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.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think a lot of anti intellectual thinking is a combination of religious and corporate influence on the world.
Religion more or less teaches that you should believe what you’re told, not what you discover or learn for yourself. It’s a subtle but powerful way to discourage people from seeking the truths in life because they are genuinely convinced they’ve found the answer for everything.
Similarly with corporate influence so heavily a part of our lives people are quick to fall into the trap of consumerism. From a young age we are being conditioned to accept that it’s normal to have to pay multiple times for the same product and to replace our possessions regularly. The cost of living that way makes the time and expense of continuing education unattainable for the average person, which often leads to bitterness about their situation and anger towards those who are able to work a white collar job or live an easier life.
Both are problems without quickly enacted solutions. People have to be taught to think critically without being put off or angered when they get to topics that contradict what they want to believe.
It's not unpopular and more so true. Religion is anti-intellectual, and the main abrahamic ones double-dip hard on it. If you ever tried arguing with a religious person about faith, it's incredibly obvious how impactful it is on their critical thinking.
Capitalism also prefers anti-intellectual thinking because it makes people easier to manipulate and exploit into accepting shitty conditions and supporting the system. I think a large cause for the lack of critical thinking and self-reflection is because too many people live a very self-centred life where they consider themselves superior automatically and never take the time to question their beliefs, or if they do, refuse to face contradictions because it's harder than staying the same.
Wait til AI takes prominence. What effect on intellectualism that might have remains to be seen. As long as LLMs aren’t tailored to bias certain views, it may just lift humanity.
It’s just gonna pollute the internet with even more bullshit. Language models don’t really understand topics, they just put together words that are likely to appear with each other. Biases are inherent to this design.
Yeah, even if it worked perfectly it would only be as smart as the training data.
As long as LLMs aren’t tailored to bias certain views, it may just lift humanity.
The bias is already there (even if those that own it and command that bias may claim otherwise and you may believe them) and the “lift humanity” pitch is marketing bullshit.
As long as LLMs aren’t tailored to bias certain views, it may just lift humanity.
Press x to doubt on this.
Nothing about a glorified auto-fill will uplift humanity. We already see the opposite happening right now. LLMs output is already making the internet worse because its being flooded with auto-fill bullshit. And that in turn is making LLMs even worse over time, because instead of just being garbage out, now the garbage goes in and cimes out worse than the first time.
And its impossible for LLMs to not have bias, and ones claiming to not have bias are probably the worst of all.
LLMs are not the aspects of AI that are going to have the biggest impact. It will be AI based tools for evaluating data in the aid of specific tasks that has the big effect
As soon as the AIs start saying it would make the most sense to equally distribute resources and having 10 people hoarding all the wealth is bad for the economy they’re going to get some adjustments real fucking fast.
I somehow envy your optimism.
I’m already seeing people come into software dev support forums asking “ChatGPT said you could do this but it’s not compiling” and people replying that no, that’s not possible and them arguing about it because ChatGPT said it.
Once Elon Musk unleashes his “uncensored” AI chat bot, we’re going to be flooded with made-up misinformation, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
Well I don’t have a dog in the AI fight. I did sufficiently couch my comments as a thought experiment. I could have postulated the opposite scenario I suppose. Or none at all. I do see that there are some strong and confident predictions as to the outcomes.
I do see that there are some strong and confident predictions as to the outcomes.
I see what’s already happened so far with LLMs and there is no sign of “uplifting” outside of marketing propaganda.
I do see that there are some strong and confident predictions as to the outcomes.
Yeah most people don’t “couch ideas as thought experiments” they just say what they think. Although i don’t think anyone replying made a prediction really. We can already see what’s happening and we know that bias is inherent to the entire design of LLMs.
Illiberal populism isn’t going anywhere, unfortunately.
People will always fear that which they cannot understand.
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.
From what I’ve heard, this is mostly a US phenomenon.
There’s plenty of it in the UK too.
You writing that this is mostly a US phenomenon (which is not true) is weirdly appropriate, since it shows the main issue (not being informed enough about what happens around the world).
It happens everywhere.
It’s an unfortunate side effect of an unequal society where people feel left behind and then see a lot of people who had the advantage and privilege to go though years of education lecturing them on how to live. This breeds resentment and makes them targets for movements and groups that oppose these ideas.
unequal society
The US is much more unequal than most other developed countries though, hence why it happens much more in the US than in other places.
