John’s post on how educated conservatives are even crazier than uneducated conservatives really hit the mark for me. In my regular life, I’m able to avoid socializing with other academics for the most part, but on this sabbatical, my after-work life is like an extended episode of the Charlie Rose show. I’ve never listened to so much Vichy liberal bullshit in my life.
Granted, I’m a deeply unserious person who thinks it’s irresponsible not to speculate about the possible effects of guillotining a few hundred members of the permanent government (I honestly believe that it is irresponsible not to consider this, I do), but even so…the ignorance of contemporary politics I see from these people is off the charts. I’ve been asked “what’s Obama hiding, why won’t he release his long-form birth certificate”. I’ve been looked at like I was Che Guevera for saying that the U of Chicago econ department lost credibility after the 2008 crash. I’ve spent half an hour explaining why it’s politically difficult for Obama to propose a new gasoline tax (this was a little different than the others, because in this case the person seemed willing to learn at least).
People are dumb. Really fucking dumb. It doesn’t matter what kind of a degree they have after their name, they’re still idiots, maybe just clever, erudite idiots (maybe). And politics is complicated and non-obvious, at first blush. It’s a lot easier to say “Al Gore is fat” than to consider the evidence on global warming, it’s a lot easier to say “both sides do it” than to put Bush v Gore and the Clinton impeachment in historical context. Everyone is this way, I’m sure, I don’t care if you’re Donald Trump or Irving the tailor. I enjoy firing up the Clash and writing diatribes against our Galtian overlords, and I know that’s not a rational exercise. (But the men at the factory really are old and cunning, all the evidence bears that out.)
I fear more and more that educational credentials (when paraded around in public discourse, not within narrow fields of expertise) and all this talk of “cognitive elite” are just new ways of saying STFU plebe.
Ben Cisco
I am smitten with this paragraph; it should be bronzed and hung someplace.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Ben Cisco:
Thanks.
Jeff Spender
I spent time at U of Chicago. I stayed away from the econ department because I didn’t want the cops called on me for disorderly conduct.
I agree with you, though, DougJ. I’ve spent enough time around credentialed people to know that idiots exist amongst them, and in greater numbers than I’d originally feared.
The Dangerman
This will be available on Pay Per View, right? Having commercials interrupting the action would be so wrong.
Narcissus
It really is the best years of your life they want to steal.
Time is money, so they want yours.
Jeff Spender
Also of note: I have a friend that did a summer internship at the Ayn Rand Institute. She came away fairly disillusioned with the objectivists that ran the place (saying that they were really quite illogical and uni-dimensional in their thinking and, mostly, came from very wealthy backgrounds and didn’t have much real-world experience).
She suggested that I sign up just so I could annoy the hell out of them. They’d ostracize me pretty quickly for asking questions and daring to put their philosophy on trial. One of the people she was there with got this treatment, to the point where he was asked why he was there because he had some reservations about some of the things they said.
Good bunch of people.
ChrisNYC
Just want to be clear. Are you talking dumb as in when John Cole was yelling about boots on the ground in Libya (didn’t happen) or your type of dumb (as in, I don’t think this contraceptive thing will amount to a hill of beans; didn’t happen) dumb? Which kind of dumb?
ETA” Ha! I also remember the other guy’s dumb. The “ooooohhh Santorum is real and dangerous threat dumb”. Hahahaha!
ETA2: Also, “Rick Perry is the GOP nominee, because crazy Christians.” There’s that kind of dumb too.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@ChrisNYC:
I didn’t mean your kind of dumb, which is easier to explain.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
It really is time to push the reset button on this republic. Sorry Ben, we couldn’t keep it.
Some Guy
I believe yes, I believe no. My students always surprise me. They disappoint me too. It is the surprises that I live for.
But being less of a poseur, I don’t think knowledge solves anymore. I think doggedness does. So if I accept your point, and generally I do, there is nothing but the push and the shove. And right now, the right needs a big ‘ole shove. Because they wil not listen to anything but a brick wall. And the left needs to stop being so self-regarding about its conscience and get some shit done. We are two steps and a screen door from entering the handmaid’s tale.
I say this knowing full well I too am very dim about things that matter, I just don’t know which ones.
MattR
Maybe its just me, but I have trouble trusting any survey that shows moderates historically being the most distrustful of science.
