I see the point, but I don’t think intellectual elitism is the same as anti-anti-intellectualism. I think intellectual elitism creates a sense of alienation from science that in fact leads to anti-intellectualism. “I have more specialized knowledge than you” is not the same as “I’m better than you,” and acknowledging that is the solution
I think they’re joking about the elitism part. People just need to stop to listen to idiots
The issue is that anti-intellectualists think that the very concept of knowing more than them about any given topic is elitism.
My conspiracy theorist mom would go on and on about how her spending an afternoon googling something put her ideas at a higher level than someone who got a degree studying it, and if I agreed with the person with the degree, then I was an idiot for not following her. She thought that right up until she died trying to treat her cancer with quack therapies.
Regardless of whether we frame it as “I’m better than you because I know more than you,” the anti-intellectualists will still be framing it as “I’m better than you because my ‘gut feeling’ knows more than you.” It’s a competition to them, not because someone told them they were lesser, but because they already believed they were greater.
Well at least your anti vaccine mom is dead
There are still way too many people like her who exist unfortunately
IDK if we wanna go that aggressive if the parent commenter didn’t exactly go that far first
I will.
Every dead antivaxxer makes the world a slightly better place
Right, but people will call nearly anything elitism these days. The reason schools don’t offer accelerated learning programs for students who aren’t challenged by the average coursework is because people were calling that type of thing elitist.
Instead, now we put the upper quartile in the same classes as the lower quartile so that nobody receives the particular level and kind of attention that they need, and everyone is held to “average” whether they’re predisposed to be above that expectation or below it.
If someone is talented at a sport, people shower them with praise and give them full rides to college. If someone is talented at math or writing, people tell them to be a team player and stop surpassing their peers by so far. Merit-based scholarships are rare nowadays too, so good luck going to a top university just because you excel at your subjects…
Merit-based scholarships are rare nowadays too, so good luck going to a top university just because you excel at your subjects…
At least that is not true.
'The rest of it is, highschools are an enforcer of conformity and woe be to anyone that bends the curve.When I was applying for financial aid I kept being told “We don’t offer merit-based scholarships. Everything is need-based and you’re considered for it automatically. No need to apply for one.”
There might be some for STEM fields, but rarely a full ride. More like a $1000 discount on your tuition each semester, which leaves you with only about several dozen thousand of debt by the time you graduate…
False dichotomy. There are credentialed doctors and scientists on both sides. It’s just that the actual research keeps coming down on the antivaxxer’s side.
Example: Henry Ford Health Dr. Marcus Zervos.
What?
I’m not for or against vaccines. I was raised with my mother as a hard anti-vax and the rest of my family as a hard pro-vax, so I was used as an example a few too many times. I’ll meet in the middle.
The misguided notion that you can find some sort of truth by meeting verifiable falsehoods halfway, is like 90% of the problem.
I suppose
What does ‘in the middle’ look like? Getting vaccines for some things and not others?
Nope. It looks like I don’t personally, am past the age of childhood vaccines anyway, and don’t give a shit whether other people do or not.
You’re stupid.
You’re an antivaxxer, you’re just trying to hide it because you don’t want to be called stupid
Nope. I’m entirely neutral, though I find it interesting how aggressive people get when anyone doesn’t jump to their exact opinion. I’m not calling anyone stupid, yet you are. Interesting.
Because you’re stupid
There is no “middle”
There are people who think vaccines are good, and there are idiots
There can be a middle to anything. Opinions are just that: opinions. I am neutral towards them. Me and my opinion does not affect you and your opinion, I am not stopping you from doing whatever you like.
You’re wrong
The opinions of antivaxxers, bigots etc. affect others
I think you know this this, and are being disingenuous
That, or you genuinely are that stupid, which is just sad
I agree that they affect others when aggressively expressed. I also believe that they don’t when kept to oneself.
Antivaxxers cause harm, especially to the most vulnerable people in society
I stand by my statement, you’re stupid.
You say this, but I got banned from a sub for being a corporate shill for trying to explain to what I’m pretty sure was a 13 year old kid that AI is not going to dissapear and that it’s not just a fun toy used to make shitty TikTok videos
I would explain what AI Agents were and how they worked and what they did and I was told I was a troll that like to suck my bosses dick… and then I was banned
My job? Software engineer. Been one for over 20 years.
