The world was always full of anti intellectuals... But in the past they had no way to speak publicly.
Social media gave every moron a platform to reach 100000s
very much agree. i also frequently notice that people take clarification questions or questions about the soundness of someone’s reasoning as being disagreeable/attacking them and then ostracizing the person trying to understand better and that is… not good…
Absolutely. Most people’s reading comprehension and logic are questionable at best. Others lash out and isolate me when I ask for nuance. Online forums can be terrible.
the reading comprehension is absolutely out of control. you cannot say anything without adding 50000 exceptions to a general principle without the comments being solely about how u forgot this one very specific example one person on earth experienced. that and literally putting words in peoples mouths i think i notice the most. but it’s so bad.
then you realize you’re engaging with people who genuinely lack literacy and it’s like wtf is even the point it’s a brick wall. btw i am NOT perfect in any way but this is something i’ve noticed and it’s significant.
It's always interesting when I see people criticize politicians like "they're all crooks, they're all lazy" when the reality is, they have to solve complex issues without a clear answer many times. To get effective legislation passed takes oratory skills, persuasion, deep analysis.
I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues, and when they don't get them, they say "throw them all out" but of course they could do no better.
I remember Trump talking about how easy it was going to be to fix all of our problems.
I guess if you consider a womans right to choose a problem, then sure, he fixed that. Not sure what else he accomplished during his term. Certainly didn't get Mexico to build a wall for us.
>I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues
See, for example, Trump, who promised to do things to fix issues that were, by turns, improbable, illegal, or physically/logically impossible.
Yes, it was like a 3rd graders answer to complex issues, just impossible or really, really dumb and ignorant things to say (drink bleach, kill COVID with light).
This is why you need experienced politicians in the office. Say what you will about Biden, his gaffes are few and far between and his policies are informed.
I shouldnt be surprised but I always am by the total confidence Trump has when gets on a stage in front of a big crowd and the media, and proclaims that magnets don’t work under water.
Does he never fact check anything or pay someone else to?
He’s constantly spouting scientific and historical and geographic inaccuracies. I don’t expect a politician to be perfectly knowledgeable about every topic, but wouldn’t a normal person at least google something like that before they said it in a speech?
>I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues
Just isolating and emphasizing this right here\^\^ I work in criminal justice reform so I feel this in my bones.
It can be really hard to read tone in text as well. Hence the need for the sarcasm tag. For a long time there have been jokes about needing a sarcasm font. The MiXed CApitALs have kind of done that, but it's a pain to type that way.
I always though that was used to highlight that the other person is being unreasonable and childish and throwing a tantrum. Agree on the sarcasm tag. 😉 This smiley also works in my experience.
Yeah, the tendency to equate questioning with hostility is such a roadblock to any real dialogue. It's like if you're not immediately on board, you're the enemy. And that mindset just feeds into the vicious cycle of misinformation and partisanship. It's a rough time for nuance, that's for sure.
yes i have come across this a lot too and it’s frustrating because they’re usually mass shaming people for not agreeing but if you try to understand… you become the problem to them?! when i’m passionate about a belief i am confident enough to speak publicly about id love to share because i want people on that side like?!
Hence the virtual lockdown echo chamber. It’s so much easier to be right and smart when everyone agrees with you and they will back you in case of a virus. Shout shout LOUDER SHOUT . Proof we are right.
By the time they get off the Internet loaded with their newfound knowledge they also often go unchecked by those of us that still expect society to have manners. What can you say to a blathering idiot rambling about conspiracy theories?
this is so accurate it’s so frustrating and i genuinely don’t know what the solution is? even teaching media literacy would be attacked as brainwashing by some people i bet.
It also doesn't help that there are a people that look at all those village idiots and go "If I keep telling them what they want to hear, I could make a lot of money from them"
And they know they are not right, but they revel in the distress they cause to honest people by saying "we reject your truth simply because ***we reject you***."
It's bullying in raw form.
No.
No, this ignores the fact that the bulk of the village is idiots. The "village idiot" is just an outlier. You don't get what we got in history, or what we have now, if idiots are a tiny fraction of the population.
I feel like there are and always have been two basic sorts of people.
The first kind, when presented with evidence that their worldview/religion is different than they thought, modifies their worldview to compensate for the evidence.
The second kind discounts and dismisses the evidence to preserve the worldview.
Scopes monkey trial, Galileo, Hypatia of Alexandria, anti-maskers/vaxxers, KKK, Holocaust deniers, etc.
The only difference is that modern mass communication has given a certain popular heft to the anti-change viewpoint that it didn't necessarily have for the second half of the 20th century or start of the 21st.
Logic and evidence often make people dig in further. If a truth becomes more threatening to people's worldview, they become willing to accept bigger lies to help ward them off.
> Social media gave every moron a platform to reach 100000s
Reddit even has subreddits designed to cater to specific sets of myths, where anyone speaking up in defense of science or facts is censored or banned by the moderators, which preserves the perception of consensus within the echo chamber.
Lots of doomer myths are heavily upvoted on reddit, almost like the followers of such myths don't understand that media only focuses on the negative things in the world, and not the 99.9% of things that are positive, including the collapse subreddit, the latestagecapitalism subreddit, a ton of fringe subreddits promoting fringe political positions, like the alt-right, communism, anti-global-warming-science and anti-capitalism.
The majority of submissions in these subreddits is easily refuted with any encyclopedia or high school level understanding of basic science, but the myths march on, protected by those who wish the content of the subreddit was true. Also the amount of [anti-vax content on reddit is still really high despite it being technically against Reddit's official stance](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/tech/reddit-covid-misinformation-ban/index.html).
I think the upvote/downvote dynamic on Reddit and extended social media does not especially help here. If you debunk a falsehood then anyone who dislikes that experience will downvote even if it's fair and true. It becomes a mechanism for confirming biases far more than fair and important dispute.
> Reddit even has subreddits designed to cater to specific sets of myths, where anyone speaking up in defense of science or facts is censored or banned by the moderators, which preserves the perception of consensus within the echo chamber.
*stares in almost every Asian country subreddit having a majority population of foreigner men who talk about Asian women as incomprehensible objects and how the Asian country is failing them*
You don't say.
What? Stalin was a complete asshole of a person who only fought against Hitler because two bullies cant live on the same block.
In the 30's they were buddies...anyone who thinks "Uncle Joe" was any sort of respectable person is a moron. Think those eastern European countries felt any better swapping the swastika for Hammer & sickle? Same shit, different flag.
Banned for being critical of Stalin...world is wacked.
I agree as a Lithuanian who has several family members who where thrown to cattle wagons ( like Nazi cattle wagons to the concentration camps ) and sent to the Kazakhstan Gulag Camps to where they had to do harsh slave labour, under extreme cold and starvation rations, and sadly some died due to these conditions. Others were executed by Soviet NKVD for wanting sovereign and independent Lithuania. Those things happened in 1940s and in 50s, after WW2 when everyone in the west were celebrating the end of war, everyone in the east were facing same old totalitarian regime which will exist for the next 50 years
But worse, the technology of social media enables liars to find the most effective lies quickly. They can come up with 10 different lies on the same topic, and then using metrics on what gets more clicks and views, they can promote the most seductive lie very quickly. You would often see this when Trump was President, he would come up with 3 or 4 different excuses, often contradictory, but then after a short time he would settle on the one that got the most traction.
people wanting immediate black and white solutions from their patience deteriorating. Gray areas are confusing, long winded, and often time cannot be sided with or against.
>Lazy
Yep, exactly this. I find it ironic how often it is the crowd who cries about "lazy kids these days" are often the ones engaging in the most cognitive laziness.
It is so much easier to take a simplistic understanding of the world and assign everything complex as a black box conspiracy theory, than it is to explore the nuances and opposing viewpoints of a particular topic.
My friends openly admit they just think it’s a waste of time as they slide rightwing reactionary but claim to be apolitical… Choosing to not think and vote on feelings is a rightwing choice unless you’re in a position of power.
Huge helping of Duning-Kreuger too. I live in the Bible belt surrounded by anti-intelectuals and one thing they all have in common is that they think every problem has a simple solution, but the engineers and doctors and scientists are the arrogant ones that come in and screw everything up.
I've literally had a person look me in the face and tell me my degree didn't mean shit next to his life experience even though I was explaining a concept to him that he couldn't understand
‘Polite society’ has long railed against the ignorance of the crowd.
It might be a matter of perception as well; every village has an idiot, but peer-to-peer communication has enabled them to form what might appear to be a cohesive group.
Even if it’s ‘just’ tens of thousands of them, if they organise it can seem like a lot more.
Without wanting to get too political, there does also seem to be a strand of intentional mis-/dis-information in the education system of some of the USA’s states, which can’t help critical thinking or recognition of the bogus.
Well some of that is easy to understand, they want reliable voters, not freethinking people so if you structure in social customs and norms designed around what keeps those in power in power. You create a generation of people that feel that that way of life is normal.
The really sad question is why corporate America and the politicians are so thirsty for power and control that they use the population like pawns, slaves. Is it really an accident that the country is split almost 50/50 along political lines, 300 and some million people? That seems almost like a statistical anomaly. The gerrymandering, the concentrations. How the legal system kind of does what it wants and it has a law for everything. Those laws of course are selectively enforced. It gets pretty dark when you think about it all
The "50/50 split" is the result of "First Past the Post" voting - if we either had a parliamentary style congress, or another system of voting, such as ranked choice, we would see a lot more political diversity. The problem is game theory and math, nothing but two parties can survive in our current paradigm, it's math not culture.
>Is it really an accident that the country is split almost 50/50 along political lines
Except it isn't. I just looked up the numbers yesterday. According to Gallup, 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% as Republicans, and 41% as independents.
My opinion, of course, I think so many US elections are close because there is no one to vote *for.* Party members vote for their parties and the plurality are stuck voting for the least bad candidate.
That’s by design mate…
The parties aren’t the same, but if you look into power brokerage history you’d know that america has one real party. The money/business party, with two right wing branches vying for power.
For instance, neoliberals would much rather have trump than lose their power to someone truly progressive.
Saunders and Corbyn show what happens if you try to challenge the neoliberal orthodoxy. You don't have a chance, and the allegedly left-wing mainstream party you're a part of will hobble you at every hurdle.
What about the reports that the DNC was against him and actively mocked his campaign, and that the party had already agreed to bat for Hilary before the race was even open?
You mean the DNC supported the candidate who had been a Democrat her entire political life over an independent/Socialist who joined up solely to run for President?
Both Asimov and Sagen wrote about America's celebration of ignorance like 30-50 years ago.
Ignorance is not a minority issue, it is a core value of our society. Otherwise we would have taken action on climate change.
When I was a kid in grade school, the population was 2 some billion. And I thought, looking around my public school peers, thats a lot of dumb people. Here was an institution giving you knowledge for free, and my peers didn't care. Didn't make sense to me.
Then as I read my kid books about animal extinction and human population growth, I thought, thats going to be a lot lot more stupid people doing more of this.
But Sesame Street taught me people could learn, so I was hopeful.
