CDZ Anti-intellectualism -- The very idea of this being an actual "thing" is stupid from jump

[JoeMoma]

I'm smart enough to call the plumber.

 

[Elvis Obama]

Anti-intellectualism is an actual thing because:

1- Stupid people spend their lives being shown how stupid they are. They fail at school, or barely scrape by at best. They grow to resent smart people. They beat them up at recess, and that makes the hurt go away, but only for a very short time. Then they graduate, or drop out. The "smart kids" go on to have intellectually stimulating, important and profitable careers, while they are stuck in a menial and low-paying job.

2- Every now and again, a small dog pulls back the curtain which hides the Wizard. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", goes the standard refrain. Stupid, uneducated herd animals are infinitely preferable to thoughtful, smart, well educated people, when that moment arises.

Ronald Reagan didn't invent anti-intellectualism (he wasn't smart enough). He did evolve the practice, with his golly-gee-whiz, Grandpa Walton in the White House, intuitive approach to policy matters. After all, the man did receive his CIA briefings in cartoon form.

 

[Correll]

Anti-intellectualism is an actual thing because:

1- Stupid people spend their lives being shown how stupid they are. They fail at school, or barely scrape by at best. They grow to resent smart people. They beat them up at recess, and that makes the hurt go away, but only for a very short time. Then they graduate, or drop out. The "smart kids" go on to have intellectually stimulating, important and profitable careers, while they are stuck in a menial and low-paying job.

2- Every now and again, a small dog pulls back the curtain which hides the Wizard. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", goes the standard refrain. Stupid, uneducated herd animals are infinitely preferable to thoughtful, smart, well educated people, when that moment arises.

Ronald Reagan didn't invent anti-intellectualism (he wasn't smart enough). He did evolve the practice, with his golly-gee-whiz, Grandpa Walton in the White House, intuitive approach to policy matters. After all, the man did receive his CIA briefings in cartoon form.

1. Stupid people spend their lives working to be popular. And are often successful at that. That benefits them in a number of ways. It often leads to stimulating, important and profitable careers.

2. Intelligence is no protection from being swayed by being told what you want to hear.

3. Ronald Reagan was NOT an anti-intellectual. His policies were mostly quite brilliant, and brilliantly successful. If you never read the back story on the "intellectuals" who came up with the SDI plan, you might want to to see how he was quite happy to work with intellectuals.

 

[320 Years of History]

Anti-intellectualism is an actual thing because:

1- Stupid people spend their lives being shown how stupid they are.
2- Every now and again, a small dog pulls back the curtain which hides the Wizard.

Lamentably, most cognitively incompetent people are, IMO, too so to truly be anti-intellectuals, for one must have a reasonable level of "smarts" to willfully reject and refute cogent ideas. I'm sure there are scores of ignoramuses who appear to be anti-intellectual, but who are in fact just "dumber than the day is long" and for whom being called anti-intellectual is genuinely not derisive but rather complementary or merely a neutral observation of fact.

Among well known politicians today, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell strike me as anti-intellectuals. Neither of them is abjectly stupid, but both will, at the drop of a hat, utter any manner of foolishness to sway folks who truly cannot see past their BS lines of argument and specious assertions/premises.

The salient distinction between idiots and anti-intellectuals is that most folks of the latter ilk are dangerous because, if given legitimacy and legitimate power, they can and "muck up the works" for everyone but themselves. They know what they are doing, and they know the true fools don't. Actual nitwits are dangerous only insofar as they are easily manipulated and when they exist in great enough numbers such as we've seen in the 2016 election cycle, they enable the manipulators like Trump and McConnell to achieve their duplicitously advertised goals.

Red:
Incompetent and ignorant people are quite often too dull, ill informed or misinformed to actually know they are thus. Yes, loons are often told they are amiss in their thinking. Indeed, the proposed solution for overcoming the Dunning-Kruger effect in incompetent people is to directly tell them they are incompetent and show them why that is so. Unfortunately the problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that incompetent people have probably been getting this type of feedback for years and failed to take much notice. Moreover, when they are told they don't actually know what they are doing/talking about, they respond defensively, as though the speaker is out to disparage them. The fact of the matter is that rather than considering that the person telling them so may be right, they "dig in" and and then launch a barrage of invectives.

How can one almost instantly identify the folks who fit the above description of being "too stupid to know they are stupid?" Easy. They are the folks who are convinced of their infallibility; they are the people who are 100% certain they are right on "whatever" if not everything and who never present a cogent case showing that to be so. They just know they are right and won't hear news to the contrary. They are the absolutists of our society, the folks who'll find some minor point in a discussion, latch onto it, perceiving it's the most important thing aside from water, and then attempt to discredit a sound conclusion based on whatever conjured crap that wholly ignores the key themes at hand.

Even now, I'll wager someone reading this is of a mind to refute the remarks I've offered above. I suspect they'll attempt to do so without regard for the fact that the Dunning-Kruger effect and its impacts have been proven over and over again. Another group of researchers who arrived at the same conclusions published their findings in "Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent."

I'm sure we've all heard the saying "one rises to one's level of incompetence." Well that's quite true of pretty much everyone. The matter of incompetence isn't limited to utter buffoons. What's going on is that even people who are smart, competent, in one or several ways are limited in the degree of competence they can exhibit, that is, unless and until they acquire new knowledge and skills that allow them to become competent in new ways.

That's where anti-intellectualism kicks in. That's where folks who are smart in one or a few disciplines reach their level of incompetence. For Donald Trump, there's no question he's smart re: how to boost his own fortunes, even those of individuals close to him or with whom he works directly. When it comes to national public policy and foreign policy, however, the man is clueless, misguided, stupid, misinformed, not thinking, whatever you want to call it. Dunning-Kruger merely calls it incompetent.

• The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance
• How unaware are the unskilled? Empirical tests of the ‘‘signal extraction’’ counter-explanation for the Dunning–Kruger effect in self-evaluation of performance
• Accuracy of Physician Self-assessment Compared With Observed Measures of Competence

Frankly, I am content with the term "incompetent" to describe the behaviors I see both on political forums and in real world politics. I suspect that many folks will yet see being called incompetent as an insult, but in the context in which Dunning and Kruger use it, it's not that at all, so I don't mean it as one either. Incompetent is merely the thing one is when one thinks one knows something that one does not, yet one nonetheless acts without confirming the verity of one's preconceived notions. Stupid to greater and lesser degrees and not necessarily in all areas (remember, smart folks aren't absolutists), is what one is when one fails to make the appropriate objectively rigorous investigation to confirm one's ideas. In other words, to be stupid is to act in spite of being ignorant, thus why this thread's title equates anti-intellectualism with stupidity.



Now, let me digress away a bit from strict "Dunning-Kruger" and explore some of the behaviors observed in the political battle between Trump and and his competitors, as well as among his supporters and those who favor other candidates. The following isn't critical to the ideas offered above, but it provides some of the background information one may need to understand the thoughts above somewhat more completely. The content provided below is not my own. It is taken from an outstanding series of laymen-directed writings one can find here: 10 Most Brilliant Social Psychology Experiments .

Storming and Norming:
In looking at the Trump phenomenon and popularity in the 2016 election cycle, one might ask, "How can Trump be so incompetent and yet so many millions of people support him? It just can't be that so many folks 'just don't get it', that so many people are too incompetent to see through Trump's BS. " Well the sad reality is that as many people as can exist can indeed be that oblivious to the reality. Notwithstanding the will (or lack of will, depending on one's point of approach) to refrain from critically examining what Trump has had to say over the past year, notwithstanding folks' genuine desire to have their worries and ideas validated by someone whom they hold in high regard (albeit doing so because the man is rich, thus smart at making money for himself, rather than because he's just smart in general), one could succinctly call Trump's popularity and the will of millions to "get on his wagon" inertial.

