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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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A quirky trend that was observed by assimov 43 years ago?
That’s a hell of a trend
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.
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 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.