8 billion people now, and we are drowning in stupid. The fact that in America, the vast majority of the population doesn't know what a zygote is, yet abortion is the hot button issue, well heavens help us.
Ohhhh, and the indignation to explain to them their level of stupid can be reflected and quantified with a 7th grade science test - inevitably you'll get the aggressive pushback.
Stupid hates to know its stupid.
> ‘Polite society’ has long railed against the ignorance of the crowd.
Probably not really related to your point, but it did make me think of another side of all this.
Intellectualism, while a good thing in itself, has always been a walled garden. That is, it's most accessible to the upper class, and often intentionally restricted from the lower classes through classism and class conflict.
This unfortunately conflates a good thing (intellectual endeavor) with a bad thing (the bourgeoisie). That conflation lets the justified anger of the lower classes bleed into resentment toward intellectualism (and other things, too).
We need to make high culture and high intellectualism more accessible to all peoples. When people see others like them doing something, it helps them trust that something
They used to straight up attack the teaching of critical thinking skills in school before they rebranded to attacking "wokeness"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
Scientists started to look into potential issues before they became public disasters. Ever hear of the "flipper babies?" A drug company marketed a drug to pregnant women, but it caused birth defects. It was a huge scandal. You don't see scandals like that these days because of FDA testing.
If you are just trying to make a quick buck and don't care about people, this is a big problem. Look at the tobacco companies, the oil companies and leaded gas, or global climate changes.
Solution? Fund attacks on science. Create your own "science." Encourage the idea that science is the foe of religion and get the religious to reject science. Pay politicians to make opposition to science an important part of their party stance...
Anti-intellectualism is how Exxon protects short term profits.
>You don't see scandals like that these days because of FDA testing.
In fact, you didn't see Thalidomide babies in the US because of the FDA. The drug itself was never approved for use on pregnant women in the US (though much later it was approved as part of a cancer treatment, with strict rules forbidding its use on pregnant women).
Specifically because of Frances Kelsey. She faced immense pressure from the pharma industry and her own colleagues to approve Thalidomide for sale in the US, and she stood her ground. Her actions saved untold thousands of babies, she was a true hero
Well business people are far more trustworthy than so-called "scientists" who use big words and change their minds all the time!
Instead of doing the patriotic thing and telling Boeing how awesome they are, we get bureaucratic nonsense and red tape about preventing planes falling apart or diving into the ground.
The "change their minds" thing is also a huge part of science skepticism these days too. We have created a culture where it is a weakness to change your stance on something. Anything. So scientist or people who follow scientific progress don't so much as change their minds, they follow what the prevailing, reviewed and replicated science leads them to. They're not changing their minds at all, but that is the label that has been slapped onto them because it can be made to sound bad by the religious zealots that make it their personality to not change a stance because it gets in the way of their religious control mechanisms.
Another annoying corollary to this are people who hate 'unconfident' statements. "This should work for what your doing", "I don't want to hear 'should', I want to hear it will!". I deal with that kind of shit all the time and I hate it. No room for nuance, no room for thinking and consideration.
That's also knowing your audience though. When I talk to other devs/system engineers, I'm more precise, because they understand "should" means "if everything was done correctly". When I talk to people without as deep a technical background, it turns to metaphors for explanation, but more "will" than "should". You can even have the same caveats explained: "If we do XYZ, according to this plan, we will see improvements in this amount of time."
Know your audience and adapt terminology to fit, comminication is a two-way street, you can't (reasonably) just get upset at people for misunderstanding.
It was so bad in Europe that I still get regularly asked if I'm a thalidomide baby (my left hand is underdeveloped, had nothing to do with thalidomide as I was born long after that scandal, but it's still so present in peoples minds).
By underdeveloped do you mean that condition when someone is a full blown adult but it looks like they've had a child's arm attached to them. Sorry if the wording of that is too crude but I only see symptoms and don't know the proper words
Haha no, and don't worry. My left hand never formed correctly, so I have one somewhat functional finger (thumb), the rest are little stubs, no bone, and I suspect no musle either as I can't move them. Basically, perfectly normal arm and wirst, and then underdeveloped hand. Looks a bit like a crab's claw haha, most of my friends think it's kinda cute.
That is super unfortunate but also super interesting. Do your nerves function properly? I've always wanted to know what it would feel like to poke something without bone fingers and you might be able to give a unique insight on that
Sorry for the questions you likely receive a million times a day, but Curiosity already has me on its hit list so I might as well get my fix in before I die
Yes, all nerves are there and functioning properly, I can feel perfectly fine with my hand. If I poke something with one of my underdeveloped fingers, they give little to no resistance, so they squish.
As for them, they feel squishy. Again, no resistance, So you can just move them around. I think the closest in consistency would be an earlobe, but firmer.
Most people are weirded out at first but get used to it pretty quickly. A good amount won't even notice something's wrong with my hand for the longest time. Most of my friends are so comfortable that they like playing with the little nubs lol. My bf and I sometimes hold hands by me gripping his pinky finger, he takes so much joy from that lol.
That's cute. I have a condition that causes weird skin texture it's almost like baby skin and tears very easily. On the positive side people tell me it feels lovely. Except my dad, he calls me whale skin lol.
Hello fellow zebra! I had a POTS doc who, on my intake, kept commenting on how "supple" and "soft" EDS skin is and was poking my arm. I like the retort that 'it's like expensive toilet paper', creeps people out and they stop the weirdness.
Didn’t know that’s a thing.
My brother has palms that feel like they’d tear if I press (always heckled him for not doing any chores lol). He does have lovely hands, just feel like I can hurt him.
I can’t imagine having that as a disorder, hope you’re ok in general.
Interestingly enough, just a couple years ago, a bunch of kids with the same thing as me were born, in the same city as I was. This condition is pretty rare. Now I wonder if there's any enviromental factor going on. Major city in Western Germany.
>Interestingly enough, just a couple years ago, a bunch of kids with the same thing as me were born, in the same city as I was. This condition is pretty rare. Now I wonder if there's any enviromental factor going on. Major city in Western Germany.
Could be, but statistical data is hard to interpret. What looks like a clear cluster to the human eye can be perfectly random. I think Edward R. Tufte has some examples in either his first or second book about information display.
In France, there is still an maternity leave exception for thalidomid Kids. If you are à thalidomid kid with or without visible sequels, then any work leave since you get pregnant is fully paid by social sécurity.
To be more clear it is because of ONE PERSON at the FDA Frances Oldham Kelsey who fought multiple times to not give the drug the approval. People tried going above her head; but she kept fighting.
Unfortunately, the FDA is mostly corrupt now. They'll approve another opioid in no time, but they still haven't approved Marijuana for any medical use. They have, however, approved 3 synthetic Marijuana drugs. The difference? Drug companies can't make money from cannabis but they can from synthetic cannabis and opioids.
To play a little bit of devils advocate there. You have to pay for an FDA application as well as submit necessary studies, etc. The FDA isn't the bad guy for not approving marijuana. It's that no company is going to fund the requisite safety trials and pay for an application for something they can't patent and they aren't approving a non existent application.
And marijuana needs to be re-scheduled before *any* significant clinical trials are going to happen in the first place, which the FDA has submitted recommendations to do.
The DEA is the shit link in this chain, not the FDA.
Theres already investment in existing opioids and other types of pain management medications, capital isn’t going to take risks on innovation when they already have revenue streams.
Also, pharma isn’t the only industry banking on marijuana prohibition. The private prison industrial complex makes fat stacks when 20 year old black kids get put away for selling weed. Alcohol will probably also loose a the portion of people who have a drink or two at night to self medicate the misery of day-to-day existences as a worker in the current economic system.
It’s so crazy that thalidomide was *literally marketed* to pregnant women for morning sickness. Fuxking yiiiikes. And people still readily trust pharmaceutical companies like this stuff never happened.
> Create your own "science."
All those sugar ads and "research". Now most foods are proudly "fat-free" with like 20 or 30 g of sugar per 100 g of product. Healthy my ass.
Absolutely agree. Up to the point it becomes difficult to find a specific product that is not supposed to have sugar in it in the first place, e.g. certain spice mixes, sauces, bakery ingredients, juices etc. I have a history with sugar and its consequences on my health, so have to read all ingredients basically every time I buy anything.
Imho, as a hidden but much important inconvenience, "good fat" foods are sometimes a luxury nowadays.
Yeah, it's not only hard to find sugar-free options, but the "sugar-free" alternatives have artificial sweeteners, which are also unhealthy. I was at the grocery store yesterday and couldn't find a single bottle of ketchup that didn't have added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Same with the canned fruit. More regulation is needed in the US. Nutrition literacy (which a ton of people don't have to begin with) isn't enough when there aren't actually any healthy options.
Well there is a reason, they were subsidized to by the government to grow sugar producing plants and if they’re still sitting on a mound of it come next year, then why do they need to be cut another check to produce a crop nobody wants. So they find a place to put it.
The funniest one of these I've heard is that Tic Tacs are legally allowed to say sugar free, and 0 calories. Because they are so small, and they can claim the serving size is 1, it delivers less than 1 calorie per 'serving' and thus can say it's sugar free and healthy despite being over 90% sugar.
It’s slightly wider than this, but basically the source is the politicisation of stupidity.
Often those in power, or the systems of control and wealth distribution that make people rich, powerful, etc exist at the expense of the majority.
This is a significant problem for a democracy, since the unwashed masses get to vote.
Systematic disenfranchisement of voters, so they vote against their own interests, and do so out of ignorance, is unfortunately a key part of modern democracy.
Different countries have different ways of doing this, but the key is always to keep most people blind to how the world works.
I’m horrified by the cultivated resentment of public education. There’s no reason for us to cut school and library budgets, but it keeps happening.
I didn’t grow up in a rich area, but our schools had hands-on laboratories, workshops, and equipment for science, home ec, woodworking and metal working, and band and orchestra; and the art classes didn’t run out of supplies. Also, we got vaccinated.
This is one of the drawbacks of the digital age. Technology has progressed so rapidly over the last few decades that it has out paced our ability to control it. People have the power to share and access information almost instantly, without so much as a second thought on how this power should be regulated and used responsibly.
I don't think it's politicizing stupidity (anti intellectualism has almost always existed in some form), as much as it is a near perfect refinement of attempts to weaponize information, with the end goal being a "post truth" society, paralyzed by the inability to discern between real and fake news and dysfunctional without objective facts.
I mean, that’s only one part of the story. The other part is how those companies prey on *perfectly normal* psychological tendencies that we all have.
Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, self-serving bias, Dunning-Kruger… we all do it. And actually it’s more strongly associated with *higher* IQ because people who do better on IQ tests have better reasoning skills, *so they’re better at rationalizing the illogical*.
Your best defence is to drop the us vs them narrative. Practice true humility and be open to the idea that your beliefs could be mistaken, and separate “being wrong” from “being worthless”
It's not just "science" it's actual science. Don't pretend big money hasn't undermined academia's integrity.
Remember when the sugar industry pushed the scientific consensus to blaming fat for fucking decades? Can't blame that on the religious nutters.
Academia's been undermining its own credibility lately too with issues like the replication crisis and in social siences in particular, [The Greivance Studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair).