We all know that humans are natural born conformers – we copy each other’s dress sense, ways of talking and attitudes, often without a second thought. But exactly how far does this conformity go? Do you think it is possible you would deny unambiguous information from your own senses just to conform with other people?

Have a look at the figure below. Compare the line on the left with the three lines on the right: A, B & C. Which of these three lines is the same length as the lonesome line on the left?

It’s obviously C. And yet in a classic psychology experiment conducted in the 1950s, 76% of people denied their own senses at least once, choosing either A or B. What kind of strong-arm psychological pressure tactics made them do this?

The fascinating thing about this experiment was that its creator, renowned psychologist Solomon Asch, set out to prove the exact opposite. A previous experiment by Muzafer Sherif (see his well-known Robbers Cave experiment -- I discuss this below) had found that when people were faced with making a judgement on an ambiguous test, they used other people’s judgements as a reference point.

This makes perfect sense. If I’m not sure about something, I’ll check with someone else. But this is only when I’m not sure. The situation is quite different when I have unambiguous information, such as when I can clearly see the answer myself. Other people’s judgement should then have no effect.

To test his theory he brought male undergraduates, one at a time, into a room with eight other people who were passed off as fellow participants (Asch, 1951). They were then shown three lines with another for comparison, similar to the figure above. Participants were asked to call out which line – A, B or C – was the same length as the reference line. This procedure was repeated 12 times with participants viewing variations of the above figure.

What the participants didn’t realise was that all the other people sat around the table were in on the game. They were all confederates who had been told by the experimenter to give the wrong answer. On half of the trials they called out the line that was too short, and on the other half the line that was too long.

The real experimental participant, who knew nothing of this, was actually the sixth to call out their answer after five other confederates of the experimenter had given the wrong answer.

Findings
The results were fascinating, and not at all what Asch had been expecting:

• 50% of people gave the same wrong answer as the others on more than half of the trials.
• Only 25% of participants refused to be swayed by the majority’s blatantly false judgement on all of the 12 trials.
• 5% always conformed with the majority incorrect opinion (we all know people like that, right?!)
• Over all the trials the average conformity rate was 33%.

Intrigued as to why participants had gone along with the majority, Asch interviewed them after the experiment. Their answers are probably very familiar to all of us:

• All felt anxious, feared disapproval from others and became self-conscious.
• Most explained they saw the lines differently to the group but then felt the group was correct.
• Some said they went along with the group to avoid standing out, although they knew the group was wrong.
• A small number of people actually said they saw the lines in the same way as the group.

The findings of this study were so startling they inspired many psychologists to investigate further. Here are a few of their findings:

• Asch himself found that if the participant only had to write down their answer (while others called theirs out) conformity was reduced to 12.5%.
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) still found conformity rates of 23% even in conditions of high anonymity and high certainty about the answer.
• Those who are ‘conformers’ typically have high levels of anxiety, low status, high need for approval and often authoritarian personalities.
• Cultural differences are important in conformity. People from cultures which view conformity more favourably – typically Eastern societies – are more likely to conform.

A mixed blessing
The variations on the original theme go on and on, examining many possible experimental permutations, but the basic finding still remains solid. While there’s no surprise that we copy each other, it’s amazing that some people will conform despite the evidence from their own eyes. Imagine how much easier it is to encourage conformity when ambiguity levels are much higher, as they often are in everyday life.

Conformity itself is something of a mixed blessing. In many situations we need conformity. In fact, many aspects of our social lives would be much harder if we didn’t conform to a certain extent – whether it’s to legal rules or just to queuing in the post office.

The dangers of conformity are only too well-known, just take a look at the implications of Milgram’s obedience experiments for a glimpse at what humans will do in the name of conformity. Sometimes it really is better if we think for ourselves rather than relying on what others say and do.

How does conformity affect us all?
It certainly bears considering how our own lives would be different if, one day, we decided not to conform, or even to suddenly start conforming. Would things get better or worse for you? Many people find their inability to conform is a real problem in their lives while others find it more difficult to break away and do their own thing.

Psychologically speaking, one sees the "Robbers Cave" behaviors inertially manifesting themselves over and over. So what is the "Robbers Cave" behavior pattern?


Conflict, power and insults:
The typical retelling of Sherif’s classic Robbers Cave experiment highlights the resolution of intergroup prejudice, but recent interpretations suggest a darker conclusion that demonstrates the corrupting influence of power.

The Robbers Cave experiment, a classic study of prejudice and conflict, has at least one hidden story. The well-known story emerged in the decades following the experiment as textbook writers adopted a particular retelling. With repetition people soon accepted this story as reality, forgetting it is just one version of events, one interpretation of a complex series of studies.

In the "Robbers Cave" experiment, twenty-two 11 year-old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, little knowing they were the subjects of an experiment. Before the trip the boys were randomly divided into two groups. It’s these two groups that formed the basis of Sherif’s study of how prejudice and conflict build up between two groups of people.

When the boys arrived, they were housed in separate cabins and, for the first week, did not know about the existence of the other group. They spent this time bonding with each other while swimming and hiking. Both groups chose a name which they had stencilled on their shirts and flags: one group was the Eagles and the other the Rattlers.

The two groups now established, the experiment moved into its second phase. For the first time the two groups were allowed to find out about each other and soon the signs of intergroup conflict emerged in the form of verbal abuse.

A little name-calling wasn’t enough, though. The experimenters wanted to increase the conflict substantially. To do this they pitted the groups against each other in a series of competitions. This ratcheted up the antagonism between the two groups, especially once all the team scores were added up and the Rattlers won the overall trophy for the competitive activities. They didn’t let the Eagles forget it.

The Rattlers staked their claim to the ball field by planting their flag in it. Later on each group started name calling at the other and singing derogatory songs. Soon the groups were refusing to eat in the same room together.

With conflict between the groups successfully instigated, the experiment now moved into its final phase. Could the experimenters make the two groups kiss and make up? First of all they tried some activities in which the two groups were brought together, such as watching a film and shooting firecrackers, but neither of these worked.

The experimenters then tried a new approach. They took the two groups to a new location and gave them a series of problems to try and solve. In the first problem the boys were told the drinking water supply had been attacked by vandals. After the two groups successfully worked together to unblock a faucet, the first seeds of peace were sown.

In the second problem the two groups had to club together to pay for the movie they wanted to watch. Both groups also agreed on which movie they should watch. By the evening the members of both groups were once again eating together.

The groups ‘accidentally’ came across more problems over the next few days. The key thing about each of them was that they involved superordinate goals: boys from both groups worked together to achieve something they all had an interest in. Finally all the boys decided to travel home together in the same bus. Peace had broken out all over.​

Sherif reached an important conclusion from this study, and other similar work carried out in the 1940s and 50s. He argued that groups naturally develop their own cultures, status structures and boundaries. Think of each of these groups of boys as like a country in microcosm. Each country has its own culture, its government, legal system and it draws boundaries to differentiate itself from neighbouring countries. From these internal structures, the roots of conflict in both the groups of boys and between countries are created.

One of the reasons Sherif’s study is so famous is that it appeared to show how groups could be reconciled, how peace could flourish. The key was the focus on superordinate goals, those stretching beyond the boundaries of the group itself. It seemed that this was what brought the Rattlers and the Eagles back together.

