Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/WhyAntiInt.htm

by asciilifeform • 17 years ago

72 60 17 years ago

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

This made me smile:

"I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issue with any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:

What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?

I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover, I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determine whether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games. Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all you have to do is commit to a criterion for testing. It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-minded enough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?"

nazgulnarsil6• 17 years ago

Yeah but on the other hand some people that come off as close minded simply have different axiomatic beliefs than you do. Things that look like logical flaws to you can be perfectly consistent if they hold "belief x". Until you address belief x arguing against specific flaws in their argument is about as effective as hoping to convert catholics by making fun of the pope's hat.

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

Very true - I've found myself arguing to death with people before realizing we had different goals. I just took it for granted that they wanted "xyz obvious thing that anyone would want" from the situation. And often it's me who overlooked something big and was being dense.

jwilliams2• 17 years ago

There is a good TED talk along these lines: http://ted.org/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_m...

DavidSJ2• 17 years ago

Human minds are not formal logical systems. We don't have axioms per se (that is, a belief or desire held with absolute certainty from which all of our other ideas follow). This is true even when we think we believe something axiomatically.

Another way of thinking of this is that our ideas are not a hierarchy with one level at the bottom and each level as the foundation for the next. Instead, they form a "heterarchy" -- a complex, twisted network of interconnections, where the right argument or experience can modify what previously seemed to be the most deeply-held idea.

anamax7• 17 years ago

I didn't see the section where the author described the evidence that he would accept as proving his position wrong.

schtog• 17 years ago

Defense. It is so obvious how some people make fun of it because they are unable themselves.

nazgulnarsil6• 17 years ago

anti-intellectualism often refers to being anti ivy league more so than actual anti-rationality.

unalone• 17 years ago

It refers to pretty much anything. It's such an empty phrase.

I have heard it used to describe anti-rationality, though. Some people think that it's easier to decide nothing has meaning and nothing makes sense: that way, their own problems aren't their own fault.

nazgulnarsil6• 17 years ago

true, it's as empty a signifier as "conservative" following the rise of the neo-cons. Basic terminology has been blurred to the point of hilarity in regards to any political term. I think this last election has pretty much ruined "intellectualism vs anti-intellectualism" for a few years at least.

modoc• 17 years ago

I think of it more as being a de-emphasis on grades versus sports in school, how people will make fun of you for using a wide vocabulary with multi-syllabic words, that being smart or well educated is much less important than looks, being good at sports, etc...

You heard a lot of this sort of fuss over how Obama's speeches were phrased. Lots of people were angry that he didn't "sound like one of us", or that he was "talking down to us", etc....

For some reason seeing a football player make a touchdown doesn't make the average person feel fat or slow, but hearing someone using "big words" and talking about something harder to understand that last night reality tv show seems to make the average person feel dumb or talked down to. And they lash back.

iamwil• 17 years ago

Supermodels seem to make the average woman feel fat though--enough that there are people advocating plus-size models, etc.

What's shared between intellectuals and supermodels that isn't with football players?

Alex3917• 17 years ago

So you believe there should be more emphasis on grades in school?

Tangurena• 17 years ago

de Tocqueville noticed anti-intellectualism was rampant in the US when he wrote Democracy in America 150 years ago. He wrote to try to explain why the US revolution resulted in a democratic nation, while the French revolution a couple years later turned out so terribly bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America

nazgulnarsil6• 17 years ago

what sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear grows more timely every year as the bureaucratic mess that runs the country gets worse.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

logicalmind2• 17 years ago

I would say that anti-intellectualism is more about people putting faith above reason. An intellectual believes they have the superior mind and can reason about anything. An anti-intellectual believes they have no great intellect and rely on alternative senses to guide them.

anamax7• 17 years ago

> I would say that anti-intellectualism is more about people putting faith above reason.