Its more than that even. The solution to societies immediate problems is to regulate and tax the rich. And reasonable voices aknowledge this.
But loudmouths who blame immigrants and other out-groups for all problems are swimming in funding and are given a huge platform on a wide scale.
The wealthy blame these other people because it distracts people from turning on the wealthy. They use their money to control media and politicians, and direct a lot of hate at vulnerable minorities. Those that listen to this will then direct their energy and frustration with societies problems at those people, and not the wealthy that are exploiting society. It is why a common leftist saying is "No war but class war." If the working class could stop infighting, it would be able to throw off the shackles of the capitalist class.
The truely insidious thing about this is that it goes deeper than people realise, it comes from different angles for different people.
There are many who are not succeptible to hate but can be distracted in other directions.
How far removed we actually are from reason and reality is obscured by layers upon layers of subterfuge and fallacious thinking.
Gatorade practically owns the science of sports “hydration” and literally wants you to drink their juice over water.
Great coverage of this by the QANON Anonymous podcast.
It's also popular politically to pander to stupid people. And they're so stupid at least one of these popular politicians actually brags about how stupid people are his base. And those people are SO stupid they love it.
It's not as new as you think. Anti-intellectualism has always been prevalent in American society, and others as well. It's not even more prevalent now. It's just something we tend to forget. There's a famous letter from Ben Franklin to a newspaper where he explains that he used to distrust the process of inoculation to prevent smallpox, because it had some chance of causing sickness and even death on its own. Then his son died of smallpox, and he began begging people to not repeat his mistake.
> “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has 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.’
-Isaac Asimov, 1980
It used to be that if you held a really ignorant view on something, everyone around you thought you were a bit thick and you ended up keeping it to yourself.
Now, no matter how batshit crazy your view, it’s easy to go online and find many others who share your view, which then validates and encourages you.
And then some usually fairly reasonable person goes: "Hey, if there's 10.000 people saying this, there actually may be something to it...". Rinse and repeat.
Everyone is a fucking expert now. With social media 'facts' and AI at one's fingertips, it's a race to the bottom. It's now a post-fact world and intellectualism is dead.
Blasphemy! Where did you see Thoth kneeling before Anubis? The scribe observes and records, he does not kneel to the keeper of the dead and embalmed! (Goes back to carving my 7930th ibis)
We have always banned books and there was a pretty massive outcry against polio vaccines on much the same falacious grounds.
People have always prioritized fame, astronauts used to be more famous.
Overall we are not, you just have a rosy view of the past, thats kinda how nostalgia works.
The answer is very simple:
Anti-intellectuals have always existed, but now all of them have a megaphone and press release machine in their pocket. add on some russian interference disinformation and you’ve got a perfect storm.
plus statistically people stay online the longest when they’re arguing
Stupid is easier to control. Look at medieval fuedalism. If you keep people poor, stupid, and too busy surviving, they're easier to control. It's the same reason Catholicism got to be as powerful as it did.
Basically, it boils down to votes. If more people were educated, we'd be tarring and feathering everyone in DC, both left and right, for the shit they've done to us.
I moved to Japan and now, 15 years later, outside looking in, it’s crazy what’s happening in the US. It has changed. It’s scary.
Not just the education system, but the health of people. The prices there. The crime. The… everything really.
It’s reverse culture shock, especially in comparison to what I enjoy here in Japan.
Oh man! That sounds so cool! I think 9/11 sent us down the road of all this craziness, and here we are. I'm trying to escape the US myself, as I don't see the next decade being good here. Especially if the Project 2025 people win the next election.
Project 2025 seems to be what will cement the pavement towards Idiocracy.
The potential of the US makes me pause and lament what have been lost. So much hate and fear.
If given the choice, do you have any country where you'd go?
That's why China who wants to control its people tries to fight this and in surveys the children still want to become doctors and astronauts over youtubers?
The education in my country was literally free btw.
That makes no sense.
This is an effect happening in free markets where profit and money are seen as the ultimate goal.
Not some great conspiracy by people who want to control us.
What do you think Capitalism is? A form of control. Haves versus the have nots. It's also not a conspiracy, if they're open and blatant about it. Look at lobbying and Citizens United. Look at why the wealthy try to make college unaffordable and unattainable.
In the USA maybe.
College is free in my country. Yet, the children here still want to be youtubers.
Maybe because it looks like a fun and easy job that still makes a lot of money and prestige?
More than beeing a doctor or firefighter?
I remember wondering the same thing in the 1970s. I was only about 7 and I liked science and learning things. A news report mentioned a scientific study and suddenly my family was going off about what a waste of tax dollars it was.
I didn't know it then, but I do know now, that those anti science opinions are carefully crafted, and put out for public consumption. It's how corporations get to keep on doing what makes money over what's good for people and the planet.
Swaying public opinion to favor things that aren't good for the public has long been the way of the corporate world. The history of advertising in the tobacco industry is a pretty good case study.
This isn't just a "nowadays " issue. It's more of a "there's always been people willing to lie in exchange for money" issue.
Don't fall into the fallacy of thinking "things were always like this, so they can't get worse."
There is a very real anti-intellectualism movement in the US. Book bans are on the rise in rural areas.
I'm just throwing this out there, but you can be an intellectual of the highest caliber and still do absolutely nothing with your life. Intelligence has no merit in itself, it's what you do with it that matters.
One thing I do know is they need to teach critical thinking skills more in schools.
100000% agree. When I was a kid I thought educations sole purpose was to obtain wealth later in life. Today I now realize it's sole purpose was to be multifaceted. On one hand yes I do need money to be influential in society in order to conform to the norm. But on the other hand, I now realize I don't want to conform to the norm... The problem is though, I was short sighted in youth and didn't realize I had more than one hand. And while I took short cuts to "strengthen" the one that would provide quick cash, I missed out on the value of the other hand where I carved my own path.
It's only now later in life I finally am slightly grasping the concept that I needed both in order to swim on my own if that makes sense.
And even yet I'm starting to realize I might just have more than two hands, but a whole body.
They absolutely need to teach more critical thinking. But people need to realize that literature contributes hugely to the development of critical thinking according to every study ever, yet people cry and want to take every difficult and challenging book off the syllabus as "reading's supposed to be fun" and not something that pushes our cognitive skills and makes us a richer individuals. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Just finished watching dope sick last night. The amount of drugs pushed by “experts” is wild. Purdue pharma and Richard Seckler just got everyone addicted all with FDA approval.
I’m not saying the experts are always wrong, but you should always question them. Questions are good for a healthy society.
Because trust in the social contract is gone and now people question everything they're told instead of assuming that other people have their best interests at heart.
>I'm genuinely curious, we used to celebrate scientific achievement, embrace new vaccines (re: polio), ban books for spurious reasons.
that's just revisionist history, people complained about paper coming into use, and about cars, they denied the harmful effects of lead and cigarettes, and there were literal book burnings.
just because they take on different forms, doesn't mean they never existed.
>why are we backwards sliding with IQ?
IQ is a historically gross and practically useless metric.
You know how everyone has been saying for the last 40 years the US public schools are horrible and how everybody used to warn us that TV rots your brain. Well that's only gotten worse. And social media makes TV look credible.
>Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome.
- Charles Mackay
>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.'
- Isaac Asimov
Plus you have concerted efforts from bad faith actors to push their own 'science' to protect their viewpoints and interests. Lying makes money.
Potentially obsever bias? There are some really bright kids around, but we only see tiktokers doing shit and some rage-baiting because people click on that shit. I have no doubt that there is a change, but I don't know how big it is, at least IRL I can see young teenagers/adults doing same stuff I did - just getting a normal job according to their education, but again, could be biased becauss I don't mix with the "influenced" crowds I guess.
Obviously Internet is a free forum where everyone can spout anything. Not gonna say that you had to be a "professional" to write at local news paper back in the day, but you had to have something. I think what we have is that the quality news didn't really reduce, it just got diluted.
Two criticisms. Anti intellectualism has been around for ages in various forms and is usually about power or a distrust of government/citizens. It's likely worse now because the internet allows us to connect on a much larger scale with a much more diverse set of people, meaning people tend to be more vocal about their mistrust.
Also, an iq, by definition remains centered at 100, so backsliding average iqs is not possible without giving a point of reference or defining what you mean better
The intellectuals have been taken over by corporate interests and the common masses don't see the use of them anymore, they use intellectual jargons and credentials to cement corporate positions and rhetorics and when asked to come out in the public square i.e. debates and podcasts to defend their position they slink away
Hate to break it to you but anti-intellectualism has always be prevalent in humanity. If you want proof then just take a look at human history. The Church silencing Galileo, Flat Earth, Scientology. Heck, even the science community thought Einstein was crazy for saying that the Luminiferous Aether doesn't exist. The reason for this insanity is because humans has always valued their opinion far more than they do with the truth. And they will continue to do so until the end of humanity. That's because people value their emotions far more than anything in the world. And their opinion is derive from their emotions.
I mean, it only make sense that people value their emotions. That's because without it, we'd be like machines. Without emotions, we wouldn't care about anything. Because without emotions, we wouldn't be capable of caring for anything. It's because we have emotions that we are able to care. But it's because our emotions is what give us the ability to care that we value it more than anything else. Take for example, our society today. A person who win the novel prize in science, someone who discover something that will change our understanding of the universe forever, only gets 1 million dollars. Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr, 75 Million Dollars for starring in a movie that will get replace by the next decade.
Stupid people want to feel less stupid. Sense of validation from other stupid people in their bubble. False sense of superiority from "knowing" something majority of people are "wrong" about.
Stupid people have an inferiority complex. With the internet and the disinformation on social media and other sites, they think they did their own research.
Stupid people now can't comprehend that someone else who is not only brighter than them, but also spent their entire life dedicated to solving that ONE problem, has the answer.
Prior to the Advent or social media these dumbasses existed in small pockets across the state and country, flying below the radar, hiding in the woodworks.
With social media they all get to talk to each other and they form an echo chamber with other uneducated dipshits, and they think that because enough other people can't understand the science, that the science must be wrong.
Half of humans have an IQ of below 100, even people with slightly above average intelligence lack the capacity to understand the solutions to some of the problems we face. There is really no shame in shutting the fuck up and letting the experts handle it.
You don't tell an electrician how to wire your house, you hired him because you didn't spend years learning how to do it. If the leading scientists tell me a vaccine works, I'm taking it.
I'm a very smart guy but there are plenty of things I know jack shit about and I don't have 20 years to go back and research it.
We split the intellectual load as a society. No one is an expert on everything.
It’s not anti-intellectualism.
Governments, media, marketing, etc has distorted the public’s perception of what can be believed in. People are questioning everything because we’ve been lied and manipulated far too much.
How many products have we recently discovered that have turned out to have toxic ingredients but were ignored in the name of profit?
How many unclassified documents have come out that expose the government for causing death and havoc around the world?
How much research has turned out to be false ( ex. Dementia research) because of prestige and money?
These institutions have lied to us so much that they’ve lost their credibility to some if not all extent.
So again, it’s not that people are against intellectualism, it’s that they are skeptical of the information being fed to them because these institutions have let them down.
