Intellectual impostures

What Hacker News says

1. dimaturaApr 2022
   When I started my undergrad I was quite interested in various fields related to cognitive science, but in my country there was no way to major in that. I started a psychology major, and while I did get to take courses related to cogsci, and work part time in more neuroscience-y research, I also had to take several courses in clinical psychology and not one, but two! courses on psychoanalysis. They were taught by profs that were very much into Lacan. My conclusion after all this coursework (and several books outside the syllabus) is that while these ideas are sometimes interesting from a literary and, let's say, continental philosophy angle, they're of dubious clinical value and totally bunk from a scientific point of view. I had to stop myself from laughing sometimes when it came to the pseudo-mathematical formulations because they really are nonsense (for a good summary on that aspect, see Sokal's "Intellectual Impostures"). This wasn't the only reason, but I ended up switching majors to CS to focus on AI/ML (a good decision in retrospect!). Years later, I still think of Freudian and Lacanian ideas sometimes, though - they do have a certain appeal.
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2. yesenadamJun 2021
   > I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight.

   Did you read e.g. Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures, aka Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science?!

   Set out to show how numerous key intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly, Sokal and Bricmont intentionally provide considerably lengthy extracts in order to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context. Such extracts pull from such works as those of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard, who—in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and of citations received—were some of the leading academics of continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, and/or the social sciences at the time of publication.

   The book provides a chapter to each of the above-mentioned authors, "the tip of the iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts." For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us;" and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics. Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument and is "not just false: it is gibberish."

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

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3. vixen99Aug 2019
   And anyone who wants to know a bit more about some of these theorists might want to read 'Intellectual Impostures' by the Left-leaning physicist Alan Sokal.
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4. DyslexicAtheistFeb 2019

     - Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"
     - N.N.Taleb "The Black Swan"
     - Danny Kahneman "Thinking Fast & Slow" (also his papers with Amos Tversky)
     - Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race"
     - Peter Wessel Zapffe "On the Tragic" & "The Last Messiah"
     - Sokal, Alan D "Intellectual Impostures"
     - Simon Herbert "A The Sciences of the Artificial"
     - Herbert Marcuse "One-Dimensional Man"
     - Schopenhauer "Parerga and Paralipomena"
     - Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias"
     - Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish"
     - Edward S. Herman "Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
     - Franklin Foer "World Without Mind The Existential Threat of Big Tech"
     - Ben Goldacre "Bad science"
     - Emil Cioran "The Book of Delusions"
     - Gracian "The Art of Worldly Wisdom"
     - Heidegger Martin "The Question Concerning Technology"
     - Jacques Ellul "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes"
     - Mumford Lewis "The Culture of Cities"
     - Orwell "1984", "Down and Out in Paris and London", "Animal Farm"
     - Huxley "Brave New World", "The Doors Of Perception"
     - Michael Pollan "How to change your mind"
     - Jeff Hawkins "On Intelligence"
     - Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "Notes from the Underground", "The Brothers Kasamarov", "The Gambler", "The Idiot", "Crime & Punishment"
     - Peter Smith "Teach Yourself Logic"
     - Thomas More "Utopia"
     - Emil Cioran "The Trouble With Being Born"
     - Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago"
     - Nietzsche "Complete works"
     - Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
     - Gerald M. Weinberg "The Secrets of Consulting"

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5. codeulikeAug 2017
   Soon after this Sokal and Bricmont wrote a book called 'Fashionable Nonsense' (titled Intellectual Impostures in the UK) in which they tackle Lacan, Deleuze and Guatarri, etc. Its well worth a read.

   From the wiki page about the book:

   Sokal and Bricmont claim that they do not intend to analyze postmodernist thought in general. Rather, they aim to draw attention to the abuse of concepts from mathematics and physics, subjects they've devoted their careers to studying and teaching. Sokal and Bricmont define abuse of mathematics and physics as:

   - Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean.

   - Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use.

   - Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader.

   - Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless.

   - Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor.

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6. zwischenzugDec 2016
   Humanities student-turned software engineer here. Was once into PoMo studies.

   I don't know about the Social Text bullying issue (I'd never heard of Social Text, so I didn't think its publication that significant), but Sokal's Intellectual Impostures picks apart most of those writers' abuse of scientific concepts extremely fairly and sensitively. He takes great care not to comment on their philosophical writing outside of its scientific content, and even then takes care to distinguish between literal and metaphorical use.

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