Kolya on 14/2/2015 at 10:41
One of the largest and most pervasive social movements I have noticed in recent years is the growing distrust against experts in all fields. People don't trust "any politicians any more", they don't trust scientists because their results are likely engineered by whatever interest group they oppose, they don't trust artists because "a five year old could have painted that", they don't trust teachers because their child is special, they don't trust medics because they heard that vaccinations are a ploy and they don't trust journalists because they are all paid liars. The rise of the dilettantes is also the rise of the "common sense".
There may be a growing knowledge gap between the experts and the general populace. This could happen in two ways: People may get dumber. The fact alone that this is such a widely held belief while everyone excludes themselves from it, marks this as a psychological phenomenon, closely related to "the new generation is dumber than we were".
On the other side the world is certainly getting more complicated as we accumulate more knowledge in all fields. But I suspect that the main reason behind this growing anti-intellectualism is universal access to information: Given enough time everyone could become an expert in almost every field today. And that leads us to think that we are on par with any expert, after reading the wikipedia entry on a subject or some opinionated blogs.
The ramifications! But I haven't had breakfast yet. :)
nickie on 14/2/2015 at 17:32
You forgot banks, they're top of my list and I wouldn't have medics or teachers in it. What do you consider to be 'recent years'.
Yakoob on 14/2/2015 at 21:52
Heh i feel this is aimed squarely at me and ill admit im a pretty big disbeliever (tho i lve always been more on the skeptical side, even before it became cool :p)
Particularly i distrust the nutrition/medical areas, after read ad nauseum how many strongly held beliefs get disproved or questioned. However i shifted (thanks to some of faetals excellent points) a bit more from just distrusting the science to distrusting the representation science in media, which loves to spin and magnify the findings to get the best story and most pageviews, rarely even getting past the abstract. As a web writer/marketer i completely understand the reasons this happens, but that only makes me more dubious.
The solution would be to just go read the studies yourself but thats not honestly feasible for most people who arent working in a particular field. For me, i simply dont have the time, there are often way too many studies youd need to get through to get sufficient viewpoints to make up your own mind (altho some meta analysis alleviates that) and many journals are behind a paywall.
Tho, to step bit into the mistrust-land, sometimes i think even going to the journals may not be sufficient; ive read from number of researches complaining about many shoddy or even engineer studies making it to journal if they just pay their way thru. And many stories of corporations sponsoring favorable studies while burying the less so, which would bias the information out there.
That being said, im not against science and advancement per se. If anything i use high tech gadgetry and culinary inventions every day. But i do think a lot of what we (as a society) "know" is really just an educated guess. Its good to rely on educated guesses and often enough they work well, but lets not spin it into "kale cures cancer!" stories.
froghawk on 14/2/2015 at 21:59
^agreed 100% with this. I don't think a healthy distrust is a sign of anti-intellectualism - if anything, it's the opposite. People are becoming more skeptical of the party line, and less willing to let 'authorities' dictate what's best for them. While that leads to a lot of irrationality, stupidity, and people turning away from one group that wants their money only to get taken in by another instead, I think it will be a net positive for society over time. People just need more education for that to work. For example, scientists generally do a terrible job of communicating with the public. If they were more transparent, worked at educating people more thoroughly, and worked to earn the public's trust instead of creating the ivory tower divide, you'd be seeing a lot less dogmatic ignorance. Remove the paywalls, give people access to journals, and give them the basic tools to comprehend what they're reading to some degree.
ZylonBane on 14/2/2015 at 23:33
Oh god you're serious.
froghawk on 15/2/2015 at 00:11
Who, me or Kolya?
