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.
Shut it, nerd
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.
I’d like to preface this by saying I have all the vaccines, including four covid vaccines.
Until just a few years ago, I was all-in on the institutions. You see, institutions have been synonymised with science and intellectualism. Fast forward to covid and we had our healthcare professionals lying to us. “Masks are ineffective.” “Sorry I lied. You’ll die if you don’t wear masks in public.” “Except if you’re a BLM looter, then racism is a public health emergency.” Our leaders were locking us in our homes, closing our bank accounts, banning us from social media, shutting down free speech, and effectively forcing us to take very minimally tested vaccines, repeatedly. They gaslit us about the origin of the virus. We learned that the people who were likely responsible for the lab leak were working in collusion with the Chief Medical Adviser/Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation.
Kind of alarming, right? Data suggests trust in institutions took a huge hit under covid. Not because of “misinformation,” but because of dishonest and authoritarian actions by leaders.
Then we have science. Data shows that political partisanship is at an all time high in universities. Up to 20% of lecturers identify as communists. There is no equivalent on the right. In fact, the mix of liberal and conservative faculty members in universities in America is so lopsided now, it’s as much as 10:1. We can all pretend like this hyper-partisanship doesn’t lead to research and educational biases, but we can see that it does, in real time. For example, trans research. It would be hard to name a field receiving more funding today, nor a field less impartial. Many advocates and researchers argue vehemently that transitioning is necessary to save the lives of those with gender dysphoria. Yet there is not a single study, anywhere, which shows this. The closest researchers have come is arguing that “suicidal ideation” is a synonym for “suicide,” and because self-reported ideation decreases in some studies, this means transition saves lives. Clearly this is incorrect, but such research is so widely used and misused that the President of the U.S. has endorsed it. Conversely, there are numerous reports of researchers being barred from testing hypotheses which question this premise, or outright removed from universities. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] When researchers are prevented from studying all sides of an issue, all that’s left is the narrative of those in power.
For me, the question isn’t “will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?” Instead, it really should be, “what are institutions doing to mend the immense harm they have caused to trust?” I am amazed it hasn’t happened sooner, and that the backlash isn’t even larger.
Wow there is so much misinformation here and fear mongering and anti trans bigotry right under the surface.
If you thought this would come off as looking like a centrist take and not that you were a right wing nut bag trying to frame your misinformed biases as centrism, you utterly failed.
You need to take a long hard look at yourself before you start criticizing “institutions”, there, guy.
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.
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
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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.
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.
i think eventually nothing will matter even to the living, so there will be no use for emotion or conflict. the fact that one doesnt know if theyll have food tomorrow, or if theyll be there tomorrow gives meaning to the fighting. so i feel that it makes sense that people are the way they are
Had a discussion about hydrogen cars on Lemmy the other day
The discussion involved:
- 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.
- 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).
- Character attacks against myself and any references I posted (oh, she’s a physicist, even they’re wrong sometimes).
- Conspiracy theories against battery companies or whatever
- 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).
- 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…
- 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
Your points dispproving hydrogen as a viable energy solution for the future are a bit silly. It’s like saying the future isn’t possible because what is available now. I would actually say you’re being anti-intellectual because you’re not being open minded and solution oriented, which are intellectual traits.
You might need to read the discussion, as I was being solution oriented (Hydrogen has many good uses, and I agreed with that based on evidence).
But, the original poster started using buzzwords (I blocked the guy, so don’t remember them fully, but there was a lot), character attacks, and dismissing major evidence. Character attacks aren’t a valid debating technique…
Fair I don’t have enough context.
In a debate, the idiot will try to pull you to their level so they can beat you with experience.
idiots cite cliches
now you respond touché
telling us how you argued with another idiot on the internet doesn’t really tell us much about anti-intellectualism
it honestly just looks like you’re one of the emboldened.
and now me too! maybe this framing isn’t the most helpful… not the “smartest” framing
If you can provide a way to approach that example differently, I’m open to suggestions. It’s an example of my experience, where my comment includes many of the common techniques they employ
Your comment is
- A character attack (point 3)
- You’re saying case studies and examples aren’t relevant to the conversation (point 2). That’s dismissing evidence.
Why isn’t my experience relevant, and why can’t we post our experiences? Are we required to simply say “yes” or “no” and not why?
Wow so you actually think this is evidence, okay. I’m not even sure how to approach this. I was pretty gentle with you and your character too. I was a fucking asshole to a Hexbear user in another thread.
It does come down to character though. By putting one person as “intellectual” and the other “anti” it’s creating a hierarchy between perspectives. So then the question is an ethical one, is it justified to dismiss another perspective based on XYZ. I’m guessing in this case, dismissing you is the “anti”, right? Based on whatever criteria you’ve chosen. But what happens if we select different criteria?
Congratulations on being an asshole. But being subtle doesn’t change anything (even Trump tried, and got a gag order).
