Asklemmy

“In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”

https://qz.com/967554/the-five-universal-laws-of-human-stupidity

By eliminating critical thinking, and polarizing everyone, those in power can do whatever they want, and the rest of us won't be sufficiently organized to stop it.

I'm seeing positive signs though, labor unions getting successful settlements, and more awareness. So maybe?

I have decided that it is safe to assume that everyone is an idiot, including me, and behave accordingly: act deliberately with an open mind, making no assumptions, and remain curious.

Frank Herbert's Bene Gesserits had a tenet in which they remained mindful of the naivety of all people, including themselves, ostensibly to prevent allowing hubris to allow poor decisions.

Coming back around to my point: I think we'd all get along a lot better if we'd all agree we're all stupid, but we can get better.

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.

"the world" is not anti-intellectual, you just hang out with the wrong people

Funnily enough, if as an intellectual you let go of the idea that others are dummies and start examining what they do and why and start brainstorming about what might motivate them, you might get a better idea of all the dynamics that go on when it comes to an individual's choice or motivation. Including, yes, why people are "anti-intellectual". And perhaps how to "solve" it.

I'm a bit snarky here, because I get irritated by other supposedly "smart" people looking at things through a tiny, biased and prejudged pinhole.

You're smart? Ok. Get out there, observe things, learn them, then come back and form a hypothesis that aligns with what you've observed.

Anti-intellectualism is a strategy employed by some rich people that control some mass media outlets to keep people away from being class conscious.

"You can never truly idiot-proof something, as there will always be a better idiot."

• source unknown

Can we start with anti-I-Need-My-Dopamine-Hit-Every-10-Minutes?

Between people's ever depleting attention span and our desire for acceptance on social media, I just don't see how you can even begin to tackle "anti-intellectualism".

Most people use these platforms to comment on a headline and never read the article. Perhaps we could all decide to use these platforms properly and use the downvote button to bury comments that, while funny or otherwise emotionally engaging, are clearly not accurate or providing value to the topic of discussion.

By upvoting funny comments and rewarding hive-mind mentality, we're partly to blame for the lack of intellectualism.

I believe there is an evolutionary purpose to human stupidity though, and it's the reason we've come so far as a species. Without writing a novel here, look up the concept of simulated annealing, which is conceptually related to natural selection. The short version is, when searching for a better solution to problem in a sea of functionally infinite possible solutions, if you only ever try solutions you can see that are categorically better than the solution you currently have, you will (with statistical certainty) end up in a local maxima. That is to say, without stupid people, no one would have ever looked at a cow udder and thought, "yeah, I wanna get in on that", and as a result many humans throughout history would have gone without nutrients necessary for their survival.

I have no idea who first drank cow's milk, that's not the point, don't @ me. The point is, stupid people try stupid stuff, many times it is just as stupid as it looked, but sometimes that stupid thing turns out to have previously undiscovered potential benefits which smart people notice, research, and help integrate into our society, resulting in others' lives being better.

It's not so simple I think. Anti-intellectualism is a symptom of the greater human condition. Part of it is the scapegoat aspect. If something has a name then it's easy to point a finger at it, easy to blame the person who named it. Part of it is envy, people trying to tear down those who they feel are superior to them. Part of it is propaganda, if not caused by certainly exacerbated by.

Like many things in life it's complicated.

Reading the comments, it seems that the take on this in a lot of highly voted comments is the highly simplistic "some people are stupid, others are not".

Let me make one thing clear: Intelligence is NOT Wisdom, and whilst the former might make it easier the get the latter, to begin down the path of growing the latter requires an ability to recognize one's lack of it and such ability is dependent on things like self-confidence, self-criticism, ability to practice introspection and possibly a reasonably varied life-experience, most of which barelly correlate with intelligence (and in some cases the correlation is actually negative).

Yes, it's emotionally satisfying for people who see themselves as intelligent (yet can't even recognize the limits of intelligence) to think their greatest quality (worse, one they're born with rather than acquired) makes them immune to that problem, which they thing is because "most people are stupid".

(Funnily enough, more intelligent people are apparently more likely to fall for scams, which would make sense if one they tended to overestimates the power of mere intelligence)

However emotionally satisfying doesn't mean right and a wise person would suspect such self-serving "I'm great because I have this characteristic and it's those who don't have it who are the problem" 'conclusions'.

Personally I think a lot of the manipulation going on nowadays is at an emotional level (just go learn about modern marketing and start playing attention at how branding in TV is mostly creating associations between the brand and certain emotional urges and impulses, for example perfumes with sex and cars with freedom) and an "indoctrinated" subconscious definitelly bypasses intelligence no mater how extraordinary (Hollywood's typical portrayal of exceptional genious is an almst superhumanly wise person - or alternativelly, nutty professor - all very unrealistic).

Also I've known some highly intelligent people who were so unable to accept that even they were non-omiscient humans who made mistakes, that they migt as well be morons (these people are rare though).

Others have said it already, but anti-intellectualism at its core is alienation. It's a lack of trust in academic or professional authorities and substituting that trust for either ones own experiences or complete hallucinations. People will find alternative communities to trust, especially if they can find something that verifies their existing biases.

If you sense something's wrong with the world, but lack an ability to pinpoint it, you'll go to whoever seems most immediately relatable to you. Reactionaries like Qanon people ended up in that situation. They no longer trust authorities on information outside of cranks on Facebook.

