectivist without being Ayn Rand.  The ability to answer the question, "Why do these morals exist in society?", with answers like, "because they are demonstrably beneficial to not just the individuals but society as a whole in these ways."  And if that's not related to moral objectivism, then that's one more problem I have with the field, because when I hear the phrase "moral objectivism", what it sure as Hell sounds like is either "a rational/objective explanation of morals" or "the study of object-based moral concepts".

It's Any Rand who appropriated the term, not academics. It's her claim that whatever morals she personally had are "objective" compare to the rest of us with out inferior "subjective" morals. She was deliberately playing with two different senses of how people use the term "objective", as far as I'm concerned.

Complaining that the term "objectivism" is tainted with "Ayn Rand" is like trying to start a whole new movement called "Nazism" and them complaining that people think of Hitler when you mention it.

Just accept the previous usage of language in society affects people perceptions of those words in the future and we just have work around that to clearly express our meaings. Try combining "rational ethics" or "rational morality".

EDIT: D'oh - look up Ethical Calculus

[RedKing]

Here conservapedia comes to the rescue.

http://conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity

Heh. I first read that link as "Counterexamples to Reality". Which would fit with Conservapedia in general.

I used to think I was intellectual, but now I genuinely don't know. Lately I feel like I'm just a poseur, and I'm actually just some regular schmuck who wasted a lot of time and money because people told me I was smart as a kid.




EDIT: Oh man...I just read some of those "counterexamples to relativity"

The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54, Matthew 15:28, and Matthew 27:51.
...
In Genesis 1:6-8, we are told that one of God's first creations was a firmament in the heavens. This likely refers to the creation of the luminiferous aether.

Does trying to use Bible physics to disprove Einstein count as pseudointellectualism?

[Lord Shonus]

Here's how I see it.
     An intellectual is someone who buys Mein Kampf/The Communist Manifesto/The Little Red book so he can understand the ideological basis for the behavior of Hitler/Marx/Mao and be ready to defend or refute said ideologies in reasoned debate.

     A pseudo-intellectual is someone who buys Mein Kampf/The Communist Manifesto/The Little Red Book so he ca set it on his desk or shelf so that his arguments hold more weight when promoting/denouncing said theories.

     An anti-intellectual burns Mein Kampf/The Communist Manifesto/The Little Red book  because Hitler/Marx/Mao was a very bad man and should be erased from history.

[Max White]

Does trying to use Bible physics to disprove Einstein count as pseudointellectualism?

No. There ain't nothing intellectual about it.

[Reelyanoob]

Gah, I knew about the bible physics but "luminiferous aether" is even funnier!

[Max White]

Conservatives; Ignoring the Michelson Morley experiment in the name of god.

[Reelyanoob]

Actually this reminds me of the Theosophy movement and how they still maintain the scientific theory of the lost continent of Lemuria a century after it's been abandoned by the scientific community.

Also reminds me of meeting a woman in an alternative bookshop who was wearing a paper face mask. She told me it was to protect her from the poison gas in the clouds (which were put there by the government).

She started telling me about Wilhelm Reich and his Orgone Ray generator. You see when you make one of these it's meant to disspate any clouds that you point it at. The fact that it doesn't work, proves that the clouds in the sky are fake clouds put their by the government using chemtrails.

[Kay12]

I browsed the first few pages from a book that claimed that in its original form (Hebrew) the Old Testament had lots of hidden encoded astronomical facts, approximations on the size of the world etc.

While I have my doubts about the supposed factbook hidden in the Old Testament, I think the author did a good job not trying to force the Bible to be correct in everything - mainly, instead of saying that "this phrase actually means yadayada which is precisely what modern physics..." he rather bluntly stated, if I recall correctly that is, that the secondary meanings hidden in there were fairly separate from the "actual" content. And again, I'm still not too enthusiastic about the book's credibility.


Not to say that Bible is all just mumbo-jumbo though. Some parts have practical information that works even outside the religious context, such as quarantining lepers.

[Lord Shonus]

The way I see it, the Bible is a version of events deliberately dumbed-down for an iron-age people, that uses allegory to explain concepts that the ancient Hebrews didn't have the foundation to understand.