Now an important thing to know is that Sherif's study is actually just one of three that address the idea of intergroup politics, conflict and power. The two earlier studies had rather less happy endings. In the first, the boys ganged up on a common enemy and in the second they ganged up on the experimenters themselves. How does this alter the way we look at the original Robbers Cave experiment?

Well, upon looking that each study one sees that Sherif’s work involves not just two groups but three, the experimenters are part of the system as well (Billig, 1976). In fact, with the experimenters included, it is clear they are actually the most powerful group. Much of the conflict between the two groups of boys is orchestrated by the experimenters. The experimenters have a vested interest in creating conflict between the two groups of boys. It was they who had the most to lose if the experiment went wrong, and the most to gain if it went right.

Power relations
The three experiments, then, one with a ‘happy’ ending, and two less so, can be seen in terms of the possible outcomes when a powerful group tries to manipulate two weaker groups. Sometimes they can be made to play fair (experiment three), sometimes the groups will unite against a common enemy (experiment one) and sometimes they will turn on the powerful group (experiment two).

For psychologist Frances Cherry it is the second experiment which makes this analysis plausible. When the boys rebel against the experimenters, they showed understanding of how they were being manipulated (Cherry, 1995). Although the Robbers Cave experiment is, in some sense, the ‘successful’ study, taken together with the other two it is more realistic. In reality, Cherry argues, it is more often the case that groups hold unequal amounts of power.

Weak groups can rebel
Unequal levels of power between groups fundamentally changes the dynamic between them. Whether it’s countries, corporations, or just families, if one group has more power, suddenly the way is open for orchestrated competitions and cooperation, not to mention manipulation. Manipulating other groups, though, is a dangerous game, and weaker groups don’t always play by the rules set for them. Perhaps this is the more subtle, if less enduring message of the Robbers Cave experiment and its supposedly less successful predecessors.​

 

[Correll]

Anti-intellectualism is an actual thing because:

1- Stupid people spend their lives being shown how stupid they are.
2- Every now and again, a small dog pulls back the curtain which hides the Wizard.

Lamentably, most cognitively incompetent people are, IMO, too so to truly be anti-intellectuals, for one must have a reasonable level of "smarts" to willfully reject and refute cogent ideas. I'm sure there are scores of ignoramuses who appear to be anti-intellectual, but who are in fact just "dumber than the day is long" and for whom being called anti-intellectual is genuinely not derisive but rather complementary or merely a neutral observation of fact.

Among well known politicians today, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell strike me as anti-intellectuals. Neither of them is abjectly stupid, but both will, at the drop of a hat, utter any manner of foolishness to sway folks who truly cannot see past their BS lines of argument and specious assertions/premises.

The salient distinction between idiots and anti-intellectuals is that most folks of the latter ilk are dangerous because, if given legitimacy and legitimate power, they can and "muck up the works" for everyone but themselves. They know what they are doing, and they know the true fools don't. Actual nitwits are dangerous only insofar as they are easily manipulated and when they exist in great enough numbers such as we've seen in the 2016 election cycle, they enable the manipulators like Trump and McConnell to achieve their duplicitously advertised goals.

Red:
Incompetent and ignorant people are quite often too dull, ill informed or misinformed to actually know they are thus. Yes, loons are often told they are amiss in their thinking. Indeed, the proposed solution for overcoming the Dunning-Kruger effect in incompetent people is to directly tell them they are incompetent and show them why that is so. Unfortunately the problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that incompetent people have probably been getting this type of feedback for years and failed to take much notice. Moreover, when they are told they don't actually know what they are doing/talking about, they respond defensively, as though the speaker is out to disparage them. The fact of the matter is that rather than considering that the person telling them so may be right, they "dig in" and and then launch a barrage of invectives.

How can one almost instantly identify the folks who fit the above description of being "too stupid to know they are stupid?" Easy. They are the folks who are convinced of their infallibility; they are the people who are 100% certain they are right on "whatever" if not everything and who never present a cogent case showing that to be so. They just know they are right and won't hear news to the contrary. They are the absolutists of our society, the folks who'll find some minor point in a discussion, latch onto it, perceiving it's the most important thing aside from water, and then attempt to discredit a sound conclusion based on whatever conjured crap that wholly ignores the key themes at hand.

Even now, I'll wager someone reading this is of a mind to refute the remarks I've offered above. I suspect they'll attempt to do so without regard for the fact that the Dunning-Kruger effect and its impacts have been proven over and over again. Another group of researchers who arrived at the same conclusions published their findings in "Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent."

I'm sure we've all heard the saying "one rises to one's level of incompetence." Well that's quite true of pretty much everyone. The matter of incompetence isn't limited to utter buffoons. What's going on is that even people who are smart, competent, in one or several ways are limited in the degree of competence they can exhibit, that is, unless and until they acquire new knowledge and skills that allow them to become competent in new ways.

That's where anti-intellectualism kicks in. That's where folks who are smart in one or a few disciplines reach their level of incompetence. For Donald Trump, there's no question he's smart re: how to boost his own fortunes, even those of individuals close to him or with whom he works directly. When it comes to national public policy and foreign policy, however, the man is clueless, misguided, stupid, misinformed, not thinking, whatever you want to call it. Dunning-Kruger merely calls it incompetent.

• The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance
• How unaware are the unskilled? Empirical tests of the ‘‘signal extraction’’ counter-explanation for the Dunning–Kruger effect in self-evaluation of performance
• Accuracy of Physician Self-assessment Compared With Observed Measures of Competence

Frankly, I am content with the term "incompetent" to describe the behaviors I see both on political forums and in real world politics. I suspect that many folks will yet see being called incompetent as an insult, but in the context in which Dunning and Kruger use it, it's not that at all, so I don't mean it as one either. Incompetent is merely the thing one is when one thinks one knows something that one does not, yet one nonetheless acts without confirming the verity of one's preconceived notions. Stupid to greater and lesser degrees and not necessarily in all areas (remember, smart folks aren't absolutists), is what one is when one fails to make the appropriate objectively rigorous investigation to confirm one's ideas. In other words, to be stupid is to act in spite of being ignorant, thus why this thread's title equates anti-intellectualism with stupidity.



Now, let me digress away a bit from strict "Dunning-Kruger" and explore some of the behaviors observed in the political battle between Trump and and his competitors, as well as among his supporters and those who favor other candidates. The following isn't critical to the ideas offered above, but it provides some of the background information one may need to understand the thoughts above somewhat more completely. The content provided below is not my own. It is taken from an outstanding series of laymen-directed writings one can find here: 10 Most Brilliant Social Psychology Experiments .

Storming and Norming:
In looking at the Trump phenomenon and popularity in the 2016 election cycle, one might ask, "How can Trump be so incompetent and yet so many millions of people support him? It just can't be that so many folks 'just don't get it', that so many people are too incompetent to see through Trump's BS. " Well the sad reality is that as many people as can exist can indeed be that oblivious to the reality. Notwithstanding the will (or lack of will, depending on one's point of approach) to refrain from critically examining what Trump has had to say over the past year, notwithstanding folks' genuine desire to have their worries and ideas validated by someone whom they hold in high regard (albeit doing so because the man is rich, thus smart at making money for himself, rather than because he's just smart in general), one could succinctly call Trump's popularity and the will of millions to "get on his wagon" inertial.

We all know that humans are natural born conformers – we copy each other’s dress sense, ways of talking and attitudes, often without a second thought. But exactly how far does this conformity go? Do you think it is possible you would deny unambiguous information from your own senses just to conform with other people?

Have a look at the figure below. Compare the line on the left with the three lines on the right: A, B & C. Which of these three lines is the same length as the lonesome line on the left?