So the question is how do you get more people to adopt a consensus of reality that's based on expertise, professional research, investigation, etc? You have to convince more people they're part of that process and that experts share their interests. America has had that before, but usually in times of conflict against a foreign enemy. The average American used to be really into space travel tech for instance.

There was also a period around the 1890s where the average American was really into electricity as a hobby, like making little circuits or trinkets. It was considered pretty normal back then to have an understanding of how simple circuits like a doorbell worked.

It is tricky to get someone to recognise that they aren't knowlegable enough. Even if you say it as gently as possible, some will still hear "you're dumb" and no one likes that.
Also it's a great tool to manipulate people : "I don't need a scientist trying to explain me life from the depths of their lab !! I have commonsense !!"

Drinking game: click on a random username in the comments section and take a shot every time they start talking out of their ass

My account doesn't count (although I am flattered, weirdo)

Actually, it is not "the world". Only certain parts and groups of it. The US is quite anti-intellectual, especially where the GOP is in power, as they draw their clientele from people who think less for themselves. So, naturally, they discourage intellectual advance wherever they can - Crippling public schools and libraries, making university unaffordable, etc.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think a lot of anti intellectual thinking is a combination of religious and corporate influence on the world.

Religion more or less teaches that you should believe what you're told, not what you discover or learn for yourself. It's a subtle but powerful way to discourage people from seeking the truths in life because they are genuinely convinced they've found the answer for everything.

Similarly with corporate influence so heavily a part of our lives people are quick to fall into the trap of consumerism. From a young age we are being conditioned to accept that it's normal to have to pay multiple times for the same product and to replace our possessions regularly. The cost of living that way makes the time and expense of continuing education unattainable for the average person, which often leads to bitterness about their situation and anger towards those who are able to work a white collar job or live an easier life.

Both are problems without quickly enacted solutions. People have to be taught to think critically without being put off or angered when they get to topics that contradict what they want to believe.

The anglosphere is anti-intellectual and some other parts are, but that does not mean the whole world is, and the influence of the anglosphere is waning fast.

Only when people stop giving credence to the argument that you don't actually need to read or learn math or science to get a job and pay your bills.

I wouldn't say "the world" is anti-intellectual, some populists are. The US right is definitely anti-intellectual and they have better PR so you're getting a lot of if in the media. It's because Republican voters are mostly from small towns and not well educated so the party is trying to demonize education as something elitist. It's the same in Poland where the ruling, far-right party's electorate are mostly people from smaller towns and villages. But in Spain where the right wing voters are mostly upper class and well educated and left wing voters are working class you don't see a lot of anti-intellectual rhetoric. For example the anti-vax movement during covid was mostly non-existent here. I think UK is the same: right wing party is the party of well educated voters so they don't promote anti-intellectual ideas.

I think cultural anti-intelectualism to some extent comes from the belief that intelectuals don't care about their interests or wellbeing. Not helped by the historic lack of accessibility of education

I think the latter is improving somewhat

Had a discussion about hydrogen cars on Lemmy the other day

The discussion involved:

1. Easily provably wrong claims ("Hydrogen isn't getting any support for the government, thats why it's not succeeding"). 2 second google click, and article directly from government showing how they support it.
2. Kept telling me that a HUGE part of the argument should be ignored (efficiency). Science doesn't allow you to simply ignore parts of the debate. And, the efficiency difference wasn't even a small amount (apparently the difference in efficiency was 30%-40% or more, so not a small amount).
3. Character attacks against myself and any references I posted (oh, she's a physicist, even they're wrong sometimes).
4. Conspiracy theories against battery companies or whatever
5. Nitpicking arguments. I posted a youtube video, and 1 point was incorrect (or outdated). They pretended that invalidated the entire argument (and when i posted references which added credibility to a few of the other arguments, they just dismissed me).
6. They kept saying "batteries are obsolete and are an old idea". Water pipes are also old, but, they get refined constantly. Batteries are also evolving constantly. This is borderline common sense..
7. They kept saying I wasn't understandable or rambling or whatever.

The internet has emboldened people who barely passed school because on the internet, they're anonymous and nobody knows who they are. People who know them however in real life would likely ignore their comments.

I think the problem is, its less time consuming to make up nonsense and shout over people, than actually provide accurate, well-referenced information

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Science is the best means by which we can understand the objective truth about the world around us. It's a shame that people are rejecting it in favour of conspiracy and superstition.

Traditionalism vs new approaches to things will never go away until technological progress at least stops accelerating and levels out a little bit. So, a Star Trek utopia basically, where fundamental physics has largely been nailed down.

That said, education is a separate topic, and has generally been trending in a positive direction for most of the past 4000ish years. This has actually made the conflict harsher, over time imo, as the traditionalists are starting to feel threatened at an existential level. Naturally, they're going to meet that feeling of threat with traditional methods, and I'll just let you consider our human history of conflict resolution methods to consider what that might entail.

We just don't believe in our religious books anymore, though. We used to. And that's a problem for some people. Like, the biggest problem that can exist for them, its about souls and salvation, not this "crude matter" as Yoda would say.

This smells like someone who considers himself an “intellectual” and is sick of people disagreeing with him.