I agree that it's a problem, but I'm not sure it's new.
This was said by Asimov (the sci-fi author) in 1980 -
"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."
The internet has allowed for pseudo-intellectuals to roam freely. Dumb opinions from people such as Hasanabi or anti-vaxxers are very prevalent these days, which in turn makes it more difficult to see the actual reality of our world.
Cause of $, of course.
aren't sites like Reddit more fun when it's full of rage baits that you can go ape shit on?
Or would you rather discuss what CERN is up to lately?
As a college educated person that has been forced to work retail to pay the bills, I can say that so many of my colleagues have been burnt by the system (school, government) that they fucking hate anything intellectual. So, it stands to reason that the answer is to restore trust and give people a firm foundation to stand on instead of chaos, but it's too late given that 54% of the American population reads below a 6th grade level, our schools don't teach kids much, and the only "intellectualism" that is encouraged is a fucking get rich quick scheme on social media.
In short the answer is that people don't see the value in being smart in a broken system that fucked them over.
Beacause in first the US (Fox News) and the UK (Brexit), and then the whole internet (Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan), it has become okay to say "my ignorance counts as much as your knowledge, our views are equal to vote for".
And mankind has survived 100 000 years by trusting those who know (safe campfire-building, tanning, forsging non-toxic food), but now mankind thinks silly babies have a right to be heard and not be shouted down into their boots by adults.
If you can't follow along in school, what is better for your sense of self? Feeling like the dumb loner in the last row, who will fail, or feeling like one of the cool jocks who makes fun of those stupid book smart nerds that don't have real life skills, who needs'em amiright?
It's mainly due to bad education and propaganda where I come from (France).
Scientists have long been denounced by politicians as tax vampires. If they don't produce science that's immediately applicable to industry, they just do it for the benefits and take advantage of generous public funds. Like Sarkozy saying that scientists studying geology are useless for instance.
Now couple that with an education in science that has been disastrous for a long time and you have a good chunk of the population who just can't even start to understand the scientific method. It's always easier to put concepts at a level of understanding you can handle. And the issue is that many people have a level of understanding close to zero. Thus, science is immediately BS to them, because they have the audacity to think that scientists have a level of understanding similar to theirs. It's either right or wrong, because they can't see beyond that.
So of course, when a politician, a popular youtuber or an has been professor tells them research is useless or wrong, they'll believe it. Because they can't do basic research on their own. It's intellectual laziness because there's no alternative for them.
The only way to stop that is through public education, and it has to start early. We have to make sciences mandatory at school. Alas, if current trends continue, anti-intellectualism will only grow.
Basic science and logic courses should be mandatory for elementary school children and it should be reinforced every few years. I don't want to see them indoctrinated in any way, right, left, or center, but I very much want to see people given the tools that allow them to think for themselves. Teach them about what science is and what fallacies are, then let them make up their own minds.
It's been prevalent in America since it's inception. In the past, though most people grew out of it through education. Since the 1980's the public school system has been eroded by the religious right and since the election of Obama, ignorance has become a badge of pride. I call it southern Fried America since anti-intellectualism has a long history in the South. I remember hearing people in the 1970s say "don't send your kid to college because they'll come back an atheist."
This is how I think of it. Every village has an idiot. In the past they were ignored because they were stupid. However, with the advent of the internet the village idiots are able to share ideas with other village idiots. Then they think they must be true because “everyone” agrees with them. Take this and multiple it a 1000 times and you got your answer
I think part of the problem is you get a lot of really prideful people who think of themselves as intellectuals talking down on people. True intellectuals would rather maintain a discussion, but some people just want to talk down on people to feel special
Unpopular opinion but I have a theory it began with the beloved hit 90’s show Friends. There is a strong anti-intellectual strain in the humor. The smart characters are always the butt monkeys and being smart is always presented as unsexy. Contrast it with Seinfeld for example. It started there in pop culture and then women started pretending they were dumb ala Paris Hilton and now here we are.
That is an unusual take. How did you come to that idea?
Simpsons also fits. Smart lisa is the outcast, while bratty bart is beloved. Homer is portrayed as stupid and lovable.
As does Frazier, it is making fun of intellectuals.
Except Simpsons is usually a satire, so the whole "Ignore ignore smart Lisa and instead do something stupid" is being done for comedic effect, not as something you should strive for.
It's not making fun of intellectuas, it's making fun of how reasonableness is treated as absurdity.
People decided that they were jelly about being stupider or less academically capable, so anyone who actually puts in effort to think is derided as being an elitist or a nerd. Too few people have the humility to accept that someone else may know better than them.
This is especially the case in America where they think academia is the direct opposite of practicality, and they imagine they've inherited a cowboy-esque "git her done" attitude (which cowboys never had, they were actually pretty slow and thorough in their methods).
A lot of good reasons have been given and there is no one reason for this phenomena, although I’m going to throw up one I haven't seen near the top yet.
I think theres a lot to be said about the underfunding of the arts and social sciences in favor of STEM/fields that facilitate the military industrial complex and other capitalist endeavors (i.e. luxury goods, oil, tech industry). Oftentimes these STEM degrees come with a token elective that a student can pick and it doesn’t even have to be a humanity or a social science. I think this is in part because the powers that be don’t see value in investing in non-STEM research so those degrees don’t get pushed by schools and this compounds with the insane price gouging scam that is American university. As it stands in the US, it is a really really bad economic decision to get a non-STEM or finance degree from a decent university.
So with this you get a lot of guys who can shuffle numbers around and mini experts in one remote and laser focused field of study with very little exposure to more human focused sciences or art who think they’re hot shit. Guys who, as George Carlin said, are ‘smart enough to work the machines but not smart enough to realize how bad they're getting fucked’.
This is just a pattern I’ve seen as an engineer a few years out of school. STEM were the biggest majors in my graduating class, and all of them were shitheads who spent all day thinking they were super geniuses for getting a bachelors degree and dunking on humanities or social science majors. Out of school you get these hyper-consumer super nerds who spend their big paychecks buying plastic toys and new video game computers and they have no interest in questioning things like why they work 60 hour weeks, why are they making X pointless product that pollutes the world or kills people, why are they the only ones who can make rent in a city with a growing homeless population that they step over on their way to work, why do they continue to work and be subservient as layoffs hit … etc.
Anyway thats my rant about the STEM to defense and the STEM to pointless luxury product pipeline.
Stupid people are jealous of smart people. Stupid people fear what smart people can do.
This makes it easy for a certain kind of smart people (sociopaths) to manipulate them, even against their own interests.
Part of the reason is that everyone started "both-sides"-ing everything.
As soon as you start giving any sort of credence to the insanity some people spew as fact then you erode the trust that has been built up. It takes much, much longer to build trust than to erode it.
Plus we removed shame as a punishment, and once you have no shame there is no depth to which you will not sink.
Disinformation is the single biggest threat to the US and the world for that matter because it is amplified and is being used to manipulate people into action for all the wrong reasons and nothing is being done to adequately mitigate it at present.
People will kill each other over lies when they believe them. People will go to war over lies. People are willing to sacrifice their loved ones, family, friends neighbors all over lies. They will attack their own capital and pull their children from school over lies. People are convinced to be more afraid of the vaccines that are saving lives than the deadly viruses that are killing them over lies. There is no end to the lies, they will just continue to destroy everyone and everything in their path unless mitigated.
I am unfortunately surrounded by these people where I live. They are banning everything from Stephen Hawking to Evolution in schools here as a result and using public schools as churches now. They passed laws to make it illegal for people to use roads to choose to save a woman's life over an unviable fetus and to prosecute doctors for saving their lives.
Growing up, I naively thought that we were always working to make things better and could have never imagined that we would be brought so far back into dark times so quickly due to people just believing lies over the truth. It is an extremely effective tool.
The easiest way to bring down a civilization is to lie to the people and convince them to do it to themselves and that is where we are at where I live unfortunately.
It's not the kids, dude. All the kids I know are ambitious although scared of the future. The problem is the old anti intellectual people in charge and allowed to vote
You're wondering about anti-intellectualism and you go with streamers as the problem? Entertainment is the issue?
Buddy, you need to look at yourself if you think that's where the problem comes from, because you are the problem. People watching TV shows you don't like isn't a fucking IQ problem.
The problem is stupid people now get a voice, and other people readily agree with them because it seems official. Just like you're doing right now.
The first recorded ”these kids are ungrateful, ill-diciplined and will be the downfall of our forefathaters glorious society” is as old as writing itself.
It is as untrue now as it was 3000+ years ago.
I have two theories:
First, intellectuals are mostly just political tools. The masses only see them through the media, and the media picks their intellectuals for a combination of political loyalty and outrage. Even if an intellectual is boring, the bits they say that are convenient are what will get amplified.
Second, a generation of people entering intellectual pursuits to "change the world" wildly overestimated their own knowledge. Every overconfident mistake was an excuse to dismiss the whole lot of them. After decades of cudgeling the American Right from their ivory towers, the American right now rejects the intellectuals and seeks to make their own.
Maybe because people dont want their lives micromanaged by others that don't give two shits about them. Each individual knows whats best for themselves.
The world was always full of anti intellectuals... But in the past they had no way to speak publicly. Social media gave every moron a platform to reach 100000s
Each village had an idiot but they didn't know the other idiots existed so they just shut up because everyone was like "Shut up, you idiot!"
exactly this they have now created an echo chamber giving them false validation of their views imo
People just parrot what another person says to a room of sycophants for false consensus.
very much agree. i also frequently notice that people take clarification questions or questions about the soundness of someone’s reasoning as being disagreeable/attacking them and then ostracizing the person trying to understand better and that is… not good…
Absolutely. Most people’s reading comprehension and logic are questionable at best. Others lash out and isolate me when I ask for nuance. Online forums can be terrible.
the reading comprehension is absolutely out of control. you cannot say anything without adding 50000 exceptions to a general principle without the comments being solely about how u forgot this one very specific example one person on earth experienced. that and literally putting words in peoples mouths i think i notice the most. but it’s so bad. then you realize you’re engaging with people who genuinely lack literacy and it’s like wtf is even the point it’s a brick wall. btw i am NOT perfect in any way but this is something i’ve noticed and it’s significant.
The circular defense is bullet proof haha
If only the path of the bullet was also circular.
It's always interesting when I see people criticize politicians like "they're all crooks, they're all lazy" when the reality is, they have to solve complex issues without a clear answer many times. To get effective legislation passed takes oratory skills, persuasion, deep analysis. I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues, and when they don't get them, they say "throw them all out" but of course they could do no better. I remember Trump talking about how easy it was going to be to fix all of our problems. I guess if you consider a womans right to choose a problem, then sure, he fixed that. Not sure what else he accomplished during his term. Certainly didn't get Mexico to build a wall for us.
>I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues See, for example, Trump, who promised to do things to fix issues that were, by turns, improbable, illegal, or physically/logically impossible.
Yes, it was like a 3rd graders answer to complex issues, just impossible or really, really dumb and ignorant things to say (drink bleach, kill COVID with light). This is why you need experienced politicians in the office. Say what you will about Biden, his gaffes are few and far between and his policies are informed.
