Asklemmy

You would think the Internet and access to an unprecedented amount of information would have made us smarter, more emphatic, and so on.

But it turns out people are easily misled and manipulated. Social media quickly starts to feed you more of the same crap just because you watched one video. Village idiots can now form echo chambers with like-minded individuals, e.g flat Earth believers.

Those who want power will take advantage of people who fall into all this.

It ebbs and flows. My personal conspiracy is that it's a built-in self-destruct switch in case a species overpowers all predators, diseases, and lack of resources. Some code auto-nerfs the species so they aren't OP forever.

When resources are plentiful, vaccines have stopped most major diseases, everyone is washing their hands and decently educated ..that's when the incels, the homeschooler mommy groups who distrust science, and the religious zealots sow discord and take civilization down, lol.

I'm sure the demographics throughout history change. But the base instincts of greed, fear, and hate blow apart cultures and empires throughout time.

No because human stupidity is infinite

A lot of things in life are perpetual changing.

Some day the pendulum will swing back to pro intellectual. Once people comprehend the damage the just like me leadership has done.

I don't think I've ever witnessed literal "anti-intellectualism", perhaps that's a thing around you ? People not caring/understanding the value of knowledge, sure, but deliberately opposing it... that sounds terribly dumb. Not sure what anybody would get out of it

I think there's this idea of historical tick-tock, that goes from faith or belief to enlightenment. It swings back and forth depending upon geopolitical development.

But that aside, I believe that after the digital revolution, getting people to believe bunk en masse became easier. This has amplified the grift economy, which in turn spreads disinformation, fronts logical fallacies as a debate method and puts bad faith arguments on a pedestal.

Take for instance that guy who illegally experimented on kids because he thought he had a better vaccine than the multi-purpose vaccine that was standardised. After he lost his medical practice he has been forced to rely on financing from conspiracy theorists and socialize with flat earthers because he is now an anti-vaccine icon.

He has to do that because his name is synonymous with malpractice and needs to play the part to feed his face.

This is just one example of the grift economy. For more, seep up "savage alpha male podcasts" to see an even harder grift.

I think it's becoming better overall, not worse. Yes, there's a populism issue at the moment, but this is far from the first time that's happened. We're dealing with the introduction of an entire new means of communication, online media in general and social media more specifically. That brings all new hazards and benefits that need to be dealt with.

The era after the printing press was developed brought intellectual development, but it also sparked revolutions. Those didn't always wind up with that right people getting into power. It took a while for society to adapt and stabilize. I expect the same will happen with Internet communication.

I'm also hopeful because studies have shown that successive generations generally improve their abilities in abstract thinking. (I'm having trouble sourcing that statement, unfortunately). That's important for the economy because the jobs of the future will need that abstract thinking. At least in my experience, it also acts as a bulwark against bad actors because people with poorer abstract thinking abilities tend to be more gullible, at least when it comes to lies that they like.

People will always fear that which they cannot understand.

Maybe that's not what's happening to begin with. I reject the entire premise. And all the users in here humble bragging is honestly nauseating.

Traditionalism vs new approaches to things will never go away until technological progress at least stops accelerating and levels out a little bit. So, a Star Trek utopia basically, where fundamental physics has largely been nailed down.

That said, education is a separate topic, and has generally been trending in a positive direction for most of the past 4000ish years. This has actually made the conflict harsher, over time imo, as the traditionalists are starting to feel threatened at an existential level. Naturally, they're going to meet that feeling of threat with traditional methods, and I'll just let you consider our human history of conflict resolution methods to consider what that might entail.

We just don't believe in our religious books anymore, though. We used to. And that's a problem for some people. Like, the biggest problem that can exist for them, its about souls and salvation, not this "crude matter" as Yoda would say.

Wait til AI takes prominence. What effect on intellectualism that might have remains to be seen. As long as LLMs aren't tailored to bias certain views, it may just lift humanity.