Will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?
Will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?
One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
“In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.
Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”
https://qz.com/967554/the-five-universal-laws-of-human-stupidity
I try my best to keep in check my stupidity thus offloading some of the work of the smart people. Unfortunately, I fail most of the time
The Marching Morons
Thanks a lot for that link. I am a hardcore science fiction nerd, yet I had never crossed paths with that one. Indeed relevant in this debate, too.
This is why I am 100% in favor of normalizing regularly having things like computer/internet literacy tests msybe every half decade to ensure you are actually smart enough to use the internet in a responsible manner. Don't pass? No internet access for you outside of things educational material, cooking recipes, or sending messages to people. No access to your social media or conspiracy theory groups or anything else that'll harm your brain.
It'll either encourage people to get better at cheating, give up on using the internet entirely, or they might actually try to learn something and better their lives.
Some will definitely complain that they're having their rights violated (USA), but if it keeps the Internet safe from stupidity even by a small margin, I'll gladly take it.
I am so sick of reading proposals like this from probably-white non-US Westerners who have probably never actually had to engage with the idea that racism exists. This might get some fascist groups off the internet, sure, but it would also likely push oppressed minority groups who do not necessarily have access to quality education out. That's the history of minimum IQ requirements for voting, mind you.
Put this proposal in front of a Proud Boy and they'll likely be in favor of it, because they believe whites are the only people smart enough to pass it. They'll stop being in favor once it goes into effect and they're included along with groups they hate in the "not allowed online" crowd, but the groups they hate, some of whom's situations may be made direly worse by the lack of unrestricted internet access, will most likely be pushed out too.
Here we have a person who has never considered the important question: Who among us is intelligent enough to decide where the line lies between good enough and not good enough?
When do we consider someone too stupid to use the Internet? Bottom 50%? Bottom 10%? If bottom 10%, what do we do about the people who score exactly with 10.1%? They're nearly indistinguishable from the bottom 10% in terms of performance, yet they still get to go online?
Who decides which sites and services are ok? The government? The ISP? The site creators? You? What happens when your approved messaging service adds short form videos? Adds group chats?
The ultimate problem: There are no good answers to any of these questions, and if you think you have one, you are almost certain to have missed something significant in your evaluation of the options.
By eliminating critical thinking, and polarizing everyone, those in power can do whatever they want, and the rest of us won't be sufficiently organized to stop it.
I'm seeing positive signs though, labor unions getting successful settlements, and more awareness. So maybe?
It's just absurd that so many people fall into the shitter so incredibly easily without second consideration. But those who don't also need to get out of the mentality of 'I can't do anything' because even a single individual can have a massive impact in other people's lives and the world without major ambitions. Every time somebody says that, it just feels so pathetic, like they have given up attempting any responsibility and relinquished the last of their power even though so much more could have been accomplished. We collectively need to have a much stronger resistance to injustice in the world, and we are making progress, but it's so slow it's eclipsed by the amount of atrocious shit that happens almost every single day. I find it saddening how quick people are to resign themselves from doing something just because the odds are against them.
Yes, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of hopelessness and apathy, and it's only helping those who commit the atrocities.
But before you judge, I'll state that I've been a member of an activist group, progressivecoders dot org, for the last 5 years. I've worked on various projects, but overall watched the world situation get worse anyway. Even before that, I've done my best to be an activist and ally.
I've also been in the software industry for 30 years. I've watched it go from a genuinely useful and interesting information processing and delivery system, to a completely shittified ad delivery and surveillance tool. I've had to participate in it myself, I was actually part of the team that delivered the first animated GIF that made advertising that much more annoying. I worked for several of the big internet monopolies, and realized that it wasn't an accomplishment, they just crack the whip that much harder, and I have CPTSD in exchange for free lunches and massages.
So yeah, I'm starting to give up. But it's not for lack of trying.
“Just absurd” is the language of someone who doesn’t understand what’s going on.
I assure you that (which you already know but aren’t processing for some reason) people are not setting out to live their lives in an absurd way.
It just means you’re tossing your hands up at the complexity of understanding something. Not a very disciplined approach to understanding for the 1% Intellectual in the room.
I have decided that it is safe to assume that everyone is an idiot, including me, and behave accordingly: act deliberately with an open mind, making no assumptions, and remain curious.
Frank Herbert's Bene Gesserits had a tenet in which they remained mindful of the naivety of all people, including themselves, ostensibly to prevent allowing hubris to allow poor decisions.
Coming back around to my point: I think we'd all get along a lot better if we'd all agree we're all stupid, but we can get better.
These are good points and good techniques IMO, and to add on--
Humans have always been drowning in the unknown, hence our chronic set of coping mechanisms, but on top of that, in this high-tech information civilisation we currently live in, now we're drowning in information, as well. Which leads to some big problems, of course.
As in-- it takes considerable effort, honesty and openness to form a decent perspective on most subjects these days, particularly significant ones, and because of that hurdle, I fear that most people (you, I, everyone) are inclined to 'settle' for flawed understandings of topics, even with best intentions. Or at worst, some of us form whatever ludicrous opinions simply because it makes us feel better / at peace / self-righteous.
