[HN Gopher] Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resist...
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Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert
Consensus
Author : gHeadphone
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-08-13 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (academic.oup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (academic.oup.com)
| belter wrote:
| Contrarian data point:
|
| "The most vaccine-hesitant group of all? PhDs"
|
| https://unherd.com/thepost/the-most-vaccine-hesitant-educati...
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Considering the linked study covers January-May 2021, it's too
| bad they don't have a breakdown of the reasons for not getting
| vaccinated vs. education. The vaccine was still in short supply
| in the US for a number of those months, and I could see a lot
| of educated people choosing the "Other people need it more"
| option, with the intent of getting vaccinated when the shortage
| wasn't as severe.
| treesprite82 wrote:
| Based on a Facebook survey where people self-selected their
| education level, in which a significantly larger proportion of
| respondents claimed to have a PhD than would be expected
| (compared to a random sample of the US).
|
| Still an interesting data point which could be worth following
| up on with a more rigorous study, but easy to see the potential
| for skewed results.
| bell-cot wrote:
| "Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess
| more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they
| produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are
| nicked by the real world." -Colin Powell
|
| Note that Powell was a real-world leader of an extremely large
| organization, which pretty much delivered extremely difficult and
| complex real-world results (victory in Operation Desert Storm) on
| time and within budget. (Yes, I know about his role in
| whitewashing My Lai. And later moral failures. Not. The. Point.)
|
| Also - how much are anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism
| grounded in repeated experiences by groups of "ordinary people"
| with intellectuals and elites who are oblivious (at best) to the
| concerns and problems of ordinary people? If not busy using their
| intellectual and elite status to justify or excuse treating
| ordinary people like crap, for their (intellectuals and elites)
| own benefit? Marie Antoinette probably never said "Let them eat
| cake" - but that phrase and the surrounding French history sum up
| very well how things often work out, given human nature, when
| society contains self-absorbed elites.
| HNisBaizuo wrote:
| Corrupt academics frame challenges against them as anti-
| intellectual.
| [deleted]
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| When you lie to people repeatedly, they stop trusting you. If you
| think they should continue to trust you because you're an
| "expert," despite your proven track-record of dishonesty, that
| says more about you than them. None of this is complicated or
| confusing. None of this needs a sophisticated academic
| examination to plumb its impenetrable atavistic depths. It's
| obvious on the face of it.
|
| If people fail to understand something so simple, it can only be
| due to cognitive dissonance caused by a refusal to acknowledge
| their own moral and ethical bankruptcy. You cannot go around
| murdering people day and night and then stand, drenched in their
| blood, and complain that no one RESPECTS you anymore.
|
| And lest anyone think this is hyperbolic, remember that lies have
| consequences, and when "experts" in power lie, those consequences
| are often injury and death.
| dotcommand wrote:
| "Expert consensus". From institutions that demand ideological
| conformity.
|
| "Scholars have maintained that public attitudes often diverge
| from expert consensus due to ideology-driven motivated
| reasoning."
|
| Or maybe it's the "scholars" ideology-driven motivated reasoning
| that's the problem?
|
| The title should be extremist authoritarians upset people see
| through their bullshit.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Do you have examples of what you're describing when it comes to
| the areas the study looked at?
|
| > I provide evidence of a strong association between anti-
| intellectualism and opposition to scientific positions on
| climate change, nuclear power, GMOs, and water fluoridation ...
| [deleted]
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| This reads like a how-to on logical fallacies such as
| Appeal/Arguments of Authority, False Authority, Popularity,
| Normality, Common Belief, and Accomplishment.
|
| Being skeptical is good science, as science is a process/method,
| not a dogmatic religion.
| bitwize wrote:
| You know what else is good science? Staying in your lane, and
| placing more faith in subject-matter experts' ability to do
| their jobs than in your ability to gainsay their work.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| When Galileo saw that Copernican Heliocentrism better
| explained the observations he made with his telescopes that
| existing theory of Aristotelian geocentrism, he did not then
| shutup about it despite facing a litany of criticism from the
| State & the Church, and finally, the Inquisition. He was more
| correct, and they were not.
|
| Good science is critical science.
| bitwize wrote:
| True, but not everybody is Galileo and not everybody's
| opponent is a dogmatic and powerful church. Just like it's
| probably not a compiler bug, an oil geologist's difference
| of opinion with a climatologist on whether and how the
| planet is heating up is probably not due to a fault in the
| climatologist's data or analysis.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Opponent is a strong word; competitor perhaps instead?
|
| It just could be siting problems with an observing
| system, or two, instead, in my personal experience.
| Banyonite wrote:
| Yet it is axiomatic that there exist powerful groups of
| entrenched scientists that do oppose challenges to dogma
| without any semblance of due diligence. While many
| examples exist, two immediately come to mind- a
| researcher, Jim Allison, at my own institution who
| recently won a Nobel after decades of having the core
| tenets of his research marginalized.
|
| "When I first came to Berkeley in the 1990s, for example,
| they were in the midst of trying to redefine modern
| biology, and certain very powerful people there did not
| even want there to be a department of immunology. They
| felt that immunology was not a real discipline because it
| didn't deal with the static, fundamental processes of
| biology that apply to everything."
