Anti- Intellectualism

[oldtimer]

1 minute ago, Jeff Matthews said:

That is a good example.  I don't think starting the fib is reflective of the general population, so I would not compare the source to all the unwitting participants who pass it along.

Now that is interesting when compared with your views of foreign interference of our elections through social media.  If as you have said, there is tons of BS out there anyway, and so what, then why draw a distinction now between the originator and the unwitting dupes?

[oldtimer]

is it not the same thing?  is it not as you mentioned showing a little skepticism and doing a little research before spreading it further?  Is it not part and parcel of the same problem (issue)?  The prior link mentions "confirmation bias."  In other words, the unwitting participants are merely displaying confirmation bias.

[Jeff Matthews]

1 minute ago, oldtimer said:

Now that is interesting when compared with your views of foreign interference of our elections through social media.  If as you have said, there is tons of BS out there anyway, and so what, then why draw a distinction now between the originator and the unwitting dupes?

To answer the question you posed, you suggested that on the whole, the population has become more "anti-intellectual," and you tried to make that point partly by reference to a more culpable party - namely, the ones who make up this "fake news."  It's one thing to parrot false information unwittingly, and it's another to just flat-out make it up.  I never suggested that the persons who make it up are less culpable.  I did, however, state that it doesn't really matter whether Russia makes up fake news or not, considering we have our own citizens churning it out. 

 

In our rights-based democracy, we have to tolerate "speech" such as we see in The National Enquirer, with all its crazy, fake stories.  That's part of free speech.  If we have to tolerate domestic free speech, what difference does it make that Russians play the game, too?   I guess we could try to shield ourselves from communications with the outside world a bit more, but I have some doubts it would be without its own set of drawbacks.

 

So, I would not point to a culpable few as evidence of a trend at large.  As far as unwittingly passing on false information, this is not surprising.  As I said, this is the Age of Information.  There is so much information being passed back and forth, compared to decades past, that you can only expect people not to try to Wiki and Google everything they hear.  Speaking of which...  Do you remember how we used to repeat that Gene Simmons had a cow tongue implanted in place of his real tongue?  lol!  Classic!

[oldtimer]

Ha!  Actually, I don't remember that.  

[Jeff Matthews]

10 minutes ago, oldtimer said:

is it not the same thing?  is it not as you mentioned showing a little skepticism and doing a little research before spreading it further?  Is it not part and parcel of the same problem (issue)?  The prior link mentions "confirmation bias."  In other words, the unwitting participants are merely displaying confirmation bias.

I agree with this premise, but I do not believe confirmation bias is at some supposed "all-time high."  As I said previously, we pass on so much more information.  If you said, "Yellowstone National Park has a lot of big waterfalls," I'd believe it, even if I've not heard that same thing before.  Now, if I was going to plan a trip to go there based on what you said, I'd try to confirm your claim first.  But the difference is what it costs me to believe you.  It costs me nothing if it doesn't affect me materially.  But if I'm going to put my money and time behind your claim, the cost is real, and my motives change.  I become more careful.  This is nothing new.

[oldtimer]

I recall asking "where does that lunacy start" but not that the originator was more culpable.  That is just splitting hairs in the conversation of course.  The cost issue is interesting.  You say people will pass on crap because they don't think they have an investment in time or money.  True enough.  The problem as I see it is the lack of understanding that as a society, there is an ultimate cost, and it can come back at the individual through unwitting actions.

[richieb]

The moment I saw the thread subject I wondered how many pages before it went political, taking the wrong fork in the road and Locked. Im a bit shocked it hasn't turned that direction. Nice to see OT keepin' the train on the rails. 

[oldtimer]

Thanks, but it's not me, just the good people of the forum.

[Jeff Matthews]

23 minutes ago, oldtimer said:

The problem as I see it is the lack of understanding that as a society, there is an ultimate cost, and it can come back at the individual through unwitting actions.

Similar to the freeloader problem, which always has been. 

 

As you know from our many years of discussions, I have evolved to believe that "fake news" is for entertainment and simple people.  Money and business make the world go 'round.  Money and business don't care one iota about fake news.  They care about money.  So, it doesn't bother me so much that candidate X could lose to candidate Y because of fake news.  Business and money will insure a reasonably smooth transition of political control.

