DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus “Anti-intellectualism...

...has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” - Isaac Asimov

That is very well done... and I believe it's accurate....

Hmm, where have I read that line before?

yup.

Thanks for posting that video. I completely agree w/his take. Well, there was one thing I didn't completely agree with, but overall, it was a very good take.

I also couldn't help but think of the personalities on this board. We have so many blowhards on here who pretend they know things they don't. I see the most asinine stances in the Political forum, but also in other forums like the Pure Football forum. People who don't have a clue about things are trying to shout down others who do. It's maddening.

I tend to look at things like this. I don't know a lot of things and I like to listen to folks who know a lot about a particular subject. I am not trying to slight anyone here and I want to say we have a lot of knowledgeable posters, but here are some examples:

Music: I really listen to you, Clem. You know way more than I do and I always defer to your knowledge. You teach me a lot.

Law: DawgLover5 [I might have that name wrong] is an attorney and extremely intelligent. I listen to his takes.

Gaming: Eve is my go-to girl.

Online sales: OCD.

Europe: Swish

Taxes: WSU

Art: Portland

Infectious Diseases: Jester

I could go on and on. Of course, I always try to read what the experts in the certain fields have to say.

This won't go over well w/some folks, but oh well........it does slay me that there are a handful of folks on here who constantly pound their chest and try and act like I don't know the game of football. I played and coached. Was successful at both. Instead of a resource, I got these know-it-alls telling me how dumb I am in that field.

When I started watching the video and I heard the Agrabah thing, I thought "....wait. We talked about this here before. I hope it's aged okay."

Link

It mostly has. I could actually use the word xenophobia without getting piled on! Man, such simpler times...

2011-2015 was a great period to post here and actually have discussions.

I wonder what caused us to take each other's expert opinions and throw them in the trash?

Good stuff Clem. In this internet age, watching 15 minutes of video's has replaced years of reading books, practice, and study. You know, learning from the people who learned before you. You didn't learn how to play the cello on your own, at least I don't think so. Somebody showed you how to slide your fingers up and down the neck to get in to the right spot. 1/8" off and that note isn't going to be quite right, and they didn't learn on their own either, some dead person taught them.

Hey, give me about 20 minutes and I will instruct you on how to play the cello. You have been doing it all wrong, man....geesh

pppfffttt I already knew all of that

Don't turn it around on you. Football is a game and that is just the way it goes. I had the chance to sit at a dinner table with Tommy Lasorda maybe 20-25years ago.

He said there are three things all men feel like they can do better than any other man...

1. Make love to a woman
2. Build a campfire
3. Manage a baseball team

It's true.


My point is Tommy Lasorda was clearly at the top of his profession, and he had people questioning his position and decisions. It's a game man. Everybody has played it to some point, so they know what they are talking about and you don't know squat. It is what it is. Don't get bunched up, it just comes with the position.



I like Lover. Haven't seen him post in a while. We had PM conversations when he was thinking about attending and attending law school. Good kid. Met him and his father at a tailgate maybe 15-20 years ago. I guess it was that long ago.

Hope they are doing well.

Sounds like East Cobb. My son played in a few tournaments for them if we didn't have anything going on that weekend and they needed a left handed pitcher to come in a get some people out.

We were with the Chattanooga Colonels. I coached a group of guys for many years.

I am no longer involved, but I was a member of the Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association for nearly 20 years. I loved the annual meeting in Nashville. Talking baseball for 2-3 days, a lot of cool guest speakers. Lot's of good tips, from guys like Tommy Lasorda, and he is just one of many. I just lucked out and when I took my seat at the dinner table, Tommy was assigned directly across from me, maybe tables of 8. Each table had somebody of note, but none better than Tommy.


I miss that a lot.

Cool story about Ned.

East Cobb is a class act. Great facilities. You have about 15 teams, best I recall it was EC Blue, Gold, Red, whatever color. We always liked playing East Cobb teams...well coached, good young men, no dirty play. We lost a tournament there. We beat one of the Cobb teams to get in to the championship, but lost by 1 run to the Indiana Bulls.

