I just watched this new video from Thought Slime.

People like Pageau and Peterson are playing on the fragile egos of sort-of-smart people who feel a little more secure if they can pretend they can follow the bullshit and comprehend it.

I’m a sort-of-smart person with a fragile ego too. I’m aware that there are many deep and complex ideas that I’ll never actually understand. But when people who know more than me about something can always compress and condense a big idea (if they feel like making the effort) into a form that is more and more accessible until I finally sort of get it. Or they’ll say look, you’re not anywhere near getting what integral orbits are about but if you study abstract group theory it’s sort of on that path.

I guess what I’m saying is that if a new idea seems way over my head there are really only four possibilities:
* The speaker can oversimplify the idea into something I can grasp, at the cost of losing some nuance.
* The speaker can start me on a path that eventually leads to grasping the idea if I work hard enough at it.
* The speaker honestly doesn’t think it’s that important to clue me in, and that’s fine.
* Or the speaker is full of shit.

Pageau and Peterson and their ilk are full of shit. If their ideas were valuable and truthful it would not be that hard to make them somewhat comprehensible.