Point is-- it seems like the world just has way too much information for people to handle these days, effectively worsening our collective mental health and communal behavior, one might say.
remained mindful of the naivety of all people, including themselves,... to prevent allowing hubris to allow poor decisions.
Not to spoil a 60 year old book, but didn't they have a plan to genetically engineer a literal savior to mankind with hundreds of years of selective breeding? A little like the pot telling the kettle it's too sure of itself.
Everyone has gaps in their knowledge and errors in their thinking. A true master is an eternal student, or something like that. We can always learn. The problem here is too many people have their own ego impeding any progress.
Funnily enough, if as an intellectual you let go of the idea that others are dummies and start examining what they do and why and start brainstorming about what might motivate them, you might get a better idea of all the dynamics that go on when it comes to an individual's choice or motivation. Including, yes, why people are "anti-intellectual". And perhaps how to "solve" it.
I'm a bit snarky here, because I get irritated by other supposedly "smart" people looking at things through a tiny, biased and prejudged pinhole.
You're smart? Ok. Get out there, observe things, learn them, then come back and form a hypothesis that aligns with what you've observed.
I'm not sure that your statement has anything to do with stopping thinking of others as dummies. I think it's telling you to think of them that way, and you're just trying to push that under the rug to try to be nice.
You're saying to understand anti intellectualism you need to understand things from their perspective.
The lack of knowledge (especially true knowledge) and lesser ability to understand complex ideas are major aspects of that perspective.
No matter how we define or measure intelligence, we're mathematically guaranteed that it's distributed approximately on a bell curve with a small number of intelligent people at the top.
I'll never not see anti-intellectual people as stupid, even if they have their reasons. I used to be an idiot who actively did things they thought were wrong. But eventually I stopped because I realised it's completely hypocritical and morally and logically wrong. I came to that conclusion without need of others judging me through my own self-reflection, and I'll admit it was hard. Even so, I wished somebody would have called me out, but I guess animal consumption is so engrained in society people don't even question it. I had my reasons to do so, but they were by no means a justification. I still try to understand things in different ways, but eventually it becomes redundant taking each case and doing so. The reality is that anti-intellectualism is incredibly prevalent and people need to change their ways of thinking. Sometimes they are just blatantly wrong and need to stop letting their emotions do their thinking. Sometimes there is nothing to understand. I don't know why people are so bent on seeing every individual separately, it's impossible to do so. Even if we do, they are still liable for their actions. Such as choosing not to self-reflect.
If you think OP is just being arrogant, will you listen to Isaac Asimov instead?
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Also, there's a big difference between mere ignorance, or even lack of intelligence, and active hostility to knowledge and intelligence, which is what anti-intellectualism is. Ignorance can be fixed with knowledge, but willful ignorance is a character flaw that's very hard to change.
I don't think everyone is an idiot. It's a big assumption to say so. People have their reasons and motivations. Many people weren't given a fair chance in life, many lacked an education, many were raised to think a certain way or in a certain culture.
I'd wager I have tried arguing with the people I would categorise as 'anti-intellectual' more than 99% of people to ever have lived trying to understand them, and I did develop a level of empathy and understanding. But still it remains that just because people have reasons, they aren't necessarily valid and eventually people are responsible for their own self-reflection and decisions. 'Solving' this issue with people who already have engrained beliefs is incredibly difficult because they need to be responsible themselves. It isn't something I can actualise solely. It's far easier to start from a fresh generation, because changing is hard when you are used to something for so long. You see this in religious people especially and in people who eat meat. I know why they are/do what they do, but still it doesn't give justification. Many of them may even doubt their beliefs, but still cling to them. I know they do because I used to as well. I even still proceeded to do things I know were wrong. I don't claim to be flawless. Furthermore, I also know there is no reason to come in blaming these people ruthlessly because it will not progress anywhere and serve no purpose, what is done is done. But I cannot deny how annoying it is to see people still refuse to even attempt to learn.
The 'solution' is very complex if you want people to change because it will be an incredibly difficult task and something that would require an entire cultural shift to how people think. No doubt long term and I don't have the answer to how, and even if somebody did, it still relies on others to make a decision themselves. You can only make your own judgement of individuals for so long, soon enough you can recognise patterns and arguing every case is not possible with what time you have. I do my best.
I have tried arguing with the people I would categorise as ‘anti-intellectual’ more than 99% of people to ever have lived trying to understand them
this betrays a lot about your attitudes towards 99% of people and how you interact with them
Consider that the ones who aren't as enlightened as you just haven't had the privilege to get the free time, financial flexibility, and education to spend a lot of time and effort self-reflecting on their own intellectual purity. Consider also that there are many in that group who count you as anti-intellectual for your prioritization of the ideals of a squeaky clean intellectual platform over the material realities of living in the world and having to engage in conflict and contradictions.
I think you're mixing up intellectualism and morality. There are many reasons people choose not to eat meat, and some of those reasons are emotional or moral rather than intellectual. Some people only eat a vegan diet because their doctor told them they had to. Are those people somehow more intellectual than someone who researched the science and came to the conclusion that humans are omnivores?