We got back the next year up in Hopkinsville, Ky and beat them pretty bad in a NABF World Series, and the next year in Miamisburgh, Ohio.


Good times, we took our kids and played in 17 different states. Every one of them got a college scholarship and while none made the Bigs; 3 made it to AAA and 2 more fizzed out in AA. A couple played some independent league ball, clinging to the dream.

Not bad for taking pretty much the same 15 kids at age 13 and seeing them through. We kept the roster at 15-16 players. That way we could play everybody enough. We were collecting money to pay for the thing. Only maybe $600 per player family. We had some private funding. We worked on $20-25,000 a year to make it work. We always had a team room or two if parents couldn't go..


I was over the team rooms. I always checked on the guys at 10PM. I then taped their door. I wake early and sleep lightly. I told them if the tape was broken, if they had not come to my room immediately to explain why they had to leave the room for some reason, everybody in the room was out of the games for the weekend.

If it caused us to forfeit and leave the tournament, it was on them to explain why we didn't play baseball that weekend.

It only happened once. The other guys came to my room to say so and so left the room to go across the street to some store.

I went over, found the kid, and gave the other guys a pass.

The guys Dad was ticked at me for not playing him when he found out I didn't play him. I felt responsibly for those guys when not under parent supervision. I said rules were rules. I took the team checkbook out, wrote a full refund to his father, but wouldn't sign the check. I told him I would sign it when they returned his clean uniforms.

I signed it a couple of days later.

We have to meet.

I think there several reasons why we think we know more than the experts.

One is TV and the movies. There are innumerable movies where the experts are clueless and some average citizen or kid becomes the person who saves the world or captures the bad guy. We relate to the average person and feel that we could do that if the situation arises.

Second is when the experts make a decision that doesn't work. Let's say that it is 3d and 1. The coach calls a pass and it is incomplete. We say, why didn't he run the ball. A run may have failed as well, but we don't have proof of that so we assume that we are right and know more than the experts. Even though there may not necessarily be a right answer. We then assume because this situation happens that it will always happen.

3rd, we then take that time that we weren't knowingly wrong and extrapolate that t other situations.

Playing devil's advocate here for a moment, I have to point out that many so called experts in things found online or in media are not truly experts. There are a lot of fake it until you make it experts in certain fields; we've got one as president of the low-to-no morals republican trumpian base with it's conspiracy theories over facts and money over lives alt-right version of the US government right now. And Trump's expert on all things GOD has direct reciprocal conversations with God on the regular...

I like the Braves as well. They are...or were on TV every night.

I am still a Indians fan, but the Braves are my other team. My wife and I got down to 3 games last year at the new park. I like being able to park the car at the hotel and pretty much be at the ballpark. Turner field and Fulton Co stadium, were, well, in a bad part of town. I only went to day games there.

I don't like to cast negatives, but it was. You just didn't want to be driving around down there at 10:30 after a game.

Glad I could make you smile. Oh....I didn't mention how sometimes you have to bear down on the strings to get the sound out, and other times maybe just one horsehair going across....or whatever they make bow strings out of these days.

I probably did a poor job of communicating. It was not my intention of making it about me. I was trying to apply what the video was saying by using examples of how things work on here and how we can be a microcosm for society, as we are a small--but widely diverse--community. Let's face it, there are quite a few posters who have opinions, read some articles, and then vigorously argue points where their knowledge and understanding of the topic are lacking.

Good point. Yes there are a lot of self proclaimed experts that really have no advanced knowledge on a subject. That certainly detracts from the real experts.

The instant I heard Agrabah, I was like "That doesn't sound real". lol

It was. I watched the Braves lose a few, and couldn't really celebrate when they did win. Go figure.


That Braves pitching staff will have to rank up with the best ever. Maddox, Glavine, Schmoltz….and whoever the 4th guy you want to mention, who always seemed to win 14 games.

Hey bone and peen. I love baseball talk, but this isn't really the thread for that. Hope you both take that in the right way.

