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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I straight up do not believe in the existence of any specialized «mathematical talent» or «political talent» or any other talent for that matter.

If it were true, Napoleon's romantic novel would be known as masterpiece belonging to the pinnacle of world's literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clisson_et_Eug%C3%A9nie

Yes, Napoleon like every young man of his time, dreamed to be a romantic artist and worked on it as hard as he worked on everything else. The result is ... similar what would happen if Goethe was given command of an army.

Napoleon is no exception - numerous great and accomplished men - politicians, generals, businessmen, scientists, etc... wrote memoirs of their lives. How many of them are known for their literary, artistic value?

Ed Witten could have continued on the track of politics and journalism; he didn't become any smarter after dropping it.

Was he known as rising star in the world of journalism and politics?

Are "Are You Listening, D.H. Lawrence?" and "The New Left" known for their genius insight?

(anyway, political genius would pick other place to start his career than McGovern campaign)

Some people say that power over humans is just fundamentally not as interesting to intelligent people as playing with abstractions and earning six figures while being a vulnerable serf, which entirely filters out geniuses. I call them nerds and press (x) for doubt.

Power? Job of modern politician is office job that consists of meetings and endless powerpoint presentations, job where you are as easily replaceable cog of machine as in every other job.

Nerd serf worth six figure pay could be fired, could be cancelled and blacklisted if he fucks up badly, and in this is no different from politician (except that the politician would fall much harder).

People interested in raw up your face "powah" become cops, border or prison guards, this is work where you can bully and brutalize your fellow human beings with impunity.

If it were true, Napoleon's romantic novel would be known as masterpiece

(anyway, political genius would pick other place to start his career than McGovern campaign)

Power? Job of modern politician is office job that consists of meetings and endless powerpoint presentations

People interested in raw up your face "powah" become cops, border or prison guards

Does non-existence of distinct specialized talents eliminate the role of experience, including experience of your and your family's network? Does the «job» of someone like Putin or Xi consist of powerpoint presentations? And since when is political power (a separate notion from «political office») a job at all, isn't this a hyperstition that commoners (very reasonably, but with incomplete success) try to force onto the class of masters? Do you assert that Derek Chauvin is psychologically the modern day Caesar, while the modern day's intellectual peer of Caesar is fiddling with Haskell monads, and there is no intersection of those categories?

You probably do not. But this is the level of your intellectually dishonest, motivated nitpicking that is not responsive to what I have said.