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Isaac Asimov Laments the “Cult of Ignorance” in the United States (2016)

126 points by teslacar 10y ago

madengr 10y ago
Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that places faith over reason.
- taurath 10y ago
  And yet people are more likely to change their religion to match their politics than vice versa.
  - sabertoothed 10y ago
    Politics and religious beliefs are intertwined. Especially in the US (in the Western world).
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      This seems sensible to me. If a person truly believes his religion, it has major implications for his/her notion of what it means for humans to thrive, what activities are moral/ethical, and the goals of human society. It would be very strange indeed if those beliefs had no bearing on one's politics.
      - tchock23 10y ago
        Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this?
        sigzero 10y ago
        No, because once you give the government the ability to tax something you give the government the ability to control whatever that something is. The Supreme Court has ruled on this in the "Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York" ruling.
        DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
        > Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this? I don't know. I see good arguments for and against.
  - willvarfar 10y ago
    Interesting, can you elaborate on what you mean and is there any studies behind it?
    - punk_coder 10y ago
      My sister and her husband did this. He was Episcopalian, and she became pretty religious after marrying him. No one in my family was raised religiously. My parents always said we can figure that out for ourselves when we get older. Anyway, once the Episcopalian Church welcomed gay pastors, and her church got one, they fled and became Southern Baptists.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        In entire fairness, the Protestant strains in general can be organized along a single dimension with Calvinism at one end and Unitarianism at the other. Episcopalianism is relatively close to the latter, and Southern Baptism to the former; I don't really know that I'd describe it as a change of faith entire when someone moves along that dimension toward a more satisfactory interpretation of the scripture which all these strains share.
      - ddebernardy 10y ago
        That's rather specific to the US and I'm not sure I'd rate that as changing religion TBH. In Europe, your usual choices when you disagree with the dominant church are to get over it, become atheist, or - more rarely - change faith altogether (as in to Islam, Buddhism, etc.) because, more often than not, you exhaust Christian picks after going through Catholicism and the local Protestant flavor or two. In contrast, the US offers a very wide variety of Christian flavors (and Christian-based sects). So when, like your sister and her husband, you disagree you can just pick another church flavor down the block that is mostly the same with a few twists. You're still nominally Christian though. The difference between the two is sometimes put forward to explain the contrast between the high number of atheists in Europe and the high number of religious people in the US.
      - fsloth 10y ago
        I don't think that qualifies as changing religions.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Religion is only incidental. Human beings are illogical and take a lot of things on faith. People often don't have good reasons to believe things or have simplistic views of other (see religion or not-religion). They believe because that's all they know. You eliminate all religion and you'll end up with non-religious faiths and ignorance. Haven't you noticed most tech is religion? Religion might play a factor, but only as much as class, nationality, race, culture, education, background, genetic factors, etc.
  - davrosthedalek 10y ago
    There is a natural drive to faith: We can't know everything, so we think we have to take some things on faith. The point being that most religions try to foster faith. It's often a central mantra that faith is good. This unfortunately trains people to stop asking questions. On the other hand, the scientific approach tries to manage how we deal with things we don't know for certain. We believe in things more because we have more evidence for it. Without trusting them 100%.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      Of course, but many things try and foster faith - companies do it, nations do it, people do it. Most people whether they are religious or not aren't applying the scientific method to their daily lives. You can't blame that - biases are easy and trying to be objective is a pain in the ass.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I think most people are smarter than this discussion is saying they are - it's just they don't optimize for the things we implicitly assume here. They don't optimize for the truth value of their beliefs, but for their direct usefulness in life. Most of the scientific facts don't have a direct impact on your life, so you don't get rewarded for getting things right, nor you get punished for getting them wrong. Different criteria thus become more relevant. How a belief fits your image of yourself? How does it help you strengthen your ties to the groups you're in? How it positions you against the groups you dislike? Note that in situations when getting things right has direct impact on one's life - like, when it comes to money or job - people suddenly become very rational.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  FWIW, most evangelicals I know reject the notion that faith and reason ought to be in contradiction. I think you'll find that few well-respected Christian theologians or pastors would embrace such a contradiction either. AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your eggs in one basket". And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    You are arguing against an ideological worldview. It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious. Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer. Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      > It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history with faith or non-faith. I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say. The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a monster. Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    I think pretty much all humans hold self-inconsistent internal beliefs. We're not rational agents.
