The general population is more educated now than in the past, but education alone is not what makes one an intellectual, or rather a good intellectual. Having intellectual virtues what makes one a good intellectual, imo. These virtues include intellectual humility, intellectual courage, intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual responsibility.
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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As long as conservatism exists, no.
As long as there are financial incentives to keep people being anti-intellectual, we will never see a world where the average person acts in good faith and with good knowledge of the subjects they're talking/debating about.
Most people don't have the capacity so it makes them angry and mistrustful of anything that's perceived to be "smart". Maybe if one is a true intellectual they can make dumb down these concepts so that they can at least get a basic understanding of them.
People will always fear that which they cannot understand.
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.
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There's a loud minority, but I'm not sure it's more common than in the past. In fact, (Western) young people now tend to be highly educated and interested in things previously seen as stuffy.
You would think the Internet and access to an unprecedented amount of information would have made us smarter, more emphatic, and so on.
But it turns out people are easily misled and manipulated. Social media quickly starts to feed you more of the same crap just because you watched one video. Village idiots can now form echo chambers with like-minded individuals, e.g flat Earth believers.
Those who want power will take advantage of people who fall into all this.
I don't think this will go away completely, but there is a possibility to reduce it. By improving the education system, and also helping people communicate better, we can expect this problem's severity to reduce.
No because human stupidity is infinite