We do live in a short lucky period of time. I agree that people suddenly being able to make a lot of money in IT improved the status of smart people.
As for why smart people don’t do more to improve the status of smart people.… I only have guesses. One is the feeling that status manipulation is unclean—it takes being in the falsehood business. Another is the perception that it’s hard.
I may as well mention treachery—the writers of that tv show got the details right for intelligent talk.
Our short lucky period is embedded in a long unlucky period. As I understand anti-intellectualism (the American variety—I don’t know whether it’s different in other places), it’s theoretically valuing practicality over theory. This is not always the wrong choice, considering the consequences of bad theory, especially state communism.
This might be amusing, considering that a lot of theory went into the surprisingly effective American government. Don’t laugh—the founding fathers had to invent it. So far as I know, there was no prior experience with large-scale democracy.
However, the valuing of practicality only makes sense for people who actually have practical knowledge, and that’s becoming less common because so much more is automated.
I only know a little of the history of how sports came to be hugely important, but I know they weren’t such a big deal in all times and places. We should put them on the list of supernormal stimuli.
As I understand anti-intellectualism (the American variety—I don’t know whether it’s different in other places), it’s theoretically valuing practicality over theory.
That doesn’t sound right to me. “Valuing practicality over theory” is usually called “science”. The slaying of the beautiful hypothesis by a little ugly fact, and all that.
I see anti-intellectualism as consisting of mostly two parts: (1) making smartness to be a bad thing, something to be ashamed of; and (2) suppressing anything outside of groupthink and the general stress on the “us vs them” paradigm.
“Valuing practicality over theory” is usually called “science”.
The greater the inferential distances, the less it seems so. What exactly is the practical aspect of string theory? On the other hand, microwave is pretty useful, but somehow it doesn’t feel scientific. It’s just a technical thing.
It’s like the specialization is too extreme for our intuitions today. It used to be:
Average people who use stuff.
Smart people who do science and create stuff.
But these days it’s more like:
Average people who use stuff.
Skilled people who create stuff.
Smart people who do science… which seems kinda unrelated to the stuff.
The romantic science types like MacGyver or the mad scientists (I’m sure there are many good examples, but they don’t come to my mind right now) are people who study science and then apply it. But in real life, the people who create science, and the people who apply it are not the same.
For example, I can create computer programs, but I never invented anything scientific in computer science. And then there are people who have PhD’s in computer science and publish in peer-reviewed journals, but probably couldn’t make a decent text editor. The link between the top science and doing cool stuff is lost. Einstein can say some weird things about the space-time, but unless he had the Nobel price he couldn’t even become rich from this knowledge. He can’t use his space-time knowledge to build a spaceship or a teleport in his garage. He doesn’t have the power in his hands. A carpenter can make you a new table, but Einstein can’t do anything for you directly.
We don’t see the science directly translated to power, by the scientists. Eisteins are smart, but Zuckerbergs are rich. And even that’s awesome, because Zuckerberg at least is a programmer. It could be worse… you could have a bunch of poorly paid smart programmers (preferably working remotely from some third-world country) making some IT-illiterate boss rich.
I see anti-intellectualism as consisting of mostly two parts: (1) making smartness to be a bad thing, something to be ashamed of; and (2) suppressing anything outside of groupthink and the general stress on the “us vs them” paradigm.
Disagree. Here is a blog post by Eric Raymond describing five different types of anti-intellectualism. You’re (1) and (2) correspond roughly to his thalamic and totalizing types respectively.
Here are his descriptions of the other three:
One kind of “anti-intellectualism” is opposition to “intellectuals” considered as an interest group or social class in the Marxian sense – what Russian writers called the intelligentsia. The only more specific term I can think of for this is anti-intelligentsianism, an ugly coinage which will have to do for the duration of this essay.
Another kind is what I’ll call traditionalism. The traditionalist believes that intellectuals discard or undervalue what Russell Kirk called “the organic wisdom of institutions” (in England and continental Europe this position is associated with Edmund Burke). The traditionalist opposes intellectuals not because they form an interest group but because he believes their ceaseless questioning carelessly damages the organic fabric of society, woven by history and supporting human happiness in ways not understood until it is torn asunder.
Next we come to what I’ll call the epistemic-skeptical anti-intellectual. His complaint is that intellectuals are too prone to overestimate their own cleverness and attempt to commit society to vast utopian schemes that invariably end badly. Where the traditionalist decries intellectuals’ corrosion of the organic social fabric, the epistemic skeptic is more likely to be exercised by disruption of the signals that mediate voluntary economic exchanges. This position is often associated with Friedrich Hayek; one of its more notable exponents in the U.S. is Thomas Sowell, who has written critically about the role of intellectuals in society.
Yeah. When people start using “intelligence” as a label for their ideology, of course the people who dislike the ideology will reject the label. There is a risk of the same thing happening to “rationality”. We have to actively oppose this misuse, because if it becomes popular, most people won’t care about the technical definition of the word.
Traditionalism and skepticism make a lot of sense in a world where many scientific experiments don’t replicate, doesn’t it? It’s like treating all new information as an extremely weak evidence. Which makes sense if you have very low trust of the source that generates the information. And sometimes the sources really are not trustworthy. My only problem with these people is that they don’t understand that some scientific disciplines are more trustworthy than others. On the other hand, even some scientists would object to this.
My only problem with these people is that they don’t understand that some scientific disciplines are more trustworthy than others.