Those same people that called me a troll, a shill, a company man that liked to suck my bosses dick; the mods that banned me; they are all probably here right now talking about how stupid it is that people don’t listen to experts…
You’re a 1 week old account, and all you’ve done is shill AI non stop (with arguments that are wrong and uninformed).
I think that supposed 13 year old is smarter than you, and I also think the mod was probably in the right.
Oh, also. AI as in LLMs and agents is not the future. The fact that you’re a software engineer means nothing, you either are a bot or drank the kool aid. And after seeing you say lies such as “AI is already not a failure” or that is has done new things “more than any other invention in human history”, I don’t know if I should believe that you are a software engineer.
This is what I’m talking about…
Deep Learning had a major breakthrough around 2012 with ImageNet. What we know today is already 14 years old. It wasn’t as good as it is today, or as accessible 14 years ago, but it was around. And people really think the world is just going to decide to forget we invented it any day now
Oh my God shuuut uuuup, we don’t care!
I’m 37, you stupid fucking shill.
And you are not a software developer. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you have 20 years experience at being alive.
If you’re 37 and you still call people a shill that’s just sad
Weird you both think I’m an AI shill but also I’m not in the industry
As someone who is an expert in one area and as dependent as anyone else in others, and who also hates appeals to authority -
To me, the correct stance is that any should be able to question things that don’t make intuitive sense or that one suspects might be a perspective motivated by financial considerations instead of expertise.
Note that I said question. Not invent your own replacement fever-dream explanation.
Questions require good-faith attempts to find information and understand.
Not pitch something where its main virtue is that it makes ignorance feel good actually.
I just want people to trust. Being skeptical and wanting to learn is perfectly fine, but also, people do go to school for these things for years, you know? Have a little a faith they aren’t lying to you.
By “you” I just mean people generally, of course.
Counterpoint: a group of MDs in Toronto published a peer-reviewed paper in 2020 claiming SARS/Cov2 was from outer space.
MDs are not scientists. They pretend they are.
This is kind of the attitude I’m talking about.
Is this story even notable? Like, how much attention is this even getting?
I am not interested in propaganda that sews distrust in our institutions and collective efforts when I’ve already said that being skeptical is fine.
There’s a reason peer reviewed studies are so important.
It’s literally other people with knowledge on the subject questioning the results of a study until everyone agrees to the conclusion.
It’s not just one person pulling something out of their ass and saying “Look! This thing!” and everyone just going along with it. It’s questioned and proven multiple times.
I’ve gone to college. I’ve been taught buy people who are supposed to know this shit how to find scholarly sources. I’ve cited such sources in essays. Something I’ve never been shown are those peer reviews. Hell, it seems like half the experiments I was taught about in school come with a “And here’s why we ethically CAN’T repeat this study” like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
I feel like pointing at “influencers” and putting the blame on them isn’t really correct. They are probably more of a symptom.
Whose fault is it that some random blogger is being treated the same as people who studied something for decades?
E.g. the media owned by the rich or the governments
bought“lobbied” by the rich.A few crazy people will always exist, but currently the “inmates are running the asylum” and they actively promote this garbage. Just look at RFK.
The idea that its scientists vs bloggers was created by PR firms. It’s scientists and bloggers vs scientists and bloggers. Both sides have geniuses and idiots.
No, not in the cases of vaccines or climate change. The incredibly overwhelming majority of scientists are on the plainly correct side of both of those, they don’t have to be geniuses for that, just somewhat educated.
Highly educated and credentialed people have complex disagreements on both subjects.
Climate change: that the climate changes and is changing is self-evident, but how it will change and how much of that change is influenced by human activity is a subject of fierce debate.
Vaccines: while nobody thinks that vaccines are never effective, studies consistently show links between high vaccination and chronic health issues, leading to many highly credentialed and educated doctors and researchers arguing that vaccines are a risk factor for SIDs and allergic rhinitis.
Henry Ford Health recently conducted a large study, which they themselves described as near perfect, that showed links to many chronic health conditions, though not autism.