CaseyL
The mystery to me is why people chose to be ignorant and stupid (well, those for whom stupidity is a choice).
It’s not a great coping mechanism, because deciding to be ignorant leaves you with no way of understanding, much less coping with, a world getting more varied and complex all the time.
Ignorance only soothes the ego if you limit your interactions to other ignorant, stupid people. Granted, there are plenty of those… but it’s still a fragile environment to keep yourself in, because you never know (being ignorant) if something will happen to push you out of your tiny coterie.
Choosing ignorance also puts you in a place where you will never experience the deep joy of discovering a new idea, a new perspective, a new thought. You will never have an epiphany or a revelation.
I just don’t get people who prefer to live in the intellectual equivalent of dirty diapers.
MikeBoyScout
Doug, you’ve experienced the symptoms, but the cure escapes you & us.
Yes, the stupidity is strong.
But how shall we evoke the sympathy that logic shows we should be able to earn?
TheMightyTrowel
“People are dumb. Really fucking dumb. It doesn’t matter what kind of a degree they have after their name, they’re still idiots, maybe just clever, erudite idiots (maybe).”
I just want to add to this a little: I went to an Ivy as an undergrad, I have a phd from one of the top research universities in the world (I attended that Uni on a BFD of a scholarship) and I have landed my first tenure track job at another of the world’s great research universities before my 30th birthday. I’ve spent a lot of time around a lot of very ‘smart’ and ‘qualified’ people with more letters after their name than I’d ever aspire to. The one thing that amazes me is how deeply deeply incurious many of them are. They are so focussed on being whatever it is they are (a mathematician, a biologist, an anthropologist) that they just switch off when the conversation switches to something they assume is ‘irrelevant’ to their own success/lives. They’ll still opine without end about that topic, but most people truly fail to see the point of engaging with anything beyond their own little world.
It’s the thing I’ve been most disappointed about in my adult life. Even as a phd with the background I’ve got working with people of similar backgrounds people still mock me for loving literature (Moby Dick ftw!), politics and art. People with phds and MAs and book publishing contracts and blogs.
Jewish Steel
Omnivorously curious people are rare as hell.
RSA
I’ve never really liked the phrase “cognitive elite”. It’s just too self-congratulatory, a kind of in-crowd phrase for people who like imprecise words.
And just now I looked up where the phrase comes from… I’d forgotten it was a Bell Curve thing. Written, of course, by men with impeccable educational credentials.
Steve
Not everyone is dumb. But if you deal with people at a high level in business or law or finance or politics or whatever, it’s shocking how many people are just faking it. In fact, one of the biggest reasons why these people tend to be assholes is that they’re extremely insecure someone will figure out that they have no idea what they’re doing. I agree with DougJ that educated conservatives are far, far worse.
jl
” my after-work life is like an extended episode of the Charlie Rose show ”
Maybe you aren’t boozing enough, DougJ Emogrog King for a Day. I read on this here very blog that is how Rose handles it.
Also, I think you are supposed to wear black, so you blend into the faux hipster set design.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@TheMightyTrowel:
Hey, congrats on the job. I love academic life, because I love thinking and teaching (could live without writing), but, yeah, there are disappointments.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@jl:
I’ve been drinking a lot but probably not as much as Charlie does.
TheMightyTrowel
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: At least I get to travel. I’m living my 4th country in 10 years.
srv
Years ago, 1984, to be exact, The grad student in my physics lab groaned. He looked up at us from whatever Euro rag he was reading and said: “Did you know the United States is the largest exporter of torture equipment?”
He was met with blank stares.
After an appropriate interval, I asked “Would that be MechE or BioE?”
If you aren’t building guillotines, I don’t know wtf you are doing.
Some Guy
@Steve:
jl
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
OK, then you are not wearing black. Try that.
But seriously, who cares how dumb you think they are, if they are going to vote and vote smart. Are they?
Yeesh. I was in a good mood. Been traveling last week, and around California, whenever politics comes up, seems like most everyone here would vote for a rabid dog before they vote for a Republican. So, I’m starting to believe news reports I heard that CA will go over 60 percent for Obama. That’s all I need to know until November. Can work from there on ironing out dumbness, assuming Mayan Apocalypse is averted.