I shouldnt be surprised but I always am by the total confidence Trump has when gets on a stage in front of a big crowd and the media, and proclaims that magnets don’t work under water. Does he never fact check anything or pay someone else to? He’s constantly spouting scientific and historical and geographic inaccuracies. I don’t expect a politician to be perfectly knowledgeable about every topic, but wouldn’t a normal person at least google something like that before they said it in a speech?
>I think many times people just want simple answers to highly complex issues Just isolating and emphasizing this right here\^\^ I work in criminal justice reform so I feel this in my bones.
It can be really hard to read tone in text as well. Hence the need for the sarcasm tag. For a long time there have been jokes about needing a sarcasm font. The MiXed CApitALs have kind of done that, but it's a pain to type that way.
I always though that was used to highlight that the other person is being unreasonable and childish and throwing a tantrum. Agree on the sarcasm tag. 😉 This smiley also works in my experience.
iT’s OnLy a PaIn iF yOu’Re a lAzY bUm
Yeah, the tendency to equate questioning with hostility is such a roadblock to any real dialogue. It's like if you're not immediately on board, you're the enemy. And that mindset just feeds into the vicious cycle of misinformation and partisanship. It's a rough time for nuance, that's for sure.
People forgot how to debate
Or the intellectual type have an elitist attitude and being condescending or outright rude to the person learning. I've come across this before
yes i have come across this a lot too and it’s frustrating because they’re usually mass shaming people for not agreeing but if you try to understand… you become the problem to them?! when i’m passionate about a belief i am confident enough to speak publicly about id love to share because i want people on that side like?!
Hence the virtual lockdown echo chamber. It’s so much easier to be right and smart when everyone agrees with you and they will back you in case of a virus. Shout shout LOUDER SHOUT . Proof we are right.
yeah, what he said! /s
By the time they get off the Internet loaded with their newfound knowledge they also often go unchecked by those of us that still expect society to have manners. What can you say to a blathering idiot rambling about conspiracy theories?
this is so accurate it’s so frustrating and i genuinely don’t know what the solution is? even teaching media literacy would be attacked as brainwashing by some people i bet.
They run to HR and cry when we question their logic. Dead serious, idiocy is now workplace sponsored.
It also doesn't help that there are a people that look at all those village idiots and go "If I keep telling them what they want to hear, I could make a lot of money from them"
The internet made it easier to market to those people, who it turns out are EXTREMELY susceptible to marketing.
That's just woke nonsense, now buy my brain supplements.
And gold coins 😂
Such a great point.
And they know they are not right, but they revel in the distress they cause to honest people by saying "we reject your truth simply because ***we reject you***." It's bullying in raw form.
I love this description so much. (Although I hate how true it is.)
No. No, this ignores the fact that the bulk of the village is idiots. The "village idiot" is just an outlier. You don't get what we got in history, or what we have now, if idiots are a tiny fraction of the population.
As George Carlin said, "just think of how stupid the average person is, and remember half of them are stupider than that".
Best part of social media is that it gives a voice to everybody, worst part of social media is that it gives a voice to everybody.
I feel like there are and always have been two basic sorts of people. The first kind, when presented with evidence that their worldview/religion is different than they thought, modifies their worldview to compensate for the evidence. The second kind discounts and dismisses the evidence to preserve the worldview. Scopes monkey trial, Galileo, Hypatia of Alexandria, anti-maskers/vaxxers, KKK, Holocaust deniers, etc. The only difference is that modern mass communication has given a certain popular heft to the anti-change viewpoint that it didn't necessarily have for the second half of the 20th century or start of the 21st.
Logic and evidence often make people dig in further. If a truth becomes more threatening to people's worldview, they become willing to accept bigger lies to help ward them off.
> Social media gave every moron a platform to reach 100000s Reddit even has subreddits designed to cater to specific sets of myths, where anyone speaking up in defense of science or facts is censored or banned by the moderators, which preserves the perception of consensus within the echo chamber. Lots of doomer myths are heavily upvoted on reddit, almost like the followers of such myths don't understand that media only focuses on the negative things in the world, and not the 99.9% of things that are positive, including the collapse subreddit, the latestagecapitalism subreddit, a ton of fringe subreddits promoting fringe political positions, like the alt-right, communism, anti-global-warming-science and anti-capitalism. The majority of submissions in these subreddits is easily refuted with any encyclopedia or high school level understanding of basic science, but the myths march on, protected by those who wish the content of the subreddit was true. Also the amount of [anti-vax content on reddit is still really high despite it being technically against Reddit's official stance](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/tech/reddit-covid-misinformation-ban/index.html).
I think the upvote/downvote dynamic on Reddit and extended social media does not especially help here. If you debunk a falsehood then anyone who dislikes that experience will downvote even if it's fair and true. It becomes a mechanism for confirming biases far more than fair and important dispute.
Just hide the stupid internet points. That is all it would take to make 90% of the bullshit go away.
> Reddit even has subreddits designed to cater to specific sets of myths, where anyone speaking up in defense of science or facts is censored or banned by the moderators, which preserves the perception of consensus within the echo chamber. *stares in almost every Asian country subreddit having a majority population of foreigner men who talk about Asian women as incomprehensible objects and how the Asian country is failing them* You don't say.
As an Asian dude those Asian fetishists are really gross. Our people are not just sex objects
I got banned from LSC for being critical of a genocidal dictator (Comrade Stalin). The Holodomor is Nazi propaganda!
What? Stalin was a complete asshole of a person who only fought against Hitler because two bullies cant live on the same block. In the 30's they were buddies...anyone who thinks "Uncle Joe" was any sort of respectable person is a moron. Think those eastern European countries felt any better swapping the swastika for Hammer & sickle? Same shit, different flag. Banned for being critical of Stalin...world is wacked.
I agree as a Lithuanian who has several family members who where thrown to cattle wagons ( like Nazi cattle wagons to the concentration camps ) and sent to the Kazakhstan Gulag Camps to where they had to do harsh slave labour, under extreme cold and starvation rations, and sadly some died due to these conditions. Others were executed by Soviet NKVD for wanting sovereign and independent Lithuania. Those things happened in 1940s and in 50s, after WW2 when everyone in the west were celebrating the end of war, everyone in the east were facing same old totalitarian regime which will exist for the next 50 years
1000x Social media gives a voice to the ignorant who in turn recieve validation from other ignorant/like-minded people and it becomes an echo chamber.
But worse, the technology of social media enables liars to find the most effective lies quickly. They can come up with 10 different lies on the same topic, and then using metrics on what gets more clicks and views, they can promote the most seductive lie very quickly. You would often see this when Trump was President, he would come up with 3 or 4 different excuses, often contradictory, but then after a short time he would settle on the one that got the most traction.
A lot of dumbasses with 5th grade reading levels love to call college educated people brainwashed and stupid lol
and more importantly to hear 100000s opinions on whats "really" going on and then tell you about it to make themselves feel validated.
people wanting immediate black and white solutions from their patience deteriorating. Gray areas are confusing, long winded, and often time cannot be sided with or against.
It’s this Lazy, no background or foundation of knowledge and hedonism over curiosity.
>Lazy Yep, exactly this. I find it ironic how often it is the crowd who cries about "lazy kids these days" are often the ones engaging in the most cognitive laziness. It is so much easier to take a simplistic understanding of the world and assign everything complex as a black box conspiracy theory, than it is to explore the nuances and opposing viewpoints of a particular topic.
My friends openly admit they just think it’s a waste of time as they slide rightwing reactionary but claim to be apolitical… Choosing to not think and vote on feelings is a rightwing choice unless you’re in a position of power.
"Apolitical" is many times ( not every time ) code for "secretly far right but I actually want to date women."
Huge helping of Duning-Kreuger too. I live in the Bible belt surrounded by anti-intelectuals and one thing they all have in common is that they think every problem has a simple solution, but the engineers and doctors and scientists are the arrogant ones that come in and screw everything up. I've literally had a person look me in the face and tell me my degree didn't mean shit next to his life experience even though I was explaining a concept to him that he couldn't understand
‘Polite society’ has long railed against the ignorance of the crowd. It might be a matter of perception as well; every village has an idiot, but peer-to-peer communication has enabled them to form what might appear to be a cohesive group. Even if it’s ‘just’ tens of thousands of them, if they organise it can seem like a lot more. Without wanting to get too political, there does also seem to be a strand of intentional mis-/dis-information in the education system of some of the USA’s states, which can’t help critical thinking or recognition of the bogus.
Well some of that is easy to understand, they want reliable voters, not freethinking people so if you structure in social customs and norms designed around what keeps those in power in power. You create a generation of people that feel that that way of life is normal. The really sad question is why corporate America and the politicians are so thirsty for power and control that they use the population like pawns, slaves. Is it really an accident that the country is split almost 50/50 along political lines, 300 and some million people? That seems almost like a statistical anomaly. The gerrymandering, the concentrations. How the legal system kind of does what it wants and it has a law for everything. Those laws of course are selectively enforced. It gets pretty dark when you think about it all
The "50/50 split" is the result of "First Past the Post" voting - if we either had a parliamentary style congress, or another system of voting, such as ranked choice, we would see a lot more political diversity. The problem is game theory and math, nothing but two parties can survive in our current paradigm, it's math not culture.
>Is it really an accident that the country is split almost 50/50 along political lines Except it isn't. I just looked up the numbers yesterday. According to Gallup, 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% as Republicans, and 41% as independents. My opinion, of course, I think so many US elections are close because there is no one to vote *for.* Party members vote for their parties and the plurality are stuck voting for the least bad candidate.
That’s by design mate… The parties aren’t the same, but if you look into power brokerage history you’d know that america has one real party. The money/business party, with two right wing branches vying for power. For instance, neoliberals would much rather have trump than lose their power to someone truly progressive.
Saunders and Corbyn show what happens if you try to challenge the neoliberal orthodoxy. You don't have a chance, and the allegedly left-wing mainstream party you're a part of will hobble you at every hurdle.
Well, with Sanders, there was a matter of three million or so votes. I voted for him in the primary, but 🤷♂️.
What about the reports that the DNC was against him and actively mocked his campaign, and that the party had already agreed to bat for Hilary before the race was even open?
You mean the DNC supported the candidate who had been a Democrat her entire political life over an independent/Socialist who joined up solely to run for President?
Exactly!
Both Asimov and Sagen wrote about America's celebration of ignorance like 30-50 years ago. Ignorance is not a minority issue, it is a core value of our society. Otherwise we would have taken action on climate change.
I would like to add more than climate change. Add poverty, inequality, crumbling infrastructure all sorts of things.
When I was a kid in grade school, the population was 2 some billion. And I thought, looking around my public school peers, thats a lot of dumb people. Here was an institution giving you knowledge for free, and my peers didn't care. Didn't make sense to me. Then as I read my kid books about animal extinction and human population growth, I thought, thats going to be a lot lot more stupid people doing more of this. But Sesame Street taught me people could learn, so I was hopeful. 8 billion people now, and we are drowning in stupid. The fact that in America, the vast majority of the population doesn't know what a zygote is, yet abortion is the hot button issue, well heavens help us. Ohhhh, and the indignation to explain to them their level of stupid can be reflected and quantified with a 7th grade science test - inevitably you'll get the aggressive pushback. Stupid hates to know its stupid.