Except that it's not. Intellectuals are as faith-driven, if not more so. The difference is that intellectuals think that they're not.

karl11• 17 years ago

The most important conclusion, in my opinion, is this one:

"there is a great deal of hostility toward [systematic and disciplined inquiry] by people who feel their values threatened"

This is the most widespread and most damaging anti-intellectual mindset in our country today. People do not take the time to understand their own values, what makes them so, and are too stubborn to flip-flop when evidence emerges or changes significantly.

gaius• 17 years ago

On the other hand, that it threatens/opposes traditional values doesn't automatically imply that it's worth doing, any more than something being traditional meaning it should be exempt from revision.

kaens• 17 years ago

Exactly - that's (one of the reasons) why systematic and disciplined inquiry is important.

anamax7• 17 years ago

That's the conclusion that "intellectuals" will feel most smug about, but the truthful version doesn't speak well of them.

"Intellectuals" have a nasty habit of believing that their conclusions are more grounded in science than they actually are. (For example, the existence of AGW doesn't actually lead to any policy, let alone a specific one.) Moreover, their "it's science" belief gives them unwarranted confidence which they turn to rage when they're questioned by their "inferiors".

Intellectuals also think that their expertise means things that it doesn't. For example, they're sympathetic to the idea that the best chess player should be president of the chess club.

cousin_it• 17 years ago

Anyone who equates liberals=intellectual or conservative=anti-intellectual hasn't bothered to swallow the real bitter pill of the article: the idea that liberal cultural relativism is no less anti-intellectual than religious fundamentalism. Sorry for the mouthful :-)

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

I'm a bit annoyed by this:

"Why did the same society that flocked to Star Wars decide only a few years earlier that the real adventure of going to the Moon was too expensive to sustain?"

I kinda liked Star Wars, but I'm opposed to spending money on manned space flight. IIRC, many in the scientific community think it's a waste of resources as it costs 10x as much to build a vehicle that has a chance of returning a human to earth safely as it does to send up an unmanned vehicle that can be jettisoned when its work is done.

My point isn't to argue about the benefits of visiting the moon, but it's somewhat ironic that an article on anti-intellectualism would pose such a false question.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

Intellectuals share a common culture and common political beliefs from that culture, which they often neglect to apply any sort of skeptical thought to. That makes them like the rest of us, except they are more annoying because they claim to be more objective and rational.

gnaritas2• 17 years ago

They are more objective and rational; that's what makes them intellectuals.

patio11• 17 years ago

Why did the same society that flocked to Star Wars decide only a few years earlier that the real adventure of going to the Moon was too expensive to sustain?

If Star Wars had cost several billion dollars a ticket and been ten hours of pictures of lifeless rocks, I predict it would not have been that popular, either.

philluminati• 17 years ago

This is the part of the article which bothered me. There are consistent references to creativity being a child putting every object in their mouth or a dog eating everything because of it's natural curiosity whilst simultaneously arguing that abstraction is a form of intelligence not expressed in the old times.

Would a person with the ability to abstract feel the need to generate every pattern? Would Western Europe have really demonstrated its "creativiity or intelligence" by creating every version of a pattern....or just a few?

froo• 17 years ago

Semi offtopic, but Ze Frank's attitude to anti-intellectualism.

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/050506.html

dgtized• 17 years ago

The article makes too black and white a distinction between tinkering and creativity. The author is also very focused on the concept of an idea being fundamentally new in order for it be a creative action. I'm not certain that you can so easily distinguish between a new idea and a variation on an old idea.

As example, was the development of a cell phone a new idea? I believe the idea of combining a radio, a simple computer, and a battery into a portable device intended to connect to the existing telephone network is not particularly creative, but an extraordinarily useful variation on existing ideas. A variation that has had sufficient impact that we tend to think of it as a new idea. If one goes back to the development of each of the pieces, I believe one can paint a similar picture for each of the priors. Even if one goes back as far as basic technology like fire, spears, agriculture or the wheel I think similar stories could be told.

The point of this is not that there are no new ideas under the sun, but that tinkering is the process of experimenting, and I don't particularly believe that it is possible to create a new idea (under whatever definition of new) without experimenting or tinkering with the priors.

steveplace• 17 years ago

extraordinarily useful variation on existing ideas

So could we postulate that tinkering and creativity are not discrete but rather a continuous evolution (a bunch of variations)?