HRA
@Steve:
You nailed it. It really boggles the mind to have to deal one on one with those assholes on a daily basis. I have to admit I did not take enough psych classes to deal with them.
So after almost 27 years on the job, I have set the wheels in motion to leave them to their ignorance. I will devote my time to writing at my leisure.
gex
Neuroscience and psychology have pretty much spoken, we aren’t even remotely rational. We are governed by our emotions and the right wing noise machine is very good at agitating on that front. That they’ve infected the emo-progs is not surprising. These folks are temperamentally, while not politically, very similar to the right wing base.
Raven
@Jeff Spender: Ah, the great James Heckman!
gex
@MattR: Have you seen our politics? Moderates are the people who don’t think there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans. They literally cannot assemble the available data and come to a conclusion. They seem the perfect set to have no clue about science.
ETA: Given our window of center-right to off-the-edge-of-the-flat-earth right, being “moderate” isn’t very moderate at all.
jl
@TheMightyTrowel:
Congratulations on your job and good luck.
I remember the same disillusionment when I got glimpses of higher academia, and egghead finance and professional life soon after I done finished college.
People are people wherever you go, how many letters they have after their names makes little difference. There are incurious, self centered close minded people everywhere. Some are cleverer than others at doing different things, is all. Some get rewarded for their very advanced and very narrow cleverness overmuch and it goes to their heads.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Harlan Ellison has a quote I’ve been taking to heart lately (loosely paraphrasing, I don’t feel like looking up the verbatim): “Every American feels entitled to an opinion, but they are wrong. You are entitled to an informed opinion.”
__
We’ve somehow lost the distinction.
FlipYrWhig
@TheMightyTrowel: Come hang out with us in the English department! The only people we mock are Republicans, academic administrators, and students who don’t know what a thesis statement is.
Polish the Guillotines
@srv:
Polishing them.
MattR
@gex: I hear what you are saying, but are those people really moderates? They sound more like independents or people who don’t want to be labeled even if their actual opinions tend to be liberal or conservative. I have a facebook friend who is a Ron Paul supporter but thinks the two party’s are the same and would probably call himself a moderate even though he isn’t by any stretch of the imagination.
(EDIT: Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to avoid labels or being independent of groupthink. But if a study just uses moderate to mean “not a self identified liberal or conservative”, I have to wonder how useful it is. Though to be fair I have not read the details to see how this survey decided to classify the participants)
Pavonis
What matters perhaps more than raw intelligence is what you use it for. To take an example from physics, many of the most brilliant physics students enter the field of string theory. They construct extremely convoluted mathematical models of these theories but our best guess is that humanity won’t have anywhere near the amount of energy or engineering capabilities to directly test string theory experimentally for thousands of years, if ever. What indirect evidence we do have (the failure to find supersymmetric particles at the Large Hadron Collider) looks bad for string theory. So is it really smart for a super-genius to spend his or her life working on it?
Another related example is that many clever physics students put their skills to work at Wall Street, finding better ways to leach more money from the economy through simulations and mathematical modeling. As individuals this may be financially rewarding (but the stress and long hours may be less so). But for society, wouldn’t their skills be better put to use developing better computers, or better solar panels, or even basic research on the many open questions still befuddling science?
On a more political note, I sometimes met students at my Ivy League university were expert and erudite debaters but were expertly debating stupid ideas. One guy I met in the dining hall thought that what America really needed was to get rid of public schools. I said this would destroy the economy and that a child cannot be financially responsible, pretty obvious stuff. But to this Cato-bound expert, I hate freedom. Phooey.
honus
Everywhere but the United States, Che Guevara is looked upon as a hero. And pretty much everywhere but the Washington Village the U of Chicago Econ Department has no credibility.
trollhattan
A good many ed-you-kated Republicans, and I know quite a few, spend a lot of effort building an edifice comprising a nation-state-community where liberal Democrats are in control and they’re the patriotic opposition. It’s no use pointing out their folks have been in charge for decades. They simply can’t accept it.
The rest of them just vote their wallets. Always.
kindness
Damn. If Balloon Juice wanted a lotta (unwanted) hits & page links to it you would start a list of all the members of the permanent government you’d want to guillotine. You should be good liberal democrats and vote on ’em too. Maybe bid on the order and really, can we include members of the Media & Serious Villagers as well? I’d have a couple suggestions there.