You have already judged the outcomes of people's decisions as being objectively correct or incorrect. To you, eating meat is incorrect regardless of the reasons for doing so. That is not an intellectual stance, it is a moral one. You are ultimately judging people for having different values than you. Maybe they don't care about the environment, maybe they don't care about the safety of animals or other people. Like it or not, to care about those things is emotion. You can argue they're wrong as much as you like, but you can't prove that any human behavior is objectively "the right thing to do," meaning you are not as objectively correct as you think you are. There isn't a one-fits-all solution for how to live. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can stop judging others for not being like you.
Especially when you look at folks anti-intellectual sentiments through the lense of their Material Conditions.
Agreed. I'd also like to add that intelligence != wisdom != experience, and you need all three to achieve real understanding.
Also, as an intellectual, I’d advise that understanding anti-intellectualism requires understanding what alternatives exist to intellectualism and why people might see them as more valuable (or less problematic) than intellectualism.
"the world" is not anti-intellectual, you just hang out with the wrong people
Perhaps not the whole world, but I'm many/most countries, the larger structures, like government and business, absolutely are anti-intellectual. Nice to have an academic friend group, but that doesn't change the fact that capitalism makes education less accessible in order to rely on an undereducated workforce, and then politicians push it even further for the sake of easy control.
Some folks can't much help who they hang out with. Any American is literally surrounded by thousands of miles of other Americans, and anti-intellectualism is rampant in the country. It's not like Sweden is going to let Americans immigrate with the justification that "I'm a sad intellectual surrounded by boorish peasants."
I'm very specific about my friends, I promise you that isn't the problem. It's more of an observational thing, and it is clearly present in western society at the very least. Even with my friends, we are still an insignificant minority compared to the larger population.
Any thought or idea that begins with “people are…” is doomed.
There is no such thing as “people;" there is I only you, this person here, that person there, and so on.
"You can never truly idiot-proof something, as there will always be a better idiot."
- source unknown
Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
There's a similar line in a Douglas Adams book:
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools
Pretty sure you mean the quote by Rick Cook:
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
― Rick Cook
Can we start with anti-I-Need-My-Dopamine-Hit-Every-10-Minutes?
Between people's ever depleting attention span and our desire for acceptance on social media, I just don't see how you can even begin to tackle "anti-intellectualism".
Most people use these platforms to comment on a headline and never read the article. Perhaps we could all decide to use these platforms properly and use the downvote button to bury comments that, while funny or otherwise emotionally engaging, are clearly not accurate or providing value to the topic of discussion.
By upvoting funny comments and rewarding hive-mind mentality, we're partly to blame for the lack of intellectualism.
Lemmy is far better than Reddit regarding the use of downvotes, but many people still use it as an emotional disagreement button rather than something used to hide useless/irrelevant content. I only downvote when somebody says something completely fucked or starts trolling.
I don't think upvoting funny comments is necessarily wrong, but there is a lack of meaningful engagement a lot of the time.
Lemmy is far better than Reddit regarding the use of downvotes, but many people still use it as an emotional disagreement button rather than something used to hide useless/irrelevant content
I don't know if I'd agree at all with the idea that Lemmy is any better, in my experience, people still use the downvote button as an "I Disagree" button 99% of the time. There's less people here, so it's less pronounced (you'll get -9 instead of -300 for expressing an against-the-grain opinion), but the pattern is still just as present
It's not so simple I think. Anti-intellectualism is a symptom of the greater human condition. Part of it is the scapegoat aspect. If something has a name then it's easy to point a finger at it, easy to blame the person who named it. Part of it is envy, people trying to tear down those who they feel are superior to them. Part of it is propaganda, if not caused by certainly exacerbated by.
Like many things in life it's complicated.
You forgot laziness. Intellectualism is difficult, and letting your emotions do your thinking is super easy. Then there's the greed, or more accurately the greedy, who will use anti-intellectualism to get what they want from others, be it money, power, or something else.
I maintain that it's pretty simple, actually. Humans are animals, just like any other. That comes with irrationality baked in. We think we're so much better than, say, orangutans, but are we really? I'm not impressed. I often think about how we would behave if we didn't have language or opposable thumbs. I realized one day that all we have to do is observe traffic.
I mean, the thumbs help hold stuff, sure, but it's our large pre-frontal cortex that really comes in clutch. That and our penchant for violence. There's evidence to show that the Neanderthals were possibly more advanced than us before they "died out," but also less violent and selfish. It's those traits that led us to kill them or cut off their access to resources while we took them all.
We are still animals. Any biologist will tell you that, but that's not a negative thing, it's just a facts. It's like saying we're mammals. It really comes down to how you define "better." and "successful." Obviously, we are making those determinations from our point of view, so we tend to define them with the things only we do. But if we're defining successful by technological advancement or the ability to do advanced math, or even versatility in abilities, we're at least top 3. But those orangutans are pretty nifty with their use of twigs sometimes, so don't count them out.