It’s obviously C. And yet in a classic psychology experiment conducted in the 1950s, 76% of people denied their own senses at least once, choosing either A or B. What kind of strong-arm psychological pressure tactics made them do this?

The fascinating thing about this experiment was that its creator, renowned psychologist Solomon Asch, set out to prove the exact opposite. A previous experiment by Muzafer Sherif (see his well-known Robbers Cave experiment -- I discuss this below) had found that when people were faced with making a judgement on an ambiguous test, they used other people’s judgements as a reference point.

This makes perfect sense. If I’m not sure about something, I’ll check with someone else. But this is only when I’m not sure. The situation is quite different when I have unambiguous information, such as when I can clearly see the answer myself. Other people’s judgement should then have no effect.

To test his theory he brought male undergraduates, one at a time, into a room with eight other people who were passed off as fellow participants (Asch, 1951). They were then shown three lines with another for comparison, similar to the figure above. Participants were asked to call out which line – A, B or C – was the same length as the reference line. This procedure was repeated 12 times with participants viewing variations of the above figure.

What the participants didn’t realise was that all the other people sat around the table were in on the game. They were all confederates who had been told by the experimenter to give the wrong answer. On half of the trials they called out the line that was too short, and on the other half the line that was too long.

The real experimental participant, who knew nothing of this, was actually the sixth to call out their answer after five other confederates of the experimenter had given the wrong answer.

Findings
The results were fascinating, and not at all what Asch had been expecting:

• 50% of people gave the same wrong answer as the others on more than half of the trials.
• Only 25% of participants refused to be swayed by the majority’s blatantly false judgement on all of the 12 trials.
• 5% always conformed with the majority incorrect opinion (we all know people like that, right?!)
• Over all the trials the average conformity rate was 33%.

Intrigued as to why participants had gone along with the majority, Asch interviewed them after the experiment. Their answers are probably very familiar to all of us:

• All felt anxious, feared disapproval from others and became self-conscious.
• Most explained they saw the lines differently to the group but then felt the group was correct.
• Some said they went along with the group to avoid standing out, although they knew the group was wrong.
• A small number of people actually said they saw the lines in the same way as the group.

The findings of this study were so startling they inspired many psychologists to investigate further. Here are a few of their findings:

• Asch himself found that if the participant only had to write down their answer (while others called theirs out) conformity was reduced to 12.5%.
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) still found conformity rates of 23% even in conditions of high anonymity and high certainty about the answer.
• Those who are ‘conformers’ typically have high levels of anxiety, low status, high need for approval and often authoritarian personalities.
• Cultural differences are important in conformity. People from cultures which view conformity more favourably – typically Eastern societies – are more likely to conform.

A mixed blessing
The variations on the original theme go on and on, examining many possible experimental permutations, but the basic finding still remains solid. While there’s no surprise that we copy each other, it’s amazing that some people will conform despite the evidence from their own eyes. Imagine how much easier it is to encourage conformity when ambiguity levels are much higher, as they often are in everyday life.

Conformity itself is something of a mixed blessing. In many situations we need conformity. In fact, many aspects of our social lives would be much harder if we didn’t conform to a certain extent – whether it’s to legal rules or just to queuing in the post office.

The dangers of conformity are only too well-known, just take a look at the implications of Milgram’s obedience experiments for a glimpse at what humans will do in the name of conformity. Sometimes it really is better if we think for ourselves rather than relying on what others say and do.

How does conformity affect us all?
It certainly bears considering how our own lives would be different if, one day, we decided not to conform, or even to suddenly start conforming. Would things get better or worse for you? Many people find their inability to conform is a real problem in their lives while others find it more difficult to break away and do their own thing.

Psychologically speaking, one sees the "Robbers Cave" behaviors inertially manifesting themselves over and over. So what is the "Robbers Cave" behavior pattern?


Conflict, power and insults:
The typical retelling of Sherif’s classic Robbers Cave experiment highlights the resolution of intergroup prejudice, but recent interpretations suggest a darker conclusion that demonstrates the corrupting influence of power.

The Robbers Cave experiment, a classic study of prejudice and conflict, has at least one hidden story. The well-known story emerged in the decades following the experiment as textbook writers adopted a particular retelling. With repetition people soon accepted this story as reality, forgetting it is just one version of events, one interpretation of a complex series of studies.

In the "Robbers Cave" experiment, twenty-two 11 year-old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, little knowing they were the subjects of an experiment. Before the trip the boys were randomly divided into two groups. It’s these two groups that formed the basis of Sherif’s study of how prejudice and conflict build up between two groups of people.

When the boys arrived, they were housed in separate cabins and, for the first week, did not know about the existence of the other group. They spent this time bonding with each other while swimming and hiking. Both groups chose a name which they had stencilled on their shirts and flags: one group was the Eagles and the other the Rattlers.

The two groups now established, the experiment moved into its second phase. For the first time the two groups were allowed to find out about each other and soon the signs of intergroup conflict emerged in the form of verbal abuse.

A little name-calling wasn’t enough, though. The experimenters wanted to increase the conflict substantially. To do this they pitted the groups against each other in a series of competitions. This ratcheted up the antagonism between the two groups, especially once all the team scores were added up and the Rattlers won the overall trophy for the competitive activities. They didn’t let the Eagles forget it.

The Rattlers staked their claim to the ball field by planting their flag in it. Later on each group started name calling at the other and singing derogatory songs. Soon the groups were refusing to eat in the same room together.

With conflict between the groups successfully instigated, the experiment now moved into its final phase. Could the experimenters make the two groups kiss and make up? First of all they tried some activities in which the two groups were brought together, such as watching a film and shooting firecrackers, but neither of these worked.

The experimenters then tried a new approach. They took the two groups to a new location and gave them a series of problems to try and solve. In the first problem the boys were told the drinking water supply had been attacked by vandals. After the two groups successfully worked together to unblock a faucet, the first seeds of peace were sown.

In the second problem the two groups had to club together to pay for the movie they wanted to watch. Both groups also agreed on which movie they should watch. By the evening the members of both groups were once again eating together.

The groups ‘accidentally’ came across more problems over the next few days. The key thing about each of them was that they involved superordinate goals: boys from both groups worked together to achieve something they all had an interest in. Finally all the boys decided to travel home together in the same bus. Peace had broken out all over.​

Sherif reached an important conclusion from this study, and other similar work carried out in the 1940s and 50s. He argued that groups naturally develop their own cultures, status structures and boundaries. Think of each of these groups of boys as like a country in microcosm. Each country has its own culture, its government, legal system and it draws boundaries to differentiate itself from neighbouring countries. From these internal structures, the roots of conflict in both the groups of boys and between countries are created.

One of the reasons Sherif’s study is so famous is that it appeared to show how groups could be reconciled, how peace could flourish. The key was the focus on superordinate goals, those stretching beyond the boundaries of the group itself. It seemed that this was what brought the Rattlers and the Eagles back together.

Now an important thing to know is that Sherif's study is actually just one of three that address the idea of intergroup politics, conflict and power. The two earlier studies had rather less happy endings. In the first, the boys ganged up on a common enemy and in the second they ganged up on the experimenters themselves. How does this alter the way we look at the original Robbers Cave experiment?

Well, upon looking that each study one sees that Sherif’s work involves not just two groups but three, the experimenters are part of the system as well (Billig, 1976). In fact, with the experimenters included, it is clear they are actually the most powerful group. Much of the conflict between the two groups of boys is orchestrated by the experimenters. The experimenters have a vested interest in creating conflict between the two groups of boys. It was they who had the most to lose if the experiment went wrong, and the most to gain if it went right.

