Inside the intellectual dark web

[Theodarzna]

In January, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman interviewed the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. The channel broadcast a short version of the interview on the evening news bulletin, where it would have been seen by the few hundred thousand people who watch the programme nightly. But to its credit, Channel 4 also published online the full half-hour encounter. Within days, it was viewed by millions around the globe. The interview, in which the presenter repeatedly tried to misrepresent the views of her interviewee, and in which his responses finally brought her to a confounded silence, became a sensation. Memes of Newman saying ‘So what you’re saying’ washed across social media. Channel 4 News and Newman had become internationally famous through one interview with an Toronto academic. As an online commentator noted: ‘Mainstream media, meet internet.’

Much has been written about Peterson, not least here in Spectator Life. But the two factors that have worked in Peterson’s favour — a refusal to bow to the orthodoxies of the age (in his case on enforced gender pronouns) and a willingness to use YouTube and other new technologies to bypass traditional media to disseminate his ideas — are not his alone. Indeed, it is now such a pattern there is even a term for this collection of disparate thinkers: ‘the intellectual dark-web.’

The phrase is the invention of Eric Weinstein, a brilliant West Coast mathematician and economist who has observed and participated in part of this trend. He has also seen up close the way in which the world now discovers otherwise forbidden ideas and opinions. Until last year, Eric’s brother, Bret, was a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. A Bernie Sanders supporter and life-long leftist, Bret also came to national attention because of a stand he made.

Since the 1970s, the college had celebrated a ‘Day of Absence’ in which black students and faculty met off campus. Last year, this was flipped and all white people were ordered off campus for the day. Bret Weinstein refused, explaining his objection carefully, liberally and lucidly. Some student activists accused him of racism and he got little support from his cowed fellow professors. Weinstein and the college ended up parting ways.

But the story gained serious internet and eventually even some mainstream media attention. Today, Bret speaks on podcasts and interviews across YouTube and other media and gets his views on biology and society out to countless numbers of people around the world. Far more people than if he had stayed at Evergreen and submitted to the pieties and dogmas of the era. As with Peterson, an audience came for the scandal and then stayed for the show.

Because of the prevalence of outrage culture in Britain and America, a range of modern orthodoxies, on issues such as gender and trans, have been adopted extraordinarily swiftly. On such issues discussion has been shut down almost entirely. Not least because the mainstream media has become terrified of ever being caught on the ‘wrong side’ of any debate. As a result, the public has been starved of the full and frank discussion a healthy society should have if it is to arrive at remotely healthy conclusions. Before the internet, the resistance to this would have found it hard to be heard. Today, it can be heard above the noise of the one-time gatekeepers.

Consider Ben Shapiro. The conservative pundit has become known over the past decade for his whippet-fast intellect and fearless debating style. College campuses began to see protests whenever this young conservative speaker was promised to appear. Far-leftist students repeatedly denounced the 34-year-old kippah-wearing Orthodox Jew as a racist and otherwise tried to silence him. Campuses promised students extra counselling to cope after hearing his arguments.

And last September, after earlier riots on campus, the University of Berkeley shelled out $600,000 to make the campus secure for his talk there. Again the audience tuned in for the scandal and stayed to hear his smart, funny and thoughtful opinions. Today he has more than a million Twitter followers and makes news whenever he speaks.

Nor is the intellectual dark web by any means a male reserve. Today the wars between the sexes are being inflamed just as assiduously by self-proclaimed feminists as racial divisions are being fuelled by self-described anti-racists. Here, too, the people who are willing to buck the trend are having an impact and gaining an audience without needing to play by the rules of the mainstream media. Because they bypass the orthodoxies of our time, true feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia today have millions of young people who follow their every tweet and public pronouncement.

Once the furious gangings-up and denunciations of their academic contemporaries would have counted for something. Today, such would-be gatekeepers have lowered their own reputations and can no longer dictate the intellectual weather. Intelligent and curious people can work out for themselves online whether feminists like Sommers and Paglia deserve scare-quotes or not. They can decide for themselves whether their criticisms of the misandry that much of the feminist movement has descended into are justified or not. And each time they see that the accusations thrown at them are erroneous or opportunistic, the power of the accusers slips a little more and the influence of the accused grows proportionally.

