April 16, 2026 ·
In his book Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, physicist and mathematician Alan Sokal along with Jean Bricmont back in 1997 wrote a series of satirical essays essentially akin to modern-day LLM gibberish; coherent-appearing on surface, but having nonsensical meanings underneath them. Turns out LLM-style gibberish existed well before LLMs; in humanities intellectuals borrowing scientific concepts and terminology to explain away nonsense in various deep-sounding intellectual ways.
I originally learnt of Alan Sokal via Nassim Taleb years ago and have had a copy of Fashionable Nonsense ever since. Every now and then I experience something that reminds me of it. Today's reminder comes from the Žižek talk I saw yesterday, where he takes quantum physics as a jumping point to explain his philosophy on religion and atheism and the like. I think Žižek is a funny guy and so I find it entertaining to hear him speak. But I couldn't help and notice that he was doing the Alan Sokal thing a bit. It seems to work as not many understand and can confidently speak of quantum physics; so one can use it as a jumping point for any absurd thing they want to say. Or it doesn't even have to be about quantum, or physics; and the general method still works.
I'm still trying to frame this correctly but the basic asymmetry I keep observing is this: there is tremendous merit in humanities and lots to learn there, even if some of it is trying to imitate science and bastardizing it in the process. But the opposite point of view doesn't appear to reciprocate this idea. I keep meeting humanities people that mention to me Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem; while misunderstanding what they're saying; assuming they're demeriting science and rationality in the process. I then find myself defending science or something like that in reaction, even though I didn't originally hold that position.
That science has limits is not a grand surprising fact.
I am simply trying to point out that STEM folks seem to agree that humanities and philosophy has deep merit, while humanities is either trying to hijack STEM or demerit it; never admitting that one can learn a lot there, too.
Sometimes I think it's all just in my head. But I keep coming across this asymmetry.
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