Power relations
The three experiments, then, one with a ‘happy’ ending, and two less so, can be seen in terms of the possible outcomes when a powerful group tries to manipulate two weaker groups. Sometimes they can be made to play fair (experiment three), sometimes the groups will unite against a common enemy (experiment one) and sometimes they will turn on the powerful group (experiment two).

For psychologist Frances Cherry it is the second experiment which makes this analysis plausible. When the boys rebel against the experimenters, they showed understanding of how they were being manipulated (Cherry, 1995). Although the Robbers Cave experiment is, in some sense, the ‘successful’ study, taken together with the other two it is more realistic. In reality, Cherry argues, it is more often the case that groups hold unequal amounts of power.

Weak groups can rebel
Unequal levels of power between groups fundamentally changes the dynamic between them. Whether it’s countries, corporations, or just families, if one group has more power, suddenly the way is open for orchestrated competitions and cooperation, not to mention manipulation. Manipulating other groups, though, is a dangerous game, and weaker groups don’t always play by the rules set for them. Perhaps this is the more subtle, if less enduring message of the Robbers Cave experiment and its supposedly less successful predecessors.​

Very wordy.

1. YOur assumption that Trump's policies are dumb is unsupported.

2. There is no demonstrated connection between level of intelligence and conformity. Indeed, you might do well to consider what would happen to you, if you rebelled and started SUPPORTING TRUMP in conversations with your peers. What pressures to conform are YOU under?

3. NOthing about Trump is anti-intellectual. He is an anti-elitist in that he is a populist. But he has not attacked Clinton on her education, nor hidden his own Ivy League background. He is not trying to forge a feeling of connection with the voters based on being less educated or intelligent, but more though Nationalism, and being an Outsider to the Power Structure.

 

[Unkotare]

Anti-intellectualism is an actual thing because:

1- Stupid people spend their lives being shown how stupid they are.
2- Every now and again, a small dog pulls back the curtain which hides the Wizard.

Lamentably, most cognitively incompetent people are, IMO, too so to truly be anti-intellectuals, for one must have a reasonable level of "smarts" to willfully reject and refute cogent ideas. I'm sure there are scores of ignoramuses who appear to be anti-intellectual, but who are in fact just "dumber than the day is long" and for whom being called anti-intellectual is genuinely not derisive but rather complementary or merely a neutral observation of fact.

Among well known politicians today, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell strike me as anti-intellectuals. Neither of them is abjectly stupid, but both will, at the drop of a hat, utter any manner of foolishness to sway folks who truly cannot see past their BS lines of argument and specious assertions/premises.

The salient distinction between idiots and anti-intellectuals is that most folks of the latter ilk are dangerous because, if given legitimacy and legitimate power, they can and "muck up the works" for everyone but themselves. They know what they are doing, and they know the true fools don't. Actual nitwits are dangerous only insofar as they are easily manipulated and when they exist in great enough numbers such as we've seen in the 2016 election cycle, they enable the manipulators like Trump and McConnell to achieve their duplicitously advertised goals.

Red:
Incompetent and ignorant people are quite often too dull, ill informed or misinformed to actually know they are thus. Yes, loons are often told they are amiss in their thinking. Indeed, the proposed solution for overcoming the Dunning-Kruger effect in incompetent people is to directly tell them they are incompetent and show them why that is so. Unfortunately the problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that incompetent people have probably been getting this type of feedback for years and failed to take much notice. Moreover, when they are told they don't actually know what they are doing/talking about, they respond defensively, as though the speaker is out to disparage them. The fact of the matter is that rather than considering that the person telling them so may be right, they "dig in" and and then launch a barrage of invectives.

How can one almost instantly identify the folks who fit the above description of being "too stupid to know they are stupid?" Easy. They are the folks who are convinced of their infallibility; they are the people who are 100% certain they are right on "whatever" if not everything and who never present a cogent case showing that to be so. They just know they are right and won't hear news to the contrary. They are the absolutists of our society, the folks who'll find some minor point in a discussion, latch onto it, perceiving it's the most important thing aside from water, and then attempt to discredit a sound conclusion based on whatever conjured crap that wholly ignores the key themes at hand.

Even now, I'll wager someone reading this is of a mind to refute the remarks I've offered above. I suspect they'll attempt to do so without regard for the fact that the Dunning-Kruger effect and its impacts have been proven over and over again. Another group of researchers who arrived at the same conclusions published their findings in "Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent."

I'm sure we've all heard the saying "one rises to one's level of incompetence." Well that's quite true of pretty much everyone. The matter of incompetence isn't limited to utter buffoons. What's going on is that even people who are smart, competent, in one or several ways are limited in the degree of competence they can exhibit, that is, unless and until they acquire new knowledge and skills that allow them to become competent in new ways.

That's where anti-intellectualism kicks in. That's where folks who are smart in one or a few disciplines reach their level of incompetence. For Donald Trump, there's no question he's smart re: how to boost his own fortunes, even those of individuals close to him or with whom he works directly. When it comes to national public policy and foreign policy, however, the man is clueless, misguided, stupid, misinformed, not thinking, whatever you want to call it. Dunning-Kruger merely calls it incompetent.

• The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance
• How unaware are the unskilled? Empirical tests of the ‘‘signal extraction’’ counter-explanation for the Dunning–Kruger effect in self-evaluation of performance
• Accuracy of Physician Self-assessment Compared With Observed Measures of Competence

Frankly, I am content with the term "incompetent" to describe the behaviors I see both on political forums and in real world politics. I suspect that many folks will yet see being called incompetent as an insult, but in the context in which Dunning and Kruger use it, it's not that at all, so I don't mean it as one either. Incompetent is merely the thing one is when one thinks one knows something that one does not, yet one nonetheless acts without confirming the verity of one's preconceived notions. Stupid to greater and lesser degrees and not necessarily in all areas (remember, smart folks aren't absolutists), is what one is when one fails to make the appropriate objectively rigorous investigation to confirm one's ideas. In other words, to be stupid is to act in spite of being ignorant, thus why this thread's title equates anti-intellectualism with stupidity.



Now, let me digress away a bit from strict "Dunning-Kruger" and explore some of the behaviors observed in the political battle between Trump and and his competitors, as well as among his supporters and those who favor other candidates. The following isn't critical to the ideas offered above, but it provides some of the background information one may need to understand the thoughts above somewhat more completely. The content provided below is not my own. It is taken from an outstanding series of laymen-directed writings one can find here: 10 Most Brilliant Social Psychology Experiments .

Storming and Norming:
In looking at the Trump phenomenon and popularity in the 2016 election cycle, one might ask, "How can Trump be so incompetent and yet so many millions of people support him? It just can't be that so many folks 'just don't get it', that so many people are too incompetent to see through Trump's BS. " Well the sad reality is that as many people as can exist can indeed be that oblivious to the reality. Notwithstanding the will (or lack of will, depending on one's point of approach) to refrain from critically examining what Trump has had to say over the past year, notwithstanding folks' genuine desire to have their worries and ideas validated by someone whom they hold in high regard (albeit doing so because the man is rich, thus smart at making money for himself, rather than because he's just smart in general), one could succinctly call Trump's popularity and the will of millions to "get on his wagon" inertial.

We all know that humans are natural born conformers – we copy each other’s dress sense, ways of talking and attitudes, often without a second thought. But exactly how far does this conformity go? Do you think it is possible you would deny unambiguous information from your own senses just to conform with other people?

Have a look at the figure below. Compare the line on the left with the three lines on the right: A, B & C. Which of these three lines is the same length as the lonesome line on the left?

It’s obviously C. And yet in a classic psychology experiment conducted in the 1950s, 76% of people denied their own senses at least once, choosing either A or B. What kind of strong-arm psychological pressure tactics made them do this?