  - 10y ago
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  He could have, but that still doesn't dig satisfying deeply into the analysis: why would Americans be prone to evangelical / fundamentalist religion, and a general disdain for knowledge? It isn't a direct line from the Puritans, whose descendants anyway hardly account for the result of successive waves of immigration seen today. There are deeper issues at play such as: The country's birth from a remote colonial revolution with a deep distrust of monarchy, tradition, and authority. Being a destination for various people disenfranchised in their home cultures, who need a new metric of success, coalesce around money as the arbiter of success and indirectly "correctness". Geographic isolationism from other and significantly diverse first world nations. A lingering sense of superiority for our heroic role in WWII. I don't know how much each of these contributes, but I think the answer to the questions Asimov raises is sooner found in, say, de Tocqueville than in Susan Jacoby.
iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago
I think critiques of American bumbkins is an American tradition. Hawthorne to Twain to Mencken to etc. It is the American organism hashing itself. It is healthy and has helped to make this country what it is. However there is a dangerous trend today to severely ignore the lack of this in other nations whose own bumbkins self-immolate while those who could be Twains or Asimovs are immolated. But hey, say what you want about about everyone if it makes you feel good.
- madengr 10y ago
  I think it's more that the Left in America won't criticize Islam.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Was it Islam that got the current president into office?
  - sabertoothed 10y ago
    Islam is not the predominant problem in the US. Really not. Nearly half of US Americans don't believe in evolution. Christian fundamentalism causes much more harm at the moment than islamists.
    - iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago
      Christian "fundamentalism" is quite benign in this country. Aside from the issue of abortion and perhaps stem cell research can you list some travesties caused by Christianity in America? The fastest growing religion is non religion.
      - danhak 10y ago
        Sending gay youth to psychologically damaging "conversion therapy" camps. Actively campaigning against the rights of gay individuals to marry or raise children. Physically abusing, disowning or abandoning gay children. There's a reason LGBT youth are 4x as likely to be homeless as their straight peers.
dade_ 10y ago
It isn't a cult, but I agree that it looks like one. https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-Saul/dp/0887847315 https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-... "Saul engagingly explains the current woes of democracy, especially in Canada, the U.S., and Britain. He argues from history and philosophy that the democratic meaning of individualism has been obscured and the importance of economics overemphasized throughout the twentieth century. With Socrates, he maintains that in a democracy, citizenship is the incumbent duty and government the great responsibility of the individual. Minding one's own business and getting the government off one's back are derelictions of democracy that reflect infatuation with corporatism, the brand of utopianism exemplified by Mussolini's fascism, with its melding of huge business interests and government to achieve the managed society. Privatization as a remedy for government inefficiency and the conception of individualism as the capacity to purchase consumer goods bespeak corporatism's present power, for both reduce citizenship and place control with managers accountable primarily for the bottom line, not the public good. There are many more compelling--and disquieting--ideas in this exciting, though discursive, little book." Ray Olson
- dukeluke 10y ago
  There are plenty of people who would like to participate in citizenship in America, but because our FPTP voting system creates a two-party system and extreme partisanship, too many people believe the system is rigged and they wouldn't have much of an influence. And judging from recent elections, their belief is pretty reasonable.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Some would argue that belief (no influence) is always reasonable. Guess it depends on how cynical you're feeling. V = pB − C + D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting
  - huxley 10y ago
    Voting systems aren't a panacea. Italy and Greece don't have FPTP voting but people there feel pretty disenfranchised even if they theoretically have more representation in government than an American or Canadian would.
pricechild 10y ago
I found this submission's title's date quite confusing. Yes it's an article from 2016 but discussing an essay from 1980!
- ajarmst 10y ago
  By a man who died in 1992.
  - macintux 10y ago
    Asimov may well be the only "celebrity" death that I distinctly remember. I guess I also remember where I was when Princess Diana died, but only because my wife was utterly devastated.
    - ajarmst 10y ago
      Yes. I particularly remember Asimov's death as it came only a few years after Heinlein's. It was a reminder that we were losing the last of that first generation of greats. I got drunk and cried on my father's copy of "Across the Sea of Stars" when Clarke passed.
  - pricechild 10y ago
    Yes, that's why I was confused.
throwanem 10y ago
> ...the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ But this is a necessary consequence of the universal franchise. My ignorance has one vote. Your knowledge has one vote. In a system of rule that furnishes us each a vote and values all votes equally, my ignorance and your knowledge are worth exactly the same. In such a system of rule, how can it be otherwise?
- iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago
  Let's not forget the two slippery fish in our hands that is other people's "ignorance" and our "knowledge."