 

P.S.  I do realize that some money and business relies heavily on one or the other candidate's control.  I am talking about a macro view.

[oldtimer]

6 minutes ago, Jeff Matthews said:

Similar to the freeloader problem, which always has been. 

 

As you know from our many years of discussions, I have evolved to believe that "fake news" is for entertainment and simple people.  Money and business make the world go 'round.  Money and business don't care one iota about fake news.  They care about money.  So, it doesn't bother me so much that candidate X could lose to candidate Y because of fake news.  Business and money will insure a reasonably smooth transition of the reigns.

I'm cool with that, but still see a problem with the general culture.  Great societies collapse when cultural aspects become trivial and ignored.  We remember great civilizations by what they leave behind---art, ideas, architecture.  Business  and money can help foster these things, but on their own, as the only pursuits of the people, civilizations will still collapse.  Greed may be good, but it's not that good.

[Jeff Matthews]

Just now, oldtimer said:

I'm cool with that, but still see a problem with the general culture.  Great societies collapse when cultural aspects become trivial and ignored.  We remember great civilizations by what they leave behind---art, ideas, architecture.  Business  and money can help foster these things, but on their own,  civilizations will still collapse.  

When we think of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, we don't conjure up pictures of all the smut and brothels that surrounded them as a functioning part of ancient Greek society.  It's because those other things are, indeed, trivial and not very noteworthy in terms of history.  Same here.  We have some very great things going on as we speak.  These things will make the history books.  The Kardashians will not.  

[oldtimer]

I can only hope that the 25% geocentric solar system crowd will diminish, lest we be remembered for rejecting that which made us great.  I had to mention it again, because it freaks me out.  1 out of 4?  As seen by the question mark, I question that number.

[Jeff Matthews]

Just now, oldtimer said:

I can only hope that the 25% geocentric solar system crowd will diminish, lest we be remembered for rejecting that which made us great.

lol.  I question that number.  Some people just give patently wrong answers to be flippant.  I have great-nieces and nephews in elementary school, and they frequently surprise me with things they say.  The other day, they were talking about the "waxing gibbous moon."  I am guessing that, at least in their school, nobody is coming out believing the earth is flat.

[oldtimer]

Just now, Jeff Matthews said:

lol.  I question that number.  Some people just give patently wrong answers to be flippant.  I have great-nieces and nephews in elementary school, and they frequently surprise me with things they say.  The other day, they were talking about the "waxing gibbous moon."  I am guessing that, at least in their school, nobody is coming out believing the earth is flat.

Hopefully, of those that attend.  Many are now sending their children to "alternative" schools or home schooling because of the anti-intellectual attacks on education.  Maybe 1 out of 4 is closer than we want to believe.

[Jeff Matthews]

2 minutes ago, oldtimer said:

Hopefully, of those that attend.  Many are now sending their children to "alternative" schools or home schooling because of the anti-intellectual attacks on education.  Maybe 1 out of 4 is closer than we want to believe.

Maybe.  However, even so, I don't believe the fate of our society is dependent upon changes by the 1 in 4 people who believe the earth is the center of the solar system.  I am more inclined to believe that the fate of society is probably in the hands of the top 20%.

[oldtimer]

1 minute ago, Jeff Matthews said:

Maybe.  However, even so, I don't believe the fate of our society is dependent upon changes by the 1 in 4 people who believe the earth is the center of the solar system.  I am more inclined to believe that the fate of society is probably in the hands of the top 20%.

Fair enough.  Then the top 20 could step it up a little.  The top  5 or 10 can't provide all of the money And all of the culture.

[DrWho]

1 hour ago, Jeff Matthews said:

Maybe.  However, even so, I don't believe the fate of our society is dependent upon changes by the 1 in 4 people who believe the earth is the center of the solar system.  I am more inclined to believe that the fate of society is probably in the hands of the top 20%.

