Rationalists

This guy wrote a Harry Potter fanfiction

In general he's not wrong. People put the great writers of the past on too much of a pedestal compared to contemporary writers.

Which old writers don't deserve their pedestal spots in favour of which contemporary writers?

That's because they've deserved their pedestal and they've been significant in some way for culture. To completely to start from square one in writing and ignore writers even from a generation ago would be harmful for quality.

Canonical works become canonical through a millennia-long process of weeding out works that don't appeal to people. We venerate those works because they stood the test of time and inspired subsequent works. So their cultural significance isn't just arbitrary.

Bad philosophy is, idiot.

They appeal to idiots. 'muh appeal' isn't an argument. Fucking humanists.

Are you going to substantiate any of your claims?

>They appeal to idiots.
But there is no other criterion to judge the quality of a work than by how much it appeals to other people whose work you admire. Otherwise you'd have to read every book ever written and decide for yourself, which would be literally impossible

He actually isn't a rationalist, and doesn't seem to know what rationalism actually is. Yudkowski is almost the definition of a trash intellect, take that retarded Basilisk shitshow for instance. Pure cringe.

You are unironically better off trying to discuss philosophy with John C. Wright than this buffoon.

Go back to /r/eddit
>this is what pseuds actually think

>Claims to be a judge of philosophy
>Thinks consciousness originates in anything that can be produced through human artifice and thus that the singularity is possible

It is actually genuinely cringeworthy that "Rationalist" has been taken over by a group of naive logical positivists with no actual background in rationality.

Additionally, unless firstly this hack can read Italian, he is in no position to judge Dante, but secondly, he should feel some kinship to him, as Dante, much like Yudkowski, is best known for writing fanfiction. Unlike Dante, Yudkowski will not be remembered the hour after he dies, to say nothing of 700 years later, because he is inconsequential, and so is all of his work.

>if a literary contribution has last hundreds of years it must be overrated there are no other reason that I can see!
>also lol fuck Plato look at how enlightened I am

embarrassing.
also lol at this guy

>lol stop sahying things i dont like xddd they arent socially appropriate

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of past works or saying they don't deserve to be revered. I just mean, for instance, if I wanted to argue that some TV show, say The Sopranos, is as well written than Hamlet, there are people who would essentially treat this as blasphemy. How could anyone say such a thing? It's HAMLET. Nothing can be on the level of Hamlet except other age old classics.

>than
*as

>that image
>implying that cartoons are as good as renaissance art

nigga kill ya self

Renaissance art is fucking awful.

He's right ffs about these mechanisms for popularity. I even worked this out.

Stop pretending you'd give a fuck about these old works if instead of being old works they were posted on Veeky Forums. Maybe philosophy is an exception because it has "breakthroughs" but LOL at Dickens or Pynchon being posted on 4vhan or self published . It would be slaughtered by you pseuds

What makes Renaissance painting #11583 inherently worth more than a Looney Tunes short?

IT DEPICTS BABY JESUS AND MARY IN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT POSE AND SHE'S WEARING RED. FUCKING RED.

You're silly.

I don't think that's blasphemy but I don't think I really agree. My problem with The Sopranos is that it's a screen-production which doesn't really use the screen that well. By tv standards it's quite solid, and well above soap-opera level, but there's nothing technically amazing to it. And the narrative while nice is nothing that a hundred long novels haven't done before. Of course a long character driven story is going to have lots of development, but is there anything to The Sopranos which is really mindblowing stuff to be remembered for all time? AJ and Meadow's relationship with Tony was probably the most interesting thing they had going but they didn't really do to much with it. AJ's story in particular really should have been the story of our time, the weak-willed punk-faggot son and his old-fashioned bull-headed asshole father is the story of our time, but despite interesting moments I don't think that this really went anywhere with lasting impact. Meadow getting into Law and the implication that she might get into some sketchy mob-related stuff in the future is interesting but she never really got that much focus either.

Hamlet's feelings towards his mother alone are dense and interesting enough to write a pile of books on, Shakespeare at his best was an incredibly sharp and nuanced storyteller. As fun as The Sopranos is it really kind of meanders around with silly stuff and routine drama too much to be that remarkable.

>a pile of books on

Jesus Christ, this is the sort of pseudo intellectual thing that "literary intellectuals" say. You can make bullshit extrapolations of anything

My university's library does have a large selection of books just about Hamlet. Not even the whole play, just the character.

This guy is right. Often I have posted excerpts from successful writers in the /crit/ thread, only to have some teenage retard give a slew of hilarious feedback. These include old writers and new writers, and they are always someone who Veeky Forums is aware of as a person. The board has become idiotic.

>Pseuds "slaughtering" something is meaningful
>The fact that people with no historical context cannot understand something great means that it isn't great

Stop. Cease immediately this line of thought and redirect it in a way that does not utterly undermine you. Firstly, because if any person wrote like fucking Dante did in Italian in English on Veeky Forums he would be lauded as a hero, and secondly because the opinion of Pseuds wouldn't matter even if they WERE lauded.