Critical Thinking In The Age of Content - Talk at The University of Melbourne
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- A live recording of a video essay on critical thinking I delivered at The University of Melbourne. (Melbourne University Philosophy Society)
Other Resources:
My course on writing essays in the humanities: skl.sh/3ow0m2G
My new course on keeping a writer's diary:
skl.sh/3qHJKYg
The Scrapbook Project (Insights on creativity, art, reading):
rcwaldun.com/
My Essays:
/ rcwaldun
My playlist on Storytelling:
/ watch
v=LiQltdrm698&list=PLAyKE2GAVBOJreusJxK0bBErWBzXY5IKz
My collaborative novel about Melbourne: There's A Tale To This City:
rcwaldun.com/tale
My short story collection Passing Tales: rcwaldun.com/p...
My Instagram page: / r.c.waldun
Dear Robin, I just want to let you know how proud I am of who you have become and becoming. Since the days of sitting in the university park, talking about how the education system dulls down the brains of the youth, how it makes everything more complicated than it actually is, hiding behind exclusive keywords and long winded explanations that are designed to lose a soul. When you told me you will become a professor one day and kick all that jibber Jabba jargon out of people's minds and tell it straight, how it is. You have used your street writing skills of observation, grittiness, and the concrete grounding of life perfectly, the way it should be used, and applied it to the education system. And you are taking the system by storm! You know how anti-university I am, yet somehow I really resonate with your teachings, you teach without the preach, you say how it is in a way strangers like me can understand. I am so proud of you mofo. And I'm looking forward to see where your learnings will take you. And I will see you in Paris you wanker.
Thanks Jay. :) and for sure I’ll see you in Paris you mofo!
Jay sir - this post/banter is quietly noted, I've quietly subscribed to your channel just now (completely blindly!).
R. C. Waldun is giving professor vibes. I do agree that critical thinking is an essential skill to harness. It can do you good once you've become a fully grown adult.
Professorcore lol
Brilliant articulation of language and such fine speech. Confidence high, eye contact on point. Great public speaking 👏 example.
Proud of ya mate. This was a great lecture, even someone like me who is indifferent to a lot of philosophy could catch your drift. You are a natural orator pal.
bro you had a fire fit fr fr
That was a great lecture Robin 👏 I’m terrified of public speaking, so I was experiencing some sympathetic nerves while watching, but you seemed really confident and delivered your ideas with great clarity and perfect pacing. I hope I can reach a similar level of competence someday. Thanks for sharing this with us 😊
Great talk! I found it funny when he said that “when I was younger I had to drag my mom to the library”. Did he accidentally reveal that he’s really from a different century, traveling through time?
R. C. Car Waldun is great at playing a Professor, like Sartre’s waiter playing a waiter. The dark academia outfit is on fleek, sealing the deal. Indeed, it is much easier to listen to Waldun and to check out his sweet threads than it is to read or critically think about anything, and I’m here for it. Truly, RC represents the epitome of the public intellectual in the age of content reproduction, only it is more repetition than difference. By chance, has RC talked about the next fad of ideological cynicism?
I wouldn’t compare R. C. to the waiter, as Sartre used that example to demonstrate a state of bad faith. I think Waldun’s embodiment of the professor is certainly one of good faith.
@@nunya7616 😂
damn
Well done. Some quick thoughts:
Deferral of certainty is great. But at what point should we terminate or lessen the deferral? This is crucial, since we cannot remain in a state of utter or lengthened ambivalence about fundamentals or reality at large. At some point, an interpretation and its implications must be permitted to integrate into our worldview. At first glance, Derrida seems to pose a danger: the validity of knowledge, especially in writing, is doomed.
The best strategy I’ve seen is to entertain multiple interpretations of the world in a hierarchy of plausibility. Each one should always be updated and compete for ascendence in the hierarchy. At any one time, there is always the most plausible interpretation that is to be identified with as real, but always in a tentative manner. It always remains subject to replacement by a newly more-plausible interpretation. Plausibility is defined as the degree to which an interpretation implies contradictions when integrated with an empirical model. This ensures one is always in aporia, yet doesn’t suffer from the instability of ambivalence.
Well said
"The best strategy... of ambivalence." --> That sounds a lot like what Science is!
This is where the utility of statistics shines brightest for the truth(objective?)