Of course the intellectual dark web partly thrives because it does not have the limitations of the traditional media. For any public intellectual or thinker the experience of a Newsnight or Channel 4 News studio is always the same. The evening is wrecked by having to travel to a studio where you will be given a maximum of three minutes’ airtime to correct a set of false presumptions which the presenter has already gathered against you. ‘So what you’re saying’ could be the epitaph for this form of journalism. There is no opportunity for nuance, not much opportunity for correction and very little to recommend it to anyone but the producers. Certainly not to viewers or participants. News broadcasts and political discussion shows have largely become a carousel of closely scripted talking points by people with predictable views.

[snip]

Only a few years ago, Damore would have become just one more piece of liberal road kill. But today it is possible to watch hours-long conversations with him that show he isn’t some knuckle-dragging misogynist, but a thoughtful and honest voice trying to explain facts in an age which elevates feelings over facts. The same goes for a growing, increasingly inter-connecting world of people who do not need the mainstream media but who are united in a recognition that ideas and free and fearless debate are indispensable.

For young people in particular, who have been let down by didactic and cowardly orthodoxies, these newly discovered heroes are providing a path out of the bewildering maze that their age has created for them. It is one of the great good news tales of our time: out from the dark web, into the light.

(source)

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the internet is the death of the self-appointed gate keepers. The 'responsible elite' as Edward Bernays once called it no longer hold as much power to decide what is and is not known to the public.

[Elegiac]

(source)

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the internet is the death of the self-appointed gate keepers. The 'responsible elite' as Edward Bernays once called it no longer hold as much power to decide what is and is not known to the public.

Translation: The greatest achievement of the internet is giving a platform to crazy assholes and making them appear to the average person every bit as legitimate as people who actually do the intellectual legwork to support their positions.

[Naiattavain]

these faggots are a bunch of pricks coward little pimp shit juice stain on their underwear!!!

[NED funded]

Jordan Peterson sucks tho.

[Fitheach]

More must be done to silence these voices, bigots should never be heard.

[Machismo]

More must be done to silence these voices, bigots should never be heard.

How very fascist of you. Maybe yo should start a book burning.

- - - Updated - - -

The internet allows people to gain access to all sorts of misinformation, and to fully immerse themselves in willful ignorance.

[Garnier Fructis]

It's funny, because both of the big names mentioned in that article have been guilty of running their mouths on subjects in which they have no fucking clue whatsoever.

Shapiro goes without saying, but my favorite Peterson moments are when he completely mangles mathematics to make weird philosophical points, because he's apparently too smart to have to consult with an actual mathematician first.

[Unholyground]

Knowing what is real and what is fake is how you navigate the internet.

[Deleted]

My opinion on this as a whole;

Being able to share unpopular ideas without getting fired, or shut out of the conversation is a good thing, IMO. Orthodoxy tends to kill intellectual advancement.

I don't know I am just reminded of Hurtcore and the dark web just sits uncomfortable with me

[derpkitteh]

nobody should ever decide what ideas you can and cannot hear. that is thought policing, that is authoritarianism, that is fascism.

so, this is a good thing, a very good thing.

[zebreck]

As an actual academic doing actual academic things: If you need a dark web it's because your ideas are garbage, and chances are so are you. I consistently write things that gleefully contradict several of the old guard in my field, and I consistently pass peer review because everybody loves new data almost as much as they love papers proving people wrong. If you can't pass peer review it's because your ideas suck, not because of some conspiracy of silence.

[Elegiac]

As an actual academic doing actual academic things: If you need a dark web it's because your ideas are garbage, and chances are so are you. I consistently write things that gleefully contradict several of the old guard in my field, and I consistently pass peer review because everybody loves new data almost as much as they love papers proving people wrong. If you can't pass peer review it's because your ideas suck, not because of some conspiracy of silence.

This. The people who complain about academia 'burying' crackpot ideas are generally the same sort whinging about how their anti-vaccination stance isn't treated as a legitimate opinion.

[Super Kami Dende]

It's almost as if being a fairly rational person who believes that both sides need to stop being retarded and try to meet midway in compromise is a "outcast" opinion these days.

Too many people on either side too stubborn to think that not everything there side thinks is gospel. Yet mixing and matching policies from both sides will more often than not get you ostracized by both.

