The Dangers of Anti-Intellectual Propaganda

[interchange]

A big problem is trying to reach people like that. If they can get to their position because it makes them feel good, then logic is going to make them feel bad. They will fight very hard to keep that comfort, and will do some amazing things to fight against losing that. Even to the point of hurting themselves.

Hurting themselves? How about killing dozens of people and themselves? How else would you explain a mass murder-suicide?

That need for cohesive meaning is the greatest need any human being has. It's hard to appreciate that when you come from the position that is most common in society: that such cohesive meaning isn't constantly under threat and that the childhood self which represented when it was is some discarded past.

If I had to define (non-pejorative) intellectualism, I would say it is the intellectual product of strivings to appreciate the fantasy of one's possession of cohesive meaning in the world. Just look at the posters on the board and rank them in two ways:
1. How much you respect their intellectualism independent of your agreement with their views
2. How much you think they challenge their own sense of cohesive meaning in the world (as opposed to believing implicitly that their own meaning is absolute authority)

Then compare lists.

 

[realibrad]

Hurting themselves? How about killing dozens of people and themselves? How else would you explain a mass murder-suicide?

No doubt, but I am more surprised when people hurt themselves in an attempt to not get hurt. Sad irony.

If I had to define (non-pejorative) intellectualism, I would say it is the intellectual product of strivings to appreciate the fantasy of one's possession of cohesive meaning in the world. Just look at the posters on the board and rank them in two ways:
1. How much you respect their intellectualism independent of your agreement with their views
2. How much you think they challenge their own sense of cohesive meaning in the world (as opposed to believing implicitly that their own meaning is absolute authority)

Then compare lists.

Very well said.

That 2nd one can be hard because people may change their position overall, but, don't always express that during the conversation.

 

[urvile]

57 genders isn't intellectualism. The left pushes beyond common sense in many ways today, they're not necessarily the intellectuals any longer. They smugly believe they are, though.

Intellectualism at it's finest.

 

[pmv]

I'd say the bigger danger is people will look at the limitations of science based medicine (which is actually much more open and honest about its limitations compared to alternative medicine), see that it doesn't give them a very good answer, and in response turn to alternative medicine which gives them a firm but false answer. Science based medicine can't explain much about Autism, so people turn to alternative medicine, and stop getting vaccinated and doing other really stupid things because science based medicine doesn't give them the concrete answers they're looking for. People want an explanation for things, and if science can't do it, they'll turn to religion, witch doctors, or anyone else that is willing to tell them why something is the way it is, and they willing go and throw their virgins into the volcano.

I was going to mention exactly that issue (but decided it was extraneous to my main argument). I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I think the active campaigners in that respect are dangerous cranks, but I do sympathise with parents whose children appeared to 'suddenly' develop autistic traits (or those traits 'suddenly' became manifest) shortly after a vaccination, and can't help but suspect a causal relationship. I think that's a natural thing to do in the absence of good answers.

The only way people are ever going to entirely stop wondering about it, is if and when medical science finds a _good_ explanation for autism.

In the meantime, I think the problem is that people don't appreciate just what it was like before we had vaccinations - I don't blame people for having a suspicion of a downside of vaccinations, but the trouble is that people don't seem to be able to fully grasp the known upsides - which vastly outweigh that non-evidence-based suspicion of a downside.