Anti-Intellectualism

Vorpy

I hear this word a lot nowadays regarding the TVT things that goes on.

According to the internet, "Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible."

So in other words, the anti-intellectuals lash out against pseudointellectuals, or what appears to be them, right? Is that what it's supposed to be about? I still do not understand the intellectual world, and no amount of reading has helped, so can someone explain it to me?

DonZabu

Education, philosophy, literature, art, science; none of those are inherently pseudointellectual.

A lot of people are convinced that they are. These are the people we're referring to.

Vorpy

So in other words they are the people who are good at math and english, right?

Gelzo

I'm thinking about how to explain this in a way that doesn't just restate the definition you've posted.

I think anti-intellectuals are supposed to be prone to lashing out at intellectuals and psuedointellectuals alike, since the the latter make pretensions of being the former. I'm not sure most anti-intellectuals are likely to be able to differentiate between the two groups.

Nyktos

What the word means: Distrust of the educated.

What certain people use the word to mean: Questioning any aspect of academia.

DonZabu

>So in other words they are the people who are good at math and english, right?

The intellectuals? I should hope so.

Gelzo

I think she was referencing something along the lines of the dim view in which some mathematicians view artists.

In other words, she was asking if your definition of anti-intellectuals fit that group.

Or... maybe not. Looks ambiguous at second blush.

DarkDecapodian

From what I can gather, 'pseudointellectual' is a pejorative that pseudointellectuals like to accuse intellectuals of being. Anti-intellectuals just attempt to give both intellectuals and pseudointellectuals swirlies.

MadassAlex

I think there's some merit in the idea that established concepts of intellectuality can and should be challenged.

DonZabu

^ The problem here is that they take it too far, dismissing, with much contempt, such concepts entirely, rather than merely challenging them.

Gelzo

Existing theory should be challenged, but a replacement has to have as much evidence supporting it, and maybe in more theoretical fields have greater explanatory power. A lot of challengers end up presenting nonsense like creationism.

Schitzo

In other words, this is just another word that's thrown around for the fuck of it, particularly by those with some sort of persecution complex.

MadassAlex

^^ and ^^^

Agreed, but as per ^, there are plenty of people who will interpret that spirit of challenge with actual anti-intellectualism.

MoeDantes

Lemme try my hand at this:

Basically, anti-intellectuals are people who think we should all be Book Dumb--that its better to, say, know how to till soil than to know who Nietzche is. It happens mostly because they see that stuff but don't see the immediate value, so they assume there must not be any. To be fair, sometimes they're right, just not very often.

MillerCross

The complaint is based on the fact that much of the editing are deliberate attack on, say, critics because they don't like the editor's favorite movie. Or anything academia just because it's relatively incomprehensible to the person who's not in the known about, say, the visual arts. 

The problem is that instead of keeping in an open mind and actually researching this concepts and turning them into tropes, TvT deliberately attacks them. Or did. In theory, we're supposed to weed that shit out. In practice...we don't. 

Myrmidon

It depends, really. The True Art pages can get pretty bad, but the Hard On Soft Science page seems to lament that kind of attitude.

RedEyedAbyss

That's because not everyone on the site has the same opinion. Of course, a lot of people do forget that the site itself is supposed to be neutral on these issues.