FleursDuMal• 17 years ago

Am I alone in thinking this is quite a bizarre article which doesn't really scratch the surface of anti-intellectualism?

His argument about children and their lack of genuine creativity seems a little misplaced - they are disparaged as 'tinkerers' rather than creators, but I can think of no better word than 'tinkerer' to describe Leonardo, or indeed many other great artists/scientists.

Aside from all that, I can think of plenty of reasons why anti-intellectualism would exist:

- not all forms of expert knowledge are equally valid. It was only around 100 years ago that medical expertise progressed to the point where it was more likely to cure than kill you.

- the value of expert knowledge/intellectual capital can be hard to determine. For example, once you move past the hard sciences, to sociology and literary theory and beyond, how much is contributed to human knowledge and wellbeing? How much power/status should be accorded to people in these intellectual disciplines?

- societies are composed of counterbalancing forces, between elements which are conservative/progressive, peaceful/aggressive, practical/visionary etc. No more than every business can be a startup, how can all people in a society consider intellectual investigation the main objective, as opposed to more mundane aspects of maintaining and running the society?

- science seems to have been stranded on one side of an ideological divide, where its support/derision is now a badge of political identity.

gjm11• 17 years ago

No, you aren't alone. I was similarly unimpressed.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

I don't know, I think it was fairly thorough -- at least, for a quick read on somebody's webpage.

Regarding Leonardo as a tinkerer, based on his description of Mozart's works, I'm pretty sure that this guy would find da Vinci to be creative.

As for the rest -- I was excited when he mentioned cost versus benefit for curiosity, and disappointed that he didn't spend more time on it.

Curiosity is dangerous. I've been lucky to have survived several different bouts of raging curiosity; as a species, curiosity about things like nuclear reactions has brought with it the risk of self-annihilation. Space exploration has claimed a number of lives, as has more conventional exploration throughout history.

If you're one of the people that likes to equate everything that modern humans do to some evolutionary development, then I think it would be easy to show an evolutionary disadvantage for very curious creatures. The most curious have pretty good odds of disappearing and never coming back, or getting themselves otherwise killed or removed from the gene pool.

What would be left is the childlike curiosity that he was talking about -- curiosity sufficient for exploring the immediate environment, figuring out what's good to eat and what isn't, what's dangerous and what isn't, and once the environment becomes "safe", you stop exploring.

I have one quibble though: I don't think that this solves the case of anti-intellectualism in the sense that most people would think of the term, which is a hostile response to intellectualism. What he described was more of an apathy towards rigorous curiosity; when I think of anti-intellectualism, I think back to high school.

My guess is hostility towards intellectualism is just a way for some people to level the social playing field against other people. Just as intellectuals who are not well-suited to sports will sniff down their noses at the very idea of chasing some stupid ball around a field, so do the greater majority of people sniff down their noses at the very idea of exercising your brain if you don't have to.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

You are by no means a alone. I very much wanted to read an interesting article but I didn't get beyond his example that Romans never really explored?!

You know, besides that whole empire thing that wrapped around the Mediterranean those Romans basically stayed inside their 7 hills.

tlb2• 17 years ago

He attributes the failure of some cultures to explore to lack of curiosity or anti-intellectualism. But exploration of that scale in that era was incredibly dangerous. A sufficient explanation is that individual explorers didn't want to be killed by barbarians, drowned at sea, or eaten by cannibals.

Continuing to send manned missions to the moon after 1976 didn't seem that useful. Personally, I think I got more out of Star Wars than yet another moon landing.

santadays• 17 years ago

Couldn't creativity be described with memetics. That ideas aren't tied to the survival of their host but, like our genes, with their ability to continue to replicate. Most ideas are just other ideas that have been refined to survive new circumstances.

Intelligence has given our species an advantage because of the predictions we are able to make on given evidence that allow us to avoid danger, the mechanism that allows us to make these predictions is somewhat obfuscated at this point.

So as a person develops from childhood their model of the world will contain many contradictory ideas. Given a certain set of circumstances these contradictions are brought to light and depending on the usefulness, and sometimes, but not always, the correctness of the predictions each of these ideas allowed one will survive or grow stronger.

