The skeptic community

Hey, buddy, guess what? I have an associates degree. You might think I’m just a hot little piece, but I’m educated.

You know what fascinates me the most OP? is that these "skeptic" channels were some years ago the same fedora edgelords shitting on religion as some driving force for all the world's problems.
Since it seemed pretty easy to them to just strawman Christianity by showing some Texas televangelist for views, they thought they actually had something worthwhile to say about politics as well without any education required.

howling. go ahead, tell me what subject area you've wasted 2 years in.

Oh, so you took a community college course on economics and think you can totally BTFO communist theory.

Okay, buddy. Name and describe one concept from Marx's LTV and why you think it's wrong.

The skeptic community is a bunch of dumb naive kids LARPing at intellectuals.

The whole "skeptic" movement, really a center-right industry that serves as a shaky bridge between progressive liberals and the alt-right, serves to validate popular feelings of young Westerners in their 20s and 30s, particularly resentment of the political order and distrust in recent changes to political and cultural dialogue. Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, viewed by their respective fans as opponents, serve an identical position in our media landscape by clumsily and oftentimes dishonestly critiquing perceived or real elements of discourse that they believe to be irrational.

Sam Harris, who was one of the first people to start doing this and really rode off the coattails of the 2000s "new atheism" movement, explains how science is the only authentic means for understanding the world because it's empirical and logical. All other forms of knowing need to be attacked. In practice, he usually identifies easy targets like fundamentalist Christians or radical Islamists as stalwarts of ignorants who need to be swept away if we want to move forward as a species, while simultaneously associating them with *the entire field of philosophy* simply because they all reject his specific positivist worldview. Nothing in Sam Harris' videos ever strays far from mainline public opinion, and when he risks offending any of his fans (like when he subtly suggested Muslims should maybe be killed samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation), he's very quick to dial this back to avoid losing fans and subscribers. His ideology only validates the reddit STEM circlejerk, and helps his audience feel good about themselves without even seriously addressing the critics of scientism that he claims are backward and irrational.

Now while Jordan Peterson is a bit more right-wing and has attracted a following that includes some actual nazis, he's playing the exact same game but with a slightly different set of targets. This dude has a bit more foresight and financial sense than Sam Harris, because he recognized that fundamentalist Christians are becoming increasingly irrelevant to public discourse. Political dialogue has become radicalized on both ends since the late 2000s, so he positions himself as a friendly Molyneux who can present some grand, unified theory about how our media and society has been compromised by the goddamn Jew- sorry, by the "neo-Marxist postmodernists." Peterson presents his material as the whole truth, the only truth, explaining that Western civilization is being threatened by the SJWs and that edgy liberals on college campuses are actually part of a worldwide conspiracy to undermine the existence of truth itself. He recognizes that many young people resent SJWs, so he cynically exaggerates their numbers and influence to convince 24-year-old sales reps that they're actually fighting a grand culture war. Like Harris, Peterson is a hack. He doesn't know very much about philosophy or politics, because he's only a psychologist, and only recently acknowledged that Marxism and postmodernism are contradictory positions. He makes even less of an attempt to really engage with the ideas of his opponents and worryingly spends much of his time telling his fans why they should not listen to the arguments of detractors. Because he repeats to his audience what they believe about academics and radicals, thus affirming their own convictions, he's gained hundreds of thousands of fans in a very short time and now has an income far beyond that of a mediocre psychologist. After being denied a research grant (which makes sense, because he doesn't conduct research, he just films himself ranting about gay people) his followers raised something like $200,000 to support him.

While it's weird and troubling that these reactionary philistines have so many fans, we need to remember that they're just repeating the typical petty-bourgeois opinions of many young people. Because in the decade thus far new voices have emerged on the farther right and the left, these guys are hoping to become the Chapo Trap House or Infowars of "rational centrism." Because they only exist to confirm popular opinion, expect their following to grow in coming years and expect their language and beliefs to change the minute popular opinion shifts to the right or to the left.

because time doesn't matter jack shit to what something is worth

how the fuck can you believe that one chair is more expensive than another because it took more time to build. by your logic a geode should be just as worthless as a normal rock, because they take the same amount of time to crack open

and anyways automation renders all of this worthless – now a very expensive product can be built within hours, for the same amount of time it takes to weave a $30 basket

CAPITALISM
POISONS
EVERYTHING

I call bullshit on that one, just look at Sargon of akkad, he have about 700k+ subscribers, on 2011 you would never see such a faggot with that amount of people paying attention to him.

You don't understand the labor theory of value. Nothing you said is correct. Socially necessary labor time is what matters to Marx, not the time some inept dullard might take to produce something. All you've done in your 'argument' is show that you lack even the most fundamental comprehension of the labor theory of value. Please educate yourself before making a fool of yourself on the internet.

Okay now I know that you know nothing about economics.

Sargon of Akkad is not a skeptic, he's in the MRA/alt-lite arena. He just intersected with some of the "skeptics" on the subject of islam and/or feminists.

But otherwise he's complete reactionary cancer

...

Because being a "skeptic" on youtube is regurgitating the status quo in a loud abrasive way. The only exception to having the most boring ass political positions possible is when you need to take a knee to defend a Nazi who is being "unfairly" mischarachterized by the evil leftists baeatassss.

you're educated/brainwashed in liberal economics then. unless it's marxism it's worthless trash that doesn't explain shit

top kek

Even though you bought into the strawman of what the LTV is, this is also usually not true even on just a basic common sense level. Yes in the case of the things like the endlessly worked upon "mudpie" example we can say it isn't worth more right now than it will be after I dedicate a hundred thousand man hours to it. Extreme examples of uselessness aside a lot of the time a thing is worth more the more time and care is dedicated to it. That is why people still value hand crafted furniture over factory particle board IKEA dog shit. Most art is valued precisely because it is useless on a functional level but takes a lot of skill and time dedication to make something worth while. People even like basic consumer goods more if they have been personalized and made more individuated through more time dedication and artistry towards the object. Like getting your NES to look different from the standard grey toaster.

Apple is a company who made a niche for themselves by fooling people their products somehow have more love, artistry and dedication to them than mean old consumer grade microdick or overly technical and boring Linux.

It's true in most cases somethings immediate use value is the main determining factor of somethings economic value, but right wingers and status quo defenders always seem to wrongly assume that therefore means it is the only thing that can ever attribute value to something economically. Luckily for us the LTV actually tried to account for that and more ways of deriving somethings value.

In dumbassery? They give out degrees for that, now?

Because every idiot teenager thinks they're an enlightened free thinker, it's exactly the same as why militant atheism was so popular on youtube a few years ago.

Because they don't have to be honest about communism, their audience are idiot teenagers that don't know shite about any political system.

Because they are idiot teenagers.

They are popular because they are a 'rebellion' on the one hand and on the other fully recuperable because they are purely intellectual positions.

...

Lmao, you people are delusional.

this board deserves to die. go fuck yourselves.

I know it's stupid, that is why I put skeptic in quotes kid.

Go back to revleft then faggot.

Pandering to right wing populism

Have a (you), beggar.

we should lock sargon in a room and fill it with concrete