It's a sad point the World has got to.

[Elegiac]

It's more that the people that listen to it, do not like the message...

I get that this is the popular narrative regarding academia in the US, but it isn't remotely the case.

As said, academics love new data and they like discussing what is taken for granted so that they can be the one who contributed to a new hypothesis. This notion that stuff is being 'buried' is a myth used to push an anti-intellectual agenda.

Case in point; the OP has a known history of anti-intellectual positions.

[Elegiac]

That’s not an incredibly pompous position to hold whatsoever. “There definitely isn’t any bias against certain ideaologies and I would know because I’m here!”

When "certain ideologies" are based on pseudoscience or a distortion of fact, that they aren't taken seriously by academics isn't a sign of bias; it's a sign that ideology is crap.

[zebreck]

That’s not an incredibly pompous position to hold whatsoever. “There definitely isn’t any bias against certain ideaologies and I would know because I’m here!”

Hey, it's not my fault that most of what some people believe is totally unsupported by anything resembling evidence. If that applies to you, again, not my fault that empirical verification via repeated testing of falsifiable hypotheses doesn't support your worldview.

[Elegiac]

School administrators are usually the issue, and the court of public opinion... the other scientists in the fields are not actually as reactionary to a lot of this... and in most cases back up their claims.

And I can cite just as much example of the court of public opinion forcing a consideration of hypotheses which are known to be bunk.

For instance... there is a whole backlash right now against evolutionary psychology... when a lot of their studies are observable.

The backlash is not against the idea of evolutionary psychology. The backlash is against conservative 'academics' who are trying to distort the field as a method of discrediting the social sciences.

[Elegiac]

You are not really arguing against it then.

Unless you are saying social science is infallible, and shouldn’t be criticized for some of the stupid ideas it has, that have become popular.

I'm arguing against the idea that evolutionary psychology being a thing means that the social sciences are invalid.

Point in fact, there is legitimate criticism of some of the more out there or questionable ideas within the academia field. This idea that criticism is being buried is horseshit.

[Alydael]

(source)

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the internet is the death of the self-appointed gate keepers. The 'responsible elite' as Edward Bernays once called it no longer hold as much power to decide what is and is not known to the public.

That is what everyone predicted about the internet.

That it would be sort of an "equalizer," because it removes the ability of the "elite" to:

1) Control all the information, and hence- the narrative.

2) Stop people from having a voice. You longer need "influence" or money to have a voice- anyone can start a vlog, blog or site.

3) Stealing ideas

I think it is a great thing. You do get a lot of trolls and really arrogant people though- but that's not the internets fault. That is just how some people are.

Without the internet- you would only get what the mainstream news media wants you to see. I will give a recent example- There are tons of videos all over the internet with that senator from Cali (think Peloso is her name). She constantly refers to Trump as "bush" (many times) and says all sorts of crazy things that don't make sense.
You can see those videos on the net, I have not even seen one clip on the regular channels. Without the net, I might think she was still sane.........

It also promotes responsibility in a strange way. You can longer just say or do something without a good chance of it appearing on the web somewhere. Think of all the videos of people fighting or assualting someone. Many arrests have come out of those videos being on the web. There were also plenty of dumb criminals that posted photos or bragged about their "exploits" and then the cops picked them up because of the online posts.

[Spectral]

As an actual academic doing actual academic things: If you need a dark web it's because your ideas are garbage, and chances are so are you. I consistently write things that gleefully contradict several of the old guard in my field, and I consistently pass peer review because everybody loves new data almost as much as they love papers proving people wrong. If you can't pass peer review it's because your ideas suck, not because of some conspiracy of silence.

This. The people who complain about academia 'burying' crackpot ideas are generally the same sort whinging about how their anti-vaccination stance isn't treated as a legitimate opinion.

I mostly agree with this in the realm of relatively apolitical scientific fields. I think you're both underselling things that get withheld for political reasons though. A great example of this is Robert Putnam's work on diversity and trust; he sat on the data for a pretty extended stretch because of the political implications of it, despite being pretty sure that the data set was good and that he'd evaluated it correctly.

Putnam is widely considered an excellent political scientist and already had a ton of credibility - don't you think it's likely that less established figures would be even less likely to publish something with potentially troubling implications?