Quote of the Day

About scientific journals, but it applies to other "scholarly" writings as well:

Realize that not all journals are good

Just because it's in a journal doesn't mean it's a fantastic study. Journals and papers both range from great to meh to downright fraudulent. And even a top-notch journal can sometimes publish a flawed study.

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Quote of the day

When you are trying to reach the gun owning community, it is best to keep the message simple. Too many words terrifies them.

Yes, I've found this out.

Serious ignorance

From Facebook:

I'm not sure if this is serious stupidity or rampant ignorance since pretty much everybody knows it is the US CONSTITUTION that begins "We the people.."

Well, everybody except this idiot.

The Phrase "we the people" is totally absent from the Declaration of Independence.

Which would be something this person would know if he actually read either document, which he obviously hasn't.

Neither has he understood either one for their historic and legal significance. And I am not patient enough to try to educate this person since he is a lost cause for any intellectual pursuit.

I would be pretty sure that things like ablative absolutes would seriously go well beyond this person's intellectual capacity.

Again, why I don't bother with the average gun loon. This clown is pretty typical for the intellectual level of a gunloon.

Of course, Gunloons will more than eagerly foist their ignorance upon one.

Ignorance isn't bliss: it's really fucking annoying.

Quote of the Day

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth.

Source

Experts v. College dropouts--Guess who wins!

Yes, the college dropouts!

It seems that anti-intellectualism and dumbing down are alive and well in the US as my previous post on this topic pointed out, but it is REALLY bad at how DUMB people can be as the Vanity Fair Editorial The Creeping Danger of Conspiracy Theorists points out:

But some of the latest polling data does seem to show that at least 30 percent of American citizens—and maybe lots more—are as dumb as a bag of inbred hammers.

The poll in question is a delightful one put out this week by Public Policy Polling, a concern ranked by Fordham University as the best out of 28 organizations for the accuracy of its national pre-election estimates in 2012. This time, the folks at P.P.P. decided to have a bit of fun, and rather than polling about which political party is up or down, opted to ask Americans about their beliefs in conspiracy theories. I can just imagine the laughter at the P.P.P. offices when they started putting together the questions.

Yes, you can find out how dumb and hoodwinked you are if you are able to actually read (and understand) the editorial.

As the editorial ends:

Yes, we have become scientific and political illiterates, and no nation can survive on a bedrock of such delusional stupidity. Of course, the 26 percent (or more) won’t believe me, if they manage to read this. I’ll just be deemed an “elitist” for daring to suggest that demon science and data, rather than ridiculous conspiracy theories, should be used to judge reality. So, it may be a losing battle, but we should all try. I don’t want to be forced, someday, to stand by as the rest of the world renames our nation “America the Ignorant.”

I couldn't agree more.

This isn't news to me

For some reason, the US national characteristic of anti-intellectualism is being noticed in the press with MacLeans (Canada) America Dumbs Down and the New York Review of Books, Age of Ignorance. I've also been doing posts on this since 2010, and am not the only person to have noticed this trend. As I said, this isn't really news since Richard Hofstadter won the 1964 Pulitzer prize for a book titled Anti-intellectualism in American Life.  Hofstadter attributed this trend toward the democratisation of knowledge.

In 2008, journalist Susan Jacoby was warning that the denseness—“a virulent mixture of anti-rationalism and low expectations”—was more of a permanent state. In her book, The Age of American Unreason, she posited that it trickled down from the top, fuelled by faux-populist politicians striving to make themselves sound approachable rather than smart.  Perhaps we can add media consolidation to the contributing factors with fewer good news sources being available in the US and even public broadcasting being throttled by crypto-commercials called "underwriting".

Hofstadter's book was the landmark work on the topic, even though there have been a few more significant books and articles on anti-intellectualism preceded it (most notably Merle Curti’s The Growth of American Thought in 1943), and even though it has been followed, in recent years, by well known books from the Left and Right, including Russell Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, Richard Posner’s Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, and so on. The list lengthens if one adds in broader books about the “dumbing down” of American society.

