Asklemmy

As long as conservatism exists, no.

As long as there are financial incentives to keep people being anti-intellectual, we will never see a world where the average person acts in good faith and with good knowledge of the subjects they're talking/debating about.

The general population is more educated now than in the past, but education alone is not what makes one an intellectual, or rather a good intellectual. Having intellectual virtues what makes one a good intellectual, imo. These virtues include intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual responsibility.

Most people don't have the capacity so it makes them angry and mistrustful of anything that's perceived to be "smart". Maybe if one is a true intellectual they can make dumb down these concepts so that they can at least get a basic understanding of them.

People will always fear that which they cannot understand.

I don't think I've ever witnessed literal "anti-intellectualism", perhaps that's a thing around you ? People not caring/understanding the value of knowledge, sure, but deliberately opposing it... that sounds terribly dumb. Not sure what anybody would get out of it

I don't think this will go away completely, but there is a possibility to reduce it. By improving the education system, and also helping people communicate better, we can expect this problem's severity to reduce.

You would think the Internet and access to an unprecedented amount of information would have made us smarter, more emphatic, and so on.

But it turns out people are easily misled and manipulated. Social media quickly starts to feed you more of the same crap just because you watched one video. Village idiots can now form echo chambers with like-minded individuals, e.g flat Earth believers.

Those who want power will take advantage of people who fall into all this.

There's a loud minority, but I'm not sure it's more common than in the past. In fact, (Western) young people now tend to be highly educated and interested in things previously seen as stuffy.

It ebbs and flows. My personal conspiracy is that it's a built-in self-destruct switch in case a species overpowers all predators, diseases, and lack of resources. Some code auto-nerfs the species so they aren't OP forever.

When resources are plentiful, vaccines have stopped most major diseases, everyone is washing their hands and decently educated ..that's when the incels, the homeschooler mommy groups who distrust science, and the religious zealots sow discord and take civilization down, lol.

I'm sure the demographics throughout history change. But the base instincts of greed, fear, and hate blow apart cultures and empires throughout time.