• elscallr@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    People that see Mao and Lenin and somehow think authoritarian dictatorships are democratic utopias.

      • elscallr@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        And why would anyone care about Albert Einstein’s view on Lenin? An obvious fallacious appeal to authority, and not even a very smart one.

        That’s if this is even true.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          An obvious fallacious appeal to authority

          Applying logic and reason to a post about a President’s silly haircuts.

        • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Einstein is a jewish that lived through the Russian revolution and lived in Germany during the rise of Hitler before his escape to the US. As far as period accounts he’s as good as you’re gonna get, and I don’t know about you but I don’t think we’re going to find a more intelligent person alive during that period but if you want to give examples that aren’t nazis or people that said nice things about nazis I’m certainly open to them.

          And he was an extremely active leftist politically during the period. You should read his essay, Why Socialism? It’s a good introductory piece for people.

          Also something of a smart man.

          Page 14 of the 260 page FBI file on him states the following:

          Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this “preliminary condition” of world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as Albert Einstein.

          Those files are a fun read, do recommend them. Available on the FBI vault here.

          • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            So…yeah, a naked appeal to authority. Einstein was nigh-unmatchable in his field, but that doesn’t mean his intelligence was applicable to every other field. In fact, one of the worst things you can do is consider an expert in one field an automatic ‘authority’ in others.

            • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              The same people shitting on Einstein right now are also the same people that treat media as a political authority. I can’t take it seriously at all.

              Name a better authority that was alive in the period who I won’t be able to show worshipped the nazis at some point.

              • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I’m not ‘shitting on Einstein’, I’m simply saying he’s not some sort of political or economic expert. If he were, he’d be famous for those as well as for being a pre-eminent physicist.

                Giving weight to someone’s opinion on one topic just because they’re an expert on a different topic is highly inadvisable.

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Once again not really answering my question. Who do you consider a better authority that was living in the period?

                  If you have no better authority to offer this just amounts to an ideologically motivated dismissal.

                  • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    Dude, you’re the one trying to paint Einstein as some sort of authority on the subject. He’s the same guy who urged the US to begin work on the Nuclear Bomb, which we both know the results of.

                    He was a smart man and a great scientist, but a great judge of moral character he was not.

          • mashbooq@infosec.pub
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            11 months ago

            Imagine when someone points out you’re being illogical by using an appeal to authority and you respond by… doubling down on an appeal to authority. That’s some Marx-tier dialectical thinking there, comrade

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                11 months ago

                It doesn’t matter what Einstein thought about Lenin; if he had a good argument for Lenin being a good guy, that argument would stand on its own, and the content (that’s “material conditions” in redfash-speak) of that argument should be discussed. Additionally, it’s not necessary for me to offer a counter-narrative to point out a logical fallacy; that’s shifting the burden of proof, another fallacy.

            • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              “Being illogical is when you consider one of history’s most important users of logic a person that should probably be listened to.”

              • mashbooq@infosec.pub
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                11 months ago

                lol still doubling down on your irrationality. There are some contradictions, but a dialectical analysis shows that being irrational is, in fact, progressive; am I right, comrade?