I believe there is an evolutionary purpose to human stupidity though, and it's the reason we've come so far as a species. Without writing a novel here, look up the concept of simulated annealing, which is conceptually related to natural selection. The short version is, when searching for a better solution to problem in a sea of functionally infinite possible solutions, if you only ever try solutions you can see that are categorically better than the solution you currently have, you will (with statistical certainty) end up in a local maxima. That is to say, without stupid people, no one would have ever looked at a cow udder and thought, "yeah, I wanna get in on that", and as a result many humans throughout history would have gone without nutrients necessary for their survival.
I have no idea who first drank cow's milk, that's not the point, don't @ me. The point is, stupid people try stupid stuff, many times it is just as stupid as it looked, but sometimes that stupid thing turns out to have previously undiscovered potential benefits which smart people notice, research, and help integrate into our society, resulting in others' lives being better.
So to further simplify, stupid people are unwitting test subjects that the rest of humanity sometimes benefit from because they do dumb shit no one else would have thought to try.
I'm reminded of an episode from Stargate when one of the Asgardians, Thor I believe, was able to stop replicators from attacking his home world with the help of one of the main Earth characters, Sam. Thor needed someone of a less evolved/"stupider" species to help with the problem after none of the Asgard scientists could find a way. He said with compliment, "It was your stupid idea," and Sam smiled back.
Yeah pretty much.
I'm only using the word "stupid" here because the thread is about intelligence and anti-intelligence. But more generally, I think there is a reason that it's easy to plot political ideologies (even outside the two-party system of the US) somewhere on a progressive/conservative spectrum. I believe Progressiveism and Conservativism form the same dichotomy as Mutation and Rote Replication in the context of DNA. In the stock market and economy it's referred to as Greed and Fear. In philosophy and game theory it's called Exploration and Exploitation. These are all the same phenomenon to me, one takes a step forward the other takes a step back, sometimes you need a bit more of one to survive, other times you need a bit more of the other.
You know, the only thing that keeps smart people from trying stuff is cultural boundaries and social fitness, which in itself is something evolutionary grown and includes small progress to a local maxima? You know, that the only thing that keeps us from trying unconventional stuff is often the lack of money, which inherently comes from the state. The politics decide about money and they also cater to stupid voters or to business interests. This in itself is stupidity. The answer of stupid is evolutionary benefitting is just fine on the surface, but if you look at the complexity of issues, it is not as clear. And then there is my opinion that i would rather accept some local maxima while some scientists try unconventional stuff than have stupid people always thinking theyre right DKing all the time, because it is exhausting! I know it is not a choice, but if one thinks being and staying stupid is fine, which might be the consequence of "stupidity is evolutionary advantageous", then I would rather fight the premise, because that would not be acceptable to me.
Oh my god. Stupidity is what people pushes us out of steady, slow, incremental progress towards a local maxima. I'm stunned. You might have something there.
Reading the comments, it seems that the take on this in a lot of highly voted comments is the highly simplistic "some people are stupid, others are not".
Let me make one thing clear: Intelligence is NOT Wisdom, and whilst the former might make it easier the get the latter, to begin down the path of growing the latter requires an ability to recognize one's lack of it and such ability is dependent on things like self-confidence, self-criticism, ability to practice introspection and possibly a reasonably varied life-experience, most of which barelly correlate with intelligence (and in some cases the correlation is actually negative).
Yes, it's emotionally satisfying for people who see themselves as intelligent (yet can't even recognize the limits of intelligence) to think their greatest quality (worse, one they're born with rather than acquired) makes them immune to that problem, which they thing is because "most people are stupid".
(Funnily enough, more intelligent people are apparently more likely to fall for scams, which would make sense if one they tended to overestimates the power of mere intelligence)
However emotionally satisfying doesn't mean right and a wise person would suspect such self-serving "I'm great because I have this characteristic and it's those who don't have it who are the problem" 'conclusions'.
Personally I think a lot of the manipulation going on nowadays is at an emotional level (just go learn about modern marketing and start playing attention at how branding in TV is mostly creating associations between the brand and certain emotional urges and impulses, for example perfumes with sex and cars with freedom) and an "indoctrinated" subconscious definitelly bypasses intelligence no mater how extraordinary (Hollywood's typical portrayal of exceptional genious is an almst superhumanly wise person - or alternativelly, nutty professor - all very unrealistic).
Also I've known some highly intelligent people who were so unable to accept that even they were non-omiscient humans who made mistakes, that they migt as well be morons (these people are rare though).
Anybody who thinks themselves above making mistakes is delusional. It's really concerning how people will live such self-centred lives without greater consideration or introspection. So many people lack self-awareness and the ability to properly process emotions without just giving in to them. Cultural conditioning and manipulation definitely plays a part in this. It took me so long to realise how wrong the consumption of animal products was because until I got around the age of 12 I thought much more highly of people and didn't believe so many people would partake, willing or ignorantly, in the abuse of animals so carelessly. Realising how selfish and narrow-minded many people are is really saddening. It's very rare for someone to break free from social conditioning, even more so by their own decisions alone.