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-laureate-james-p-
| alliso...
|
| Those "very powerful people" were, in point of fact,
| scientists.
|
| Barry Marshall faced years of ridicule for working to
| validate the hypothesis that many, if not most, cases of
| idiopathic gastric inflamation and lesions were a direct
| result of H. Pylori infection. Again, the hostililty from
| the entrenched scientific community was well-documented.
| He eventually won a Nobel as well.
|
| Many factors other than "science" have played a role in
| the spirited defense of dogma by experts. Researchers are
| as susceptible to all types of bias, logical fallacies,
| desire for power and money, etc. as anyone else.
|
| This clearly isn't always the case, but often enough that
| the moment someone says "...because I'm an expert
| therefore I say this is so." without supporting evidence
| that may be examined -and- debated, the veracity of their
| statement and motive in making it are suspect.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Maybe they should stop shilling out their credentials to special
| interest groups and do something to actually earn trust?
|
| Many academics basically just say 'trust me bro', then work for
| various think-tanks and industry groups. It's no wonder they've
| lost trust.
| h2odragon wrote:
| "People who disagree with us are stupid, ignorant, or at least
| misled"
| ecshafer wrote:
| The idea that populism and a lack of trust is bad is interesting,
| since it is mostly people in the "elite circle" that hold that it
| is bad, or those that wish they were. They don't seem to
| entertain the idea that maybe their expertise is not as strong as
| they believe. Many people seem to discount ideas that seem
| "bought and paid" for by an outside organization for example,
| which is reasonable. If an X studies person is an expert, but I
| don't believe they have the rigor to actually be an expert, why
| is it wrong to discount their views?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I find it fascinating that science is not performed in a
| vacuum, it requires the vast breadth of expertise in scientific
| disciplines, physics, math, and statistics, supported by IT &
| Engineering.
|
| Yet, it those dreaded statistics Pros most often finding flaws
| in my limited, anecdotal experience
|
| I think it is important to think about the different way in
| which we humans can look at the same data and draw dramatically
| different conclusions. Although I have views, I like to read
| contrary opinions for the sake of balance and synthesis.
| Believe this is different from "bought & paid for" external
| opinions, although, most organizations need income. So a think-
| tank, an FFRDC, or Academia are likely equally willing to study
| a topic and analyze it for funding. Provided you are not
| dictating conclusions I don't see an issue with it though.
| naivedevops wrote:
| Well, populists can also be pro-intellectualism when the
| scientific consensus benefits their agenda.
|
| For example, here in Brazil the president Bolsonaro started to
| promote a migration of the current DRE voting system to a system
| with a physical audit trail (such as VVPAT).
|
| The result was pure chaos. He and his followers started to mix up
| legit stuff such as the ACM statement on voting systems and
| articles written by world renowned researchers with conspiracy
| theories claiming fraud by "the communists" in past elections.
|
| Meanwhile, almost all newspapers (with the exception of one or
| two) started to bash the scientific consensus as if it was
| bullshit just to argue against the conspiracists.
|
| A horror show which is still going on.
| avmich wrote:
| > Third, evidence shows anti-intellectualism is connected to
| populism, a worldview that sees political conflict as primarily
| between ordinary citizens and a privileged societal elite.
|
| Sounds like a strange definition of populism. The presence of the
| political conflict brings attention to it, and the best model of
| the conflict so far includes tension between ordinaries and
| elites. Even experts don't propose a better picture, so this
| worldview is rational.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Also isnt Marxism (as in the Communist Manifesto) about the
| elite vs commoners but in an economic framework.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Marxism is bourgeoisie and proletariat
|
| However, his writing is much more about Optimates and
| Populares as factions of the Roman politicals
| rayiner wrote:
| > Third, evidence shows anti-intellectualism is connected to
| populism, a worldview that sees political conflict as primarily
| between ordinary citizens and a privileged societal elite.
| Exposure to randomly assigned populist rhetoric, even that which
| does not pertain to experts directly, primes anti-intellectual
| predispositions among respondents in the processing of expert
| consensus cues.
|
| The formulation of "populism" here reveals something critical.
| Populism has always existed ever since there has been an elite.
| What's new, in the U.S., is that scientific institutions are
| perceived as being part of that "privileged societal elite."
|
| It's obvious why this is happening: governance is becoming more
| technocratic. Before, policies were justified by reference to
| values or power struggles. Increasingly, they're being justified
| by reference to "experts" and "science." There is more and more
| of a sentiment that scientists aren't just doing science, they're
| playing a key role in elite governance of the masses.
|
| Ultimately, this is bad for science and scientific institutions,
| and it's in the interest of scientists and experts to fight these
| trends. Too often, experts allow politicians to hide behind them
| to avoid making political decisions, or allow political decisions
| to be framed as scientific ones.
|
| A scientist can, e.g., explain how a mask mandate will affect
| propagation of a disease. But it must be a politician that
| synthesizes that information with other information, weighs the
| political considerations, and decides to impose mask mandates.
| When a Governor says "I'm imposing a mask mandate because that's
| what the scientists say" they're actually throwing scientists
| under a bus. They're being made accountable in the public eye for
| a judgment call that's not really their's to make, and collateral
| consequences they have no control over. E.g. if the cops are
| abusive in enforcing the mandate, backlash will flow back to the
| scientists because they've been made the figurehead of the whole
| endeavor.
|
| It doesn't help that the banner of "science" is being applied to
| social studies that have nothing to do with science. But those
| social studies theories are being invoked as if they had the
| credibility of science, in the context of debates that are
| fundamentally political in nature.
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(page generated 2021-08-13 23:02 UTC)