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Oh, certainly. That's why I didn't swap the person of the pronouns from the quote. As may seem likely from the thrust of my prior comment, I don't favor the universal franchise as a system of rule; it seems to me prone on the one hand to severe corruption as various actors seek to regather the sovereign power which this scheme so atomizes, and on the other hand to precisely the sort of popular enthusiasm which the American founders sought to render harmless, a purpose whose merit the events of the twentieth century do much to demonstrate. Most who espouse such an opinion of universal suffrage seem to imagine it being replaced by a scheme in which they themselves still have some, indeed a much larger, measure of the power to rule. I think this is a mistake; where it isn't a deliberate satisfaction of arrogance, it seems to me prone to encourage that arrogance develop. I'd rather see a scheme in which the practice of rule is the province of those trained and skilled in that very specialized profession. Of course, the problem of competent rule remains, and it's not a simple one - I don't think I could even produce a formal definition, although Singapore seems like a good example in a lot of ways, and perhaps Sweden, or the Nordic countries in general, in some others. In any case, recent history offers little that I can see to suggest that universal suffrage offers a uniquely, or even notably, reliable solution to this problem, either.
    - blowski 10y ago
erikb 10y ago
I think it's widespread all over the world. Partly because not knowing stuff usually includes not knowing what one doesn't know. Therefore we always feel like knowing everything. That leads to weird collisions between "elite" and "normal people" like me being the most well earning person due to my IT master and job, but some family members wondering at Christmas when I will learn a real job (that allows me to use my hands instead of my brain).
- chronicx0 10y ago
  What?
- m_fayer 10y ago
  It's also very simple "sour grapes" thinking. Most people can intuit that knowledge leads to status and privilege, so when they don't have it themselves, their ego suffers when adjacent to those that do have it. So, in a simple act of self esteem preservation, they demean the very idea of knowledge. Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become, low-knowledge people everywhere are now in a constant state of defensive ego-preservation. Presto, wide-spread belligerent anti-intellectualism.
  - kbart 10y ago
    "Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become" What?? Where did you find such media? Please share.
    - pdimitar 10y ago
      I think he/she is referring to intellectual snobs more than anything. One has to be intelligent to be a journalist, but not necessarily have high emotional intelligence (as a general observation I often feel you have to have zero EQ to be a journalist...)
      - m_fayer 10y ago
        Exactly. In addition, I am thinking of the many television shows starring educated urban people's educated urban problems, or how often the lower classes, when they are represented at all, are treated with either some condescension (Family Guy, etc.) or are "sensitively" portrayed from a removed anthropological perspective (Friday Night Lights).
Shivetya 10y ago
In essence, if you don't vote or think like us you are wrong and it is because you are irrational and/or ignorant? yet another post election political slam of voters because they didn't choose "correctly" and not something that should be on this site.
- maxymoos 10y ago
  Not everyone who voted for Trump is anti-intellectual, but if you are, it's very likely that you voted for him.
boot13 10y ago
Related: https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/ https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-pr...
NumberCruncher 10y ago
>> It may be that only 1 per cent—or less—of Americans make a stab at exercising their right to know. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. / Matthew 5:3-12 / We think only because technology evolves humanity does it too. But we are still where we have been 2000 years ago.
bambax 10y ago
I think the cult of "free speech" is a big part of the problem. Free speech, as spelled out in the 1st amendment is the ability of anyone to speak freely without fear of repercussions by the State. "Congress shall make no law.." But it has progressively help foster the idea that all speech should be respected or listened to, that all speakers are equally respectable, and as a consequence that every utterance of words is equivalent and should be given the same screen time. This is madness. People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to, and to worship any entity, without interference from the State. But they shouldn't expect to be respected for it, and certainly not by the common man. Indeed, they should expect the opposite: to be mocked and laughed at. Same for "anti vaxxers" who are in fact utterly stupid, selfish freeriders and should be addressed as such (and shunned from civilized society). Etc. Anyway, my point isn't against free speech per se; it's the observation that a certain idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to shield themselves and the absurd views they hold, from criticism, and that the non-crazies constantly fall prey to this obvious tactic.
- Clubber 10y ago
  >People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to ... But they shouldn't expect to be respected for it ... Indeed, they should expect the opposite: to be mocked and laughed at. Many people find religion for many different reasons. To categorize them all as people to be mocked is equally doltish but the opposite to religious people telling everyone they are going to hell (for whatever thing they don't like). Your statement is an equal but opposite reaction to that which you loath. No one likes a rabid conservative, no one likes a rabid liberal. Rabid is rabid regardless of what comes out of their mouth. >idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to shield themselves and the absurd views they hold I think you are practicing what you are preaching.
  - BlackFly 10y ago
    Your contention is simply false as you misunderstand the point. Atheists expect to be mocked and laughed at by the religious. The point is that religious people should expect to be mocked and accept that fact. They should not argue that it is improper and that religion somehow implicitly deserves reverence.
DanCarvajal 10y ago
Yeah well I didn't like his Foundation series, it was boring.
partycoder 10y ago
It's not really the cult of ignorance but the cult of money. And money making skills do not require being a genius or personally making key contributions to society. It is rather about hiring the right people, negotiation and selling ideas, etc...
bawana 10y ago
