People so fragile they can’t live with the idea other people might be smarter than they are
That’s not elitism.
But but but tHe RaTiO
Even the fucking witches know to trust the virologists
I like the witches who tell people to buy carbon monoxide detectors. One time I told a patient with abusive auditory hallucinations that her nighttime zyprexa was gonna shut the stupid bastard up and she was welcome to ascribe whatever spiritual interpretation she liked to that.
I’m sure you can find many people with MDs that aren’t above peddling snake oil.
Dr Oz.
Ugh. I have Medicare so I get notices from Dr. Oz on occasion.
Yes but the percentage would be much lower.
Also, an MD isn’t necessarily a virologist or vaccine expert. I mean, you really shouldn’t ask an ortho bro about anything but bones and joints. So I doubt MD necessarily means “elite”.
Holy shit yes. Everybody thinks they’re smarter then everybody else. That’s a huge part of the problem. Nobody can just stay in their lane and admit anymore that a person with a PhD in a specific field might know a little more about that field than you. Even the educated now think they’re the smartest person on the planet.
You 100% should not trust:
- An epidemiologist’s opinion on inflation
- A civil engineer’s opinion on viral spread
- An economist’s opinion on traffic flow
They’re just as guilty of this bullshit as everyone else. It’s everybody. The whole fucking planet at this point.
Also people think being smarter means knowing more, which is stupid. A guy who spent thousands of hours studying random topic is obviously going to know more about it, no matter how smart you are it just doesn’t replace time spent learning
The big problem is that we’re not just up against plain stupidity, we’re also up against organised and weaponised stupidity that is being enabled and fanned by those in power and the media, and also their billionaire backer donors, who want to drag us all the way back to the medieval ages.
That’s much more sadistic and worse than plain stupidity which we are all guilty of from time to time until we learn better. With organised and weaponised stupidity, they don’t want us to learn better, because our ignorance benefits their wallets.
Part of the problem is that we glamorise them calling them “influencers”. We should call them “cuntfluencers”, or maybe better yet, “cunts”.
Grifters, anti vaxers and Karens and chuds
Attention seekers
Intellectual elitism is absolutely not what we’re missing, we’re missing respect for expertise
Could just say we need to get rid of anti-intellectualism but has to be phrased in the most provocative way possible because it’s on social media 🙄
No, we need to reform the education system and make studying affordable. So Joe Schmo, your weird uncle and all the Yoga Mommy’s can go to university and find out exactly how they measure up to the rest of the country. And maybe in the process they can make some good friends and learn something about themselves.
That sounds like “getting rid of anti-intellectualism,” and the literal opposite of “intellectual elitism.”
I see the point, but I don’t think intellectual elitism is the same as anti-anti-intellectualism. I think intellectual elitism creates a sense of alienation from science that in fact leads to anti-intellectualism. “I have more specialized knowledge than you” is not the same as “I’m better than you,” and acknowledging that is the solution
I think they’re joking about the elitism part. People just need to stop to listen to idiots
completely tangential, but this is actually an interesting grammatical point. I’m guessing you’re German by your username; “stop to listen to idiots” would mean “aufhören, um Idioten zuzuhören.” “aufhören Idioten zuzuhören” would be “stop listening to idiots.” it’s interesting because “to [verb]” and “[verb]ing” are often interchangeable, but in this case they actually mean the opposite
Richtig, danke.
I understood absolutely zero of the German, but for other non native English speakers who didn’t pick up on the issue here:
The usual phrase here would be “stop listening to idiots”. The sentence that was used, “stop to listen to idiots” means the contrary, that you’ll stop what you’re doing so that you can listen to what the idiot has to say.
Which is a valid option, but an ill advised one.
The issue is that anti-intellectualists think that the very concept of knowing more than them about any given topic is elitism.