By definition, my exact position in space is the center of the universe.....there is an "observation sphere" that grows out from our own personal perspectives that propagates at the speed of light. That is the sphere of our own personal reality. Not to totally derail the point, but maybe people aren't crazy when they think the world revolves around them....from their own perspective, it does (and must).

 

Totally a different subject, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't some semblance of that at the very core of the crazy ideas. Like the rain dances of the ancient egyptians? They were aware that there were forces affecting nature....today we call it weather and try to describe it with equations. Back then they tried to describe and control it with pictures and dancing. Ya, they were totally idiots - but then I don't think we realize just how dumb we are today (in much the same way).....again, totally way off topic, but a fun thought to think about (and please forgive the rudimentary examples....this is a much more fleshed out though if you start digging into it deeper).

[Jeff Matthews]

17 minutes ago, DrWho said:

By definition, my exact position in space is the center of the universe.....there is an "observation sphere" that grows out from our own personal perspectives that propagates at the speed of light. That is the sphere of our own personal reality. Not to totally derail the point, but maybe people aren't crazy when they think the world revolves around them....from their own perspective, it does (and must).

That's a different take than the expanding universe theory, which holds we are not at the center just because all the other galaxies are moving away from us.

[DrWho]

Having not lived through your era Oldtimer, I share your sentiments, but I see it slightly differently....I never experienced all these changes to which you refer.

 

However, I have experienced the onslaught of information. A few years ago I started studying cognitive bias and explored all sorts of ways we illogically process the world. My original goal was to free myself of bias and become a more open-minded thinker (mostly in hopes of becoming a better engineer). Fast forward to after a few years of periodic study, and I've now concluded that cognitive bias is a good thing - but with caveats.  A lot of the research points to cognitive bias as a shortcut heuristic to making fast decisions - which affects things like survival, or narrow windows of opportunity, etc... There simply isn't enough time or information available to make a truly unbiased decision. I've spent my entire life trying to be unbiased, so this has been a bit of a revelation for me, and has really changed how I consciously interact with the world. Hey, I'm a slow learner (I can't believe it took me this long), but I think many other people have already noticed this - although they may not verbalize it.

 

Back to the massive onslaught of information we experience today.....

 

It is incredibly overwhelming to try and understand any of the topics of interest today. Pick any topic of interest, and you're going to find that to truly understand all the perspectives will requires dozens and dozens of experts speaking to very narrow and specific fields of study. Take audio for instance....we have material science, physics, electrical engineering, acoustic engineers, psychiatry, sociology, mechanical engineering, product design, art, music, philosophy, business, etc..... an incredibly complicated area of study. For those that don't dive into all the detail (for whatever reason), they are choosing a path of cognitive bias and want a reductionist conclusion to helping them make a purchasing decision. So we gravitate to stupid ideas like "Top 10 lists" or "Here's what you really need to know about your next purchase", etc.... A reductionist 'prescription for the lack in your life'.

 

...and getting back to your point Oldtimer, I think the moronic nature of it all is fueled by materialism. Don't bother me with the facts, just tell me what I need to do to have a more fulfilling life. We are constantly bombarded with all this information, and we think we need to make sense of it all in order to be fulfilled. We know we don't have time to take it all in, so give me the reader's digest / sparknotes version so that my life can benefit without putting in all the work.....not knowing that the putting in of the work is what forms us into that better life we seek. Meanwhile we're constantly bombarded with marketing convincing us that our life is empty, so we end up believing that too because we don't have enough cognitive ability to see otherwise.

 

This is why unplugging from as much media as possible is so much nicer. Just get rid of the influx of information and free yourself to process the beauty (or insanity) around you. The rat race is an illusion, but it's a hard illusion to break free from.

 

 

Anyways, just some random thoughts on the subject. I agree there is an age of anti-intellectualism in America, and unfortunately I see it spreading to Europe. China has been fairly resistant to it as far as I can tell....that's one thing that nation does really well (respecting knowledge, wisdom and the elderly). It'll be interesting to see how they cope as the information era slowly breaks its way in. I think anti-intellectualism is a combination of the information era, the need for cognitive bias, and the ideals passed down from earlier generations (materialism and factory mindsets).