I also have to agree the comments saying shit like 'some people are stupid, others are not' are just redundant. Similarly, the people who say 'not everyone is an idiot, you have to see it from their perspective' are also incredibly annoying. Even if people have reasons, they don't provide adequate justifications. I can understand why they may have an idea or perspective, but it doesn't make it valid. I have gone through understanding people more than most people to ever have existed will have tried, but I can't fight every single case. Too many people think their opinion matters equally to another's who has invested magnitudes more time into formulating it. I think people really need a humbling to be able to appreciate things and learn more.
Actually, it is not "the world". Only certain parts and groups of it. The US is quite anti-intellectual, especially where the GOP is in power, as they draw their clientele from people who think less for themselves. So, naturally, they discourage intellectual advance wherever they can - Crippling public schools and libraries, making university unaffordable, etc.
Yeah I don't think it's "the world" either!
I live in Asia, and overall I find people here give too much weight to fancy degrees and whatnot.
It feels a lot less bad than anti-intellectualism (especially for me, personally), but presents its own set of problems. Sometimes it feels people overestimate my knowledge of all subjects, just because I wrote a thesis on the behavior or one insect on a particular tree, in a tiny geographical region.
Drinking game: click on a random username in the comments section and take a shot every time they start talking out of their ass
My account doesn't count (although I am flattered, weirdo)
That's a good way to end up with alcohol poisoning
Add in surface level observations of 'if you are so smart you would realise not everyone is an idiot' or 'you have to understand their perspective better' and maybe 1/2 comments you are slamming a shot. I guess people don't read comments anymore. (Probably never did.)
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think a lot of anti intellectual thinking is a combination of religious and corporate influence on the world.
Religion more or less teaches that you should believe what you're told, not what you discover or learn for yourself. It's a subtle but powerful way to discourage people from seeking the truths in life because they are genuinely convinced they've found the answer for everything.
Similarly with corporate influence so heavily a part of our lives people are quick to fall into the trap of consumerism. From a young age we are being conditioned to accept that it's normal to have to pay multiple times for the same product and to replace our possessions regularly. The cost of living that way makes the time and expense of continuing education unattainable for the average person, which often leads to bitterness about their situation and anger towards those who are able to work a white collar job or live an easier life.
Both are problems without quickly enacted solutions. People have to be taught to think critically without being put off or angered when they get to topics that contradict what they want to believe.
It's not unpopular and more so true. Religion is anti-intellectual, and the main abrahamic ones double-dip hard on it. If you ever tried arguing with a religious person about faith, it's incredibly obvious how impactful it is on their critical thinking.
Capitalism also prefers anti-intellectual thinking because it makes people easier to manipulate and exploit into accepting shitty conditions and supporting the system. I think a large cause for the lack of critical thinking and self-reflection is because too many people live a very self-centred life where they consider themselves superior automatically and never take the time to question their beliefs, or if they do, refuse to face contradictions because it's harder than staying the same.
I wouldn't say "the world" is anti-intellectual, some populists are. The US right is definitely anti-intellectual and they have better PR so you're getting a lot of if in the media. It's because Republican voters are mostly from small towns and not well educated so the party is trying to demonize education as something elitist. It's the same in Poland where the ruling, far-right party's electorate are mostly people from smaller towns and villages. But in Spain where the right wing voters are mostly upper class and well educated and left wing voters are working class you don't see a lot of anti-intellectual rhetoric. For example the anti-vax movement during covid was mostly non-existent here. I think UK is the same: right wing party is the party of well educated voters so they don't promote anti-intellectual ideas.
I think UK is the same: right wing party is the party of well educated voters so they don't promote anti-intellectual ideas.
That maybe was the case at one time. Labor was certainly the party of the common man.
But Tories became more populist as xenophobia and racism became more valuable to them. Just look at all the Brexit nonsense and their embrace of UKIP. Michael Gove, a prominent member of the conservative party, during the lead-up to the Brexit referendum, said in favor of Brexit, "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong."
Edit: but I'm not British, so I could be wrong.
Edit: but I’m not British, so I could be wrong.
Same, I'm not British so I'm basing this only on what I've see in the news but as I see it it's more about nationalism and racism than anti-intellectualism. It's more like "it's time to stop listening to the economists and just kick all the foreigners out". You know, as in experts might be right about the economy suffering but we don't care, we just want "our country back". I really don't see a lot of "education is bad, universities are bad" propaganda from UK right. Boris was definitely pretending he didn't got to the elite schools and clubs but the rest of recent PMs do not.
It is tricky to get someone to recognise that they aren't knowlegable enough. Even if you say it as gently as possible, some will still hear "you're dumb" and no one likes that.
Also it's a great tool to manipulate people : "I don't need a scientist trying to explain me life from the depths of their lab !! I have commonsense !!"Traditionalism vs new approaches to things will never go away until technological progress at least stops accelerating and levels out a little bit. So, a Star Trek utopia basically, where fundamental physics has largely been nailed down.
That said, education is a separate topic, and has generally been trending in a positive direction for most of the past 4000ish years. This has actually made the conflict harsher, over time imo, as the traditionalists are starting to feel threatened at an existential level. Naturally, they're going to meet that feeling of threat with traditional methods, and I'll just let you consider our human history of conflict resolution methods to consider what that might entail.
We just don't believe in our religious books anymore, though. We used to. And that's a problem for some people. Like, the biggest problem that can exist for them, its about souls and salvation, not this "crude matter" as Yoda would say.