In my experience these people are pretty good at treating different scientific disciplines differently. Frequently much better than the scientists themselves.
...a lot of theory went into the surprisingly effective American government. [...] So far as I know, there was no prior experience with large-scale democracy.
This depends crucially on what you’re counting as large-scale democracy. The Roman Republic in some periods may qualify, although most of the time it seems to have been a de-facto oligarchy and its franchise was always quite limited. Iceland was governed by a representative body, the Althing, between 930 and 1262, but its population has never been very large. Venice had a (rather odd) electoral system during its city-state period. The development of the British Parliament from an advisory council into a full-blown representative body and major seat of government was extremely gradual and started quite early; Wikipedia cites De Montfort’s Parliament in the late 13th century as the first elected one.
I think it’s fair to cite the US under its current constitution as the first modern democratic republic of any great size, but I don’t think I’d call it the first one.
We do live in a short lucky period of time. I agree that people suddenly being able to make a lot of money in IT improved the status of smart people.
As for why smart people don’t do more to improve the status of smart people.… I only have guesses. One is the feeling that status manipulation is unclean—it takes being in the falsehood business. Another is the perception that it’s hard.
I may as well mention treachery—the writers of that tv show got the details right for intelligent talk.
Our short lucky period is embedded in a long unlucky period. As I understand anti-intellectualism (the American variety—I don’t know whether it’s different in other places), it’s theoretically valuing practicality over theory. This is not always the wrong choice, considering the consequences of bad theory, especially state communism.
This might be amusing, considering that a lot of theory went into the surprisingly effective American government. Don’t laugh—the founding fathers had to invent it. So far as I know, there was no prior experience with large-scale democracy.
However, the valuing of practicality only makes sense for people who actually have practical knowledge, and that’s becoming less common because so much more is automated.
I only know a little of the history of how sports came to be hugely important, but I know they weren’t such a big deal in all times and places. We should put them on the list of supernormal stimuli.
That doesn’t sound right to me. “Valuing practicality over theory” is usually called “science”. The slaying of the beautiful hypothesis by a little ugly fact, and all that.
I see anti-intellectualism as consisting of mostly two parts: (1) making smartness to be a bad thing, something to be ashamed of; and (2) suppressing anything outside of groupthink and the general stress on the “us vs them” paradigm.
The greater the inferential distances, the less it seems so. What exactly is the practical aspect of string theory? On the other hand, microwave is pretty useful, but somehow it doesn’t feel scientific. It’s just a technical thing.
It’s like the specialization is too extreme for our intuitions today. It used to be:
Average people who use stuff.
Smart people who do science and create stuff.
But these days it’s more like:
Average people who use stuff.
Skilled people who create stuff.
Smart people who do science… which seems kinda unrelated to the stuff.
The romantic science types like MacGyver or the mad scientists (I’m sure there are many good examples, but they don’t come to my mind right now) are people who study science and then apply it. But in real life, the people who create science, and the people who apply it are not the same.
For example, I can create computer programs, but I never invented anything scientific in computer science. And then there are people who have PhD’s in computer science and publish in peer-reviewed journals, but probably couldn’t make a decent text editor. The link between the top science and doing cool stuff is lost. Einstein can say some weird things about the space-time, but unless he had the Nobel price he couldn’t even become rich from this knowledge. He can’t use his space-time knowledge to build a spaceship or a teleport in his garage. He doesn’t have the power in his hands. A carpenter can make you a new table, but Einstein can’t do anything for you directly.
We don’t see the science directly translated to power, by the scientists. Eisteins are smart, but Zuckerbergs are rich. And even that’s awesome, because Zuckerberg at least is a programmer. It could be worse… you could have a bunch of poorly paid smart programmers (preferably working remotely from some third-world country) making some IT-illiterate boss rich.
Disagree. Here is a blog post by Eric Raymond describing five different types of anti-intellectualism. You’re (1) and (2) correspond roughly to his thalamic and totalizing types respectively.
Here are his descriptions of the other three:
Yeah. When people start using “intelligence” as a label for their ideology, of course the people who dislike the ideology will reject the label. There is a risk of the same thing happening to “rationality”. We have to actively oppose this misuse, because if it becomes popular, most people won’t care about the technical definition of the word.
Traditionalism and skepticism make a lot of sense in a world where many scientific experiments don’t replicate, doesn’t it? It’s like treating all new information as an extremely weak evidence. Which makes sense if you have very low trust of the source that generates the information. And sometimes the sources really are not trustworthy. My only problem with these people is that they don’t understand that some scientific disciplines are more trustworthy than others. On the other hand, even some scientists would object to this.
In my experience these people are pretty good at treating different scientific disciplines differently. Frequently much better than the scientists themselves.
This depends crucially on what you’re counting as large-scale democracy. The Roman Republic in some periods may qualify, although most of the time it seems to have been a de-facto oligarchy and its franchise was always quite limited. Iceland was governed by a representative body, the Althing, between 930 and 1262, but its population has never been very large. Venice had a (rather odd) electoral system during its city-state period. The development of the British Parliament from an advisory council into a full-blown representative body and major seat of government was extremely gradual and started quite early; Wikipedia cites De Montfort’s Parliament in the late 13th century as the first elected one.
I think it’s fair to cite the US under its current constitution as the first modern democratic republic of any great size, but I don’t think I’d call it the first one.