The fascinating thing about this experiment was that its creator, renowned psychologist Solomon Asch, set out to prove the exact opposite. A previous experiment by Muzafer Sherif (see his well-known Robbers Cave experiment -- I discuss this below) had found that when people were faced with making a judgement on an ambiguous test, they used other people’s judgements as a reference point.

This makes perfect sense. If I’m not sure about something, I’ll check with someone else. But this is only when I’m not sure. The situation is quite different when I have unambiguous information, such as when I can clearly see the answer myself. Other people’s judgement should then have no effect.

To test his theory he brought male undergraduates, one at a time, into a room with eight other people who were passed off as fellow participants (Asch, 1951). They were then shown three lines with another for comparison, similar to the figure above. Participants were asked to call out which line – A, B or C – was the same length as the reference line. This procedure was repeated 12 times with participants viewing variations of the above figure.

What the participants didn’t realise was that all the other people sat around the table were in on the game. They were all confederates who had been told by the experimenter to give the wrong answer. On half of the trials they called out the line that was too short, and on the other half the line that was too long.

The real experimental participant, who knew nothing of this, was actually the sixth to call out their answer after five other confederates of the experimenter had given the wrong answer.

Findings
The results were fascinating, and not at all what Asch had been expecting:

• 50% of people gave the same wrong answer as the others on more than half of the trials.
• Only 25% of participants refused to be swayed by the majority’s blatantly false judgement on all of the 12 trials.
• 5% always conformed with the majority incorrect opinion (we all know people like that, right?!)
• Over all the trials the average conformity rate was 33%.

Intrigued as to why participants had gone along with the majority, Asch interviewed them after the experiment. Their answers are probably very familiar to all of us:

• All felt anxious, feared disapproval from others and became self-conscious.
• Most explained they saw the lines differently to the group but then felt the group was correct.
• Some said they went along with the group to avoid standing out, although they knew the group was wrong.
• A small number of people actually said they saw the lines in the same way as the group.

The findings of this study were so startling they inspired many psychologists to investigate further. Here are a few of their findings:

• Asch himself found that if the participant only had to write down their answer (while others called theirs out) conformity was reduced to 12.5%.
• Deutsch and Gerard (1955) still found conformity rates of 23% even in conditions of high anonymity and high certainty about the answer.
• Those who are ‘conformers’ typically have high levels of anxiety, low status, high need for approval and often authoritarian personalities.
• Cultural differences are important in conformity. People from cultures which view conformity more favourably – typically Eastern societies – are more likely to conform.

A mixed blessing
The variations on the original theme go on and on, examining many possible experimental permutations, but the basic finding still remains solid. While there’s no surprise that we copy each other, it’s amazing that some people will conform despite the evidence from their own eyes. Imagine how much easier it is to encourage conformity when ambiguity levels are much higher, as they often are in everyday life.

Conformity itself is something of a mixed blessing. In many situations we need conformity. In fact, many aspects of our social lives would be much harder if we didn’t conform to a certain extent – whether it’s to legal rules or just to queuing in the post office.

The dangers of conformity are only too well-known, just take a look at the implications of Milgram’s obedience experiments for a glimpse at what humans will do in the name of conformity. Sometimes it really is better if we think for ourselves rather than relying on what others say and do.

How does conformity affect us all?
It certainly bears considering how our own lives would be different if, one day, we decided not to conform, or even to suddenly start conforming. Would things get better or worse for you? Many people find their inability to conform is a real problem in their lives while others find it more difficult to break away and do their own thing.

Psychologically speaking, one sees the "Robbers Cave" behaviors inertially manifesting themselves over and over. So what is the "Robbers Cave" behavior pattern?


Conflict, power and insults:
The typical retelling of Sherif’s classic Robbers Cave experiment highlights the resolution of intergroup prejudice, but recent interpretations suggest a darker conclusion that demonstrates the corrupting influence of power.

The Robbers Cave experiment, a classic study of prejudice and conflict, has at least one hidden story. The well-known story emerged in the decades following the experiment as textbook writers adopted a particular retelling. With repetition people soon accepted this story as reality, forgetting it is just one version of events, one interpretation of a complex series of studies.

In the "Robbers Cave" experiment, twenty-two 11 year-old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, little knowing they were the subjects of an experiment. Before the trip the boys were randomly divided into two groups. It’s these two groups that formed the basis of Sherif’s study of how prejudice and conflict build up between two groups of people.

When the boys arrived, they were housed in separate cabins and, for the first week, did not know about the existence of the other group. They spent this time bonding with each other while swimming and hiking. Both groups chose a name which they had stencilled on their shirts and flags: one group was the Eagles and the other the Rattlers.

The two groups now established, the experiment moved into its second phase. For the first time the two groups were allowed to find out about each other and soon the signs of intergroup conflict emerged in the form of verbal abuse.

A little name-calling wasn’t enough, though. The experimenters wanted to increase the conflict substantially. To do this they pitted the groups against each other in a series of competitions. This ratcheted up the antagonism between the two groups, especially once all the team scores were added up and the Rattlers won the overall trophy for the competitive activities. They didn’t let the Eagles forget it.

The Rattlers staked their claim to the ball field by planting their flag in it. Later on each group started name calling at the other and singing derogatory songs. Soon the groups were refusing to eat in the same room together.

With conflict between the groups successfully instigated, the experiment now moved into its final phase. Could the experimenters make the two groups kiss and make up? First of all they tried some activities in which the two groups were brought together, such as watching a film and shooting firecrackers, but neither of these worked.

The experimenters then tried a new approach. They took the two groups to a new location and gave them a series of problems to try and solve. In the first problem the boys were told the drinking water supply had been attacked by vandals. After the two groups successfully worked together to unblock a faucet, the first seeds of peace were sown.

In the second problem the two groups had to club together to pay for the movie they wanted to watch. Both groups also agreed on which movie they should watch. By the evening the members of both groups were once again eating together.

The groups ‘accidentally’ came across more problems over the next few days. The key thing about each of them was that they involved superordinate goals: boys from both groups worked together to achieve something they all had an interest in. Finally all the boys decided to travel home together in the same bus. Peace had broken out all over.​

Sherif reached an important conclusion from this study, and other similar work carried out in the 1940s and 50s. He argued that groups naturally develop their own cultures, status structures and boundaries. Think of each of these groups of boys as like a country in microcosm. Each country has its own culture, its government, legal system and it draws boundaries to differentiate itself from neighbouring countries. From these internal structures, the roots of conflict in both the groups of boys and between countries are created.

One of the reasons Sherif’s study is so famous is that it appeared to show how groups could be reconciled, how peace could flourish. The key was the focus on superordinate goals, those stretching beyond the boundaries of the group itself. It seemed that this was what brought the Rattlers and the Eagles back together.

Now an important thing to know is that Sherif's study is actually just one of three that address the idea of intergroup politics, conflict and power. The two earlier studies had rather less happy endings. In the first, the boys ganged up on a common enemy and in the second they ganged up on the experimenters themselves. How does this alter the way we look at the original Robbers Cave experiment?

Well, upon looking that each study one sees that Sherif’s work involves not just two groups but three, the experimenters are part of the system as well (Billig, 1976). In fact, with the experimenters included, it is clear they are actually the most powerful group. Much of the conflict between the two groups of boys is orchestrated by the experimenters. The experimenters have a vested interest in creating conflict between the two groups of boys. It was they who had the most to lose if the experiment went wrong, and the most to gain if it went right.