The modern world has allowed us to measure things more closely, and more rigorously trim our ideas. This is done mainly in smaller elite circles of academia.

Then anti-intellectualism is simply the result of people who have models of the world that reject ideas which would do them harm, sometimes with no real benefit. I say no benefit because these new "intellectual" ideas simply aren't verifiable to most of the population. Them believing these ideas would be equivalent to believing parishioner.

However, I would say certain discoveries, or actions broaden general populations worldview and prime them for scientific ideas. The moon landing, technology in general are good examples.

grandalf• 17 years ago

I think he's defining what it means to be intellectual too narrowly. If he considers only phd level research "intellectual" then of course he'll be disappointed by an inventive game imagined by a child.

But what are most phd programs but social rituals in which people first absorb all of the field's dogma, then take prelims, and then work on a niche area of their own advisor's well known work? Such a ritual confers upon the participant the status of "intellectual", but it's primary purpose is social filtering, much like a fraternity hazing ritual or a Dick Cheney duck hunting trip.

Why is creativity not more widespread? Simply because it isn't valued by society. An established professor isn't looking for a totally fresh take on ideas, he's looking for someone who highly values his existing contribution and is willing to do grunt work in exchange for the stamp of institutional approval.

This is also what Society wants. The role of the intellectual is to help keep the status quo in society... hence hte need for a 5 year ritual to pass the gilded baton. Now, anyone can simply look at the embossed seal and feel totally confident that the recipient knows what he is talking about.

In my opinion, intellectuals are people who enjoy being rational and creating biproducts of rationality. Most doctoral theses don't fall under this definition. Most are so unbearable by the time of the defense that the student drops the area of study completely and enters the private sector, aided by the official seal of his institution and the perks of being part of a select social group.

Some people don't like to read, to think, or to discuss ideas. So be it. Such a person may still come up with a brilliant solution to a problem, even by accident. In most cases such a person (like the phd student) has no incentive to change the status quo, merely to play along with it and collect a paycheck. But so be it.

Intellectuals typically surround themselves by others with similar interests and skills. To the true intellectual, creativity is everywhere, from the lyrics of a rap song to the carona on an espresso to the small improvement to the glibc strlen function.

When creativity and insight are coupled with personal courage we get things like linux, Einsteinian physics, and many smaller but equally courageous accomplishments.

Sitting in academe complaining about anti-intellectualism is not creative, intellectual, or courageous!

DavidSJ2• 17 years ago

Two serious problems with the article (though I didn't read every word). First, he says:

What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?

I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific.

This falsifiability criterion is what determines whether a theory is scientific, but there is a larger category of theories which are not all empirically testable yet are subject to rational criticism, and are therefore rational, though we must generally hold them with a lower degree of confidence than we do our scientific theories.

In fact, his very claim is an example of a rational yet non-scientific theory! For he himself has not provided us with the evidence it would take to prove his theory that evidence is necessary wrong! And so we see that there are meaningful, important ideas which can be judged on criteria other than evidence (in this case, internal contradiction, though that is far from the only criterion).

Second:

But the view that we all start out curious and creative, and have those qualities systematically stifled, fails to address some core questions. Why should it be possible to stifle these qualities at all? If there are people who see benefit from stifling curiosity and creativity, why should those benefits outweigh the benefits of encouraging curiosity and creativity? And assuming that there are people with a vested interest in stifling curiosity and creativity, why should they be able to prevail over those members of society who value curiosity and creativity? If curiosity and creativity are general traits of human beings, anti-intellectualism should be a rare and aberrant phenomenon. It should be regarded as a variety of mental retardation, or a condition as undesirable as impotence. The only possible conclusion is that there is something fundamentally wrong with this model of human nature.

This is certainly not the only possible conclusion. Only if you presume that human behavior never has unintended consequences must you think that someone must see themselves as "benefiting" from an act in order to do it. The simple fact is that our educational institutions do do tremendous damage to curiosity and creativity, and they do so despite having the exact opposite motivation.