You’re talking about mostly religion. Not one specific but for all of them to work they have to dumb people down, otherwise why would you follow crazy rules if you can have your faith at home without crazyness?
I believe that in a far future, as humanity gather more and more knowledge keeping religion up will be kind of hard, but until them we will have to go through the “dark ages of christianism” where our lifes will be controled by some old conservarive people. But they will die out.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is mostly religion. A lot of people are stupid. Sincere question, when was the last time you talked to a normie?
I chatted with my hairdresser yesterday. She didn’t know:
- what a DMZ is.
- who SBF or Elizabeth Holmes are.
- that there is an anti trust case against Google.
- the word “query” as in “search query”.
For Halloween my girlfriend and I are going as SBF and Elizabeth Holmes. She commented that “no one outside [my] little circle is going to know who those people are.” I started to disagree but, in a way, she’s right.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s wonderful and hilarious and chill af. She’s just a bit dumb. And that’s okay but it’s true.
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Well the point to my comment wasn’t how smart I may be, it was that I feel like those topics are pretty standard things. If you watch or follow the news you’ll pick it up pretty quickly.
Also I didn’t insult my girlfriend. I insulted my hair stylist. But I don’t think she cares we have a good rapport.
I have a background in networking.
I know what a DMZ is.
I have no idea what these 2 are.
Yes, I heard about it at some point.
I would have thought a fair few number of people knew that. Maybe it’s just your barber who doesn’t care enough.
Not being able to give correct answers to these questions (one of them being fairly technical) doesn’t indicate anything about her intellect though
None of those as exemples of inteligence they are exemples of ignorance, lack of information, that can happen either by lacking access to or not caring about.
The general population is more educated now than in the past, but education alone is not what makes one an intellectual, or rather a good intellectual. Having intellectual virtues what makes one a good intellectual, imo. These virtues include intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual responsibility.
I agree. But way too fucking many people will ignore the last 2.
“the world” is not anti-intellectual, you just hang out with the wrong people
I'm very specific about my friends, I promise you that isn't the problem. It's more of an observational thing, and it is clearly present in western society at the very least. Even with my friends, we are still an insignificant minority compared to the larger population.
Any thought or idea that begins with “people are…” is doomed.
There is no such thing as “people;" there is I only you, this person here, that person there, and so on.
Perhaps not the whole world, but I’m many/most countries, the larger structures, like government and business, absolutely are anti-intellectual. Nice to have an academic friend group, but that doesn’t change the fact that capitalism makes education less accessible in order to rely on an undereducated workforce, and then politicians push it even further for the sake of easy control.
Some folks can’t much help who they hang out with. Any American is literally surrounded by thousands of miles of other Americans, and anti-intellectualism is rampant in the country. It’s not like Sweden is going to let Americans immigrate with the justification that “I’m a sad intellectual surrounded by boorish peasants.”
It’s not like Sweden is going to let Americans immigrate with the justification that “I’m a sad intellectual surrounded by boorish peasants.”
It’s not? Assuming you could get yourself there, I mean.
No country will just let in any rando. They have to want you there. There’s humanitarian programs, but largely you need to have something they want.
That’s typically special skills (MD, PhD, athletics, etc.). Or money. Money will get you anywhere.
Being stupid is a trend. People love being quirky.
A quirky trend that was observed by assimov 43 years ago?
That’s a hell of a trend
“quirky”=“stupid”? That sounds like a strange definition. Some of the quirkiest people I’ve known have been highly educated.
Quirky synonyms:
eccentric, idiosyncratic, unconventional, unorthodox, unusual, off-centre, strange, bizarre, weird, peculiar, odd, freakish, outlandish, offbeat, out of the ordinary, Bohemian, alternative, zany, outré, wacky, freaky, kinky, way-out, far out, kooky, oddball, off the wall, in left field, bizarro
That’s what I thought.
I think they mean “quirky” in the sense of standing out. Some people will walk over corpses if it makes them stand out.
Being overtly stupid is apparently a great way of standing out very quickly, if you’re not picky about the kind of attention you get.That’s fair, but that’s not what they said.
What does being “quirky” have to do with being stupid? Is there some published conformist standard of normal that makes people smart for adhering to it?
It’s not so simple I think. Anti-intellectualism is a symptom of the greater human condition. Part of it is the scapegoat aspect. If something has a name then it’s easy to point a finger at it, easy to blame the person who named it. Part of it is envy, people trying to tear down those who they feel are superior to them. Part of it is propaganda, if not caused by certainly exacerbated by.