Roger Moore
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady):
I don’t think this is correct, either literally or in spirit. If anything, I think we’ve done a better job of keeping the Republic than the Founders expected, and if we’re in danger it’s by hewing too close to what they said and did. We have far too strong a tendency to see the Constitution as holy writ handed down by philosopher kings far wiser than any living man. In fact, though, they included a mechanism to amend the Constitution precisely because they knew they were both fallible and inexperienced and were sure to get stuff wrong. We need to take advantage of our 2+ centuries of additional experience and get to patching the flaws and outdated assumptions in our government, rather than complaining about our inability to live up to the Founders’ ideals.
slag
Ummm…dude….”dumb” is not the preferred nomenclature. “Intellectually lazy”, please.
danielx
@TheMightyTrowel:
I can understand the lack of expertise in other fields, but the lack of interest throws me for a loop.
Roger Moore
@TheMightyTrowel:
It’s interesting, because I’ve seen some of the same stuff. I went to a world-class university and saw exactly the tendency you describe of the people to bury themselves in their own field. Even worse, many of them assumed their genius was universal, so their thoughts about things they hadn’t studied were automatically as great as what they did in their chosen field of study.
Now that I’m at a good but less elite institution, the people don’t seem to be as bad. They have some genuine modesty and are willing to listen to other people’s ideas and views. Because of that, it’s a much more liberal place. I think it’s fascinating that the second tier people are much smarter that way than the absolute elite.
srv
@Polish the Guillotines: Aren’t they ready after 4 years?
James Gary
Obligatory XKCD link:
http://xkcd.com/793/
Roger Moore
@Steve:
I’m not sure I buy that. I don’t think those people are alone in feeling insecure because they’re a bunch of fakers. I feel like that sometimes; I’ll get into a group and wonder when the grownups are going to start laughing at me and tell me to go back to the kiddie table.
The big difference is how you deal with that insecurity. You can take a positive approach, trying to improve yourself to the point you aren’t a faker anymore, or a negative approach, where you try to hide your limitations by attacking the people who know better than you do. It’s the tendency to do the latter rather than the former that makes the people you’re talking about assholes, not the insecurity itself.
Steve in DC
It’s been the LEFT that has declared “degrees mean everything, where you get them means more” not the right. So this is in part our fault.
Let’s toss out “education” it’s often worthless or problematic. Let’s chose values that help all. An equal wage, higher taxation on all, and a more robust safety net. And move from there.
The fact remains that Harvard educated fucks dominate BOTH parties, and shockingly… they produce similar economic policies yet pander to different social values to get into power, and we wonder what is wrong?
I’m more of a center left populist than everything, but we need to vote people for progressive economics into office. We aren’t going to get that, YET. We could, but a ton of this is going to be pushing people like Trumpka and Sanders into office and not the next Obama!
mclaren
“Glamorous non-cognitive elites” are our new Overlords. Same as the old Overlords. Just prettier.
Concerned Citizen
The left needs to be as obtuse as the right. They need to spew endless one liner talking points like the right does. The left will never compete with the right because they do not cater to the stupids.
Reagan made race baiting easy for do nothings to blame their worthless lives on, Our only hope is that Obama can reverse that horseshit.
I’m betting on Boehner. I think we’re fucked.
The Other Bob
For the person raised IIn a right wing household,ignorance is a like a nice warm,comforting blanket.
The Other Bob
For the person raised in a right wing household, ignorance is a like a nice warm, comforting blanket.
chrome agnomen
it’s not so much that people are dumb or ignorant, it’s more that they are no longer curious.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
@Roger Moore:
I hope you’re right, but I fear I’m right. The oligarchs are treating this country like they’re all running Bain Capital and are in the process of stripping the physical assets and laying off the populace, with the consent of enough of the populace who have adopted ignorance and faith instead of enlightened self-interest to put the whole experiment into question. If we’re not at the tipping point, we’re close.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@The Other Bob:
so is the first moment after you urinate on yourself out in the cold.
Oliver's Neck
See, this is exactly why all you self-impressed “academics” should just turn the whole enterprise back over to us philosophers. The minute you dips started down the winding paths of your little specialties toward your various terminal degrees (which, ironically, sadly, you still refer to as “Doctorate(s) of Philosophy”) you pretty much jacked up the whole enterprise. So go home and leave the work to those of us who actually think for a “living”. Alternately, you could sit in on my classes and we can see if the damage is reversible.