Anti-intellectualism is a strategy employed by some rich people that control some mass media outlets to keep people away from being class conscious.
I dislike this take. It assumes a conspiracy among a shadowy elite, which is the same tactic often employed by the anti-intellectual crowd. If we simply write off the problem with a hand-wavy solution based on a hunch, we’re no better than those we are discussing.
Some professors have actually done the methodical research to find out this is, in fact, true. There's no shadowy elite there's just an elite that has a policy towards this: https://www.amazon.com/Gatekeeper-Years-Economics-According-Times/dp/1594516820
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Fascists and dictators are often supported by intellectuals. Being an intellectual doesn’t mean you’re on the right side of history.
Science is the best means by which we can understand the objective truth about the world around us. It's a shame that people are rejecting it in favour of conspiracy and superstition.
That’s just human psychology at work. Many of these BS explanations are appealing to a certain type of mind.
It's the same to people. All the interest in the latest cancer medicine, people like science. They are not anti-science, they cannot tell the difference.
This smells like someone who considers himself an “intellectual” and is sick of people disagreeing with him.
That may be the case but it doesn't change the strong current of anti-intellectualism in modern societies.
It's useful to those in power, for example.
No disagreement there, but simply declaring that “those who don’t see things my way are anti-intellectual” is a drastic over-simplification of how things got this way. Declaring it into Lemmy, which an echo chamber of progressives and communists (including myself) means we all know who he’s talking about, which means it’s just a progressive dog-whistle for the “them” that we want to be mad at.
There are a lot of intelligent people who hold what I’m sure OP would consider anti-intellectual stances. I live around them, work with them, play games with them, etc. it’s much more valuable to understand who they are and how they got to their beliefs than it is to simply vilify them.
This smells like jumping to conclusions.
It was but OPs replies seem to confirm it.
Or someone who's seen brexit happen, or the rise of right wing populist parties everywhere that want to ban books and discount expert advice on climate, the economy, etc.
Observing democratically-elected governments being unable to address existential threats to the human race is certainly food for thought.
To follow-up my snarky reply What if we’re the bad guys here?-NYTimes OpEd (non-paywall) This has a good take on how being “intellectual” is potentially an elitist take.
I somewhat agree. The world isn’t black and white. And as a society we are very much still untwined with our primitive groupthink.
The world is very complex.
What's wrong with that? Just an example, imagine living in a world where most people consume animal products without second thought, despite the absolute moral atrocity that is committed as a result of it. You'd be pathetic to not be outraged at it. People should care about the consequences of their actions, but most people hypocritically selective in what ways they are.
No, because there are a lot of people who don't care to learn more than they need to and aren't curious to learn more, or they do not want to change their mind and are set in their beliefs.
They don't know what they need to know because they don't know anything.
Nobody knows anything, we just have varying degrees of ignorance and a variable predisposition to find learning a rewarding thing.
The general population is more educated now than in the past, but education alone is not what makes one an intellectual, or rather a good intellectual. Having intellectual virtues what makes one a good intellectual, imo. These virtues include intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual responsibility.
I agree. But way too fucking many people will ignore the last 2.
As long as conservatism exists, no.
As long as there are financial incentives to keep people being anti-intellectual, we will never see a world where the average person acts in good faith and with good knowledge of the subjects they're talking/debating about.
Most people don't have the capacity so it makes them angry and mistrustful of anything that's perceived to be "smart". Maybe if one is a true intellectual they can make dumb down these concepts so that they can at least get a basic understanding of them.
I don't think this will go away completely, but there is a possibility to reduce it. By improving the education system, and also helping people communicate better, we can expect this problem's severity to reduce.
I don't think I've ever witnessed literal "anti-intellectualism", perhaps that's a thing around you ? People not caring/understanding the value of knowledge, sure, but deliberately opposing it... that sounds terribly dumb. Not sure what anybody would get out of it
Have you seen people overrate "common sense"? That's it.
Don't think deeply, go for common sense, disregard the specialists, we can't understand their areas of study, therefore they are lying.
Also, avoid studying humanities: history, philosophy, sociology, politics. That will make you poor! Stay technical and mathy, don't worry about anything else other than making money! Have a life project! Get rich!
That's the anti intellectual speech.
Who benefits from the smart peoples of the world not questioning the status quo, and the building blocks of capitalism?
Stay technical and mathy, don’t worry about anything else other than making money! Have a life project! Get rich!
"But also not if that technical and mathematical knowledge will disagree with what I want."
may I introduce you to the very real concepts of anti-vaccine people and flat-earthers? or the people disregarding health advice during the pandemic because of some global conspiracy to kill people with masks
Ah I know the flerfs ! I "talked" with them, haha. It's depressing.
You would think the Internet and access to an unprecedented amount of information would have made us smarter, more emphatic, and so on.
But it turns out people are easily misled and manipulated. Social media quickly starts to feed you more of the same crap just because you watched one video. Village idiots can now form echo chambers with like-minded individuals, e.g flat Earth believers.
Those who want power will take advantage of people who fall into all this.