Humans are creatures that evolved at an interface - the boundary between the earth and the atmosphere, the boundary between the known and the unknown. We have evolved to solve problems in the face of the unknown. American ingenuity embodies this spirit. OTOH, 'intelligence' is simply the recapitulation of stuff people have already talked about and done. This arthritic view is European. The actual application of 'intelligence' to the unknown is a rare activity that very few have embarked on. The authors of 'intelligence' constitute a handful of individuals in the sea of billions that inhabit this planet. How many Asimov's are there? I can feel his loneliness at the top but have no compassion for it. Is it no surprise then that Americans have eschewed blind worship of an elite priesthood? That kind of behavior is a shortcut to abdicating your brain. I respect those people who have honestly forged their place in the world without relying on deceit, subterfuge, delegation, entitlements, etc. These people have a vision for their lives and move in that direction, not the cult-like flocking behavior of the 'literati' peering into their smartphones for the latest liturgy.
- grive 10y ago
  > 'intelligence' is simply the recapitulation of stuff people have already talked about and done Your definition of intelligence is simply knowledge. That's a shaky foundation to build any sensible reasoning. You make efforts not to call "American ingenuity" as intelligence. No, this ingenuity (which has nothing specificaly american about it) is just intelligence. The actual application of 'prejudice' to the unknown is simply ideological rambling. American exceptionalism will never stop to astound me in its vacuity. Note that European are, or at least were equally guilty of it. But americans are only starting to know what it is to be an old society. To have entrenched interests furthering inequalities and hindering innovation (divide between the golden people from california and the inner-country pop). The new age of protectionism is there and America is on its forefront. > Is it no surprise then that Americans have eschewed blind worship of an elite priesthood? "Is it no surprise that humans applied very human behaviors to employ conceptual shortcuts in trying times?" You reek of arrogance. This is pretty ironic, considering that the subtext of your comment is itself a critic of a supposed european smugness.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  You make false dichotomies and try to make this in some sort of "USA vs. Europe" imaginary war. Why must you do that? False conflations of nations and ways of thinking, and accusing people of being full of themselves while you yourself expose such a behaviour. You need a hug, man.
narrator 10y ago
Asimov was fascinated by psychology, so much so that he made it the ultimate technology in his Foundation trilogy. I think this stemmed from the common fascination among elitists with methods and technologies to get the people they perceive to be their inferiors to do what they want them to. "A Cult of Ignorance" is an excuse and a lament that their methods and technologies weren't effective.
hugh4life 10y ago
"Arguments, that is to say, have come to be understood in some circles not as expressions of rationality, but as weapons, the techniques for deploying which furnish a key part of the professional skills of lawyers, academics, economists, and journalists who thereby dominate the dialectically unfluent and inarticulate." - Alasdair MacIntyre It's not surprising that people turn to demagogic populist buffoons when "rational" managerial class tell obvious lies in order to increase their powers.
norea-armozel 10y ago
Much of the reason why anti-intellectualism is held in high regard is because of the historical basis of the intellectuals being apologists for the rulers of civilization. Whether it's Milton Friedman being friendly with Augusto Pinochet who had no qualms throwing people out of flying helicopters that didn't comply with his right wing ideology or Trofim Lysenko who had his opponents killed or exiled under Stalin, intellectuals have a storied history of propping up bad regimes and bad policies so that they can bargain with said regimes to execute their own side projects (ex. Lysenkoism). Part of that comes from the fact that they believe their pursuits are divorced from the social and political dimensions when in reality they're so heavily tied to them that it's inescapable. Like it or not, they need to realize that they must be part of the social and political dimensions to mitigate the dangers of anti-intellectualism. That means there needs to be some form of science education/advocacy (like John Dobson did in some regard with astronomy or Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson had done for astrophysics) and participation in the political process such that the common person (the non-intellectual/scientist/expert) can digest what is said and done by intellectuals rather than cloistering the knowledge away behind thick books and thicker language. I'm not sure any of those suggestions can yield positive results but it seems it's better than cozying up to the current US President or hiding behind some tech billionaires to pursue your dreams of Martian colonies.
squozzer 10y ago
Keep in mind some of Asimov's best-known works do not flatter the intellectuals or even technology: Foundation Trilogy -- 1) The Encyclopedia Foundation epitomizes ivory-tower (and mostly retrospective) intellectuals who find themselves outmaneuvered by a mere politician, Salvor Hardin. This same Hardin uses deceit and treachery to keep Terminus independent against menacing breakaway provinces. Hardin's successors oversee the hegemony of the Foundation, even as Terminus' government devolves into autocracy under the Indburs. 2) The savior of humanity Hari Seldon essentially keeps Terminus in the dark about crises he was able to predict decades / centuries in advance. Only the arrival of an aberration (The Mule) throws his predictive power to the wind. 3) Moreover, Seldon establishes a shadow group of telepaths, mathematicians, and psychologists, ostensibly to gaurd against aberrations such as The Mule, but whose ultimate goal is to eventually rule the galaxy on the blood and sweat of the First Foundation. Galatic Empire novels -- 1) Hyperspatial travel, once considered liberating, becomes the primary mechanism for inflicting human politics on an unsuspecting galaxy. Robots of Dawn novels -- 1) Robots initially free humanity from drudgery but eventually render the societies that use them vulnerable to a droid-phobic Earth. Earth wins the inevitable war between itself and the robot societies, but becomes uninhabitable. Considering his background, Dr. Asimov had a certain autocratic streak.

