this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
469 points (91.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43912 readers
1015 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

Having tried this, no, it does not. People are anti-intellectual because they willfully choose to be ignorant. They're like that for several different reasons, but their choices are the same.

What actually matters is not allowing people like you to shame the rest of us who do value knowledge into submitting to the will of people like that out of a misguided notion that judging them for their stupidity is wrong or bad. It's not. It's called holding people accountable for their actions and choices, and it's a thing we have been doing far too little of in society.

Hold people accountable for not knowing basic shit and refusing to learn it. Grown adults have no excuse, barring some learning disability, for not having decent reading comprehension, or not being able to do basic math, or not having critical thinking skills. We're trying to run a democracy here and that requires having an educated public. And that means the public has to be willing to educate themselves.

For fuck's sake. I don't know everything either but if there's something I don't know, I learn it. I at least try.

You're part of the problem defending them by shaming us. You're part of the reason why anti-intellectualism is such a problem: you enable irresponsibility, indolence, and selfishness by protecting people who refuse to learn from consequences.