Dunning Kruger effect. Yes, the man in the Oval Office is an exquisite example but it preceded him by quite some time. The internet made an occasional yet still common phenomenon a world wide epidemic. To be sure though, Dunning Kruger is different than anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards intellectuals and experts, historically because they’re seen to corrupt morals and agitate change and challenge establishment etc. I think what they’re actually talking about is Dunning Kruger effect....

“David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, has devoted much of his career to studying the flaws in human thinking. It has kept him busy.

You might recognize Dunning’s name as half of a psychological phenomenon that feels highly relevant to the current political zeitgeist: the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s where people of low ability — let’s say, those who fail to answer logic puzzles correctly — tend to unduly overestimate their abilities.

Here are the classic findings from the original paper on the effect in graph form. The worst performers — those in the bottom and second quartile — grossly overestimated their ability (also note how the best performers underestimated it).

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The explanation for the effect is that when we’re not good at a task, we don’t know enough to accurately assess our ability. So inexperience casts the illusion of expertise.

An obvious example people have been using lately to describe the Dunning-Kruger effect is President Donald Trump, whose confidence and bluster never wavers, despite his weak interest in and understanding of policy matters. But you don’t need to look to Trump to find an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You don’t even need to look at cable news. Dunning implores us to look for examples of the effect in ourselves.

“The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club,” he told me in an interview last year. “People miss that.”
—————

Brian Resnick: What do you wish more people knew about the limitations of the human mind?

David Dunning: If there is a psychological principle that I think people should know more about, it’s the principle of naive realism. [It means that] even though your belief about the way the world is just seems so compelling or so self-evident, it doesn’t mean that it really is [true].

Whenever we reach a conclusion, it just seems like it’s the right one. In fact, a lot of what we see and conclude about the world is authored by our brains. Once you keep that in mind, hopefully, it does give you pause, to think about how you might be wrong, or to think about how another person might have a case. And you might want to hear them out.

Your brain is doing a lot of creative artistry all the time. There have been a couple of teachable moments in the past couple of years [on naive realism].

The first teachable moment was that blue-black/gold-white dress. You look at that dress and damn it, it looks white and gold to me. And I can’t make it look the other color. So it looks like the way it is. But really, our brain is making a few assumptions and then coming up with an answer. That’s us. It’s not the world.

Brian Resnick: Something that I think is both funny and instructive about your work is that people often get the Dunning-Kruger effect wrong, and take away the wrong conclusions from it. Do you see that a lot?

David Dunning: Yes. The answer is yes.

The work is about [how] when people don’t get it, they don’t realize they don’t get it. And so the fact that people don’t get the work in major ways is a delicious irony, but also terrific confirmation.

But there are a couple things that people get wrong that are major.

The first is they think it’s about them [i.e., others]. That is, there are those people out there who are stupid and don’t realize they are stupid.

Now, those people may exist, and the work isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that this is a phenomenon that visits all of us sooner or later. Some of us are a little more flamboyant about it. Some of us aren’t. But not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition. The problem with it is we see it in other people, and we don’t see it in ourselves.

The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com...kT6bofIAxynI5jE

Nice addition.

America as a whole, many of the voters are anti intellectual because they vote based on emotion instead of logic, world history, and economic theory. Then again if every voter knew all of this information nobody would get elected because they'd all be rejected immediately.

An example of this is Ross Perot. Everything he illustrated turned out to be true but Americans and government failed to listen. They dismissed him for some reason or another, maybe due to being anti-intellectual. Many also vote for a pretty face (not any of our current candidates, lol) or good speaker (Obama) rather than someone who has shown they can actually get stuff done.

I want the presidential candidate to have a press conference and speak about micro\macro economic theory. Why hasn't this happened yet? I want them to talk about monetary theory and reducing the role of the federal reserve. Why hasn't this happened? I want charts, theory, examples throughout world history brought up as to why their policies work and where they have.

I don't think we all have to be intellectuals. I think it's fine if people don't even care about being an intellectual. I do think it is wrong for one to forcefully state their opinions when they are not well-informed or are just using particular articles, speeches, antidotes, conversations, etc as a means to justify their biases.