Further, his examples of civilizations that failed to make various or other accomplishments (Sub-Saharan Africans, Romans, etc.) is only evidence that problem-solving is hard, and that the innate curiosity that human beings are born with is not enough. We need a good tradition of scientific and rational discovery to complement our innate curiosity, in order to create great things.

ww• 17 years ago

>>>>I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific.

>>This falsifiability criterion is what determines whether a theory is scientific, but there is a larger category of theories which are not all empirically testable yet are subject to rational criticism, and are therefore rational, though we must generally hold them with a lower degree of confidence than we do our scientific theories.

The essence of anti-intellectualism is when we say that there are subjects that are too deep or too laborious to discuss. Suppose we say that (1) empiricism is not empirically testable, and then say that (2) empiricism is true, and then say that (3) everything that is true must be testable. Now suppose someone were to come along and say that (4) It is the case that (1) and (3) are mutually exclusive. The shying away from statements/discussions like (4) is the essence of anti-intellectualism which spawns from all manner of modern philosophical beliefs. You'll notice a shying away of this type of discussion in the article. Not inspecting your true core beliefs is what anti-intellectualism is.

jibiki• 17 years ago

The article is actually not about why anti-intellectualism exists. It is about resolving the following paradox: all people are curious, but most are anti-intellectual. His resolution is that the premise is false: most people, in fact, are not curious (as he establishes by redefining curiosity.)

One thing that strikes me about most of the comments here on HN is that they don't address the meat of the argument, which is that people are anti-curiosity. It is very possible that anti-intellectualism is motivated by all sorts of proximal causes, but the author's argument would still be valid if people, by nature, just weren't curious.

Of course, addressing the author's argument is hard, because it is based on a redefinition, and a fuzzy one at that. He wants curiosity to be something above the sort of "tinkering" that children do to find out about their world. He never sets any metrics, or really gives any examples, to show the difference between the two.

anamax7• 17 years ago

> His resolution is that the premise is false: most people, in fact, are not curious (as he establishes by redefining curiosity.)

Thus demonstrating that he's making an "intellectual argument".

People are curious, they're just not curious in the way that he thinks that they should be, which makes them, in his eyes, inferior. The article is his "proof" of their inferiority.

Yes, those are sneer quotes.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

If we all like play, or tinkering as he puts it, then why is there anti-intellectualism? Surely knowledge is the most interesting tinkering and perhaps infinite.

I can not imagine anything more creative than two ancient people sitting there and thinking, hmm we do need to keep a record of how much crop we are making so that we can be prepared for natural disasters and not starve. I've noticed that usually in the summer we do good, but in winter not so good, how much do we need to survive winter? And then sitting there and thinking hmm well I suppose if I make a line on this thing that means x amount, two lines mean well x amount. Basically they are both agreeing on a communicating system through symbols. If that is tinkering, then what is creativity? Is creativity imagining what alien life looks like? Or is that tinkering? Is perhaps creativity the synthesis of many tinkering? I simply don't get it, but then the guy studies pseudo-science? It seems he is merely speculating and very subjective. What do I mean by subjective? Well subjectivity is thinking of what creativity could be. When one indulges in subjectivity they start making their own rules, they start fantasising and lose track of reality. In my opinion, that is what this guy is doing.

anamax7• 17 years ago

> If we all like play, or tinkering as he puts it, then why is there anti-intellectualism?

Because play, tinkering, and intellectualism aren't related in any way that would mean "like play" or "like tinkering" would imply "like intellectualism".

tlb2• 17 years ago

Here's my rebuttal based on refutable statements.

I'm a curious and intellectual person. I spend most of my time learning and exploring.

While I have traveled to various parts of the world, I would not spend months traveling by foot or horse risking barbarian attacks, disease, and hypothermia, in order to discover new land.

Therefore, it's possible that the Romans were curious and intellectual even though they didn't explore Scandinavia.

tjic• 17 years ago

> The Romans never explored significantly outside their Empire.

I can put this another way:

EVERY place that the Romans explored, they conquered.

pg• 17 years ago

That's not true. They went on plenty of expeditions at the edges of territory they controlled.

Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?

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