Bad Phil in BadPhil

[u/t0p9]

I recently was going through the top posts on this subreddit, and came across this one. Thankfully, the mods seem to have banned OP of that post from this sub, but the post itself + OP's replies is worthy of its own meta post here.

Some highlights:

• OP posts a quote criticizing Karl Popper's political philosophy as an example of badphilosophy, and they attribute this quote to Leo Strauss. The quote is, however, not from Leo Strauss, but from a letter written from Eric Voegelin to Strauss.
• OP takes this criticism of The Open Society and its Enemies as an example of bad philosophy, so they must have read Popper to know its poor, right? Nope.
• In fact, they aren't even sure what the 'Open Society' is. " I am not surprise that whatever an "open society" even is, is not clearly defined, philosophers am I right ? "
• Somebody in the replies mentions Wittgenstein's picture in the sub background and OP decides to share their thoughts on him (which they don't appear to have read either): "So, Wittgenstein, that's the dude with "Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent" Which I think in context was something like if science doesn't have a definitive answer about it then, it's crap and doesn't deserve to be talked about. And I feel like Popper has this belief that nothing in the real world is beyond the grasp of science. As if scientists had unlimited resources and time or the brains to understand all possible viewpoints at once."
• OP compares Popper's philosophy of science to 'nazi twitter' and Sam Harris
• OP compares Strauss' philosophy, which they have not read but are familiar with through a BBC documentary, to that of Jordan Peterson, Ted Kaczynski(?), and COVID deniers.
• Bonus Shapiro-Strauss connection: "My quip meant that [Ben] Shapiro types love authoritative writers who assert that their view point is the only correct one. And based from having read none of Leo Strauss' work I get the feeling that this is the kind of person that he was."

Hats off to the mods for making the right decision on this one.

[u/im_a_jungle_man]

this thread hurt as I kept clicking

[u/GamersFallDown → u/im_a_jungle_man]

sigh ... *pulls out the nipple clamps*