I had a college prof tell us one time that you don't need to know all the answers. You just need to know how to find the answers. She was talking about research. Effective research. I passed that message on to my students and their parents each year. I would put it in my syllabus and touched on it during Open House.

I have always felt that if one is going to speak strongly on a particular topic, one should do the research to be well-informed. Finding an article that supports your bias or beliefs, is not effective research. Effective research is when one enters the process w/an open mind and is looking to learn rather than proving a point.

I think we have some dawgs that effectively research and have an open mind. He doesn't post in this forum, but guard impresses me in that area. There are times we disagree on certain things. I'll state that I disagree and instead of shouting him down, I simply post links to several articles and let him decide for himself. He might reply with "I might have to rethink my position." That means he will probably do further research while considering the information in the links I provided for him. I find that impressive. He seems like a guy who actually wants to be well-informed and who enjoys learning. It's refreshing.

As it relates to the second part of what you said, if every person of voting age in America was intellectual enough to apply reason and logic and understand all that they don't know, which is really what Dunning is about.. nobody would run for office.

As the old saying goes, the very first thing that should disqualify a person from being President is that they think they SHOULD BE President. (the same applies to congress) I cannot fathom the level of ego it has to take to look at yourself in the mirror one day and think, "I am the very best person available to lead and make decisions which impact a nation of 330 million diverse people full of complicated issues."

Then to stand on a stage at a rally or a debate and claim over and over "MY plan..." "I will change..." "I know how to fix..." on every issue known to man.. healthcare, economy, infrastructure, civil rights, education, the environment, foreign affairs, etc.. No one person is smart enough to have all of the answers regarding ANY ONE of those issues but I'm to believe that this one person has the depth of knowledge to fix ALL OF THEM... GMAFB.

Intellectual people ask a lot of questions, they are full of doubts, they have a grasp and acceptance of the things they don't know... anti-intellectual people are full of self-confidence and think they know all the answers... so you are correct to shift the discussion from voters to politicians...

We have a government system that was designed to be run by intellectuals.. ie. people who know they don't have all the answers but are willing to listen and apply logic and reason to what other experts tell them. That's why we have 435 people in the house of representatives, 100 people in the senate, a President and a Vice President, appointment positions to run all of the major departments that are supposed to be staffed with career experts, and a SCOTUS... to get to the best answer drawing on the talent and expertise of MANY MANY people...

Then we elect anti-intellectuals to office who fight, not based on logic and reason, but on ideology and career advancement and who fill the cabinet positions based on alliances and favors and not on expertise..

And here we are.

I don't think a candidate being the smartest person out there is anywhere near the most important selling point of their candidacy. Being a good leader is waaaay more important than being smart (or not being dumb, whichever you prefer to see it). No president, no matter who sits in that seat, will ever be smarter than the people feeding the info. He/she does, however, have to have the emotional/personality intelligence to prioritize, surround with good/capable people, communicate effectively, manage teams, hold accountability (including themselves), etc. While there is probably correlation with doing those things well and being uber-smart, I don't think the one leads to the other.

Give me a dummy who can command, listen to their trusted advisors and make a rational decision based on the available info, and is at least somewhat believable when they talk to voters/citizens (the bar is low at this point), and they'll get my vote.

Agreed. Steve Jobs has one of my favorite quotes along those lines:



Ronald Reagan had a great quote on his desk with also applies:

I have zero issues with anybody expressing their opinions or ideas regardless of how well thought out the ideas or educated the person may be. No person's opinions, regardless of intelligence, should be left out of the process of legislating laws or resolving issues that affect them IMHO. Relegating anyone to the status of 'you don't matter' will not do.

Research, debate, and conversation all become useless though if two or more groups can not agree on basic facts. You simply can not have these things if one or more parties to a conversation is willing to lie, make up supporting 'facts', or ignore reality. You can not have a base of agreed upon facts in an atmosphere of pure propaganda where even the 4th estate is being manipulated by money, greed, and political agendas. We as a people and nation will either have to start recognizing these things or we will succumb to them, there are no half measures nor can there be in establishing and accepting basic facts based upon the best information we have available.