126 points by teslacar 10y ago

Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that places faith over reason.

taurath 10y ago
And yet people are more likely to change their religion to match their politics than vice versa.
- sabertoothed 10y ago
  Politics and religious beliefs are intertwined. Especially in the US (in the Western world).
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    This seems sensible to me. If a person truly believes his religion, it has major implications for his/her notion of what it means for humans to thrive, what activities are moral/ethical, and the goals of human society. It would be very strange indeed if those beliefs had no bearing on one's politics.
    - tchock23 10y ago
      Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this?
      - sigzero 10y ago
        No, because once you give the government the ability to tax something you give the government the ability to control whatever that something is. The Supreme Court has ruled on this in the "Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York" ruling.
      - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
        > Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this? I don't know. I see good arguments for and against.
- willvarfar 10y ago
  Interesting, can you elaborate on what you mean and is there any studies behind it?
  - punk_coder 10y ago
    My sister and her husband did this. He was Episcopalian, and she became pretty religious after marrying him. No one in my family was raised religiously. My parents always said we can figure that out for ourselves when we get older. Anyway, once the Episcopalian Church welcomed gay pastors, and her church got one, they fled and became Southern Baptists.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      In entire fairness, the Protestant strains in general can be organized along a single dimension with Calvinism at one end and Unitarianism at the other. Episcopalianism is relatively close to the latter, and Southern Baptism to the former; I don't really know that I'd describe it as a change of faith entire when someone moves along that dimension toward a more satisfactory interpretation of the scripture which all these strains share.
    - ddebernardy 10y ago
      That's rather specific to the US and I'm not sure I'd rate that as changing religion TBH. In Europe, your usual choices when you disagree with the dominant church are to get over it, become atheist, or - more rarely - change faith altogether (as in to Islam, Buddhism, etc.) because, more often than not, you exhaust Christian picks after going through Catholicism and the local Protestant flavor or two. In contrast, the US offers a very wide variety of Christian flavors (and Christian-based sects). So when, like your sister and her husband, you disagree you can just pick another church flavor down the block that is mostly the same with a few twists. You're still nominally Christian though. The difference between the two is sometimes put forward to explain the contrast between the high number of atheists in Europe and the high number of religious people in the US.
    - fsloth 10y ago
      I don't think that qualifies as changing religions.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
Religion is only incidental. Human beings are illogical and take a lot of things on faith. People often don't have good reasons to believe things or have simplistic views of other (see religion or not-religion). They believe because that's all they know. You eliminate all religion and you'll end up with non-religious faiths and ignorance. Haven't you noticed most tech is religion? Religion might play a factor, but only as much as class, nationality, race, culture, education, background, genetic factors, etc.
- davrosthedalek 10y ago
  There is a natural drive to faith: We can't know everything, so we think we have to take some things on faith. The point being that most religions try to foster faith. It's often a central mantra that faith is good. This unfortunately trains people to stop asking questions. On the other hand, the scientific approach tries to manage how we deal with things we don't know for certain. We believe in things more because we have more evidence for it. Without trusting them 100%.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Of course, but many things try and foster faith - companies do it, nations do it, people do it. Most people whether they are religious or not aren't applying the scientific method to their daily lives. You can't blame that - biases are easy and trying to be objective is a pain in the ass.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I think most people are smarter than this discussion is saying they are - it's just they don't optimize for the things we implicitly assume here. They don't optimize for the truth value of their beliefs, but for their direct usefulness in life. Most of the scientific facts don't have a direct impact on your life, so you don't get rewarded for getting things right, nor you get punished for getting them wrong. Different criteria thus become more relevant. How a belief fits your image of yourself? How does it help you strengthen your ties to the groups you're in? How it positions you against the groups you dislike? Note that in situations when getting things right has direct impact on one's life - like, when it comes to money or job - people suddenly become very rational.
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
FWIW, most evangelicals I know reject the notion that faith and reason ought to be in contradiction. I think you'll find that few well-respected Christian theologians or pastors would embrace such a contradiction either. AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your eggs in one basket". And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  You are arguing against an ideological worldview. It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious. Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer. Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    > It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history with faith or non-faith. I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say. The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a monster. Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  I think pretty much all humans hold self-inconsistent internal beliefs. We're not rational agents.
- 10y ago
lr4444lr 10y ago
He could have, but that still doesn't dig satisfying deeply into the analysis: why would Americans be prone to evangelical / fundamentalist religion, and a general disdain for knowledge? It isn't a direct line from the Puritans, whose descendants anyway hardly account for the result of successive waves of immigration seen today. There are deeper issues at play such as: The country's birth from a remote colonial revolution with a deep distrust of monarchy, tradition, and authority. Being a destination for various people disenfranchised in their home cultures, who need a new metric of success, coalesce around money as the arbiter of success and indirectly "correctness". Geographic isolationism from other and significantly diverse first world nations. A lingering sense of superiority for our heroic role in WWII. I don't know how much each of these contributes, but I think the answer to the questions Asimov raises is sooner found in, say, de Tocqueville than in Susan Jacoby.

iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago

I think critiques of American bumbkins is an American tradition. Hawthorne to Twain to Mencken to etc. It is the American organism hashing itself. It is healthy and has helped to make this country what it is. However there is a dangerous trend today to severely ignore the lack of this in other nations whose own bumbkins self-immolate while those who could be Twains or Asimovs are immolated. But hey, say what you want about about everyone if it makes you feel good.

madengr 10y ago
I think it's more that the Left in America won't criticize Islam.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Was it Islam that got the current president into office?
- sabertoothed 10y ago
  Islam is not the predominant problem in the US. Really not. Nearly half of US Americans don't believe in evolution. Christian fundamentalism causes much more harm at the moment than islamists.
  - iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago
    Christian "fundamentalism" is quite benign in this country. Aside from the issue of abortion and perhaps stem cell research can you list some travesties caused by Christianity in America? The fastest growing religion is non religion.
    - danhak 10y ago
      Sending gay youth to psychologically damaging "conversion therapy" camps. Actively campaigning against the rights of gay individuals to marry or raise children. Physically abusing, disowning or abandoning gay children. There's a reason LGBT youth are 4x as likely to be homeless as their straight peers.

dade_ 10y ago

It isn't a cult, but I agree that it looks like one. https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-Saul/dp/0887847315 https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-... "Saul engagingly explains the current woes of democracy, especially in Canada, the U.S., and Britain. He argues from history and philosophy that the democratic meaning of individualism has been obscured and the importance of economics overemphasized throughout the twentieth century. With Socrates, he maintains that in a democracy, citizenship is the incumbent duty and government the great responsibility of the individual. Minding one's own business and getting the government off one's back are derelictions of democracy that reflect infatuation with corporatism, the brand of utopianism exemplified by Mussolini's fascism, with its melding of huge business interests and government to achieve the managed society. Privatization as a remedy for government inefficiency and the conception of individualism as the capacity to purchase consumer goods bespeak corporatism's present power, for both reduce citizenship and place control with managers accountable primarily for the bottom line, not the public good. There are many more compelling--and disquieting--ideas in this exciting, though discursive, little book." Ray Olson

dukeluke 10y ago
There are plenty of people who would like to participate in citizenship in America, but because our FPTP voting system creates a two-party system and extreme partisanship, too many people believe the system is rigged and they wouldn't have much of an influence. And judging from recent elections, their belief is pretty reasonable.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Some would argue that belief (no influence) is always reasonable. Guess it depends on how cynical you're feeling. V = pB − C + D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_voting
- huxley 10y ago
  Voting systems aren't a panacea. Italy and Greece don't have FPTP voting but people there feel pretty disenfranchised even if they theoretically have more representation in government than an American or Canadian would.

pricechild 10y ago

I found this submission's title's date quite confusing. Yes it's an article from 2016 but discussing an essay from 1980!

ajarmst 10y ago
By a man who died in 1992.
- macintux 10y ago
  Asimov may well be the only "celebrity" death that I distinctly remember. I guess I also remember where I was when Princess Diana died, but only because my wife was utterly devastated.
  - ajarmst 10y ago
    Yes. I particularly remember Asimov's death as it came only a few years after Heinlein's. It was a reminder that we were losing the last of that first generation of greats. I got drunk and cried on my father's copy of "Across the Sea of Stars" when Clarke passed.
- pricechild 10y ago
  Yes, that's why I was confused.

throwanem 10y ago

> ...the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ But this is a necessary consequence of the universal franchise. My ignorance has one vote. Your knowledge has one vote. In a system of rule that furnishes us each a vote and values all votes equally, my ignorance and your knowledge are worth exactly the same. In such a system of rule, how can it be otherwise?

iiii_iivii_iiii 10y ago
Let's not forget the two slippery fish in our hands that is other people's "ignorance" and our "knowledge."
- throwanem 10y ago
  Oh, certainly. That's why I didn't swap the person of the pronouns from the quote. As may seem likely from the thrust of my prior comment, I don't favor the universal franchise as a system of rule; it seems to me prone on the one hand to severe corruption as various actors seek to regather the sovereign power which this scheme so atomizes, and on the other hand to precisely the sort of popular enthusiasm which the American founders sought to render harmless, a purpose whose merit the events of the twentieth century do much to demonstrate. Most who espouse such an opinion of universal suffrage seem to imagine it being replaced by a scheme in which they themselves still have some, indeed a much larger, measure of the power to rule. I think this is a mistake; where it isn't a deliberate satisfaction of arrogance, it seems to me prone to encourage that arrogance develop. I'd rather see a scheme in which the practice of rule is the province of those trained and skilled in that very specialized profession. Of course, the problem of competent rule remains, and it's not a simple one - I don't think I could even produce a formal definition, although Singapore seems like a good example in a lot of ways, and perhaps Sweden, or the Nordic countries in general, in some others. In any case, recent history offers little that I can see to suggest that universal suffrage offers a uniquely, or even notably, reliable solution to this problem, either.
  - blowski 10y ago

erikb 10y ago

I think it's widespread all over the world. Partly because not knowing stuff usually includes not knowing what one doesn't know. Therefore we always feel like knowing everything. That leads to weird collisions between "elite" and "normal people" like me being the most well earning person due to my IT master and job, but some family members wondering at Christmas when I will learn a real job (that allows me to use my hands instead of my brain).

