Stefan Molyneux

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The HodgeTwins are really interesting and tragic because they started off making videos where they would just riff on news stories. It was pretty obvious that they were more or less Southern Democrats minus the racism. Then at some point a few years back they decided to rebrand their entire channel and now suddenly they're talking about cultural marxism and SJWs and inter-state politics and all this weird trendy stuff that only boomers and hoodie-wearing edgelord eastern europeans care about anymore.

Anthropoid, I've known you way longer than you've known me, and let me just say I think you're a fascinating individual. I'm genuinely interested as to why someone your age would get so invested into this kind of thing. Did you find these youtubers recently or have you known them for years like Stefan Molyneux?
 
The crew of Peter Bogossian is also a good source . . .


The HodgeTwins are really interesting and tragic because they started off making videos where they would just riff on news stories. It was pretty obvious that they were more or less Southern Democrats minus the racism. Then at some point a few years back they decided to rebrand their entire channel and now suddenly they're talking about cultural marxism and SJWs and inter-state politics and all this weird trendy stuff that only boomers and hoodie-wearing edgelord eastern europeans care about anymore.

Anthropoid, I've known you way longer than you've known me, and let me just say I think you're a fascinating individual. I'm genuinely interested as to why someone your age would get so invested into this kind of thing. Did you find these youtubers recently or have you known them for years like Stefan Molyneux?

I just stumbled on them recently. I'm leaning toward counter-revolutionary or even reactionary! :grin:

I mean... He is definitely good at argumentation but I see little science in what he is saying. And I can't say that he has the most impressive academic resume


An h-index of 5 is what you would expect from a PhD student who just graduated, not a late career academic. Just as a term of comparison, this is the scopus profile for another historian


That alone gives me the impression of an academic that really didn't do that great in his career and is trying to recycle himself. Then as I was looking him up I found another video where he talks about Covid 19 among other things



which kind of sealed it in for me. Unless you are a virologist or a scientist working in a related area you really shouldn't be posing as an authority explaining why the virus is spreading in some areas more than in others. As an historian you can certainly try to analyse say the effect that the pandemic is having on society and compare it to what has happened in the past, but when you start talking about the actual virus and how it's spreading you have no more authority than my plumber. Everything considered I find it hard to take what he says seriously.


Ah! I see you are still an adherent to the order :smile:
I think many of you know that I have a Ph.D. and worked as a professor for many years. My record of publishing and research was slightly above average, but then that was the norm in my field (anthropology). Having been out of the academy nearly 10 years now, and regarded with increasing horror how the academia has largely abandoned pedagogy and research based on critical thinking, empiricism, and open dialogue, I've grown increasingly cynical about the social sciences and humanities. I was always somewhat cynical about the physical sciences for the reason that the highest levels of success in those fields are (at this point) inextricably linked to high-budget projects with either massive empirical and theoretical implications or massive commercial implications. Such a system is obviously fraught with vulnerabilities by virtue of being "sold out."

My cynicism about the social sciences and humanities relates to those disciplines having fallen prey to an alternative corruption: selling out to a brand of philosophy that I could only describe as "New Totalitarian Tribalism."

All of which is to say: I really don't give a **** what someone's CV says or does not say. I'll judge if they make sound arguments which seem to rest on reasonable or well-established empiricism and use my intuition to read between those lines.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Gen-X is a menace.

Oh ****, you're 72. Nevermind, that's understandable then.

Yes, technically a Boomer, but in actual character, much more of a Silent Gener. I think many of us born during those transitional years (and especially those of born to more rural and working class backgrounds) tended to carry on the habitus of our parent more than the true "Boomer" archetype.

It seems there are many INEFFABLE shared characteristics between Silent Geners and Gen-Xers: pragmatism, frugality, pro-Establishment (at least relative to the Boomers), selfless and patriotic (again, compared to the Boomers). There are obviously a lot of big differences, but I suspect that a thorough analysis would reveal the two cohorts are among the most similar of all the possible dyads in the last five cohorts :wink:
The HodgeTwins are really interesting and tragic because they started off making videos where they would just riff on news stories. It was pretty obvious that they were more or less Southern Democrats minus the racism. Then at some point a few years back they decided to rebrand their entire channel and now suddenly they're talking about cultural marxism and SJWs and inter-state politics and all this weird trendy stuff that only boomers and hoodie-wearing edgelord eastern europeans care about anymore.

Anthropoid, I've known you way longer than you've known me, and let me just say I think you're a fascinating individual. I'm genuinely interested as to why someone your age would get so invested into this kind of thing. Did you find these youtubers recently or have you known them for years like Stefan Molyneux?

It is interesting though that you make reference to "Southern Democrats minus the racism" about the Hodge twins, who I would guess are . . . in their late 30s, i.e., born around 1990?

