כך מפורש כבר בהקדמה, לקראת הסוף, בד”ה והנה מה שאסור.
וזה לשונו, ובנדון דידן אף שרובא דרובא דעלמא נתפסים ברשת זו טמנו להם הציונים האפיקורסים המחטיאים את הרבים ר”ל, ולהם לא יועיל מאומה אף דברים ברורים יותר משמש בצהרים, הם לא יאבו ולא ישמעו, ואדרבא כל שכן דפקרי טפי כו’, עכ”ל.
בקיצור, דמגוגיה.
כתבה מאת אריה ליבוביץ:
Reprinted with assumed permission.
ניתן לשמוע חומרים דומים מגמ”ח “יד שמשון” כאן…
ראה ספר חדש וקצר בשם “תפילה – שעה וחצי בשתי דקות” מאת הרב הדר יהודה מרגולין.
You may have read the important Rashba responsum regarding “בכל דבר שיש קבלה ביד הזקנים והזקנות מעמנו”.
Quoting the introduction to “Democracy: The God That Failed” by Dr. Hans Hoppe, p. 23:
Regardless of the unorthodox interpretations and conclusions reached in the following studies, the theories and theorems used to do so are definitely not new or unorthodox. Indeed, if one assumes, as I do, that a priori social theory and theorems exist, then one should also expect that most of such knowledge is old and that theoretical progress is painstakingly slow. This indeed appears to be the case.
To illustrate his economics’ hoariness Dr. Hoppe then weakly points to the… 16th-century Scholastics (with a hand-waving flourish of Rothbard’s history of economics), when he could have pointed to Mishlei and Chazal (had he known or cared.)
Hoppe also wants to justify and, indeed, glorify “grand social theory”, see the rest of the valuable intro.
Semi-libertarian Nassim Taleb often echoes the same sentiment.
Here, quoting “Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life” p. 176-177:
If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works 90 percent of the time. On the other hand, in part because of scientism and academic prostitution, in part because the world is hard, if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are that it works at less than 10 percent, unless it is has also been covered by the grandmother and the classics, in which case why would you need a psychologist? [footnote] Consider that a recent effort to replicate the hundred psychology papers in “prestigious” journals of 2008 found that, out of a hundred, only thirty-nine replicated. Of these thirty-nine, I believe that fewer than ten are actually robust and transfer outside the narrowness of the experiment. Similar defects have been found in medicine and neuroscience; more on those later. (I will discuss the point further in Chapters 18 and (mostly) 19, as well as why the warnings of your grandmother or interdicts aren’t “irrational”; most of what is called “irrational” comes from misunderstanding of probability.)
(I recommend his argument there too, by the way.)
It is critical that it is not just that the books of the ancients are still around and have been filtered by Lindy, but that those populations who read them have survived as well.
While our knowledge of physics was not available to the ancients, human nature was. So everything that holds in social science and psychology has to be Lindy-proof, that is, have an antecedent in the classics; otherwise it will not replicate or not generalize beyond the experiment. By classics we can define the Latin (and late Hellenistic) moral literature (moral sciences meant something else than they do today): Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucian, or the poets: Juvenal, Horace, or the later French so-called “moralists” (La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, La Bruyère, Chamfort). Bossuet is a class on his own. One can use Montaigne and Erasmus as a portal to the ancients: Montaigne was the popularizer of his day; Erasmus was the thorough compiler.
Don’t second-hander goyim just love quoting other second-hander goyim? And speaking of evolution, haven’t Jews survived even longer?
We have written the Lindy effect is found in Chazal here.
Of course “Chareidism” is partly about denying the historical past and the past’s inconvenient insights (not to mention negating its relevance)…
Speaking of this.
(A “Response”, yes, but not a little-deserved “answer”.)
First, as to the actual claims, it is ridiculous to think every Dime-A-Dozen cheap “Chief” State rabbi deserves detailed answers every time he rehashes old claims refuted a thousand times already, like some stiff-necked missionary.
For example, his list of rabbis opposing Har Habayis is wrong and misleading. The claim those who ascend properly cause others to ascend improperly (not even true on the ground) is refuted by Gemara Shavuos 16a:
… ולמה קידשוה למה קידשוה הא אמרת לא קידשוה אלא למה הכניסוה מפני שתורפה של ירושלים היתה ונוחה היא ליכבש משם
And Tosafos:
אלא בבני גולה, אע”פ שהיה הדבר בא לידי תקלה הכניסוה כדי שימסרו עצמם עליהם יותר כשיש בה שם קדושה.
As for Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef specifically, I hate to give him credit, but as I said before, his writing on this topic always seems a bit schizophrenic, even encoding the opposite message, and this time is no exception either. (See more here.)
It’s silly Rabbi Yosef thinks any but the most naive readers would regard him or his father (mentioned in this public letter), both indentured servants to the anti-Temple establishment, as in any way unbiased or honest.
Most important to stress here, I think, is how dishonest the anti-Temple Mount position really is.
You see, Rabbi Yosef mentions those rabbis, such as Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu who supported building a synagogue on the mount and also blames the faithful for not stopping ignorant Jewish tourists from violating halacha.
But how come there is still no synagogue on the mount? How come no authority prevents ignorant Jewish tourists from violating halacha? I won’t even mention keeping the goyim out. And if it’s impossible, in his view, to rely upon mere measurements, that is only because his owners refuse to allow any excavations! Aren’t those jobs the role of his own employers?!
Imagine a lowlife who gets a girl pregnant, but refuses to wed her, promising to at least support his own child. But then doesn’t send any money. And even writes letters appealing to the public not to give the child or the mother a single penny.
The word “chutzpah” is too mild!
And here is another response to Rabbi Yosef’s previous outburst against Har Habayis (in Hebrew).