One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
Anti-intellectualism comes alongside alienation from others. It has to. Being an intellectual is essentially saying “I trust the findings of academics and will adopt their consensus.” Nobody can learn about the whole span of the world, it’s too much information. But when you are convinced that collaboration is weakness and compromise is failure, you have to keep the world in your head, and the only way to do that is to maintain a really simplified internal diorama from which your “truth” is derived.
This is such a great take. I’ve never considered it like this
Thanks, I’m already thinking of ways I am off the mark though, like how things like race science and eugenics have been the “academic” position in the past.
I think properly working the academic consensus into your mind involves also understanding that it’s the product of people. It’s not that different from having some trust in institutions outside of academia too. There were people in the sciences fighting bitterly against those trends, and in the long run their position became standard.
I think there’s a point to be made here about trust vs faith
Yeah probably. I don’t like the idea of having faith in science of course, considering that science is done by people, and people aren’t infallible. But it’s the best tool we have for preserving and interacting with past ideas and breakthroughs. I suppose the thing I’d have to have faith in is humanity’s drive to understand a “truth” that holds up to scrutiny, instead of the characterization some have of human beings as creatures that wish only to satisfy existential terror incuriously.
That was very useful to people. It’s not like a majority, even those disliking academia, will trust no scientific study or something, they just don’t trust the ones they disagree with politically
This is an uncomfortable reality but the more recent examples of the sciences and humanities being considered progressive overall gives me hope.
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the difference between pseudo-science and science can be slight, and always better understood in hindsight. IQ was a big part of race science in the early 1900s, and it looks like science. It’s objectively measured, systemic data. You’ve gotta take a step back to realise it’s bullshit and too subjectively defined to be useful for anything. A big part of science is trying to think objective, and it’s only been somewhat recently there’s been a movement to remind people that they aren’t actually objective, ever.
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thought, think, will think. But I kind of did say that already.
That doesn’t make sense. Intellect is a personal attribute that can’t be outsourced, not even to academics. If someone claims to be an intellectual but the information from academics isn’t subject to the same level of scrutiny as all other sources, their claim is incorrect. People tend to start from academic sources because they have a better chance of already being held to scrutiny than other sources, but if they stop there just because smart-guy-said-so, they’re no intellectual. Or they’re just pressed for time.
I get what you are saying, but I don’t think anti-intellectualism refers to people being against people who happen to have “intellect.” And also, this claim about being a true intellectual seems like an impossible standard. It’s possible to rigorously scrutinize an assumption drawn from smart types, sure, but nobody has the time to do that for everything that makes up their understanding of reality.
I could tell you right now that sidewinder rattlesnakes don’t use their heat-sensitive facial pits to select thermally ideal ambush sites, they just use their eyes to pick a site that looks good. You could not deduce this without experimentation. (I was part of a study that tested it.)
Now, you could trust that I’m telling you the closest thing to the truth that is known in the world of rattlesnakes, but let’s say you want to be intellectual by your definition and go know it without just taking my (admittedly qualified) word for it. You could go get a herpetology degree, go convince a grad student that it would be worth challenging our conclusion, and spend another three months like we did out in the desert catching snakes and running experiments with thermal cameras.
You probably don’t want to do that, because you probably don’t have the highly specific interest in snakes that we had, and so it would feel like a waste of your time. In the end, I think you’ll probably admit that I know more about this snake topic than you, you’ll accept my conclusion, and go around understanding it without having personally studied or observed it, and that’s a good thing because it will free you up to go figure something out that fits into your interests and you can share your findings with me in turn.
It’s the exact opposite of that. An intellectual is someone with a lot of curiosity and typically rejects the status quo. Anti-intellectualism is the acceptance of what others say based on “stuff” (emotions, group affiliation). Intellectuals have been oppressed because they offer intelligent ideas to challenge a political party, religion, or the “adopted consensus”.
I just responded to a pretty similar position below.
It is silly to conflate opposition to the status quo with intellectualism. Those visionaries whose ideas led to paradigm shifts were still building upon previous consensus. Sometimes being correct puts you at odds with the group, but so does being COMPLETELY WRONG.
Sometimes