Power relations
The three experiments, then, one with a ‘happy’ ending, and two less so, can be seen in terms of the possible outcomes when a powerful group tries to manipulate two weaker groups. Sometimes they can be made to play fair (experiment three), sometimes the groups will unite against a common enemy (experiment one) and sometimes they will turn on the powerful group (experiment two).

For psychologist Frances Cherry it is the second experiment which makes this analysis plausible. When the boys rebel against the experimenters, they showed understanding of how they were being manipulated (Cherry, 1995). Although the Robbers Cave experiment is, in some sense, the ‘successful’ study, taken together with the other two it is more realistic. In reality, Cherry argues, it is more often the case that groups hold unequal amounts of power.

Weak groups can rebel
Unequal levels of power between groups fundamentally changes the dynamic between them. Whether it’s countries, corporations, or just families, if one group has more power, suddenly the way is open for orchestrated competitions and cooperation, not to mention manipulation. Manipulating other groups, though, is a dangerous game, and weaker groups don’t always play by the rules set for them. Perhaps this is the more subtle, if less enduring message of the Robbers Cave experiment and its supposedly less successful predecessors.​

 

[320 Years of History]

Here's a fine explanation of what I've discussed earlier in this thread, and it's short and entertaining.

​

 

[JoeMoma]

I might have superior knowledge than some people in some areas; however, I can learn from everyone. Almost every (adult) is more knowledgeable than I am with some content area or skill. As such I should look down on no one. I should not indulge in intellectual snobbery.

 

[320 Years of History]

I might have superior knowledge than some people in some areas; however, I can learn from everyone. Almost every (adult) is more knowledgeable than I am with some content area or skill. As such I should look down on no one. I should not indulge in intellectual snobbery.

I get what you're saying, but this thread isn't about looking down on people, although I see how some folks may think it is -- the folks who think everything is "all about them" personally. What this thread is about is anti-intellectualism, which at its heart, as was noted in the OP, is a matter of resisting credible and cogent input that challenges one's preconceived notions and/or that may come from a source that obviously is more knowledgeable on a topic than one is oneself. The thread is about the pervasiveness of anti-intellectualism as exhibited in the American populace.

Do I use examples taken from posts and comments on USMB? Of course I do and have; they are the most readily accessible and visible examples of the phenomenon. Indeed, one need not even use my specific examples. I'm sure lots of folks, even non-USMB members, can peruse the thread on here and within seconds find examples of their own. Doing so doesn't make the thread or make pointing out any specific example about the poster who demonstrates the phenomenon, although it's possible to make it about them if one is inclined to make the matter personal.

(I don't know what the point of making it personal would be. Presumably we are all strangers to one another, even though there is a false sense of familiarity given by the repeated appearance of IDs and avatars.)

As for the snobbery part...well, look around and see how often folks will make claims as though they know XYZ to be so versus how often one finds folks saying, "I don't know," or indicating they are largely speculating. That's who the snobs are. The people perceived as snobs are often the folks who willingly indicate the limit of what they do or don't know or cannot figure out. The actual snobs are the one's who are unwilling to recognize their own cognitive limitations and act to eliminate them, relying instead on the incontrovertibility of their limited exposure to "whatever."

 

[Unkotare]

 

[Holos]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

The point of any arguing, however, is not to defeat an opponent (upon the loss or reaffirmation of credibility), neither it is to confirm or ensure your position. All of that should happen before argument begins, as the reassessment of definitions has already taken place privately, before the meeting or confrontation.

The point of arguing is to lead, guide, assist, inform, suggest, advise, collaborate, express.

When there are two sides, A and B, the point of argument is so that A and B may go to new sides, points or states (C, D, F), especially selected by each original side for the meeting and decision as to where both should go joined. It is no argument if a side claims the same new side as the other opposing side. It is an easy decision. A and B want to go to F? Then they go there together instead of arguing. A wants to go to C and B wants to go to D? Then they argue until they agree to which will be the point for their junction. If they do not want to be joined at all - unlikely since we are already considering their associations - then still there is no argument, but a decision remains: they in fact are not associated.

Take politics as an example. Suppose there really is a party in the whole of the American Continent that wants nothing with the other, that they do not even want to share the soil they stand on, breathe in, see in, feel, that if a single participant of one party has spoken on one coast, the other party would recoil, never to go to that coast again but claim the other as impenetrable to any participants of the opposition. Suppose that is really the situation, in geographical, geological terms, like the World Wars you have not seen by land or by air, except by "bird eye's view" or satellite (we are talking about the whole World, with Capital Letters, aren't we, like those classified upon a secretive government?). Let's take those image of wars as if there really were two abhorrent sides repelling each other, striving as much as possible to eliminate, protect and ensure survival of the side that contained no variation, no desire for it. The barest truth, in LOGICAL MATHEMATICAL TERMS, which would regiment and maintain any map or architecture, any road or even any erosion, is those two parties were never associated (because that is what they always really wanted, no joint association).

Any time you would like to argue, I am ready, I know where I want to go, but I do not know where you want to go, and thus am willing to know more about you, your wants, and the world which may await both of us, or each of us separately, until we may be joined again upon realizing the reason for which we are very well within the possibility of association.

 

[320 Years of History]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

 

[Unkotare]

 

[Holos]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

If we are to argue about rationality or intellectualism, multiple definitions would increase the value of our understandings, especially as we communicate to perhaps develop the terms previously assembled to have a specific but pliable, possibly reassigned direction.

Think of it like fallen tree branches. I want to introduce them to you as I perceive them, I want to play a game with them, with you also as a player. However, there are certain rules to the game, so we can have the maximum amount of fun out of it without unnecessary conflict. So I do tell you about those branches, and how they are so different from any other branches, especially in relation to the game I am looking forward to play with you. It is not really a need, but a joined possibility upon a consciously formed inquiry for interest.

In terms of language, if you want to communicate about your reference, it is respectful to provide your previous comprehension of it, otherwise the signal might as well never be returned.

 

[320 Years of History]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

If we are to argue about rationality or intellectualism, multiple definitions would increase the value of our understandings, especially as we communicate to perhaps develop the terms previously assembled to have a specific but pliable, possibly reassigned direction.

Think of it like fallen tree branches. I want to introduce them to you as I perceive them, I want to play a game with them, with you also as a player. However, there are certain rules to the game, so we can have the maximum amount of fun out of it without unnecessary conflict. So I do tell you about those branches, and how they are so different from any other branches, especially in relation to the game I am looking forward to play with you. It is not really a need, but a joined possibility upon a consciously formed inquiry for interest.

In terms of language, if you want to communicate about your reference, it is respectful to provide your previous comprehension of it, otherwise the signal might as well never be returned.

Red:
Well, as I said, anti-intellectualism's definition can be found in the OP and in the link provided for it in the OP. Indeed, at the link, one'll find an exhaustive and nuanced explanation of it it.

As goes the definition of "rational thought," if I need to define that for you (or anyone else for that matter) I and that person, you if the "shoe fits," are best off not engaging in and argument/debate about anti-intellectualism, it's pervasiveness in American society, why it does pervade American society, what, if anything, to do about it, etc., for both our sakes.

 

[Correll]

I might have superior knowledge than some people in some areas; however, I can learn from everyone. Almost every (adult) is more knowledgeable than I am with some content area or skill. As such I should look down on no one. I should not indulge in intellectual snobbery.

Anyone might have an idea or a viewpoint that adds value.

The idea should be judged on it's merits.

Being against "intellectual snobbery" is mostly what is called "anti-intellectualism" today.

 

[Correll]

I might have superior knowledge than some people in some areas; however, I can learn from everyone. Almost every (adult) is more knowledgeable than I am with some content area or skill. As such I should look down on no one. I should not indulge in intellectual snobbery.