chronicx0 10y ago
What?
m_fayer 10y ago
It's also very simple "sour grapes" thinking. Most people can intuit that knowledge leads to status and privilege, so when they don't have it themselves, their ego suffers when adjacent to those that do have it. So, in a simple act of self esteem preservation, they demean the very idea of knowledge. Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become, low-knowledge people everywhere are now in a constant state of defensive ego-preservation. Presto, wide-spread belligerent anti-intellectualism.
- kbart 10y ago
  "Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become" What?? Where did you find such media? Please share.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    I think he/she is referring to intellectual snobs more than anything. One has to be intelligent to be a journalist, but not necessarily have high emotional intelligence (as a general observation I often feel you have to have zero EQ to be a journalist...)
    - m_fayer 10y ago
      Exactly. In addition, I am thinking of the many television shows starring educated urban people's educated urban problems, or how often the lower classes, when they are represented at all, are treated with either some condescension (Family Guy, etc.) or are "sensitively" portrayed from a removed anthropological perspective (Friday Night Lights).

Shivetya 10y ago

In essence, if you don't vote or think like us you are wrong and it is because you are irrational and/or ignorant? yet another post election political slam of voters because they didn't choose "correctly" and not something that should be on this site.

maxymoos 10y ago
Not everyone who voted for Trump is anti-intellectual, but if you are, it's very likely that you voted for him.

boot13 10y ago

Related: https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/ https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-pr...

NumberCruncher 10y ago

>> It may be that only 1 per cent—or less—of Americans make a stab at exercising their right to know. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. / Matthew 5:3-12 / We think only because technology evolves humanity does it too. But we are still where we have been 2000 years ago.

bambax 10y ago

I think the cult of "free speech" is a big part of the problem. Free speech, as spelled out in the 1st amendment is the ability of anyone to speak freely without fear of repercussions by the State. "Congress shall make no law.." But it has progressively help foster the idea that all speech should be respected or listened to, that all speakers are equally respectable, and as a consequence that every utterance of words is equivalent and should be given the same screen time. This is madness. People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to, and to worship any entity, without interference from the State. But they shouldn't expect to be respected for it, and certainly not by the common man. Indeed, they should expect the opposite: to be mocked and laughed at. Same for "anti vaxxers" who are in fact utterly stupid, selfish freeriders and should be addressed as such (and shunned from civilized society). Etc. Anyway, my point isn't against free speech per se; it's the observation that a certain idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to shield themselves and the absurd views they hold, from criticism, and that the non-crazies constantly fall prey to this obvious tactic.

Clubber 10y ago
>People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to ... But they shouldn't expect to be respected for it ... Indeed, they should expect the opposite: to be mocked and laughed at. Many people find religion for many different reasons. To categorize them all as people to be mocked is equally doltish but the opposite to religious people telling everyone they are going to hell (for whatever thing they don't like). Your statement is an equal but opposite reaction to that which you loath. No one likes a rabid conservative, no one likes a rabid liberal. Rabid is rabid regardless of what comes out of their mouth. >idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to shield themselves and the absurd views they hold I think you are practicing what you are preaching.
- BlackFly 10y ago
  Your contention is simply false as you misunderstand the point. Atheists expect to be mocked and laughed at by the religious. The point is that religious people should expect to be mocked and accept that fact. They should not argue that it is improper and that religion somehow implicitly deserves reverence.

DanCarvajal 10y ago

Yeah well I didn't like his Foundation series, it was boring.

partycoder 10y ago

It's not really the cult of ignorance but the cult of money. And money making skills do not require being a genius or personally making key contributions to society. It is rather about hiring the right people, negotiation and selling ideas, etc...

bawana 10y ago

Humans are creatures that evolved at an interface - the boundary between the earth and the atmosphere, the boundary between the known and the unknown. We have evolved to solve problems in the face of the unknown. American ingenuity embodies this spirit. OTOH, 'intelligence' is simply the recapitulation of stuff people have already talked about and done. This arthritic view is European. The actual application of 'intelligence' to the unknown is a rare activity that very few have embarked on. The authors of 'intelligence' constitute a handful of individuals in the sea of billions that inhabit this planet. How many Asimov's are there? I can feel his loneliness at the top but have no compassion for it. Is it no surprise then that Americans have eschewed blind worship of an elite priesthood? That kind of behavior is a shortcut to abdicating your brain. I respect those people who have honestly forged their place in the world without relying on deceit, subterfuge, delegation, entitlements, etc. These people have a vision for their lives and move in that direction, not the cult-like flocking behavior of the 'literati' peering into their smartphones for the latest liturgy.

