I've thought about this. Too much. For purposes of this reply, Jordan Peterson will be the exemplar for a self described Rationalists and new atheists (whatever they call themselves) and misc intellectual dark web characters.

My primary criticism is lack of novelty. I've heard it all before. Tell me something new.

A positive example of this, for contrast, is how Ezra Klein is able to have constructive conversations with people he disagrees with. Most recently David French. So I've learned stuff from people I would have never given the time of day. Which reflects poorly on me, I know. But I'm trying to change.

My second criticism is my befuddlement. I just can't figure out what most of the celebrity pundits are saying. I've given Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and many others more of my time and attention than I care to admit. Because I want to know what others find compelling about their ideas. And mostly I'm just not getting it.

My best immediate, aggregious example of this is Eric Weinstein's interview of James O'Keefe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN-eGN8VSpA

Going in, I thought "Ok, I utterly oppose anything and everything O'Keefe has said and done. He's just a troll in the mold of Lee Atwater. But Eric sounds smart. I'd like to hear O'Keefe describe what he does in his own words." I'm a masochist, I know.

Whatever Eric's criticism of O'Keefe is, I couldn't understand it. I actually listened twice. Because these are smart people, right? Surely I'm missing something.

Alas, Eric's not even wrong. His notions, assumptions, basis for "journalism" are so far off base as to not being worth criticism.

Frankly, it just felt like mental masterbation. Like high school seniors debating "What is Art, really?" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100142

Like a lot of smart people, Eric assumes his obvious competency in areas outside of his own expertise. He's not just willfully ignorant (incurious) of journalism as a profession and it's tortured history, he actively rejects it. So he's doing a drunken sailor's walk thru a problem domain that has already been thoroughly beaten to death by many others with far more intention.

So I learned nothing.

The end result is I now regard Eric as another boring dilettante and don't take him seriously. He's apparently got some heterodox theories about physics, cosmology, or whatever, that might prove interesting. But I'll let people smarter than me chew on those.

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The thing I most enjoy, savor from Lex's podcast is the novelty, the unexpected learning. I've read Emperor's New Mind and I've read the back and forth about Penrose's theories. So I wasn't expecting anything. But having Penrose himself relate the backstory and his own learning since that book was published made me smile.

Another episode that delighted me was Corecursive's interview of DHH. I really dislike Ruby, right? My study group worked thru a Ruby book, back when RoR was the new hotness. It's not quite the bight on humanity like PHP or JavaScript, but it's pretty bad. Though I was aware of DHH, I didn't know anything about him. I thought, "Well, I like Adam Gordon Bell and if he thinks DHH is work talking to, I'll at least listen for a bit". And I just fucking loved DHH. I want to be DHH. I regret not paying attention to him for all these years. https://corecursive.com/045-david-heinemeier-hansson-softwar...