What criteria would you pick to change character attacks, blatant assumption, dismissal of evidence (without counter evidence), incorrect comments, or marketing nonsense (like “water battery” or “greenwashing”) into intellectual arguments?
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.
Oh my god. Stupidity is what people pushes us out of steady, slow, incremental progress towards a local maxima. I’m stunned. You might have something there.
So to further simplify, stupid people are unwitting test subjects that the rest of humanity sometimes benefit from because they do dumb shit no one else would have thought to try.
Yeah pretty much.
I’m only using the word “stupid” here because the thread is about intelligence and anti-intelligence. But more generally, I think there is a reason that it’s easy to plot political ideologies (even outside the two-party system of the US) somewhere on a progressive/conservative spectrum. I believe Progressiveism and Conservativism form the same dichotomy as Mutation and Rote Replication in the context of DNA. In the stock market and economy it’s referred to as Greed and Fear. In philosophy and game theory it’s called Exploration and Exploitation. These are all the same phenomenon to me, one takes a step forward the other takes a step back, sometimes you need a bit more of one to survive, other times you need a bit more of the other.
I’m reminded of an episode from Stargate when one of the Asgardians, Thor I believe, was able to stop replicators from attacking his home world with the help of one of the main Earth characters, Sam. Thor needed someone of a less evolved/“stupider” species to help with the problem after none of the Asgard scientists could find a way. He said with compliment, “It was your stupid idea,” and Sam smiled back.
You know, the only thing that keeps smart people from trying stuff is cultural boundaries and social fitness, which in itself is something evolutionary grown and includes small progress to a local maxima? You know, that the only thing that keeps us from trying unconventional stuff is often the lack of money, which inherently comes from the state. The politics decide about money and they also cater to stupid voters or to business interests. This in itself is stupidity. The answer of stupid is evolutionary benefitting is just fine on the surface, but if you look at the complexity of issues, it is not as clear. And then there is my opinion that i would rather accept some local maxima while some scientists try unconventional stuff than have stupid people always thinking theyre right DKing all the time, because it is exhausting! I know it is not a choice, but if one thinks being and staying stupid is fine, which might be the consequence of “stupidity is evolutionary advantageous”, then I would rather fight the premise, because that would not be acceptable to me.
Oh for sure, please, nobody tell the stupid people about my theory. They’re smarter than they look…
the world would be a much more terrifying place if stupid people doing ‘evil’ (never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity) stuff were instead evil and highly intelligent. I like this version better. we like to think that intelligence brings with itself high morals and every intelligent person is an agent of good. some people might just want to watch the world burn, but that’s a discussion for another thread, I think.
imagine a highly intelligent musk or spez. ugh
You know that much more intelligent people are still doing evil stuff right now and more often than not, because other people do either not act intelligent or consequential. I have a few examples: grandchildren-trick in germany, which relies inherently on grandparents being naive or ignorant about technology or that they might be betrayed. They never thought about that, in that regard you might count being ignorant or naive also as stupid. Another example: some people get into magazine subscriptions and never stop them, even though they do not like it, just because unsubscribing is too inconvenient or saying no to the sales man is too hard. Another one: People go to financial advise and do not know most things about personal finances and investments. So they literally have to trust the advisor, who sometimes only works to get the most out of his customer into his own pocket, that could only be avoided through knowledge and experience, which are traits, that are also associated with smartness. Although not all those people maliciously choose to exploit those naive or lazy or ignorant people, they rely heavily on them to earn their money. If those people would not let themself get exploited, there would literally be less evil, because it could not be commercialized in that way. Hell, even corporate and governmental employees are sometimes as stupid as they could not even send a simple e-mail (there are examples), and would not even learn it, if shown.
I do not accept any answer like “those people that exploit others will find ways”, as you do not know if it would be that way.
I also do not accept anything defending the exploited people, who in my opinion are not inherently stupid from the mentioned circumstence and I do not mean any harm to them. But the things that happened are literally stupid things, that could easily be avoided, so they have done something stupid, as does anyone in this world, so no evil feelings there, just improving the debate focus.
And to answer anything, that would say that some people might have a disability or illness and therefore might be easier to exploit, which could be the case. Those could also be exploited, even if everyone becomes smarter, but: there is a solution to that and that is societal support and care work. If you have a right to health care and to be supported by society to make up for your disabilities, then a judge or judgementally assigned professional might decide for you, so that you do not have any disadvantages due to those circumstances.
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.
Video calls and recordings. Chatgpt. Why will future generations need scripture and math for everybody?
Some should learn it though.
Nope. Everyone will choose not to learn, and we’ll be doomed.
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.
I think there’s this idea of historical tick-tock, that goes from faith or belief to enlightenment. It swings back and forth depending upon geopolitical development.
But that aside, I believe that after the digital revolution, getting people to believe bunk en masse became easier. This has amplified the grift economy, which in turn spreads disinformation, fronts logical fallacies as a debate method and puts bad faith arguments on a pedestal.