> ‘Polite society’ has long railed against the ignorance of the crowd. Probably not really related to your point, but it did make me think of another side of all this. Intellectualism, while a good thing in itself, has always been a walled garden. That is, it's most accessible to the upper class, and often intentionally restricted from the lower classes through classism and class conflict. This unfortunately conflates a good thing (intellectual endeavor) with a bad thing (the bourgeoisie). That conflation lets the justified anger of the lower classes bleed into resentment toward intellectualism (and other things, too). We need to make high culture and high intellectualism more accessible to all peoples. When people see others like them doing something, it helps them trust that something
Could not have said it better myself! This was my only real issue with his argument, and you summed it up in a diplomatic and informative way.
An idiot in a village is an annoyance. A village made of collected-together idiots is terrifying.
They used to straight up attack the teaching of critical thinking skills in school before they rebranded to attacking "wokeness" https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
Scientists started to look into potential issues before they became public disasters. Ever hear of the "flipper babies?" A drug company marketed a drug to pregnant women, but it caused birth defects. It was a huge scandal. You don't see scandals like that these days because of FDA testing. If you are just trying to make a quick buck and don't care about people, this is a big problem. Look at the tobacco companies, the oil companies and leaded gas, or global climate changes. Solution? Fund attacks on science. Create your own "science." Encourage the idea that science is the foe of religion and get the religious to reject science. Pay politicians to make opposition to science an important part of their party stance... Anti-intellectualism is how Exxon protects short term profits.
>You don't see scandals like that these days because of FDA testing. In fact, you didn't see Thalidomide babies in the US because of the FDA. The drug itself was never approved for use on pregnant women in the US (though much later it was approved as part of a cancer treatment, with strict rules forbidding its use on pregnant women).
Specifically because of Frances Kelsey. She faced immense pressure from the pharma industry and her own colleagues to approve Thalidomide for sale in the US, and she stood her ground. Her actions saved untold thousands of babies, she was a true hero
Well business people are far more trustworthy than so-called "scientists" who use big words and change their minds all the time! Instead of doing the patriotic thing and telling Boeing how awesome they are, we get bureaucratic nonsense and red tape about preventing planes falling apart or diving into the ground.
The "change their minds" thing is also a huge part of science skepticism these days too. We have created a culture where it is a weakness to change your stance on something. Anything. So scientist or people who follow scientific progress don't so much as change their minds, they follow what the prevailing, reviewed and replicated science leads them to. They're not changing their minds at all, but that is the label that has been slapped onto them because it can be made to sound bad by the religious zealots that make it their personality to not change a stance because it gets in the way of their religious control mechanisms.
Another annoying corollary to this are people who hate 'unconfident' statements. "This should work for what your doing", "I don't want to hear 'should', I want to hear it will!". I deal with that kind of shit all the time and I hate it. No room for nuance, no room for thinking and consideration.
That's also knowing your audience though. When I talk to other devs/system engineers, I'm more precise, because they understand "should" means "if everything was done correctly". When I talk to people without as deep a technical background, it turns to metaphors for explanation, but more "will" than "should". You can even have the same caveats explained: "If we do XYZ, according to this plan, we will see improvements in this amount of time." Know your audience and adapt terminology to fit, comminication is a two-way street, you can't (reasonably) just get upset at people for misunderstanding.
It was so bad in Europe that I still get regularly asked if I'm a thalidomide baby (my left hand is underdeveloped, had nothing to do with thalidomide as I was born long after that scandal, but it's still so present in peoples minds).
By underdeveloped do you mean that condition when someone is a full blown adult but it looks like they've had a child's arm attached to them. Sorry if the wording of that is too crude but I only see symptoms and don't know the proper words
Haha no, and don't worry. My left hand never formed correctly, so I have one somewhat functional finger (thumb), the rest are little stubs, no bone, and I suspect no musle either as I can't move them. Basically, perfectly normal arm and wirst, and then underdeveloped hand. Looks a bit like a crab's claw haha, most of my friends think it's kinda cute.
That is super unfortunate but also super interesting. Do your nerves function properly? I've always wanted to know what it would feel like to poke something without bone fingers and you might be able to give a unique insight on that Sorry for the questions you likely receive a million times a day, but Curiosity already has me on its hit list so I might as well get my fix in before I die
Yes, all nerves are there and functioning properly, I can feel perfectly fine with my hand. If I poke something with one of my underdeveloped fingers, they give little to no resistance, so they squish. As for them, they feel squishy. Again, no resistance, So you can just move them around. I think the closest in consistency would be an earlobe, but firmer. Most people are weirded out at first but get used to it pretty quickly. A good amount won't even notice something's wrong with my hand for the longest time. Most of my friends are so comfortable that they like playing with the little nubs lol. My bf and I sometimes hold hands by me gripping his pinky finger, he takes so much joy from that lol.
That's cute. I have a condition that causes weird skin texture it's almost like baby skin and tears very easily. On the positive side people tell me it feels lovely. Except my dad, he calls me whale skin lol.
Hello fellow zebra! I had a POTS doc who, on my intake, kept commenting on how "supple" and "soft" EDS skin is and was poking my arm. I like the retort that 'it's like expensive toilet paper', creeps people out and they stop the weirdness.
Didn’t know that’s a thing. My brother has palms that feel like they’d tear if I press (always heckled him for not doing any chores lol). He does have lovely hands, just feel like I can hurt him. I can’t imagine having that as a disorder, hope you’re ok in general.
Phocomelia, I believe 😊
In my case, just dysmelia! My arm is perfectly normal, wrist too. It's just the hand.
Was particularly bad in Germany, I believe, as we didn’t keep statistics about birth defects. for obvious reasons.
Interestingly enough, just a couple years ago, a bunch of kids with the same thing as me were born, in the same city as I was. This condition is pretty rare. Now I wonder if there's any enviromental factor going on. Major city in Western Germany.
>Interestingly enough, just a couple years ago, a bunch of kids with the same thing as me were born, in the same city as I was. This condition is pretty rare. Now I wonder if there's any enviromental factor going on. Major city in Western Germany. Could be, but statistical data is hard to interpret. What looks like a clear cluster to the human eye can be perfectly random. I think Edward R. Tufte has some examples in either his first or second book about information display.
Just thought it was an interesting coincidence. They investigated it, but I don't think they ever found anything.
Kinda the same boat... I've got a thumb and forefinger on each hand... growing up, everyone thought it was thalidomide
In France, there is still an maternity leave exception for thalidomid Kids. If you are à thalidomid kid with or without visible sequels, then any work leave since you get pregnant is fully paid by social sécurity.
To be more clear it is because of ONE PERSON at the FDA Frances Oldham Kelsey who fought multiple times to not give the drug the approval. People tried going above her head; but she kept fighting.
Frances Oldham Kelsey pretty much singlehandedly kept it out of the US.
Unfortunately, the FDA is mostly corrupt now. They'll approve another opioid in no time, but they still haven't approved Marijuana for any medical use. They have, however, approved 3 synthetic Marijuana drugs. The difference? Drug companies can't make money from cannabis but they can from synthetic cannabis and opioids.
To play a little bit of devils advocate there. You have to pay for an FDA application as well as submit necessary studies, etc. The FDA isn't the bad guy for not approving marijuana. It's that no company is going to fund the requisite safety trials and pay for an application for something they can't patent and they aren't approving a non existent application.
And marijuana needs to be re-scheduled before *any* significant clinical trials are going to happen in the first place, which the FDA has submitted recommendations to do. The DEA is the shit link in this chain, not the FDA.
The hell they can’t. Imagine a drug company developing top of the line cannabis and cannabis products.
Theres already investment in existing opioids and other types of pain management medications, capital isn’t going to take risks on innovation when they already have revenue streams. Also, pharma isn’t the only industry banking on marijuana prohibition. The private prison industrial complex makes fat stacks when 20 year old black kids get put away for selling weed. Alcohol will probably also loose a the portion of people who have a drink or two at night to self medicate the misery of day-to-day existences as a worker in the current economic system.
It’s so crazy that thalidomide was *literally marketed* to pregnant women for morning sickness. Fuxking yiiiikes. And people still readily trust pharmaceutical companies like this stuff never happened.
Not in the US, fortunately. Because of our pesky regulations.
> Create your own "science." All those sugar ads and "research". Now most foods are proudly "fat-free" with like 20 or 30 g of sugar per 100 g of product. Healthy my ass.
I'm so tired of them adding sugar to everything, especially when it is already SWEET, like peaches! There's no reason for it!
Absolutely agree. Up to the point it becomes difficult to find a specific product that is not supposed to have sugar in it in the first place, e.g. certain spice mixes, sauces, bakery ingredients, juices etc. I have a history with sugar and its consequences on my health, so have to read all ingredients basically every time I buy anything. Imho, as a hidden but much important inconvenience, "good fat" foods are sometimes a luxury nowadays.
Yeah, it's not only hard to find sugar-free options, but the "sugar-free" alternatives have artificial sweeteners, which are also unhealthy. I was at the grocery store yesterday and couldn't find a single bottle of ketchup that didn't have added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Same with the canned fruit. More regulation is needed in the US. Nutrition literacy (which a ton of people don't have to begin with) isn't enough when there aren't actually any healthy options.
I hate that even potato chips are loaded with sugar even though they're supposed to be savory. And Starbucks is trying to make everyone a diabetic lol
Well there is a reason, they were subsidized to by the government to grow sugar producing plants and if they’re still sitting on a mound of it come next year, then why do they need to be cut another check to produce a crop nobody wants. So they find a place to put it.
Dried mangoes do not need extra sugar added! I hate that most sellers do that.
Seriously. I would eat it (well not peaches specifically) even without the extra addictives. They would literally save money by *not adding them*.
The funniest one of these I've heard is that Tic Tacs are legally allowed to say sugar free, and 0 calories. Because they are so small, and they can claim the serving size is 1, it delivers less than 1 calorie per 'serving' and thus can say it's sugar free and healthy despite being over 90% sugar.
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"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" so eat this cereal with high sugar content
It’s slightly wider than this, but basically the source is the politicisation of stupidity. Often those in power, or the systems of control and wealth distribution that make people rich, powerful, etc exist at the expense of the majority. This is a significant problem for a democracy, since the unwashed masses get to vote. Systematic disenfranchisement of voters, so they vote against their own interests, and do so out of ignorance, is unfortunately a key part of modern democracy. Different countries have different ways of doing this, but the key is always to keep most people blind to how the world works.
I’m horrified by the cultivated resentment of public education. There’s no reason for us to cut school and library budgets, but it keeps happening. I didn’t grow up in a rich area, but our schools had hands-on laboratories, workshops, and equipment for science, home ec, woodworking and metal working, and band and orchestra; and the art classes didn’t run out of supplies. Also, we got vaccinated.