Of course, some of the US founders were intellectuals (Jefferson and Franklin) who founded Universities or who praised education (Madison), yet the trend toward anti-intellectualism has taken grasp in the US.  Hoffstadter pointed out that there is a conflict between access to education and excellence in education (although, I am of the opinion that one does not need to be formally educated to contributes to this trend, which is reiterated in the MacLeans article where a US Second Grader wrote to the South Carolina legislature that she believed the States should have a fossil, but was rebuffed by fundamentalist spewing mumbo-jumbo about evolution.

Charles Simic point out in the NYRB piece that:

It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.

Even better is where Simic points out:

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth

It seems that the big push for ignorance comes from the right since an educated, well-informed population, which is required by a functioning democracy, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.  It is much easier to spread disinformation to a population which is incapable of critical thinking skills than one which only hears the things which they agree.  That was one of the reason for the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press: to have a healthy and informed debate on public policy.  But one cannot have such a debate if the field is filled with rubbish spread by those who have their own interests at heart.

To some extent, Hofstadter is correct when he mentions the democratisation of knowledge, where someone who has no real grasp of the topic gives an opinion and weight is given to that opinion which is out of line with its value.  The opinion of someone who has no knowledge of a topic does not have the same weight as someone who has studied the topic and developed an expertise of the matter.

Simic points out the common misconceptions which are being pushed and offers this conclusion for why anti-intellectualism has become epidemic:

• Christians are persecuted in this country.
• The government is coming to get your guns.
• Obama is a Muslim.
• Global Warming is a hoax.
• The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
• Schools push a left-wing agenda.
• Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
• Obama hates white people.
• The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
• The safety net contributes to poverty.
• The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners. “Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect. That’s why they love politicians who rail against teachers indoctrinating children against their parents’ values and resent the ones who show ability to think seriously and independently. Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is why millions are being spent to keep my fellow citizens ignorant.

Putting the Twitt in Twitter

OK,I'll admit that this thought passed through my head, but I know the difference between Boko Haram and Procol Harum.

The group's official  name is "the Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad" or "The Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Struggle" are translations of Arabic Jamā'at ahl as-sunnah li-d-da'wa wa-l-jihād (جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد).

In the town of Maiduguri, where the group was formed, the residents dubbed it Boko Haram. The term "Boko Haram" comes from the Hausa word boko, originally derived from a Hausa word with meanings such as "fraud" and "inauthenticity", [a] and the Arabic word haram figuratively meaning "sin" (literally, "forbidden").  Loosely translated, the name could mean "western education is sinful", which would symbolize its strong opposition to anything Western, which it sees as corrupting Muslims. Locals who speak Hausa are unsure what it actually means.

Literally speaking, the name may be meant to convey the message that "bogus education is sinful". Dr Ahmad Murtada of the Islamic Studies Department, University of Bayero, Kano has noted in his research of the group that the name of the movement should not be understood literally from the Hausa, but rather as meaning "traversing the Western system of education is haram".

Nothing like another group of fundamentalist, anti-intellectuals.

Dumbing down of the US.

The US has long had a strong anti-intellectual tendency, perhaps it is due to populism.  Lately, there has been a dislike of the "educated elite" and their "expertise", which somehow translates into unquestioning acceptance of things which are plain off bullshit.

In this case:  creationism.

Source: National Geographic

 The United States ranks 33rd in the world in acceptance in the scientific notion of evolution. Yes, 33rd! Just ahead of the Turks but behind Cyprus and Latvia. In a 2005 survey adults were asked to respond to the statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” Only 40% of U.S. citizens responded, true.

In 2013 another survey asked, “Humans and other living things have evolved over time.” Only 43% of those who identified as Republicans agreed. This was down from 54% in 2009. An 11% decline in 4 years.