I get what you're saying, but this thread isn't about looking down on people, although I see how some folks may think it is -- the folks who think everything is "all about them" personally. What this thread is about is anti-intellectualism, which at its heart, as was noted in the OP, is a matter of resisting credible and cogent input that challenges one's preconceived notions and/or that may come from a source that obviously is more knowledgeable on a topic than one is oneself. The thread is about the pervasiveness of anti-intellectualism as exhibited in the American populace.

Just because an idea may come from a source that is more knowledgeable on a topic or an issue, does NOT mean that that idea will not, or should not be judged on it's merits, and not because we should defer to an Authority.

NOR, because an idea or input comes from a source that, on paper, seems likely to be less knowledgeable, should an idea be dismissed.

Even the blindest squirrel could come up with a fine "nut" and only an intellectual elitist would rather come up with reasons to dismiss an idea because of it's source, rather than honestly address and consider it.

Do I use examples taken from posts and comments on USMB? Of course I do and have; they are the most readily accessible and visible examples of the phenomenon. Indeed, one need not even use my specific examples. I'm sure lots of folks, even non-USMB members, can peruse the thread on here and within seconds find examples of their own. Doing so doesn't make the thread or make pointing out any specific example about the poster who demonstrates the phenomenon, although it's possible to make it about them if one is inclined to make the matter personal.

(I don't know what the point of making it personal would be. Presumably we are all strangers to one another, even though there is a false sense of familiarity given by the repeated appearance of IDs and avatars.)

Making it personal is a common, very, very common Logical Fallacy used to avoid dealing with input that challenges that one's preconceived notions.

As for the snobbery part...well, look around and see how often folks will make claims as though they know XYZ to be so versus how often one finds folks saying, "I don't know," or indicating they are largely speculating. That's who the snobs are. The people perceived as snobs are often the folks who willingly indicate the limit of what they do or don't know or cannot figure out. The actual snobs are the one's who are unwilling to recognize their own cognitive limitations and act to eliminate them, relying instead on the incontrovertibility of their limited exposure to "whatever."

IMO, those who are considered "snobs" or elitists, are not those who willing indicate the limit of what they do or don't know, but those who look for reasons for themselves to be considered Authorities or for those they are talking to to be dismissed, INSTEAD OF honestly addressing ideas or input that challenges their preconceived notions.

 

[Holos]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

If we are to argue about rationality or intellectualism, multiple definitions would increase the value of our understandings, especially as we communicate to perhaps develop the terms previously assembled to have a specific but pliable, possibly reassigned direction.

Think of it like fallen tree branches. I want to introduce them to you as I perceive them, I want to play a game with them, with you also as a player. However, there are certain rules to the game, so we can have the maximum amount of fun out of it without unnecessary conflict. So I do tell you about those branches, and how they are so different from any other branches, especially in relation to the game I am looking forward to play with you. It is not really a need, but a joined possibility upon a consciously formed inquiry for interest.

In terms of language, if you want to communicate about your reference, it is respectful to provide your previous comprehension of it, otherwise the signal might as well never be returned.

Red:
Well, as I said, anti-intellectualism's definition can be found in the OP and in the link provided for it in the OP. Indeed, at the link, one'll find an exhaustive and nuanced explanation of it it.

As goes the definition of "rational thought," if I need to define that for you (or anyone else for that matter) I and that person, you if the "shoe fits," are best off not engaging in and argument/debate about anti-intellectualism, it's pervasiveness in American society, why it does pervade American society, what, if anything, to do about it, etc., for both our sakes.

I am not contesting what you are providing me with.
Is your intention with the thread only to inform? I have been informed.
I had the impression you were requesting for interaction as it is an open online forum thread in the clean debate zone.

 

[320 Years of History]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

If we are to argue about rationality or intellectualism, multiple definitions would increase the value of our understandings, especially as we communicate to perhaps develop the terms previously assembled to have a specific but pliable, possibly reassigned direction.

Think of it like fallen tree branches. I want to introduce them to you as I perceive them, I want to play a game with them, with you also as a player. However, there are certain rules to the game, so we can have the maximum amount of fun out of it without unnecessary conflict. So I do tell you about those branches, and how they are so different from any other branches, especially in relation to the game I am looking forward to play with you. It is not really a need, but a joined possibility upon a consciously formed inquiry for interest.

In terms of language, if you want to communicate about your reference, it is respectful to provide your previous comprehension of it, otherwise the signal might as well never be returned.

Red:
Well, as I said, anti-intellectualism's definition can be found in the OP and in the link provided for it in the OP. Indeed, at the link, one'll find an exhaustive and nuanced explanation of it it.

As goes the definition of "rational thought," if I need to define that for you (or anyone else for that matter) I and that person, you if the "shoe fits," are best off not engaging in and argument/debate about anti-intellectualism, it's pervasiveness in American society, why it does pervade American society, what, if anything, to do about it, etc., for both our sakes.

I am not contesting what you are providing me with.
Is your intention with the thread only to inform? I have been informed.
I had the impression you were requesting for interaction as it is an open online forum thread in the clean debate zone.

Blue:
I'm happy to engage in additional discussion on the topic, but there isn't something I think I need to define in order to have that conversation. If there is something you want defined to engage in further discussion and that term(s) hasn't already been defined, by all means, ask for the specific definitions you desire.

 

[Holos]

"Just how should one go about arguing against the rejection of rationality and the outright anti-intellectualism that often characterizes conservative politics?"

Greater accuracy of definitions, not simply led by prescription, but by inspecting the radicals of the words and reassessing them to clarify your position.

Do you, or any other person, really need "rationality" defined? The OP provides two compatible definitions for "anti-intellectualism."

If we are to argue about rationality or intellectualism, multiple definitions would increase the value of our understandings, especially as we communicate to perhaps develop the terms previously assembled to have a specific but pliable, possibly reassigned direction.

Think of it like fallen tree branches. I want to introduce them to you as I perceive them, I want to play a game with them, with you also as a player. However, there are certain rules to the game, so we can have the maximum amount of fun out of it without unnecessary conflict. So I do tell you about those branches, and how they are so different from any other branches, especially in relation to the game I am looking forward to play with you. It is not really a need, but a joined possibility upon a consciously formed inquiry for interest.

In terms of language, if you want to communicate about your reference, it is respectful to provide your previous comprehension of it, otherwise the signal might as well never be returned.

Red:
Well, as I said, anti-intellectualism's definition can be found in the OP and in the link provided for it in the OP. Indeed, at the link, one'll find an exhaustive and nuanced explanation of it it.

As goes the definition of "rational thought," if I need to define that for you (or anyone else for that matter) I and that person, you if the "shoe fits," are best off not engaging in and argument/debate about anti-intellectualism, it's pervasiveness in American society, why it does pervade American society, what, if anything, to do about it, etc., for both our sakes.

I am not contesting what you are providing me with.
Is your intention with the thread only to inform? I have been informed.
I had the impression you were requesting for interaction as it is an open online forum thread in the clean debate zone.

Blue:
I'm happy to engage in additional discussion on the topic, but there isn't something I think I need to define in order to have that conversation. If there is something you want defined to engage in further discussion and that term(s) hasn't already been defined, by all means, ask for the specific definitions you desire.

No definitions required. Discussion appreciated.

Let me ask you a question, before I present you with my ideas on the topic so your own may be included in our interaction and thus we may arrive at greater, improved ideas with mutual benefits.

Which of the questions posed in the OP is the most important to you? I would like to proceed from that one question selected by yourself for us to engage in further discussion.