People will always fear that which they cannot understand.
It ebbs and flows. My personal conspiracy is that it's a built-in self-destruct switch in case a species overpowers all predators, diseases, and lack of resources. Some code auto-nerfs the species so they aren't OP forever.
When resources are plentiful, vaccines have stopped most major diseases, everyone is washing their hands and decently educated ..that's when the incels, the homeschooler mommy groups who distrust science, and the religious zealots sow discord and take civilization down, lol.
I'm sure the demographics throughout history change. But the base instincts of greed, fear, and hate blow apart cultures and empires throughout time.
There's a loud minority, but I'm not sure it's more common than in the past. In fact, (Western) young people now tend to be highly educated and interested in things previously seen as stuffy.
A lot of things in life are perpetual changing.
Some day the pendulum will swing back to pro intellectual. Once people comprehend the damage the just like me leadership has done.
Maybe that's not what's happening to begin with. I reject the entire premise. And all the users in here humble bragging is honestly nauseating.
I think it's becoming better overall, not worse. Yes, there's a populism issue at the moment, but this is far from the first time that's happened. We're dealing with the introduction of an entire new means of communication, online media in general and social media more specifically. That brings all new hazards and benefits that need to be dealt with.
The era after the printing press was developed brought intellectual development, but it also sparked revolutions. Those didn't always wind up with that right people getting into power. It took a while for society to adapt and stabilize. I expect the same will happen with Internet communication.
I'm also hopeful because studies have shown that successive generations generally improve their abilities in abstract thinking. (I'm having trouble sourcing that statement, unfortunately). That's important for the economy because the jobs of the future will need that abstract thinking. At least in my experience, it also acts as a bulwark against bad actors because people with poorer abstract thinking abilities tend to be more gullible, at least when it comes to lies that they like.
I think it's becoming better overall, not worse.
What do I need to do, so that you will be right?
Don't panic. Think globally, act locally. Help the next generation be better than your own. Know that successive generations are likely to keep improving. Watch the arc of history instead of despairing whenever there is backsliding or push back.
People who believe they are intellectual rarely are, or they would be able to couch their points in more accessible ways.
Being an intellectual is more about valuing knowledge and understanding than it is about being smart. It's definitely not about communicating poorly and deliberately alienating people.
Wait til AI takes prominence. What effect on intellectualism that might have remains to be seen. As long as LLMs aren't tailored to bias certain views, it may just lift humanity.
Well I don't have a dog in the AI fight. I did sufficiently couch my comments as a thought experiment. I could have postulated the opposite scenario I suppose. Or none at all. I do see that there are some strong and confident predictions as to the outcomes.
I somehow envy your optimism.
I'm already seeing people come into software dev support forums asking "ChatGPT said you could do this but it's not compiling" and people replying that no, that's not possible and them arguing about it because ChatGPT said it.
Once Elon Musk unleashes his "uncensored" AI chat bot, we're going to be flooded with made-up misinformation, it's going to be a bloodbath.
I don't think anyone's anti intellectual, people use rhetoric to defend their ideas, to defend their ways, to justify what they've already done. If you used your intelligence and started to agree with people, no one would challenge you, you wouldn't run into anti-intellectual bias.
When you challenge people, or disagree with them, they're going to use rhetoric against you, and that often is portrayed as anti-intellectual. If they think you're a threat they'll attack you by any means possible
While I don't agree with OP's view that the world as a whole is anti-intellectual, I also wouldn't assume that these people don't exist at all. I've personally had interactions with people who thought less of me or others for having a higher level of education, and (at least overtly) not in the sense that they were jealous. It was more of a general antipathy against people who know things / enjoy to learn, because they saw them as arrogant etc.
But this is probably more an example of tribalism.
So true.
People are forced into school to "learn how to learn". Yeah no shit, what happens is that many dont want to learn anything anymore.
I have to live in a bubble, because I really enjoy and often have discussions with many people about all sorts of things.
The worst thing at school by far was being forced to read shit like Romeo and Juliet at school that I just didn't care about. Of course, I still enjoy reading, but it is really off-putting as an experience. Too much of the school system focuses on exams and retaining correct information, rather than the logical processes or conclusions derived from learning something and adapting it. Memory and exams are still very, very important, but without the skills to adapt the information or consider alternatives it becomes very limited in application when you are taught so strictly.
I love AI here. In germany we have "Anforderungsbereich 1, 2 and 3" which is the "level of skill"
- 1: repeat knowledge, learned shit. AI does this way better than anyone, random Internet sources too. Extremely boring and nearly nothing important learned.
- 2: accumulate, analyze: AI does this pretty good too, better than many. Still boring
- 3: interprete, use a model on some other example: AI cant do that so well. Here the fun begins and you can really see if people are stupid or not.
Ironic thing here is, that even in a Gymnasium / high school, its like 50/30/20 or more. If you are pretty much unable to think by yourself, can stupidly repeat information, you have a 4.0 and you make it.
If you are bad at repeating informations, but can analyze and interpret perfectly, you get the same amount of points.
I was always suffering from that, in History for example, where 3 is the shit you should actually take home. Antifa forever.