Like many things in life it’s complicated.
You forgot laziness. Intellectualism is difficult, and letting your emotions do your thinking is super easy. Then there’s the greed, or more accurately the greedy, who will use anti-intellectualism to get what they want from others, be it money, power, or something else.
I maintain that it’s pretty simple, actually. Humans are animals, just like any other. That comes with irrationality baked in. We think we’re so much better than, say, orangutans, but are we really? I’m not impressed. I often think about how we would behave if we didn’t have language or opposable thumbs. I realized one day that all we have to do is observe traffic.
I mean, the thumbs help hold stuff, sure, but it’s our large pre-frontal cortex that really comes in clutch. That and our penchant for violence. There’s evidence to show that the Neanderthals were possibly more advanced than us before they “died out,” but also less violent and selfish. It’s those traits that led us to kill them or cut off their access to resources while we took them all.
We are still animals. Any biologist will tell you that, but that’s not a negative thing, it’s just a facts. It’s like saying we’re mammals. It really comes down to how you define “better.” and “successful.” Obviously, we are making those determinations from our point of view, so we tend to define them with the things only we do. But if we’re defining successful by technological advancement or the ability to do advanced math, or even versatility in abilities, we’re at least top 3. But those orangutans are pretty nifty with their use of twigs sometimes, so don’t count them out.
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’s a lack of trust in academic or professional authorities and substituting that trust for either ones own experiences or complete hallucinations.
Often, it’s trust in cult of personality figures that are saying what the alienated person already wants to believe.
How do you distinguish between those two, especially if you are not intellectual.
If I was in college still there’s a part of me that would have wanted to make it my life’s work to reach the same level of “legitimacy” as PeePee Jordanson so that I could spend all my time sabotaging his reputation as publicly as possible
Ayn Rand once said “It is not I who will die, it is the world.” I will never stop being anti-intellectual personally so when I die it can’t change.
Sorry, the answer is no but if you trust the quote the world will only exist for another 30-40 years so I wouldn’t worry.
Are you seriously invoking Ayn Rand as a source of wisdom?
And that particularly solipsistic quote?
Oh look another “materialist” who relies on the pan-psychic influence of others to determine reality. How Jungian of you. Thatcher once said, “there is no society, only individuals.” Do you disagree? I imagine so. Even Marx called out Commodity Fetishism but you put the greatest fetish of all on society and reality as something inherent. If reality is just an interplay of individuals, the truth proven by both Rand and Marx, then an individual is free to form their own reality away from your own.
You'll never know the true truth because you're still enslaved the collective unconsciousness.
Also, did you really think someone was actually identifying as anti-intellectual. Come on, I know you couldn’t understand the the ironic Freud in your “I want dommy mommy to step on me” thread but this is ridiculous. Looks like you got owned on two fetishes, mommy and commodity.
You believe you are the Main Character of the universe and that everything ceases to exist when you die. And you’re accusing me of believing in woo bullshit.
And you’re such a scratched liberal that you started foaming at the mouth with some weird personal attack you’ve been holding on to, apparently, for weeks.
Solipsism is a helluva drug.
You believe you are the Main Character of the universe and that everything ceases to exist when you die
Man you really don’t understand when people are doing bits. You think people would just go on the internet and not mean literally everything they type?
Hexbear needs a villian, don’t you understand UlyssesT? You wouldn’t be having half of the enjoyment in this conversation if I just did a normal comment. But now I got to do a silly bit and you got to pretend you’re arguing with someone serious.
Discussion on the internet is inherently worthless because no one ever changes their opinions. It’s a black box in which no matter the inputs, the outputs remain the same. Is it really so wrong then to lay down ideas like “seriousness” if it doesn’t change anything? Your answer will be of course that I’m delusional and only doing this to cope or something because that’s what your opinion started as. No matter what you or I say, we cannot change.
Stop posting and touch grass if you want truth, nothing here matters.
Man you really don’t understand when people are doing bits.
Being obnoxious and falling back to “it was just a bit” is tiresome and belongs in the dustbin of history right alongside the “ironic” nazis of 4chan. Insincere people like you can move the goalposts all you want but I just see the obnoxious part and stop there because that’s all there usually is under those pretentious masks of irony.
Stop posting and touch grass if you want truth
You first, especially because of your masturbatory “I am internet Diogenes” LARPing attempts, be they bits or ironic or whatever you want to pretend they were.