Take for instance that guy who illegally experimented on kids because he thought he had a better vaccine than the multi-purpose vaccine that was standardised. After he lost his medical practice he has been forced to rely on financing from conspiracy theorists and socialize with flat earthers because he is now an anti-vaccine icon.
He has to do that because his name is synonymous with malpractice and needs to play the part to feed his face.
This is just one example of the grift economy. For more, seep up “savage alpha male podcasts” to see an even harder grift.
People will remain stupid. But I’m somewhat hopeful that in the next few decades we see AI develop enough that it truly constitutes superintelligence relative to us, and that the scalability of it tips the scales of the continual standoff between intelligence and stupidity forever.
Because I have little hope for humanity overcoming its own multiplying stupidity on its own.
And if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that such a superhuman intelligence will be used for the good of humanity and not to serve targeted ads, manupulate people against one another, and further enrich the wealthiest among us.
You seem to make a bold assumption that it will not develop the capacity for self-determination, something that companies are already struggling with in the current LLM era trying to get foundational models to follow corporate instructions and not break the rules on appeals to empathy like a dying grandma or a potential job loss.
LLMs are not self-aware. They are language prediction models. They say things real people might say because they were fed millions of permutations of real people saying things, so they’re very good at mimicing that. The issue with them not staying on the rails isn’t because they are developing a consciousness, its because trained models are extremely complex and difficult to debug…that’s why you need to be careful with the training data you use. So when a company scrapes its training data off the internet, you end up with LLMs that will say the same stupid shit as you find on the internet now (racism for one…or appeals to empathy like you mentioned)
Not quite.
If you’re actually interested in the topic, I recommend searching for the writeup on Othello GPT from the Harvard/MIT researchers earlier this year.
While the topic of ‘consciousness’ is ridiculous and honestly a red herring (even in neuroscience it’s outside the scope of the science), the question of whether models have developed specialized ‘awareness’ through training is pretty much a closed topic at this point given about a half dozen studies. There was an interesting approach from Anthropic just the other day that’s probably going to be very promising in looking more at features as an introspection unit over individual nodes (i.e. sets of nodes that fire when it is fed DNA sequences), and I expect over the next 12 months the “it’s just statistics” is going to be put to bed once and for all.
While yes, it develops world views and specialized subnetworks based on the training data, things like the concept of self and identity are pretty broadly represented in human writing, don’t you think?
So if we already know for certain a simple toy model fed only legal board game moves builds a dedicated part of its network for internal board representation and tracking of board state, just how certain are you that an exponentially more complex model fed effectively the entire Internet doesn’t have parts of that resulting network dedicated to modeling ego and self-reference?
Also, FYI no one ‘debugs’ model weights. It’s like solving a billion variable algebra equation, and the best we can do at the moment is very loose introspection of toy models we hope are effective approximations of the larger ones - direct manipulation of nodes in process to evaluate effects (i.e. debugging) is effectively a non-starter.
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 !!”I think the best way to be diplomatic about a matter like that is to emphasize that people have different fields of experience and expertise, and you just want to share information on one of the topics where you are more familiar.
Of course, if you treat them as know-nothings who should be grateful that a Knower has condescended to instructing them and they respond as though you are insulting them, it is because you are.
My favorite quip about common sense is “common sense isn’t”
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
may I introduce you to the very real concepts of anti-vaccine people and flat-earthers? or the people disregarding health advice during the pandemic because of some global conspiracy to kill people with masks
Ah I know the flerfs ! I “talked” with them, haha. It’s depressing.
Have you seen people overrate “common sense”? That’s it.
Don’t think deeply, go for common sense, disregard the specialists, we can’t understand their areas of study, therefore they are lying.
Also, avoid studying humanities: history, philosophy, sociology, politics. That will make you poor! Stay technical and mathy, don’t worry about anything else other than making money! Have a life project! Get rich!
That’s the anti intellectual speech.
Who benefits from the smart peoples of the world not questioning the status quo, and the building blocks of capitalism?
In the run up to brevity people were literally saying “were tired of listening to experts” who were saying it would be a bad idea.
Were you not around for the last 4 years when half the country decided all doctors were working together and lying?
How about our populations response to climate scientists.
Or the universally agreed on hatred for any college degree that isn’t sufficiently marketable as “worthless”
The only way I can imagine saying you’ve never seen anti intellectualism is you don’t know what you’re looking for.
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I don’t think I’ve seen this in France at least.
Were you not around for the last 4 years when half the country decided all doctors were working together and lying?
There is absolutely some (growing?) distrust in institutional knowledge, pharmaceutical labs, etc. but it’s far from being as strong as in the US (which is the country I assume you’re referring to?)
Anti intellectualism is a cornerstone of right wing politics which is gaining steam in lots of countries in Europe.
Being stupid is a trend. People love being quirky.
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?
“quirky”=“stupid”? That sounds like a strange definition. Some of the quirkiest people I’ve known have been highly educated.
That’s fair, but that’s not what they said.
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.
A quirky trend that was observed by assimov 43 years ago?
That’s a hell of a trend