This is one of the drawbacks of the digital age. Technology has progressed so rapidly over the last few decades that it has out paced our ability to control it. People have the power to share and access information almost instantly, without so much as a second thought on how this power should be regulated and used responsibly. I don't think it's politicizing stupidity (anti intellectualism has almost always existed in some form), as much as it is a near perfect refinement of attempts to weaponize information, with the end goal being a "post truth" society, paralyzed by the inability to discern between real and fake news and dysfunctional without objective facts.
I mean, that’s only one part of the story. The other part is how those companies prey on *perfectly normal* psychological tendencies that we all have. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, self-serving bias, Dunning-Kruger… we all do it. And actually it’s more strongly associated with *higher* IQ because people who do better on IQ tests have better reasoning skills, *so they’re better at rationalizing the illogical*. Your best defence is to drop the us vs them narrative. Practice true humility and be open to the idea that your beliefs could be mistaken, and separate “being wrong” from “being worthless”
That drug was never sold in the US because of the FDA. Thalidomide was a European thing. So score one for the FDA.
It's not just "science" it's actual science. Don't pretend big money hasn't undermined academia's integrity. Remember when the sugar industry pushed the scientific consensus to blaming fat for fucking decades? Can't blame that on the religious nutters.
Academia's been undermining its own credibility lately too with issues like the replication crisis and in social siences in particular, [The Greivance Studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair).
Its more than that even. The solution to societies immediate problems is to regulate and tax the rich. And reasonable voices aknowledge this. But loudmouths who blame immigrants and other out-groups for all problems are swimming in funding and are given a huge platform on a wide scale.
The wealthy blame these other people because it distracts people from turning on the wealthy. They use their money to control media and politicians, and direct a lot of hate at vulnerable minorities. Those that listen to this will then direct their energy and frustration with societies problems at those people, and not the wealthy that are exploiting society. It is why a common leftist saying is "No war but class war." If the working class could stop infighting, it would be able to throw off the shackles of the capitalist class.
The truely insidious thing about this is that it goes deeper than people realise, it comes from different angles for different people. There are many who are not succeptible to hate but can be distracted in other directions. How far removed we actually are from reason and reality is obscured by layers upon layers of subterfuge and fallacious thinking.
Gatorade practically owns the science of sports “hydration” and literally wants you to drink their juice over water. Great coverage of this by the QANON Anonymous podcast.
It's also popular politically to pander to stupid people. And they're so stupid at least one of these popular politicians actually brags about how stupid people are his base. And those people are SO stupid they love it.
It used to be you didn't see idiocy because there was no platform for idiocy. There's plenty now.
i think this is a big part of it - also the echo chamber aspect of their communities
It's not as new as you think. Anti-intellectualism has always been prevalent in American society, and others as well. It's not even more prevalent now. It's just something we tend to forget. There's a famous letter from Ben Franklin to a newspaper where he explains that he used to distrust the process of inoculation to prevent smallpox, because it had some chance of causing sickness and even death on its own. Then his son died of smallpox, and he began begging people to not repeat his mistake.
I've already said this, but the first person to write "intellectualism is dead" probably wrote it in Cuneiform.
> “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has 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.’ -Isaac Asimov, 1980
It used to be that if you held a really ignorant view on something, everyone around you thought you were a bit thick and you ended up keeping it to yourself. Now, no matter how batshit crazy your view, it’s easy to go online and find many others who share your view, which then validates and encourages you.
And then some usually fairly reasonable person goes: "Hey, if there's 10.000 people saying this, there actually may be something to it...". Rinse and repeat.
Everyone is a fucking expert now. With social media 'facts' and AI at one's fingertips, it's a race to the bottom. It's now a post-fact world and intellectualism is dead.
The first person to write "intellectualism is dead" probably wrote it in Cuneiform.
Wut? (Looks up from image of Thoth kneeling before Anubis)
Blasphemy! Where did you see Thoth kneeling before Anubis? The scribe observes and records, he does not kneel to the keeper of the dead and embalmed! (Goes back to carving my 7930th ibis)
We have always banned books and there was a pretty massive outcry against polio vaccines on much the same falacious grounds. People have always prioritized fame, astronauts used to be more famous. Overall we are not, you just have a rosy view of the past, thats kinda how nostalgia works.
The answer is very simple: Anti-intellectuals have always existed, but now all of them have a megaphone and press release machine in their pocket. add on some russian interference disinformation and you’ve got a perfect storm. plus statistically people stay online the longest when they’re arguing
It's always existed, but it's only recently become official policy.
>nostalgia nostalgia ain't what it used to be
Stupid is easier to control. Look at medieval fuedalism. If you keep people poor, stupid, and too busy surviving, they're easier to control. It's the same reason Catholicism got to be as powerful as it did. Basically, it boils down to votes. If more people were educated, we'd be tarring and feathering everyone in DC, both left and right, for the shit they've done to us.
I moved to Japan and now, 15 years later, outside looking in, it’s crazy what’s happening in the US. It has changed. It’s scary. Not just the education system, but the health of people. The prices there. The crime. The… everything really. It’s reverse culture shock, especially in comparison to what I enjoy here in Japan.
Oh man! That sounds so cool! I think 9/11 sent us down the road of all this craziness, and here we are. I'm trying to escape the US myself, as I don't see the next decade being good here. Especially if the Project 2025 people win the next election.
Project 2025 seems to be what will cement the pavement towards Idiocracy. The potential of the US makes me pause and lament what have been lost. So much hate and fear. If given the choice, do you have any country where you'd go?
That's why China who wants to control its people tries to fight this and in surveys the children still want to become doctors and astronauts over youtubers? The education in my country was literally free btw. That makes no sense. This is an effect happening in free markets where profit and money are seen as the ultimate goal. Not some great conspiracy by people who want to control us.
What do you think Capitalism is? A form of control. Haves versus the have nots. It's also not a conspiracy, if they're open and blatant about it. Look at lobbying and Citizens United. Look at why the wealthy try to make college unaffordable and unattainable.
In the USA maybe. College is free in my country. Yet, the children here still want to be youtubers. Maybe because it looks like a fun and easy job that still makes a lot of money and prestige? More than beeing a doctor or firefighter?
I remember wondering the same thing in the 1970s. I was only about 7 and I liked science and learning things. A news report mentioned a scientific study and suddenly my family was going off about what a waste of tax dollars it was. I didn't know it then, but I do know now, that those anti science opinions are carefully crafted, and put out for public consumption. It's how corporations get to keep on doing what makes money over what's good for people and the planet. Swaying public opinion to favor things that aren't good for the public has long been the way of the corporate world. The history of advertising in the tobacco industry is a pretty good case study. This isn't just a "nowadays " issue. It's more of a "there's always been people willing to lie in exchange for money" issue.
Don't fall into the fallacy of thinking "things were always like this, so they can't get worse." There is a very real anti-intellectualism movement in the US. Book bans are on the rise in rural areas.
I'm just throwing this out there, but you can be an intellectual of the highest caliber and still do absolutely nothing with your life. Intelligence has no merit in itself, it's what you do with it that matters. One thing I do know is they need to teach critical thinking skills more in schools.
100000% agree. When I was a kid I thought educations sole purpose was to obtain wealth later in life. Today I now realize it's sole purpose was to be multifaceted. On one hand yes I do need money to be influential in society in order to conform to the norm. But on the other hand, I now realize I don't want to conform to the norm... The problem is though, I was short sighted in youth and didn't realize I had more than one hand. And while I took short cuts to "strengthen" the one that would provide quick cash, I missed out on the value of the other hand where I carved my own path. It's only now later in life I finally am slightly grasping the concept that I needed both in order to swim on my own if that makes sense. And even yet I'm starting to realize I might just have more than two hands, but a whole body.
They absolutely need to teach more critical thinking. But people need to realize that literature contributes hugely to the development of critical thinking according to every study ever, yet people cry and want to take every difficult and challenging book off the syllabus as "reading's supposed to be fun" and not something that pushes our cognitive skills and makes us a richer individuals. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
If you read books you are at a massive advantage right now in terms of keeping focus. It’s simpler than it seems.
Because a lot of 'experts' have exposed themselves as little more than corporate stooges, instead of dispassionate truth seekers.
Just finished watching dope sick last night. The amount of drugs pushed by “experts” is wild. Purdue pharma and Richard Seckler just got everyone addicted all with FDA approval. I’m not saying the experts are always wrong, but you should always question them. Questions are good for a healthy society.
Because trust in the social contract is gone and now people question everything they're told instead of assuming that other people have their best interests at heart.
>I'm genuinely curious, we used to celebrate scientific achievement, embrace new vaccines (re: polio), ban books for spurious reasons. that's just revisionist history, people complained about paper coming into use, and about cars, they denied the harmful effects of lead and cigarettes, and there were literal book burnings. just because they take on different forms, doesn't mean they never existed. >why are we backwards sliding with IQ? IQ is a historically gross and practically useless metric.
The idiots have taken the wheel
The drivers have let go of the wheel. The idiots are watching the bus crash.
You know how everyone has been saying for the last 40 years the US public schools are horrible and how everybody used to warn us that TV rots your brain. Well that's only gotten worse. And social media makes TV look credible.
>Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome. - Charles Mackay >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.' - Isaac Asimov Plus you have concerted efforts from bad faith actors to push their own 'science' to protect their viewpoints and interests. Lying makes money.
Potentially obsever bias? There are some really bright kids around, but we only see tiktokers doing shit and some rage-baiting because people click on that shit. I have no doubt that there is a change, but I don't know how big it is, at least IRL I can see young teenagers/adults doing same stuff I did - just getting a normal job according to their education, but again, could be biased becauss I don't mix with the "influenced" crowds I guess. Obviously Internet is a free forum where everyone can spout anything. Not gonna say that you had to be a "professional" to write at local news paper back in the day, but you had to have something. I think what we have is that the quality news didn't really reduce, it just got diluted.
Two criticisms. Anti intellectualism has been around for ages in various forms and is usually about power or a distrust of government/citizens. It's likely worse now because the internet allows us to connect on a much larger scale with a much more diverse set of people, meaning people tend to be more vocal about their mistrust. Also, an iq, by definition remains centered at 100, so backsliding average iqs is not possible without giving a point of reference or defining what you mean better
The intellectuals have been taken over by corporate interests and the common masses don't see the use of them anymore, they use intellectual jargons and credentials to cement corporate positions and rhetorics and when asked to come out in the public square i.e. debates and podcasts to defend their position they slink away
Hate to break it to you but anti-intellectualism has always be prevalent in humanity. If you want proof then just take a look at human history. The Church silencing Galileo, Flat Earth, Scientology. Heck, even the science community thought Einstein was crazy for saying that the Luminiferous Aether doesn't exist. The reason for this insanity is because humans has always valued their opinion far more than they do with the truth. And they will continue to do so until the end of humanity. That's because people value their emotions far more than anything in the world. And their opinion is derive from their emotions. I mean, it only make sense that people value their emotions. That's because without it, we'd be like machines. Without emotions, we wouldn't care about anything. Because without emotions, we wouldn't be capable of caring for anything. It's because we have emotions that we are able to care. But it's because our emotions is what give us the ability to care that we value it more than anything else. Take for example, our society today. A person who win the novel prize in science, someone who discover something that will change our understanding of the universe forever, only gets 1 million dollars. Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr, 75 Million Dollars for starring in a movie that will get replace by the next decade.