Discussion on the internet is inherently worthless
Your internet nihilism is childish and about 20 years stale. 4chan is still open if you want to go somewhere that still praises internet nihilism.
nothing here matters
If you’re not being praised for your Diogenes LARP, bit or irony or whatever, nothing matters because all you care about is being praised for your bit/irony/very-smartness!
It’s alright, Rand was wrong about that statement just like she was wrong about virtually everything she said.
Seriously. Bizarre quote to take as truth
on a communist forumtbf lemmy.ml is mostly neolib in practice.
Wait, but that’s a hexbear user? What?
Nah it’s a bit. No one actually unironically identifies as anti-intellectual.
I’m kinda of a Diogenes figure. Sometimes you get “behold a man” and sometimes you get a homeless man yelling at passerbys.
I’m kinda of a Diogenes figure.
No. You’re just being obnoxiously smug while expecting people to praise you as some sort of eccentric philosopher.
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” ― Carl Sagan
There’s countless “Digoenes figures” like yourself already and they all believe they are the Main Character, too. And like you already did in the other comment chain here, they also get just as mad when their junk philosophy (such as, in your case, Ayn Rand) gets called out.
No. You’re just being obnoxiously smug while expecting people to praise you as some sort of eccentric philosopher.
Literally describing myself as a homeless man and anti-intellectual. No one is taking it seriously but you man.
You’re right. I just saw they were a comrade bear and made the assumption
They’re a haver of interesting takes, to say the least
No, because there are a lot of people who don’t care to learn more than they need to and aren’t curious to learn more, or they do not want to change their mind and are set in their beliefs.
Reading the comments, it seems that the take on this in a lot of highly voted comments is the highly simplistic “some people are stupid, others are not”.
Let me make one thing clear: Intelligence is NOT Wisdom, and whilst the former might make it easier the get the latter, to begin down the path of growing the latter requires an ability to recognize one’s lack of it and such ability is dependent on things like self-confidence, self-criticism, ability to practice introspection and possibly a reasonably varied life-experience, most of which barelly correlate with intelligence (and in some cases the correlation is actually negative).
Yes, it’s emotionally satisfying for people who see themselves as intelligent (yet can’t even recognize the limits of intelligence) to think their greatest quality (worse, one they’re born with rather than acquired) makes them immune to that problem, which they thing is because “most people are stupid”.
(Funnily enough, more intelligent people are apparently more likely to fall for scams, which would make sense if one they tended to overestimates the power of mere intelligence)
However emotionally satisfying doesn’t mean right and a wise person would suspect such self-serving “I’m great because I have this characteristic and it’s those who don’t have it who are the problem” ‘conclusions’.
Personally I think a lot of the manipulation going on nowadays is at an emotional level (just go learn about modern marketing and start playing attention at how branding in TV is mostly creating associations between the brand and certain emotional urges and impulses, for example perfumes with sex and cars with freedom) and an “indoctrinated” subconscious definitelly bypasses intelligence no mater how extraordinary (Hollywood’s typical portrayal of exceptional genious is an almst superhumanly wise person - or alternativelly, nutty professor - all very unrealistic).
Also I’ve known some highly intelligent people who were so unable to accept that even they were non-omiscient humans who made mistakes, that they migt as well be morons (these people are rare though).
Anybody who thinks themselves above making mistakes is delusional. It's really concerning how people will live such self-centred lives without greater consideration or introspection. So many people lack self-awareness and the ability to properly process emotions without just giving in to them. Cultural conditioning and manipulation definitely plays a part in this. It took me so long to realise how wrong the consumption of animal products was because until I got around the age of 12 I thought much more highly of people and didn't believe so many people would partake, willing or ignorantly, in the abuse of animals so carelessly. Realising how selfish and narrow-minded many people are is really saddening. It's very rare for someone to break free from social conditioning, even more so by their own decisions alone.
I also have to agree the comments saying shit like 'some people are stupid, others are not' are just redundant. Similarly, the people who say 'not everyone is an idiot, you have to see it from their perspective' are also incredibly annoying. Even if people have reasons, they don't provide adequate justifications. I can understand why they may have an idea or perspective, but it doesn't make it valid. I have gone through understanding people more than most people to ever have existed will have tried, but I can't fight every single case. Too many people think their opinion matters equally to another's who has invested magnitudes more time into formulating it. I think people really need a humbling to be able to appreciate things and learn more.
