Anti-intellectualism is sadly not an isolated problem
I fully expect to come back to this post with plenty of Lemmy-tastic comments along the lines of "The people are tired of experts", but left-leaning instead of right.
This is obvious bait, but I'll bite a little.
The real experts, that sound the alarm and call us to action, are largely silenced or ignored. These people are not in leadership or positions that hold any meaningful power or influence. Our actual leadership is mostly unqualified and playing team politics and tug of war while nothing gets done and the plane crashes.
Can you blame people for raising their hands and suggesting that the pilots, who are crashing the plane through their apathy and inaction, be removed?
Direct democracy would be a wonderful concept for humanity to explore. And the experts who are on the side of progress should be allowed to spearhead initiatives to solve the various crises our species and planet faces.
The real experts, that sound the alarm and call us to action, are largely silenced or ignored. These people are not in leadership or positions that hold any meaningful power or influence. Our actual leadership is mostly unqualified and playing team politics and tug of war while nothing gets done and the plane crashes.
Yeah, but I'm not talking about people being dissatisfied with political leadership. I'm talking about the widespread rejection of experts themselves.
People voting against evidence-based policy and politicians are just a symptom of that more fundamental issue.
People just aren't buying appeals to authority anymore. They are demanding more.
In the US, people just don't seem to trust the status quo. The government is very, very corrupt and has been for a long time. Corporations are shady and many have been implicated in some pretty damning controversies that have affected our health with relatively little consequence. Regulation essentially doesn't exist.
If experts explained why certain "controversial" things are safe and laid out the science and reasoning, a lot of these concerns would likely vanish.
But, we generally don't address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them. We attack these people, calling them names - effectively pushing them further down their rabbit holes. Plenty stand to profit off of their fears and encourage their (potentially dangerous) perspectives.
And we definitely don't address legitimate concerns properly (from experts or otherwise), which adds fuel to the fire (and adds legitimacy to these bad actors who are quick to point out these issues) and more trustworthy sources are silent.
This is all a failure of media, government, leadership, and education. I reason that distrust in experts is a symptom of those failures.
The comic is old, it was made in response to Trump saying he should be President because he's "Not a Politician"
I think he's keenly appealing to a feeling most people resonate with: distrust of politicians.
It pains me to give him any amount of credit, though. Thanks for the context.
The "pilots" were chosen by pretty much the process depicted on that cartoon.
Choose people by being popular and saying the right things and you get salesmen types rather than experts.
This is why Education is so important to make Democracy work - well educated people can much more easily see through the bullshit as well as being more aware of the implications of the choice they're making, so tend to chose better "pilots" even thought the one weakness of Democracy in the modern age is that it's pretty much a choice based on perception and hence tends towards being a choice-by-popularity: the better educated are far from immune from bad choices but are a bit better at evaluating what candidates tell them and put some more effort into it because they're more aware of the importance of that choice.
Granted, for actual pilots one probably wants some kind of non-voting process that selects them, but if by "pilots" we mean "those leading a country", such methods are not Democracy, they're Authoritarianism and invariably they too do not select the "pilots" on competence at "piloting" the country, but rather on other personal abilities (like being the best ones at climbing the ranks in a Party, or at managing the support of violence specialists such as the Military)
Choose people by being popular and saying the right things and you get salesmen types rather than experts.
I have a saying: "You can never trust salesmen or politicians, and to be fair politicians are just salesmen selling that they should be in charge."
I'd say a lottery based on merit would be appropriate to choose leadership in certain areas for a reasonable duration. Determining merit could be a sticky issue if misapplied though, and could lead to some of the issues we deal with now.
Perhaps people could vote on a pool of experts for the final decision, with each expert advertising the solutions or progress they hope to achieve during the term of their leadership. It could just amount to people voting on the methods each expert chooses to accomplish their goals, depending on how specialized the office is.
As for leading the country, I am unsure if such an office is necessary. I am personally not a fan of the centralization of power when society is this profoundly sick. We need to patch the leaks in our ship before we can worry about captaining it.
I grew up poor in the southern part of the USA. Anti-intellectualism is a core tenant of most of the common religions in this region, which trend heavily towards evangelical christianity. One of my earliest formative memories is being called a "Scientologist" and getting condemned to hell because I believed in evolution. Lots to unpack there, I know.