grive 10y ago
> 'intelligence' is simply the recapitulation of stuff people have already talked about and done Your definition of intelligence is simply knowledge. That's a shaky foundation to build any sensible reasoning. You make efforts not to call "American ingenuity" as intelligence. No, this ingenuity (which has nothing specificaly american about it) is just intelligence. The actual application of 'prejudice' to the unknown is simply ideological rambling. American exceptionalism will never stop to astound me in its vacuity. Note that European are, or at least were equally guilty of it. But americans are only starting to know what it is to be an old society. To have entrenched interests furthering inequalities and hindering innovation (divide between the golden people from california and the inner-country pop). The new age of protectionism is there and America is on its forefront. > Is it no surprise then that Americans have eschewed blind worship of an elite priesthood? "Is it no surprise that humans applied very human behaviors to employ conceptual shortcuts in trying times?" You reek of arrogance. This is pretty ironic, considering that the subtext of your comment is itself a critic of a supposed european smugness.
pdimitar 10y ago
You make false dichotomies and try to make this in some sort of "USA vs. Europe" imaginary war. Why must you do that? False conflations of nations and ways of thinking, and accusing people of being full of themselves while you yourself expose such a behaviour. You need a hug, man.

narrator 10y ago

Asimov was fascinated by psychology, so much so that he made it the ultimate technology in his Foundation trilogy. I think this stemmed from the common fascination among elitists with methods and technologies to get the people they perceive to be their inferiors to do what they want them to. "A Cult of Ignorance" is an excuse and a lament that their methods and technologies weren't effective.

hugh4life 10y ago

"Arguments, that is to say, have come to be understood in some circles not as expressions of rationality, but as weapons, the techniques for deploying which furnish a key part of the professional skills of lawyers, academics, economists, and journalists who thereby dominate the dialectically unfluent and inarticulate." - Alasdair MacIntyre It's not surprising that people turn to demagogic populist buffoons when "rational" managerial class tell obvious lies in order to increase their powers.

norea-armozel 10y ago

Much of the reason why anti-intellectualism is held in high regard is because of the historical basis of the intellectuals being apologists for the rulers of civilization. Whether it's Milton Friedman being friendly with Augusto Pinochet who had no qualms throwing people out of flying helicopters that didn't comply with his right wing ideology or Trofim Lysenko who had his opponents killed or exiled under Stalin, intellectuals have a storied history of propping up bad regimes and bad policies so that they can bargain with said regimes to execute their own side projects (ex. Lysenkoism). Part of that comes from the fact that they believe their pursuits are divorced from the social and political dimensions when in reality they're so heavily tied to them that it's inescapable. Like it or not, they need to realize that they must be part of the social and political dimensions to mitigate the dangers of anti-intellectualism. That means there needs to be some form of science education/advocacy (like John Dobson did in some regard with astronomy or Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson had done for astrophysics) and participation in the political process such that the common person (the non-intellectual/scientist/expert) can digest what is said and done by intellectuals rather than cloistering the knowledge away behind thick books and thicker language. I'm not sure any of those suggestions can yield positive results but it seems it's better than cozying up to the current US President or hiding behind some tech billionaires to pursue your dreams of Martian colonies.

squozzer 10y ago

Keep in mind some of Asimov's best-known works do not flatter the intellectuals or even technology: Foundation Trilogy -- 1) The Encyclopedia Foundation epitomizes ivory-tower (and mostly retrospective) intellectuals who find themselves outmaneuvered by a mere politician, Salvor Hardin. This same Hardin uses deceit and treachery to keep Terminus independent against menacing breakaway provinces. Hardin's successors oversee the hegemony of the Foundation, even as Terminus' government devolves into autocracy under the Indburs. 2) The savior of humanity Hari Seldon essentially keeps Terminus in the dark about crises he was able to predict decades / centuries in advance. Only the arrival of an aberration (The Mule) throws his predictive power to the wind. 3) Moreover, Seldon establishes a shadow group of telepaths, mathematicians, and psychologists, ostensibly to gaurd against aberrations such as The Mule, but whose ultimate goal is to eventually rule the galaxy on the blood and sweat of the First Foundation. Galatic Empire novels -- 1) Hyperspatial travel, once considered liberating, becomes the primary mechanism for inflicting human politics on an unsuspecting galaxy. Robots of Dawn novels -- 1) Robots initially free humanity from drudgery but eventually render the societies that use them vulnerable to a droid-phobic Earth. Earth wins the inevitable war between itself and the robot societies, but becomes uninhabitable. Considering his background, Dr. Asimov had a certain autocratic streak.