Great talk man, you are really good at it
Loved the butterfly analogy. Never get tied to your first conclusion on whatever you're reading, keep digging.
I learned so much from this! So engaging. Thank you Robin
Do all of us finishing up our BA in Liberal Arts have a brown leather like shoulder bag? because I do too 😅
It’s so nice to see someone talking like I think in a way. I feel so alone in my studies, Have you felt this way?
All the best to you 🪶
I guess I am gonna have to suspend my opinion regarding this video and this topic :)
We are witnessing the genesis of a hopefully very long career of one who will inevitably become one of the leading philosophical lights of the World.
Appreciate the essay. I'm just wondering if the anxiety about writing as opposed to speech should actually be elevated in our day and age, rather than lessened. While we might feel like there is greater immediacy between the consumer and producer of information through the form of video, presumably through the use of speech, in a sense a recorded video is still unable to defend itself, just like your written shopping list. If this is the crux of the anxiety about writing, then arguably our ability to record things beyond texts only provides more information or "symbols" for interpretive indeterminacy. It would seem that the space for critical thinking is actually widened through the use of records, whether in text or video form, rather than compressed. Yet, ironically, we are lured into thinking there is immediacy and self-evident truth. For this problem, what you have shared about différance remains important as ever.
I’m proud of you for this great presentation. Professor vibes for sure.
I could listen to your lectures all day. Great inflection, delivery, emotion and no fluff - - you fit as much valuable information into the time you have with the perfect voice and presence to make it consistently interesting and entertaining, all the while useful and inspiring. Thank you! 🥰
This is insanely cool and very interesting. You'll definitely become an influential Philosopher of this time.
Hopefully one day I'll be able to give speeches like this of my own and meet other Philosophers like you and other philosophy societies!
Good Luck brother. I hope so too.
Yes! He’s certainly one of the philosophers of all time!1!!1!1 💀
@@cristianmartinez9091 I definitely never said that 😂
I said “of *this* time” not “all time”
“This time” means this age, this decade, this period of time. C’mon.
Amazing speech! Embracing a state of confusion in the Zeitgeist where instant gratification predominates, is a sisyphean task. Please keep holding speeches about the endeavor of applying classical academic philosophy to the modern mundane life!
Pretty impressed by this!
hmm, i see a future professor in this video!!
congratulations for 250k subscribers!!
i really enjoyed this video, however, as a musician i don’t agree with the dubstep & classical music analogy. the right thing for me would be to “try to understand complex music without the knowledge of music theory” or smth like that
You can DEFINITELY understand complex music without the knowledge of music theory. I do. Most people do, in fact. Music Theory is merely a means of speaking about the way music is constructed, but not music itself.
Delivery was eh not gonna lie but the part where he says compressing the space for critical thinking hit the mark
This man RC walkin is a gem and is a true leader in this day & age
My middle school math teacher said something similar, he often stopped us from writing and listen to his lectures
That Hogwarts vibe! I miss UniMelb ❤️
You are really good at explaining, you need to be a professor
You’re doing very well young man. An impressive journey to observe.
Thank you kindly. :)
i feel like I've heard the same points on the hardcore literature podcast
wow great speaker in person too
This video is on the frontline of academic and deep thinking's purpose: positing claims that challenge the unspoken assumptions we not only see the world through but also act upon. Well done!
I do think that when handled properly, social media can do so much working hand in hand with classical learning as content creators/influencers like you, with passion for philosophy and literature, engage your viewers to be critical thinkers. You do offer fresh insights to pin them to the art and beauty of critical thinking by consistently encouraging to dig into books and discover great minds for themselves. The age of content has indeed made Derrida's "differance" relevant, for this is what globalization and digitization entail as well, as we're inevitably put in the web of cross cultures (diversity in race, ethnicity, beliefs, etc). It's just really up to us to take one step at a time and delight in digesting info so we can willfully embrace and not be unpleasantly tangled in the confusion of "unending chain of signification" (lol, had to look that up). You're right about the potential of the state of "aporia" -- it will keep minds at work and not be fixed onto dull reference frames like imagine if we hadn't considered avenues other than encyclopedias in shelves.
I guess the major challenge these days with ever growing population is how many would still (and how religiously would they) spread awareness on the essence of critical thinking. It's a crucial mission and people like you are a rare gem that most can only pray to have the opportunity to encounter in the world of academe where mining for knowledge and understanding isn't usually fun.