On the other hand, I somewhat regularly get accused of using AI to write my comments/replies on various social media platforms, something which I have absolutely never done. Simply writing in my typical style, even with all the poor grammar and misspellings, is enough to make all the Dunning-Kruger mother fuckers crawl out of their basement long enough to make accusations against me.
Verrrrrry clever, you misspelled ‘tenet’ but it doesn’t fool me, bot! /jk
I don’t think it’s experts were tired of, but rather arrogance. For me it’s doctors who ignore my symptoms because my test results are within “normal range”. My favorite was the time I had a doctor tell me she thought it was all in my head and I needed to see a therapist.
To be accurate I think the pilots have less 'lost touch' and more forgot the plane had passengers and started treating them like payload.
Time for this old thing again:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov
Remember when people liked Trump because he's "Not a politician"
The Media failed, plain and simple, they lifted up Trump because he was good for ratings. In reality they should have fucking grilled him.
Not a single person bothered to ask what he thought made America great.
That's because those who followed him all vote by emotion and social pressure. They don't know how to stop, think, and reason for themselves; but they definitely know that trans kids are the reason why the stability of their social security is always in question.
kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)
Our leaders are not the most capable
Our leaders are crashing the plane for money
And they get chosen exactly by the process described in that picture.
and not even the real plane valor, they will crash it for 20% of the total cost because they need money now, quick
We've reached an unfortunate point where nobody really knows how the plane works any more, and steering to the left takes longer than an election cycle.
You can definitely plough it into the ground like a fucking dart though.
I have thousands of hours across multiple flight sims. I'm confident in my ability to fly a plane. Just don't make me land on an aircraft carrier... I always fuck that shit up in Top Gun on the NES.
Landing on that carrier was damn near impossible, I wouldn't even trust a skilled pilot to pull it off
I think a good point related to this was made by a YouTuber called Atun-Shei Films. In one of his Q&A videos he talked about this emphasized the problem is that experts need to get better at communicating with the public in an engaging way. Otherwise you end up with experts who scoff and tell you to just trust them when you ask questions about why they recommend certain things. And that's the space that anti-intellectual people will fill and provide their own opinion but can communicate it in an engaging way. It's definitely not fair that you both have to be an expert at something but also have to be good at communicating it but that's the reality we live in at this point.
This is why public educators are so important and precious.
experts need to get better at communicating with the public in an engaging way
Experts should be experts in two fields instead of just one. Got it.
Either that or they need to start hiring communications people and taking their advice. And not just like the PR speak communications people but people who have experience with creating something engaging and potentially entertaining as well that can then be merged with the educational message you're trying to spread. Otherwise people on the other side are gonna focus on spinning their lies in a creative and engaging way and you'll never win people over.
If only more STEM bros recognized communication as requiring expertise, but it falls at least partially into humanities so it gets dismissed a lot, at least in online discussions
More or less agree, but you can only dumb things down so far.
It's not even about dumbing down, it's about presenting the information in an engaging and at least slightly entertaining way. People will watch hours long YouTube video going in depth on topics because those people know how to give the info in an engaging way. Experts either need to pick up those skills or start working with people who already have them. Because the people spreading disinformation focus a lot more on communications since they don't have to do any real research behind their positions, they just have to focus on selling it.
I swear, this is the only time i hope you don't get what you expect. It would be awful to have these kinda folks among us.
Edit: i mean like the one in the comic. Unless he's a pilot, a good pilot and everyone on that plane knows this.
I’m not sure of the qualifications , but the guy in the comic will definitely get the plane on the ground.
The door to the cockpit is locked. If there has been a discussion or if there is just this vote, the powerlessness of those regular passengers shows that anti-intellectualism is an isolated problem. It only looks dangerous to those who don't remember the locked door.
So it's an inapt analogy. The door to the government should have been locked.
That door is locked.
The cartoon is apt. It's even worse. Pilots don't fly without the approval of airline management.
Not my fault every intellectual I meet just hides their tiny penis behind big words and rote memorization. Excuse me if I aint fuckin' impressed.
is that how we weigh merit? based on what impresses you the most?
I'd rather trust an asshole who knows what they're doing than a charismatic idiot who's just trying to be the most impressive.
Absolutely, dummy. Look around.