My conspiracy theorist mom would go on and on about how her spending an afternoon googling something put her ideas at a higher level than someone who got a degree studying it, and if I agreed with the person with the degree, then I was an idiot for not following her. She thought that right up until she died trying to treat her cancer with quack therapies.
Regardless of whether we frame it as “I’m better than you because I know more than you,” the anti-intellectualists will still be framing it as “I’m better than you because my ‘gut feeling’ knows more than you.” It’s a competition to them, not because someone told them they were lesser, but because they already believed they were greater.
Well at least your anti vaccine mom is dead
There are way too many people like her who exist
They are better than them, at that thing, and if you don’t defer, then they have every right to scoff at the stupidity before them.
Right, but people will call nearly anything elitism these days. The reason schools don’t offer accelerated learning programs for students who aren’t challenged by the average coursework is because people were calling that type of thing elitist.
Instead, now we put the upper quartile in the same classes as the lower quartile so that nobody receives the particular level and kind of attention that they need, and everyone is held to “average” whether they’re predisposed to be above that expectation or below it.
If someone is talented at a sport, people shower them with praise and give them full rides to college. If someone is talented at math or writing, people tell them to be a team player and stop surpassing their peers by so far. Merit-based scholarships are rare nowadays too, so good luck going to a top university just because you excel at your subjects…
Except these programs are literally known to be abused by the elite for their benefit. It’s not elitist to want evidenced-based support for low income high achieving kids, and for that support not to be diverted to upper-middle class kids who don’t need it.
Merit based and sports scholarships are well-known to be specifically designed to attract upper middle class kids because of the benefit they have of tutors, coaches, and extensive personalized guidance through their entire schooling. Actually this is the exact reason top universities prefer need-based financial aid; they don’t need the extra money merit-based scholarships are known to bring. Low income kids tend to struggle navigating admissions systems and financial aid on their own in general, and these particular programs, especially the sports scholarships, don’t make themselves very accessible to prospective applicants.
I haven’t seen whatever studies have been done on accelerated learning programs, so I don’t know if they help/hurt anyone conclusively, but I will say from personal experience being both included and excluded from them, I absolutely hated them from both angles. If you test into them, you’re doing extra work and being segregated (with a target on your back for bullies) from your classmates. If you don’t test into them, but you learn at a faster pace than the average, you’re literally gatekept from the advanced material even if you want to learn it. I think what would do worlds of difference is bringing respect back to teaching by hiring more teachers and paying them more which would allow for more individualized learning, so each child gets their educational needs met without unnecessary segregation.
If you want to do further reading, there’s a lot of very passionate people who have dedicated themselves to this topic for decades. This is a slightly outdated, but seemingly comprehensive report I just found online, section 5 is specifically on systemic admissions hurdles for low income kids: https://www.jkcf.org/research/true-merit-ensuring-our-brightest-students-have-access-to-our-best-colleges-and-universities/
They want this same elitism. They want to have their own special secret knowledge only they (and a small handful of internet people “in the know”) have access to. This makes them feel special and superior.
Humans feeling a need to impose a hierarchy where they sit at the very top is why we can’t have nice things
Well then they should just join a mystery cult or practice alchemy
No, what we need to bring back is dumb-shaming. People need to feel ashamed of their own ignorance so they stop believing what a fakebook idiot tells them.
I don’t think it’s elitism to believe that a scientist understands their field better than an influencer. And I also don’t think this is a new phenomenon - as a society we have been buying remedies from carnival attractions and Hollywood celebrities for centuries.
Humans en masse tend to listen to those who yell loudest, not those who appeal to common sense. We can be smart as individuals, but we are dumb as fuck as a group
Everything we do is thousands on thousands on thousands of years old.
However, some 50 years ago there was more cultural respect held for doctors and lawyers and astronauts and the like. We have forgotten somewhat how to value expertise. It is a problem, regardless of anything else.
Calling that intellectual elitism is like calling state-funded healthcare socialism
Years saying “stop making stupid people famous” and nobody listened.