This was so amazing to watch!
Very Insightful. Thank you for sharing.
Wonderful! I stumbled upon this video in my feed and listened and reflected on the importance of deferring meaning and definition and to allow ourselves that space and time for reflection and sense making. 👏
how come you jumped straight to derida? and why derida in particular? you had to had a reason to jump to someone OR SOMETHING in particular and articulate whats the reason for such a choice. afterall, you have a presentation/lecture and you have an audience.GG
What a treat!! Also fantastic lighting & audio - easily overlooked for something like this! 👍🏽👍🏽
Damn you look so good at that suit, without introduction, people might mistaken for an official professor
So simple,, Even people like me with terrible english can also grasp this.. i wish the curriculum ans teachers were like him in my school and college days.. i wouldn't have dropped out and rejoin college again 2x only if i had someome to teach me like this..
Amazing talk. Loved the insight on speech, writing, interpretation and how it relates to modern society. Thanks for sharing.
This was amazing
Great Talk! The „why isn’t this person texting back“ example made it for me
Smart, intellectual 👏
Great content, I have a question, what does it mean to be on a stink bow ? 12:00 of the video, thanks.
11:10 this is so brilliant
Agreed!!!! Massive idea. I want to be a genuine thinker not a memorizer and for me nothing has been more impactful on my thinking than putting in the work slogging through the great books on my own.
@@johnnyroycerichardsoniii3273 Right, ofcourse.
Having gotten exposure to the internet since a young age has left me feeling unmoored and I feel as though I've been robbed of my right to think for myself and engender my own ideas in return of simply conforming other's words into my reality, although I do realise that this comes from a place of privilege.
@@flamingaish Ya if you’re lucky to live in the west you’re by all quantifiable standards the “privileged” and my belief is that with the internet and google and our intimate access to the greatest minds we are especially living in a time of “the most privilege.”
But too, everything instant is thin, frail, weak. I never felt particularly great about myself reading content in a condensed simplified form but I have felt a great deal of respect by reading a long dense volume or working 12 hours a day with my hands. I’m reading the Brothers Karamazov right now 40 hours, rewarding beyond words. Hardly anyone I know in person reads books these days. There is no ticktock for me, no social media ever, I use TH-cam the vast majority of the time for education allowing myself to do the thoughtless zombie scroll only when I am exhausted late at night after hours of intense focus. Now I’m not perfect but the majority of the time I don’t allow my attention to be captured by anything that is not my intentional doing. I can only speak from my own experience and my experience has been that showing up every day consistently over time and doing really hard things right on the edge of my knowledge and comfort zone has completely differentiated myself as a unique man from the rest of the world. It’s the hardest thing you will ever do but if you can pull it off the rewards are immense. My rule of thumb is that the “right thing” to do is probably the exact opposite of the masses. Be the man that defends women and children and doesn’t pull out their phone to record. Be the person that reads hard books opposed to reading spark notes and instagram posts for “wisdom.” If most men are beta males build yourself into a strong masculine man. If the world is becoming less religious be more religious. Etc etc. Served me well but it will require you to stand alone in the most inopportune moments. I’d rather have myself than to be had by the world
I just watched the most intriguing video ever! love your work
Greattt talk
R.C. Waldun is such a magnificent person.
Great content
I'm so glad that discovered your channel
Great content
Great content
Gaining braincells one R.C Walden video at a time.
amazing talk!!!
Really enjoyed this. Congratulations
In this world of social media, we are not bored enough and confused enough to do or think something more boring and confusing which eventually leads to the suffering of new ideas or philosophy coming to us. Only consumption and facts are not good for creativity.
Not to be rude. I play chess in that room 😂
great talk man , excellent public speaking well done👍👍
Hahaha the small "bye!" when the student walked out
Wow this is giving me anxiety >.
Waldun is in his professor arc!!
I'm so proud of you Robin💜😭
nice outfit
daddy is so woke
Great talk
enjoyed this!
Fantastic film
Great content.
Most insufferable shit ever
i loved the intro!!! i was wondering if you could make a video explaining the trajectory of music from classical to dubstep. i loved how you used that metaphor when explaining philosophers and where their trains of thought stemmed from. i enjoyed this video so much. great job.