(ducks)
I kid. I kid because I love.
Although, seriously, there’s no hope for the “Communication” profs. Amirite?
Concerned Citizen
@chrome agnomen: Horseshit, They are dumb. They do not give a shit about future generations. Fuck them.
chrome agnomen
@Concerned Citizen:
they’re dumb all right, but not curious enough to ever find their way out of that dumbness. dumbness is curable, after all.
YoohooCthulhu
Doug, you belong in academia out here on the west coast. I have yet to meet a totebagger professor in the bay area or upper northwest. Can’t vouch for elsewhere in California though.
Concerned Citizen
The problem with the liberal movement in this country is the assumption of intelligence. It does not exist. You have to manipulate the rubes. Depressing to say the least.
Ha Nguyen
My youngest brother who is doctor is one of the most intellectually lazy person I know. I’ve tried discussing science and politics with him and it’s like talking to a brick wall. Dead silence or someone else’s words.
I guess that’s okay for him because when I call out the stupidity in those words, he can go, “well, that’s not what I wrote so I’m not the stupid one. Heh. Heh.”
On the other hand, another brother who fell, hit his head and is slightly brain-damaged, still manages to look at the world and find things interesting in it. I can discuss things with him; unfortunately, since he does have brain damage, he can’t come up with any original thoughts. He just repeats the news stories. Which I have already read.
Whammer
@themightytrowel,
I think @Jewish Steel is right — omnivorously curious people are rare. There is actually very little societal reward for being so, even though our education would lead us to believe otherwise.
This is no knock on you — heck I don’t know you at all ;-). The thing that has disappointed me the most about the PhD folks I have worked with is that they tend to behave as though their expertise in one subject makes them an expert on everything. That has generally soured me on the idea of working with PhDs.
Oliver's Neck
On a more serious note, though, people (yourselves included) are far more capable of thinking than any of you seem to be willing to credit. They just have to be encouraged to actually do so. In support of this claim I have the “anecdatal” experience of nearly a hundred students a semester, over many, many semesters whom I am fortunate to assist in discovering both their ability to really think and the unique pleasures one finds in thinking. This is at an open enrollment institution where I get students at all levels of academic experience and self-confidence. Whereas my initial prejudices led me to think that my task would be futile and maddening, I have instead been rewarded again and again by the capabilites of these students. Again, it is a delight and a gift and the only thing I add to the process is asking them to read some engaging stuff and then asking them a few questions about it. They do the work. And they actually do the work.
So stop being such pretentious, cynical snobs and start thinking yourselves – and encouraging (note, not shaming or badgering) others to do so as well.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Oliver’s Neck:
Shaming and badgering is a great form of encouragement, though, IMHO. It’s the only thing that works on me.
Oliver's Neck
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Alright, um, lemme try.
Stop being such a self-righteous cynical prick and wasting the critical thinking ability that random biological happenstance cursed you with!
Did that help? Gotta say, I’m feeling kind of dirty and not in a pleasant way.
belle
What is really, really frightening is that y’all are talking about national and world politics, and it is so much worse at the local level.
People have no clue whatsoever who is running for local office, state legislative office, or even the US Congress. This is the reason the 2010 election turned into the War on Women, Stand your Ground laws, and Voter ID laws. This is why Labor is being attacked at the state level and Anti-Same Sex Marriage amendments are being passed, on the state level.
Anoniminous
@gex:
__
Not exactly.
__
The Limbic Lobe gets first whack at stuff but if we make the effort we can, actually, think rationally.
__
I grant most people have no training in how to think and of those that do don’t do it all the time.
TheMightyTrowel
@belle: hear hear! The most frustrating thing about living abroad is that the local elections I can vote in I have no clue what’s going on (because they’re ‘local’ to the bit of the states i last lived in) and the local elections that directly impact my life and that I have lots of opinions about I have no say in at all.
mclaren
@Anoniminous:
Yeah, basically humans have “bounded rationality.” (Warning: pdf of peer-reviewed scientific paper, Ann. Rev. Polit. Sci., 1999, Vol. 2, pp. 297-321.)
So sayeth the neuroscience.
