Reddit reviews Intellectuals and Society

I'm guessing Hawking didn't read this book

Another expert in one particular area assuming knowledge he does not have in other fields.

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I'll call it Neil Degrasse Tyson Syndrome. Or perhaps Bill Nye syndrome?

Highly recommend his books.

Satisfying as ever - Sowell exposing 'liberal intellectuals': https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Expanded-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465025226

Or Intellectuals & Society by Sowell

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Edit: I realize that this comment is likely to get downvoted. But I really think that we on the left should start engaging more with the ideas of Hayek and Sowell, and I'm not the only one

LOL - I see your elitist wapo link and raise you a "intellectualism" has been a generally pernicious force in the past 200 years

However, I would agree that people today are dumber than they were 40 or 50 years ago, though I think that stems from the rise of post-modern nihilism and reletavism and that the dumbing down is seen actually in our "intellectual" class. Mother is a straight up awful movie that tries too hard to be Polanski and relies on schlock designed to shock a 1960's audience.

Edit: And yes 100% that is a major trend in almost all art forms, and has been now for like 100 plus years

The Law by Frederic Bastiat (super short, free)

https://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederic-Bastiat/dp/1940177014/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487742542&sr=1-3&keywords=The+law


Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell
https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Expanded-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465025226

Here's a good slogan: "Do what you want, pay for yourself."

I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.

Classics 1950-1970

What is Conservatism?

The Conservative Mind

The Road to Serfdom

The Constitution of Liberty

Ideas Have Consequences

The Quest for Community

Economics in One Lesson

Capitalism and Freedom

In Defense of Freedom


Age of Reagan 1970-1990

The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945

Modern Times

Knowledge and Decisions

A Conflict of Visions

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Roots Of American Order


Modern Must Reads 1990-Today

The Clash of Civilizations

A History of the American People

The Vision of the Annointed

Intellectuals and Society

Illiberal Reformers

Restoring the Lost Constitution

How To Be A Conservative

Well anyways, here's a NRx reading list I'm slowly making my way through...

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Introduction

The Dark Enlightenment Defined*
The Dark Enlightenment Explained*
The Path to the Dark Enlightenment*
The Essence of the Dark Enlightenment*
An Introduction to Neoreaction*
Neoreaction for Dummies*

Reactionary Philosophy in a Nutshell*
The Dark Enlightenment – Nick Land*

The Neoreactionary Canon

The Cathedral Explained*

When Wish Replaces Thought Steven Goldberg *

Three Years of Hate – In Mala Fide***

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The Decline

We are Doomed – John Derbyshire*
America Alone – Mark Steyn*
After America – Mark Steyn*
Death of the West – Pat Buchanan***
The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens

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Civil Society and Culture

Coming Apart – Charles Murray
Disuniting of America – Arthur Schlesinger
The Quest for Community – Robert Nisbet
Bowling Alone – Robert Putnam
Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
Intellectuals and society – Thomas Sowell

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Western Civilization

Civilization: The West and the Rest – Niall Ferguson
Culture Matters – Samuel Huntington
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization – Ricardo Duchesne

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Moldbuggery

Mencius Moldbug is one of the more influential neoreactionaries. His blog, Unqualified Reservations, is required reading; if you have not read Moldbug, you do not understand modern politics or modern history. Start here for an overview of major concepts: Moldbuggery Condensed. Introduction to Moldbuggery has the Moldbug reading list. Start with Open Letter series, then simply go from the beginning.*

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Thomas Sowell discusses something related to this in several of his books, particularly A Conflict of Visions and Intellectuals and Society.

He can explain it in his words better than I can, so here's a short interview with him about the first book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyG1zmdh1pA

And a Cato review of A Conflict of Visions:
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1987/11/cj7n2-17.pdf

> As Sowell conjectures, the commonly observable correlation and clustering in political opinions cannot be understood as simply reflecting some underlying structure of interests. A more appropriate account, he argues, must be given in terms of certain fundamental ideas or premises—referred to as “visions”—which, largely unarticulated, are behind and give coherence to people’s particular political opinions.

And an FEE review of Intellectuals and Society:
https://fee.org/articles/intellectuals-and-society/

Roughly, the distinction between the two "visions" is that one views the world through individuals operating in a way that is constrained by their circumstances and by how the world functions (the "constrained" vision). The other views the world in a purely "intellectual" way as though society as a whole can not only be understood, but manipulated, simply by defining how society ought to function (the "unconstrained" vision).

People with the unconstrained vision, in Sowell's view, simply don't need to understand ideas like Socialism or Fascism in terms of the mundane facts of how the words have been used in the past or how people behave under those systems, because they already understand these terms from their "intellectual" definitions. (That the people you're complaining about, unlike the academics Sowell is, don't know the academic definitions of the terms and instead go with their own definitions, is not particularly relevant; it's all about their "vision".)