Pyrian on 15/2/2015 at 05:51
I'm not bothered by the distrust of authority nearly as much as the blind trust of total hacks. An antivaxxer, for example, is not merely rejecting solid science, but accepting conclusions that are completely unscientific. That's not skepticism. That's... Something else.
demagogue on 15/2/2015 at 06:28
This is something I dealt with every day doing EHS administrative law (environment, health, and safety). There's a rightist brand of it (Fox News, et al) and a leftist brand of it (critical theory, et al), but they both have the same strategy of making mainstream experts and knowledge come across like a conspiracy, by either the 1% or the socialists, to screw everybody else, and it's only their alternative media channel that are purified and can speak truth to power and uncover the conspiracies, untainted by the corruptions of the arrogant, conniving, brainwashed, and hegemonic.
Yeah ... Fox News, Julian Assange & friends (Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning), anti-vaxxers, anti-GMO/Monsanto-ists, anti-chemtrailers, the occupy movement, the tea party, every online movement from Anonymous to Zeitgeist, every critical theory professor in every small liberal arts college everywhere... They're all are in the same boat attacking the mainstream as corrupt and the alternative as pure.
Not that the mainstream doesn't have problems, but their alternative channel is always just as much suspect; the difference being that the mainstream has (the chance to have) accountability checks. The alternative channels have none. They have religiously zealous followers that don't question their own movement instead.
I'd say they should read more books, but then they just read conspiracy literature and get more worked up, so you can't win.
Edit: The, or one important, difference between health skepticism and anti-intellectualism is if you question a position based on good objective reasons or based on the presumed hidden motivations of the person holding it, i.e., a conspiracy. Another difference is if you're willing to hear any opinion out and give it serious consideration, or if you reject the very idea of an argument before you even hear it out and shut your ears to it on principle alone.
That points to another sign of anti-intellectualism I've seen. Any kind of reasoning that starts like: "I don't know everything, but if there's one thing I do know, it's X!" And then they will reject anything that even suggests that X might not be all that. In this situation, X is almost always immediately suspect IMO.
Kolya on 15/2/2015 at 12:52
Quote Posted by froghawk
I think it will be a net positive for society over time. People just need more education for that to work.
While universal informational access can raise the education level we cannot all become experts in any field. Lawyers, scientists, politicians, medics - all these experts often spent a lifetime focussed on a subset of their field. And there seems to be a huge temptation for any layman to think: Screw that, I have just understood one basic principle, now I can cut through all that irrelevant crap and talk on par with these people. That fallacy where people tend to overestimate their own ability even more the less experience they have, certainly applies here. Kruger-Dunning I think.
It's even worse when someone offers such simple solutions, either deliberately or because they never made it past entry levels themselves.
I'm really no fan of blind obedience to the authorities. But realistically I have to admit that I cannot check a lot of information myself. And it's not because scientists suck at communication. It's because I am ignorant of what they talk about, I lack their years of experience and learning. Why should they have to dumb down for me, unless they are educating freshmen?
I have to humbly admit that and consequently I have to trust other people, even though I know that people make mistakes. This becomes obvious as soon as you look at your own area of expertise.
This general trust that we extend to strangers is possibly the most valuable asset of modern society. Without it society falls apart and therefore it needs special protection. The biggest loss of the financial crisis of 2008 may not have been the money that was lost, but the distrust that was created by the appalling behaviour of some of these bankers.
Aja on 15/2/2015 at 16:28
I see lots of web ads these days that say things like, "New weight-loss formula that has angered doctors!" or "Learn to speak Spanish with secret technique that has language professors up in arms!", the implication being that these professionals are conspiring (like dem says) against you to keep you unhealthy and ignorant or whatever because then they can continue to sell you their services. These ads have always struck me as a little odd because I've never felt that mistrust toward professionals. In fact, I've always relied on them without much doubt or hesitation.
I wonder if that rhetoric resonates more for people of lower socioeconomic status. I also wonder if Americans would be more inclined to be mistrustful than Canadians of experts in education and health care since they (the American public) pay so much more for these things than we Canadians do, and they don't have the luxury of being assured that if they get sick, they'll be taken care of.
