Postmodernist deconstructionist metaphysical epistemological ontological Marxist constructivist nestructuralist babble

I wonder sometimes if some people way out on the fringes of literary and social criticism, modern philosophy, and even social "scientists" realize how completely absurd their doctines come off sounding. Their ideas might be substantial, maybe even valid and useful - but the problem is that they have become so untethered that, like the ingredients list on the back of a shampoo bottle, they are completely incomprehensible, sometimes even to other non-specialists.

Proof? Or at least, an amusing reductio ad absurdem in support of my argument?

Check out this postmodernist essay generator.

Another enlightening and amusing read along the same lines is a story from the mid 1990s of a New York physics professor named Sokal who submitted an article to a respected social science journal describing the social and political implications of the latest advances in physics. It was reviewed by the editorial board and published. To the board's chagrin, it soon emerged that the article was a satire intended to show the lack of intellectual rigor and even political favoritism found in today's reviewed academic journals.

It's a fun read and an excellent reminder that there is a fine line between artful abstract arguments and pseudointellectual sophistry.

How did I arrive at these links? Credit goes to the amazing MIT Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab that generated a random computer science paper generator. The underlying techniques for creating these papers truly are fascinating. I wonder if the mechanisms are similar when inscrutible academics begin to drone on about the phenomenology of feminism...