My sense for the evolution of the contemporary United States Democratic party suggests to me that . . .anyone who might have aligned with "racist Southern Democrat" views as they stood at their apex (ca. 1967) would almost CERTAINLY have abandoned that party by the 1980s. The Minnesota Progressive takeover initiated in what? 1965? My understanding was that the mass exodus of "Dixiecrats" was more or less complete by no later than 1970, but I certainly may not have a perfectly informed view of that.

They strike me as . . . somewhat ignorant Classical Liberals, and by "ignorant" I don't mean that in a derogatory way. Merely that, they do not seem to be well read or particularly eloquent. Home grown or 'grass roots' classical liberals perhaps? My sense is that they were born to a mixed "race" couple, and served in the USMC. I think they are a product of their life experiences and I can certainly see how gravitating toward a classical liberal stance could arise from that type of upbringing, given that the core themes of socialization were individual merit and not identity politics.

I appreciate them primarily because I anticipate that many so-called "Leftists" (whom I would rather term New Totalitarian Tribalists, or perhaps to be more comprehensible "Social Justice Warriors" or "Woke Revolutionaries," etc.) will find them to be puzzling, irritating and incomprehensible. Here we have two very confident, handsome, articulate, forthright (perhaps arguably bombastic), masculine (perhaps excessively so), "Black" men who show zero obeisance to the values of the SJW or Woke movements. Indeed, their core themes would seem to be explicitly intended to be "in your face" toward those so-called "Liberals."

Even if I do not agree with everything they have to say (and I do not, for example, agree with their views on sexuality or gender and probably also not on religion) I find it TREMENDOUSLY refreshing that in this era of Cancel Culture these two Dudes can manage to clown their way into the public eye, restoring some manner of open dialogue and freedom of expression.
 
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Ah! I see you are still an adherent to the order :smile:
I think many of you know that I have a Ph.D. and worked as a professor for many years. My record of publishing and research was slightly above average, but then that was the norm in my field (anthropology). Having been out of the academy nearly 10 years now, and regarded with increasing horror how the academia has largely abandoned pedagogy and research based on critical thinking, empiricism, and open dialogue, I've grown increasingly cynical about the social sciences and humanities. I was always somewhat cynical about the physical sciences for the reason that the highest levels of success in those fields are (at this point) inextricably linked to high-budget projects with either massive empirical and theoretical implications or massive commercial implications. Such a system is obviously fraught with vulnerabilities by virtue of being "sold out."

My cynicism about the social sciences and humanities relates to those disciplines having fallen prey to an alternative corruption: selling out to a brand of philosophy that I could only describe as "New Totalitarian Tribalism."

All of which is to say: I really don't give a **** what someone's CV says or does not say. I'll judge if they make sound arguments which seem to rest on reasonable or well-established empiricism and use my intuition to read between those lines.

I have a PhD myself, and I am currently but a low postdoc, hopefully on my way to professorship in a year or two, so perhaps my being still relatively green makes me see things differently :smile: .

My field is robotics, so I admit that I am not entirely familiar with rankings in the humanities, you are certainly more qualified than I am to pass judgement on that. I have just grown very, very weary myself of characters posting things that are simply untrue and unscientific, and people believing in them because the presentation was good. That ends up doing a lot of harm, just look at what happened with vaccines... Although in that case the scientific community is also to blame for getting the fake paper that started it all published.

All of this to say, to me seeing him talk about Covid19 was a huge red flag. He is not qualified to talk about that, no more than I would be lecturing people about the Etruscan language. The fact that he attempts to do that shows me that he is not afraid to talk about things he is not knowledgeable on, and the fact that his academic work is poorly recognized by his peers makes me question his expertise in his own field. This, plus the fact that I haven't experienced any of what he is talking about myself (perhaps it is more common in the humanities?), has me scratching my head a little.

I will say that, as a foreign who immigrated in the US, I have experienced discrimination on my own skin, although definitely in a very small part when compared to what other people will go through. I came here to marry my wife, who is American, and after arriving in the country I had to wait 9 months before I was even allowed to look for a job (pre-Trump that would have been three months at most, after that they had to give you a temporary work authorization if they didn't get around examining your paperwork). When I first arrived at the airport in my port of entry I was kept in a room for 3 hours, without being able to use my phone to let my soon-to-be-wife know I was there or what was going on (she had started to think they had sent me back home). All of this to say, that by my perception and experience this country shows little signs of far-left behavior and/or censorship, if anything it is the other way around. I suppose we all form opinions based on what we experience though, your mileage might vary.

Edit: typos
 
I appreciate them primarily because I anticipate that many so-called "Leftists" (whom I would rather term New Totalitarian Tribalists, or perhaps to be more comprehensible "Social Justice Warriors" or "Woke Revolutionaries," etc.) will find them to be puzzling, irritating and incomprehensible. Here we have two very confident, handsome, articulate, forthright (perhaps arguably bombastic), masculine (perhaps excessively so), "Black" men who show zero obeisance to the values of the SJW or Woke movements. Indeed, their core themes would seem to be explicitly intended to be "in your face" toward those so-called "Liberals."

Just say "they say the N word" and save yourself 5 minutes of typing.
 
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