Among Democrats 67% answered true while 65% of Independents agreed. Pew’s researchers said party differences remained when other factors — such as the racial and ethnic composition of the political groups, and religious and educational background — were taken into account.

That's pretty bad, but it might explain why other silly beliefs have taken hold in US society.

See also:
Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds

I heard it on the Internet...

Yeah, yeah.  I don't really like memes, but this is pretty good for those who lack critical thinking skills.

Should I trust some bozo on the internet whose qualifications I don't know?
Or should I trust someone whose knowledge I trust

Better yet, why should I believe something that I have fact checked and found to be wrong?

That's not intellectually honest.

Did the War for American Independence begin with an intellectual snub?

I wish I had bookmarked the site where it was alleged that Benjamin Franklin's desire for American Independence began with his being told he was intellectually inferior to the British when he was sent to Britain in 1757. Benjamin Franklin stated that " to be an England-man was, of itself, a character of some respect" but he lamented that his non-colonial cousins did not regard them as fellow Britons as if they were "unworthy of the name of Englishmen, and fit only to be snubbed". Considering that Franklin was instrumental in creating The Academy and College of Philadelphia (later to become the University of Pennsylvania), The Library Company of Philadelphia, and American Philosophical Society, that was truly an insult. Franklin worked at promoting intellectual life in the North American Colonies, but those attempts were deemed inferior by the Europeans.

Thomas Jefferson also encountered this snobbery with the idealization of Americans as Rousseau's "noble savages" stirred European sympathies for the United States during the War for Independence, but the European emphasis upon savagery over nobility stirred resentment among Americans. One of Jefferson's more emotional moments in Europe was his encounter with the pejorative opinions of French intellectuals concerning the American character. His Notes on the State of Virginia was a response to those Europeans who shared the views of the naturalist Georges Buffon that animal life in America was inferior in size and strength to that of the Old World. Jefferson's response went beyond a literary effort; Buffon received skins and skeletons of American animals sent to France at Jefferson's behest to prove the equality, if not the superiority, of life in the New World.

Even more galling was the charge of the philosophe Abbé Guillaume Raynal that human life degenerated on the American continent. This observation contained aspersions on American virility as well as on American genius. Jefferson countered this assault with a spirited presentation of Indian virtues. He labored valiantly, but under obvious handicaps, in pointing out poets and artists, mathematicians and scientists, to match the products of Europe. Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse were not the equals of Galileo and Newton.

The vigor of American ripostes to perceived insults to their nationality inspired more derision than respect among Europeans of this period. None was more devastating than the Reverend Sydney Smith, a Yorkshire wit who reacted to American claims to being "the greatest, the most enlightened, the most moral people upon earth" by asking rhetorically, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" So much for the pretensions of American nationalism. A sense of inferiority in relation to older civilizations seemed to have given rise to a hyperbolic style of self-defense that invited ridicule.

America thrived on its newness and break from Europe, but the question remained regarding American culture how close are its ties to its origins? Was one of the legacies of the War for Independence this desire for total newness and a break from its roots?

The problem was there was a cultural elite in the early republic, the traces of which still exist, but anti-intellectualism is becoming the rule in the US. People in the United States have moved down a path that rejects logical, rational thought. In its wake, we can easily see the rise of a lot of negative things.

Susan Jacoby writes about the American brain drain in a WashingtonPost.com article titled The Dumbing Of America. It has the subtitle “Call Me a Snob, but Really, We’re a Nation of Dunces”. I couldn’t agree more with this premise. From the article:

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980.

And from the article’s conclusion:

The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. (“Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture,” Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a “change election,” the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

As Susan at Liberality put it: "Two hundred years ago the founders of the republic would have been deliriously happy at the idea of Americans able to be informed by the sheer volume of available facts the digital information age would produce. The fatal assumption was that Americans would choose to think and learn, instead of reinforcing their particular choice of cultural ignorance."

The founders would be appalled at this.

Read more: Constructing an american identity - Nationalism