And education, or lack thereof, is vitally important to the quality of any resolutions we as a people might reach. You simply can't throw rocks at the sun and expect it to go away... But even the most ignorant among us is still a person with an emotional attachment to their opinions and the basic need to feel included the processes of making the decisions we all have to live by. Disenfranchised people undermine socioeconomic, legislative, and political processes all the time. This fact is obvious in most of our current issues. So inclusion is vitally important IMHO.

However, I often find myself questioning many of the same things that GOPers question. I believe in the constitution but I struggle with the ridiculous translations of it's contents that come out of our political and legal processes. I struggle with the moral and ethical ramifications of our decisions and actions. But I understand my biases as an extension of my personal beliefs often differ from those of others, which in turn lends to the struggle to find fact based common ground as a starting point to base these decisions and actions upon. So how do we agree on these things with no common ground? We can't and won't. We must have basic facts that we all agree upon and recognize that facts are not feelings, emotions, desires, nor random and variable in nature but observable, replicable, immutable, and constant truths.

GM and I really like each other but we will never resolve our differences on abortion, it is an impossible impasse in our political and moral differences. I don't hate him for that but I acknowledge that we will never agree as a matter of fact. On this issue, one of us will always have to lose. There is no win-win or partial measure that will ever allow him to agree with abortion or allow me to agree with taking the right of choice from a woman.

The most fierce political battles we fight today are nothing more than repetition of the won or lost battles of the past. Each iteration of these battles tends to distort comprehension of the underlying facts more and more until one side or the other gains an advantage to overturn or reinforce the existing laws. We fail as a people to compromise, agree, and accept the finality of resolutions reached from debates based in fact and the best information available at the time of the decisions. So we re-address these issues to the point of exhaustion by clubbing each other over the head with a constant barrage of propaganda and attempts to water down or alter belief in the underlying facts. Attacking facts has become more normal than accepting them.

In today's politically charged atmosphere of misinformation, propaganda, and distrusts the divides between camps and factions are simply too great to mount a united front without common ground or basic facts we can all agree upon. So the most uneducated, unsophisticated, unresearched, whimsical, and or farcical approaches to resolving issues suddenly become acceptable to one side or the other. We then use numerical, electoral, or procedural political or legal advantages to force unagreed upon solutions on our opposition with "na na na" gotcha enthusiasm. This is what our once great people have been reduced to by willful ignorance and the abandoning fact based conversations and debate. This is a recipe for disaster and IMHO that is what we are experiencing today. All of us are complicit in varying degrees.

So I agree that we don't all have to be intellectuals BUT being anti-intellectual or willfully ignorant is simply not a solution. There is nothing refreshing about dealing with those that fail to recognize this. And although I get the gist of your post, I can't stress enough that this is just not a 'kumbaya' moment in our history and think attempts to turn it into that are futile at best, and more problematic than helpful. If we can't find common ground, have fact based debate, and learn again to live with our differences, then I think we are all but done as a country.

This is probably some of the most basic, yet logical points I have seen made on this board in some time. You and I have touched on this topic before quite some time ago. If a president, or politician in general has any sense at all, they will surround themselves with experts on varying topics with which to draw information from. They understand that they are not an expert on everything and will need some advice and guidance as they work their way through their elected office. In order to do this effectively his advisors can not all be a bunch of yes men who simply go along with an elected official.

The sign of a good leader is the ability to surround themselves with the right advisors and know when to listen to those advisors. They must draw information from differing aspect and views to be an effective leader.

As for why people vote for who they vote for, I think that has more to do with what they feel is on their priority list. How they see the world and what is more important on their priority list. Sometimes it's from how it directly impacts their own life and sometimes it's looking at things from a big picture aspect.

That's not to say anyone they vote for will actually address the issues they claim they will. Deception and misinformation seems to be a politicians biggest weapon.

You just described W. I'd rather have a smart POTUS that I can respect than a guy I would like to have a beer with.

The Overconfidence effect. It's a cognitive bias that can lead to and have disastrous consequences.

Great post, DC.