TruthOrScare
@Whammer: “I think @Jewish Steel is right—omnivorously curious people are rare. There is actually very little societal reward for being so, even though our education would lead us to believe otherwise.”
I agree strongly with sentiment, that except for the thought that our education would lead us to believe otherwise (unless I’m misinterpreting what you meant, which is entirely possible).
If the root problem is that there is very little societal reward for being curious (and that seems to be the general consensus here), then that is a critical place to start improving our educational system and society. What could we do to create societal rewards for curiosity? From very young childhood, how could we reward curiosity? Grades and test scores don’t seem to be doing it.
As a parent whose last of three children started college this year, I’ve always been so disappointed that the K-12 system seems even more ridiculously geared to simply absorbing (just enough) factoids just long enough to obtain the grade or test score desired by a student, than when I was in school back in the dinosaur days. My kids all attended competitive, highly-rated schools for college admittance, and I swear I think there was more original thinking and exploration going on in my 60’s era public schools. A clear majority of their peers seemed to be young Mittbots in training, automatons focused only on the numbers and little to no interest in what any of them meant in a real-world application. Incredibly sad and makes me fear for our future.
TruthOrScare
@belle: “People have no clue whatsoever who is running for local office, state legislative office, or even the US Congress.”
As noted, the rightwing nutjobs DO know who is running locally, and they are running circles around the left at winning those offices. Why? Because they’ve been TRAINED to see the long game and that no office is too low for them to care about, right down to the school board. They are methodically and constantly given REASONS to care about candidates right down to the school board (creationism, anyone?). This local focus is where I’ll give the right wing true props for more rational thinking and long-term strategy than the left. The left may parrot the “all politics is local” cliche but they haven’t built nearly the local networks and focus that the right has. The wasted promise of OFA is a testament to the left’s weakness at maintaining interest at the local level.
How do you get a congressional candidate who’s built a constituent service record and name recognition? You run a candidate for mayor, then for county supervisor, then for the state legislature or a statewide office and, finally, for Congress. Because they win more local races, they build a better farm team. Can’t say it’s paid off much at the national level for the presidential race this year (the Rombot? really?), but because they put more players on the field they usually have a deeper bench to run at a variety of positions than the left has, especially at the state and congressional level.
I think the poor quality of their presidential field this year is as much a function of Obama’s strength as a candidate (despite claims by their wurlitzer to the contrary) — the money boyz and rational actors know that 2012 doesn’t present good odds for a successful run. But we won’t see anything like the clown car cavalcade they’ve got on parade this year when 2016 rolls around, and Obama’s not a factor.
fasteddie9318
@belle:
Want to know the fun part? Most of the people who voted R at the local and state levels and are now pissed off at their anti-union/anti-woman/anti-modernity governance will turn around and vote R again in those same races within at most two more elections.
Cain
@TheMightyTrowel:
These people are fools. You need art. It is very difficult to write a story that people will enjoy. Things like fantasy books require you to construct a whole world filled with culture. I always in awe of people who can do that. I’m a very technical person myself but I love to read mind candy books.
samara morgan
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: O Commander of Lies, it has nothing to do with intelligence (if you believe Chris Mooney in the Republican Brain), and everything to do with Openess.
moderateindy
Smart people, or at least those that like to think of themselves as intellectuals, are often very interesting to deal with when they are in a one on one type situation. However, I find them unbearable when in a group, trying to prove to each other just how smart they are.
As an example, years ago, I went to a party that was mostly made up of University of Chicago grads. The friend I was with mentioned to me that a Planet of the Apes marathon was on that day. Someone in the group of 8-10 people started talking about how the movie was imbued with symbolism blah blah blah, while another started babbling about how it was a metaphor for some Geo-political construct. Most of the others chimed in with their own analysis about the “meaning” of the movie. It went on for about 5-10 minutes until I interrupted and said, It’s a movie about talking monkeys that take over the planet, I don’t think the writers were overly concerned about subtext. They all kind of looked at me like I was a Philistine, and then my friend chimed in and she added, “besides, I don’t think Charlton Heston does subtlety, or symbolism, which stopped the entire ridiculous debate in its tracks. But I think it is illustrative of how the dynamic works when you get too many people that consider themselves to be, not just smart, but intellectual, together. They spend all their time not actually debating, or trying to learn. Instead they focus on trying to show everybody how thoughtful and analytical they are, even when discussing things that require no thought or analysis.
