• elscallr@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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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      1 year 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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      1 year 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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        1 year 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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          1 year 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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            1 year 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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              1 year 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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                1 year 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.

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re avoiding giving any other examples. Either because you don’t know any, or because you know you can’t offer one that wasn’t a fascist.

                  • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    The reason I’m not giving examples is because I’m simply here to say that your example was garbage.

      • mashbooq@infosec.pub
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        1 year 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

          • mashbooq@infosec.pub
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            1 year 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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          1 year ago

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