It's not. We'd still be hitting rocks if we were anti intellectual.
People will remain stupid. But I'm somewhat hopeful that in the next few decades we see AI develop enough that it truly constitutes superintelligence relative to us, and that the scalability of it tips the scales of the continual standoff between intelligence and stupidity forever.
Because I have little hope for humanity overcoming its own multiplying stupidity on its own.
And if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that such a superhuman intelligence will be used for the good of humanity and not to serve targeted ads, manupulate people against one another, and further enrich the wealthiest among us.
You seem to make a bold assumption that it will not develop the capacity for self-determination, something that companies are already struggling with in the current LLM era trying to get foundational models to follow corporate instructions and not break the rules on appeals to empathy like a dying grandma or a potential job loss.
I'm fine with people who really just don't know stuff. But they should really listen when you try to explain something to them.
* cough cough * flat earthers?
From what I've heard, this is mostly a US phenomenon.
You writing that this is mostly a US phenomenon (which is not true) is weirdly appropriate, since it shows the main issue (not being informed enough about what happens around the world).
It happens everywhere.
It's an unfortunate side effect of an unequal society where people feel left behind and then see a lot of people who had the advantage and privilege to go though years of education lecturing them on how to live. This breeds resentment and makes them targets for movements and groups that oppose these ideas.
unequal society
The US is much more unequal than most other developed countries though, hence why it happens much more in the US than in other places.
There's plenty of it in the UK too.
Is the world anti-intellectual or anti-“know-it-all”-poindexter?
I haven’t noticed anti-intellectualism but the reject of disrespectful and bad-faith discourse.
This is probably inevitable because science has been politicized in America.
This is probably inevitable because science has been politicized in America.
Only by the idiots who reject it. To the rest of us, there's nothing politicized about science.
For most of the US, knowing anything beyond basic math and literacy is "being a Poindexter".
I think the claim that the world is anti-intellectual is somewhat biased. I don't know if that's a sampling bias, a cognitive bias, or some other kind of bias. But one way or another, I feel like you're overblowing things.
.
You're talking about mostly religion. Not one specific but for all of them to work they have to dumb people down, otherwise why would you follow crazy rules if you can have your faith at home without crazyness?
I believe that in a far future, as humanity gather more and more knowledge keeping religion up will be kind of hard, but until them we will have to go through the "dark ages of christianism" where our lifes will be controled by some old conservarive people. But they will die out.
Unfortunately I don't think this is mostly religion. A lot of people are stupid. Sincere question, when was the last time you talked to a normie?
I chatted with my hairdresser yesterday. She didn't know:
- what a DMZ is.
- who SBF or Elizabeth Holmes are.
- that there is an anti trust case against Google.
- the word "query" as in "search query".
For Halloween my girlfriend and I are going as SBF and Elizabeth Holmes. She commented that "no one outside [my] little circle is going to know who those people are." I started to disagree but, in a way, she's right.
Don't get me wrong, she's wonderful and hilarious and chill af. She's just a bit dumb. And that's okay but it's true.
None of those as exemples of inteligence they are exemples of ignorance, lack of information, that can happen either by lacking access to or not caring about.
I have a background in networking.
I know what a DMZ is.
I have no idea what these 2 are.
Yes, I heard about it at some point.
I would have thought a fair few number of people knew that. Maybe it's just your barber who doesn't care enough.
Not being able to give correct answers to these questions (one of them being fairly technical) doesn't indicate anything about her intellect though
No.
It’s human nature to want to be the best, the most loved, the top dog. It helps to propagate the species.
If someone is smarter than you, it digs at the very core of that, and becomes a threat.
lol so you're saying that you think we're genetically programmed to mistrust "smart" people? I think you're really reaching here
I think 'human nature' is far too broad to define in such a way, and making objective statements about it is wrong. In my opinion, the only definite thing you can say is that humans act out of self-interest (as do all living beings), but the motivation derived from it doesn't have to be destructive.
I say we should provide UBI to everyone, legalize drugs, and let the stupid ones rot on their couch doing weed, playing video games, and streaming anime or porn. Hopefully they'll be too lazy to vote or commit crimes, and the rest of us can work on creating a better society with them safely out of the way.
That's...actually acceptable to me as well. The only problem is we'll still have highly ambitious sociopaths who want to grab the reins.
In my experience, anti-intellectualism is a yank trait, not a worldwide trait. Ask a German, or someone from Japan, for confirmation.
Anti-intellectualism is not uniquely American. It's common in Germany - I'm not familiar enough with Japan.
It has been expressed in many different countries, cultures and times. America is far from the most extreme anti-intellectualism. In Cambodia they killed people for wearing glasses, because they were perceived as being intellectuals.
iirc there's also significant anti-intellectual sentiment in Brazil and the Middle East. Also worth noting that some of the worst anti-5G behavior was happening in the UK.
German intellectual here. I and others have been severely beaten, harassed and fired on multiple occasions for being intellectual.
Pointing out a flaw in someones plan, finding errors in reports (that are actually important to its findings) and other work related things.
It very much depends what region in germany and what class you‘re born into. If you‘re vastly different from your surroundings, you‘re in for a bad trip.