MonkeyBoy
@Steve:
In any field, be it academics, business, automotives, or sports discussions there is a difference between being intelligent and seeming intelligent – success in such a field mostly depends on seeming intelligent because only a true expert in the field (if such could really exist) could tell if you really are really intelligent. Often a large part of seeming intelligent involves getting results where for example if somebody makes a million dollars then that is taken as evidence that they really were intelligent about what they were doing – discounting the possibility that it was just blind luck. To people with a minor grasp of a field seeming is everything.
Being intelligent in a field mostly involves having a thorough knowledge of that field’s conceptual frameworks, important instances and examples, how to evaluate situations, and how all these can produce explanations.
Seeming intelligent involves techniques to demonstrate your intelligence in a field such as using the terminology (or buzzwords) and having the rhetorical skills to express “well constructed” arguments for positions and in discussions the skills to shift the topic to “what is really important”. It is possible to have an incoherent understanding of a field or even work with a conceptual framework which is internally incoherent (e.g. many religious frameworks) yet still produce impressive sounding rhetoric and seem to some as intelligent.
The rhetorical skills to seem intelligent are mostly not field specific which is why people who are somewhat competent in one field can think they make sense when they shift to another field they have only a crude grasp of, and are buoyed by the fact that their rhetoric there appear better than some others talking about that field’s issues.
As one example of rhetorical skills in a field where you don’t want experts, my wife and I when living in LA were a few times recruited for “preview audiences”. After we saw the film while twisting dials we usually were selected for a “focus group” discussion which we approached as a graduate school seminar game. We were quick to introduce topics and get some to agree with us or shift to reasoned arguing with each other to see if people would take sides on something that must be important because there was an argument. (the others there often just opined on who or what they liked or disliked and the moderator would try to draw out their reasons while we always gave a reason for every opinion). We hardly dominated the discussion in terms of speaking times but with un-called-on comments here and there we were able to steer much of the discussion and conclusions without being assholes about it. At least that was our impression. Introduce a topic like “the main character was passive and unable to think for herself” early enough and there will be a lot of discussion about that. We could seem intelligent even though we were non-expert light consumers who were just selected for our demographic and movie and TV preferences. I wonder if people who run focus groups like or dislike those with graduate seminar training.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@moderateindy:
Funny story.
samara morgan
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: O Commander of Lies.
the distribution of intelligence in a population is extremely interesting, because whether you are correlating IQ and race or correlating IQ and political affiliation, the between group variance is always less than the within group variance.
so you get overlapping tails.
samara morgan
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: DougJ, Commander of Lies….i assume you speak math, if not arabic.
;)
But isn’t that true? In any correlate i can think of….SES, sex, race, political affiliation, the within group variance in IQ is much greater than the between group variance.
Cris (without an H)
Lawrence Tierney owned that role. Several of his great lines weren’t in the original script.
Peregrinus
@moderateindy:
This is something everyone in the humanities, I think, ends up struggling with one way or the other – especially given rules like lectio difficilior (“the harder reading [is the more believable one]”) and the idea that authors can subconsciously insert ideas into their texts that they may never realize they had even come into contact with.
On some level, I kind of agree with those, but on another, I’m also the kind of person who tries to analyze the text before me, and unless the author points me a certain way, I’m not going there. I do like entertaining possibilities, as a quick read of anything I’ve ever written shows, but I usually end up adding the caveat that “this is the set of possibilities that I think could happen, and none of them might be the right one.”
Ripley
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.
mclaren
As Doug Bandow memorably wrote in “The Lesson Jack Abramoff Taught me,” Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2006:
moderateindy
@Peregrinus:
I think what you are talking about, analyzing a piece and trying to thresh out all possible meanings is commendable, and part of what makes reading fiction, or watching films satisfying. But it seemed to me that it wasn’t an actual exercise in thought, analysis, or debate, but an exercise in ego, and pretentiousness. It wasn’t smart people having a conversation, but people trying to show the other “smart” people that they belong in the group. And I wonder if this is what plagues our leadership, which is often made up of what would be considered the best and brightest. Do they actually analyze and debate, or do they mostly spend their time talking past each other in what amounts to a well educated pissing contest?