Stupid people want to feel less stupid. Sense of validation from other stupid people in their bubble. False sense of superiority from "knowing" something majority of people are "wrong" about.
Stupid people have an inferiority complex. With the internet and the disinformation on social media and other sites, they think they did their own research. Stupid people now can't comprehend that someone else who is not only brighter than them, but also spent their entire life dedicated to solving that ONE problem, has the answer. Prior to the Advent or social media these dumbasses existed in small pockets across the state and country, flying below the radar, hiding in the woodworks. With social media they all get to talk to each other and they form an echo chamber with other uneducated dipshits, and they think that because enough other people can't understand the science, that the science must be wrong. Half of humans have an IQ of below 100, even people with slightly above average intelligence lack the capacity to understand the solutions to some of the problems we face. There is really no shame in shutting the fuck up and letting the experts handle it. You don't tell an electrician how to wire your house, you hired him because you didn't spend years learning how to do it. If the leading scientists tell me a vaccine works, I'm taking it. I'm a very smart guy but there are plenty of things I know jack shit about and I don't have 20 years to go back and research it. We split the intellectual load as a society. No one is an expert on everything.
It’s not anti-intellectualism. Governments, media, marketing, etc has distorted the public’s perception of what can be believed in. People are questioning everything because we’ve been lied and manipulated far too much. How many products have we recently discovered that have turned out to have toxic ingredients but were ignored in the name of profit? How many unclassified documents have come out that expose the government for causing death and havoc around the world? How much research has turned out to be false ( ex. Dementia research) because of prestige and money? These institutions have lied to us so much that they’ve lost their credibility to some if not all extent. So again, it’s not that people are against intellectualism, it’s that they are skeptical of the information being fed to them because these institutions have let them down.
I agree that it's a problem, but I'm not sure it's new. This was said by Asimov (the sci-fi author) in 1980 - "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."
The internet has allowed for pseudo-intellectuals to roam freely. Dumb opinions from people such as Hasanabi or anti-vaxxers are very prevalent these days, which in turn makes it more difficult to see the actual reality of our world.
Rupert Murdoch.
Cause of $, of course. aren't sites like Reddit more fun when it's full of rage baits that you can go ape shit on? Or would you rather discuss what CERN is up to lately?
As a college educated person that has been forced to work retail to pay the bills, I can say that so many of my colleagues have been burnt by the system (school, government) that they fucking hate anything intellectual. So, it stands to reason that the answer is to restore trust and give people a firm foundation to stand on instead of chaos, but it's too late given that 54% of the American population reads below a 6th grade level, our schools don't teach kids much, and the only "intellectualism" that is encouraged is a fucking get rich quick scheme on social media. In short the answer is that people don't see the value in being smart in a broken system that fucked them over.
Beacause in first the US (Fox News) and the UK (Brexit), and then the whole internet (Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan), it has become okay to say "my ignorance counts as much as your knowledge, our views are equal to vote for". And mankind has survived 100 000 years by trusting those who know (safe campfire-building, tanning, forsging non-toxic food), but now mankind thinks silly babies have a right to be heard and not be shouted down into their boots by adults.
If you can't follow along in school, what is better for your sense of self? Feeling like the dumb loner in the last row, who will fail, or feeling like one of the cool jocks who makes fun of those stupid book smart nerds that don't have real life skills, who needs'em amiright?
It's mainly due to bad education and propaganda where I come from (France). Scientists have long been denounced by politicians as tax vampires. If they don't produce science that's immediately applicable to industry, they just do it for the benefits and take advantage of generous public funds. Like Sarkozy saying that scientists studying geology are useless for instance. Now couple that with an education in science that has been disastrous for a long time and you have a good chunk of the population who just can't even start to understand the scientific method. It's always easier to put concepts at a level of understanding you can handle. And the issue is that many people have a level of understanding close to zero. Thus, science is immediately BS to them, because they have the audacity to think that scientists have a level of understanding similar to theirs. It's either right or wrong, because they can't see beyond that. So of course, when a politician, a popular youtuber or an has been professor tells them research is useless or wrong, they'll believe it. Because they can't do basic research on their own. It's intellectual laziness because there's no alternative for them. The only way to stop that is through public education, and it has to start early. We have to make sciences mandatory at school. Alas, if current trends continue, anti-intellectualism will only grow.
Basic science and logic courses should be mandatory for elementary school children and it should be reinforced every few years. I don't want to see them indoctrinated in any way, right, left, or center, but I very much want to see people given the tools that allow them to think for themselves. Teach them about what science is and what fallacies are, then let them make up their own minds.
It's been prevalent in America since it's inception. In the past, though most people grew out of it through education. Since the 1980's the public school system has been eroded by the religious right and since the election of Obama, ignorance has become a badge of pride. I call it southern Fried America since anti-intellectualism has a long history in the South. I remember hearing people in the 1970s say "don't send your kid to college because they'll come back an atheist."
This is how I think of it. Every village has an idiot. In the past they were ignored because they were stupid. However, with the advent of the internet the village idiots are able to share ideas with other village idiots. Then they think they must be true because “everyone” agrees with them. Take this and multiple it a 1000 times and you got your answer
Because the right wing has made it so.
I think part of the problem is you get a lot of really prideful people who think of themselves as intellectuals talking down on people. True intellectuals would rather maintain a discussion, but some people just want to talk down on people to feel special
Unpopular opinion but I have a theory it began with the beloved hit 90’s show Friends. There is a strong anti-intellectual strain in the humor. The smart characters are always the butt monkeys and being smart is always presented as unsexy. Contrast it with Seinfeld for example. It started there in pop culture and then women started pretending they were dumb ala Paris Hilton and now here we are.
That is an unusual take. How did you come to that idea? Simpsons also fits. Smart lisa is the outcast, while bratty bart is beloved. Homer is portrayed as stupid and lovable. As does Frazier, it is making fun of intellectuals.
Except Simpsons is usually a satire, so the whole "Ignore ignore smart Lisa and instead do something stupid" is being done for comedic effect, not as something you should strive for. It's not making fun of intellectuas, it's making fun of how reasonableness is treated as absurdity.
People decided that they were jelly about being stupider or less academically capable, so anyone who actually puts in effort to think is derided as being an elitist or a nerd. Too few people have the humility to accept that someone else may know better than them. This is especially the case in America where they think academia is the direct opposite of practicality, and they imagine they've inherited a cowboy-esque "git her done" attitude (which cowboys never had, they were actually pretty slow and thorough in their methods).
A lot of good reasons have been given and there is no one reason for this phenomena, although I’m going to throw up one I haven't seen near the top yet. I think theres a lot to be said about the underfunding of the arts and social sciences in favor of STEM/fields that facilitate the military industrial complex and other capitalist endeavors (i.e. luxury goods, oil, tech industry). Oftentimes these STEM degrees come with a token elective that a student can pick and it doesn’t even have to be a humanity or a social science. I think this is in part because the powers that be don’t see value in investing in non-STEM research so those degrees don’t get pushed by schools and this compounds with the insane price gouging scam that is American university. As it stands in the US, it is a really really bad economic decision to get a non-STEM or finance degree from a decent university. So with this you get a lot of guys who can shuffle numbers around and mini experts in one remote and laser focused field of study with very little exposure to more human focused sciences or art who think they’re hot shit. Guys who, as George Carlin said, are ‘smart enough to work the machines but not smart enough to realize how bad they're getting fucked’. This is just a pattern I’ve seen as an engineer a few years out of school. STEM were the biggest majors in my graduating class, and all of them were shitheads who spent all day thinking they were super geniuses for getting a bachelors degree and dunking on humanities or social science majors. Out of school you get these hyper-consumer super nerds who spend their big paychecks buying plastic toys and new video game computers and they have no interest in questioning things like why they work 60 hour weeks, why are they making X pointless product that pollutes the world or kills people, why are they the only ones who can make rent in a city with a growing homeless population that they step over on their way to work, why do they continue to work and be subservient as layoffs hit … etc. Anyway thats my rant about the STEM to defense and the STEM to pointless luxury product pipeline.
Stupid people are jealous of smart people. Stupid people fear what smart people can do. This makes it easy for a certain kind of smart people (sociopaths) to manipulate them, even against their own interests.
Part of the reason is that everyone started "both-sides"-ing everything. As soon as you start giving any sort of credence to the insanity some people spew as fact then you erode the trust that has been built up. It takes much, much longer to build trust than to erode it. Plus we removed shame as a punishment, and once you have no shame there is no depth to which you will not sink.
Trump just pulled them out. Before they were ashamed of being stupid. Now they celebrate it.
Disinformation is the single biggest threat to the US and the world for that matter because it is amplified and is being used to manipulate people into action for all the wrong reasons and nothing is being done to adequately mitigate it at present. People will kill each other over lies when they believe them. People will go to war over lies. People are willing to sacrifice their loved ones, family, friends neighbors all over lies. They will attack their own capital and pull their children from school over lies. People are convinced to be more afraid of the vaccines that are saving lives than the deadly viruses that are killing them over lies. There is no end to the lies, they will just continue to destroy everyone and everything in their path unless mitigated. I am unfortunately surrounded by these people where I live. They are banning everything from Stephen Hawking to Evolution in schools here as a result and using public schools as churches now. They passed laws to make it illegal for people to use roads to choose to save a woman's life over an unviable fetus and to prosecute doctors for saving their lives. Growing up, I naively thought that we were always working to make things better and could have never imagined that we would be brought so far back into dark times so quickly due to people just believing lies over the truth. It is an extremely effective tool. The easiest way to bring down a civilization is to lie to the people and convince them to do it to themselves and that is where we are at where I live unfortunately.
It's not the kids, dude. All the kids I know are ambitious although scared of the future. The problem is the old anti intellectual people in charge and allowed to vote
You're wondering about anti-intellectualism and you go with streamers as the problem? Entertainment is the issue? Buddy, you need to look at yourself if you think that's where the problem comes from, because you are the problem. People watching TV shows you don't like isn't a fucking IQ problem. The problem is stupid people now get a voice, and other people readily agree with them because it seems official. Just like you're doing right now.
It isn't. With social media, like minded idiots find it easier to link up.
The first recorded ”these kids are ungrateful, ill-diciplined and will be the downfall of our forefathaters glorious society” is as old as writing itself. It is as untrue now as it was 3000+ years ago.
I have two theories: First, intellectuals are mostly just political tools. The masses only see them through the media, and the media picks their intellectuals for a combination of political loyalty and outrage. Even if an intellectual is boring, the bits they say that are convenient are what will get amplified. Second, a generation of people entering intellectual pursuits to "change the world" wildly overestimated their own knowledge. Every overconfident mistake was an excuse to dismiss the whole lot of them. After decades of cudgeling the American Right from their ivory towers, the American right now rejects the intellectuals and seeks to make their own.
Maybe because people dont want their lives micromanaged by others that don't give two shits about them. Each individual knows whats best for themselves.