[DrWho]

1 hour ago, Jeff Matthews said:

That's a different take than the expanding universe theory, which holds we are not at the center just because all the other galaxies are moving away from us.

That comes down to how one defines center.....the center of the observable space is in fact the point of the observer. You are positing a scenario where there exists space outside of the observation sphere, and then there is a hypothetical center to that hypothetical existence outside the sphere. If you're standing in the middle of a dark room, and you turn on a light positioned on your head, then you don't know that you're in the middle of the room until the light bounces off the walls back to you. It doesn't matter that you see suspended lava lamps between you and the wall. In fact, until the light bounces back, the room doesn't even exist. It's the same experience for the observer standing in the corner of the room - there is an observation sphere expanding where you don't know where you are until the light reflects back. I'm not willing to make any assumptions about the space outside that observation window, and I don't think we're seeing any light returning back yet (or could we even measure it if it did?). What if the person in the corner of the room is in the middle of the house that contains multiple rooms? Who is then in the "true center"? This is why I always fall back to the observer is the center of their own universe. We are each limited to our own observational spheres (which is not an argument for multiple truths but that's another topic).

 

There's a bit of a semantic argument behind my point, but it's because we have to be careful about the conclusions we draw from our observations. If our understanding of the world was limited to acoustics, then our understanding of things would be very tainted (things like doppler shift, or the duality and limitation of frequency response versus impulse response, etc). We have similar effects occurring when looking at special-relativity and quantum problems....We bend all of our math to the idea that speed of light is constant because that's our fastest observation medium. It's the rate at which our existence propagates. Then we get into weird things like the wave/particle duality of light because we only have light to describe light. It's the same way frequency response and impulse response are coupled together intrinsically, but we think of them separately.

 

Btw, that's not to get confused with the doppler shift of light and the hubble telescope stuff....my point is that if we understood the world through the lens of sound (instead of light), then our understanding of things like doppler shift, frequency response, impulse response would be very different. It's because we have the faster medium of light that we're able to understand the acoustical domain to a greater level of detail. Our understanding of light is limited to our observation of light - we don't have a faster medium to understand it. The same thing happens with space-time....we like to think of space and time separately, but they're intrinsically related and fundamentally the same thing. We just don't exist in a dimension where we can experience it outside of itself. This causes us to make weird statements like "the universe is expanding" because we're trying to understand a higher dimensional problem using boring old Newtonian Physics world analogies that we experience in our daily lives. We're not using an intrinsic understanding of space-time and gravity to describe these behaviors (I'm also not sure it's possible to gain an intrinsic understanding due to the observational limits).

 

And just to clarify, I'm not challenging any of the scientific conclusions....I'm just saying the way we talk about it is way abstracted from what is actually being observed. As future observations are made, I have no doubt that the hubble telescope conclusions will be modified...not in a way that discredits current observation, but in a way that finds new ways to conceptualize and model the behaviors we're seeing. Wouldn't it be ironic if all these stars had slightly different elemental makeups that result in different spectral content - they could actually be moving towards us if that were the case. I would never defend that position personally, but it's helpful in a simple way to understand limitations of our observations. We really aren't observing that much right now and we're making huge mathematical projections. What does it even matter if the universe is expanding, contracting, or staying the same? Why are we trying to put the universe into a box (or sphere or whatever) and trying to define a middle? I've long given up having any understanding of the shape of space, and rather just accept the observations for what they are. Why create a bucket when there is no need for a bucket?

 

I apologize for making weak points, but it would take weeks if not months to revisit the maths of it all. This is a topic that interests me greatly, but is totally off-topic - so I'm trying to be brief. My point is that there is obfuscation in this world to any of the "simple facts" we're told to believe. As such, the 25%'ers may or may not be that crazy - and only history will tell....even if they're crazy regardless, that's just how history looks back on things. I think the ancients were brilliant for recognizing that there are forces in nature, and that maybe one day we'll be able to manipulate them. They were crazy for dancing, and slitting their wrists, and sacrificing their babies, but they recognized a great force outside of themselves. It just took a while to start looking in the right places. And the same will be said for us by future generations.