8 ms·

America is one of the few cultures with insults for smart people?

121 points by Leary 8y ago

thiago_fm 8y ago
That's far from true. We have many words for smart people in Portuguese and German as well. The other two languages I know.
sabedevops 8y ago
"It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws - for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advanced, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world's greatest artists AND the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed... by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” ― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom Script Episode 1
8bitsrule 8y ago
I suspect that 'smart-people insults' are somewhat universal. Ironically (the article's from japantimes.com) there's a (reportedly well-known) Japanese saying that might explain it: “The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down.” (Found that at this longest-url-contender:) https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-proverb-The-nail-that-sticks-out-shall-be-hammered-down-Do-you-think-its-cruel-Or-do-you-think-its-normal-Or-are-there-any-similar-proverbs https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-p...
liftbigweights 8y ago
Even in ancient greece there were jokes. Plato wrote about Thales: "Thales was studying the stars and gazing aloft when he fell into a well; a witty and amusing Thracian servant-girl made fun of him because, she said, he was wild to know about what was up in the sky but failed to see what was in front of him and under his feet."
anonu 8y ago
This was a really fun article to read. However, extrapolating American's insulting words for smart people to ...... the culture as a whole is dumb and uneducated .... is insulting. Anti-intellectualism in American politics, as the author pointed out with Bush, is mostly made up. In most cases it's designed to make the politician more appealing and easier to understand.
IshKebab 8y ago
This doesn't sound remotely plausible.
cafard 8y ago
Don't the English say, "too clever by half"?
jankotek 8y ago
America PAYS smart people, France not so much...
sremani 8y ago
He missed IYI. 16 years of school makes you good at one thing, test taking. America recognizes more than other cultures the high probability of bs vendors among this test taking class.
abraham_lincoln 8y ago
Never was a fan of 'GeekSquad'. I feel it is derogatory. But, it was well parodied in the series 'Chuck' as the 'Nerd Herd'.
rectang 8y ago
> Maybe it’s time to take a cue from our proudly pro-intelligence and pro-education cultural cousins across the Atlantic. Nope. I can live with the downsides of anti-intellectualism in trade for escaping the cult of "genius". People who claim to know better than the rest of us are dangerous.
- minikites 8y ago
  I wish this attitude was applied equally to people in private industry like Elon Musk instead of only slamming government employees like the original article (and most similar articles).
  - askmike 8y ago
    That's exactly what the article talks about: > Despite the rise of Silicon Valley and its technoelites, the Revenge of the Nerds in the South Bay has managed to line stock portfolios without moving the needle on America’s cultural values. Jocks still rule high schools that spend millions on new football stadiums while starving the arts. Elon Musk isn't considered a national hero or someone to look up to (in most parts of the US - not talking about cali).
- WalterGR 8y ago
  In what ways have our "cultural cousins" across the Atlantic succumbed to the cult of genius? What have been the consequences of that?
- nerflad 8y ago
  There are plenty of "public intellectuals" with cults in the US, though. Jordan Peterson and Neil Tyson come to mind.
  - throwaway8879 8y ago
    Tyson can be a little annoying, he's just very excitable but generally knows what he's talking about. Peterson on the other hand...
  - 8y ago
gnufied 8y ago
I am not sure how much of this is true. In India for example - people do get called "Kitabi Kida"(bookworm) and I forget but there is a insult for people who have gained knowledge from reading books but aren't street smart. India elected Narendra Modi who is decidedly nowhere as educated as previous prime minister. The state I am from(Bihar) had series of Chief Ministers who weren't all the educated(or even intelligent as a matter of fact). I think people select their politicians differently than how they would select their Doctor or mechanic to repair their car or engine. I don't need my doctor to relate to my economic difficulties to treat my illness but this may be a desirable trait in a politician. The point is - smart people are not always likable and in a politician likability and ability to relate yourself to him/her(even if faked) are desired qualities. The author may have a point about schools spending lot of money on stadiums and sports and ignoring investment in science and technology but there may be other reasons for that - other than unbridled hate for smart people.
- virtuabhi 8y ago
  > India elected Narendra Modi who is decidedly nowhere as educated as previous prime minister. Yet he promotes technology (Startup India, Paperless/Digital Locker, Digital ID, Live tracking of projects online, EVMs, Soil testing labs, Solar) much more than one of the IIT educated Chief Minister. The point is that a good leader does not need fancy degrees from fancy colleges.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    The IIT guy is only saying if you don't fix education and healthcare, you won't have people who can do basic knowledge work, let alone write operating systems and do other big research work. That was the whole idea behind Nehruvian socialism. The problem in essence is in a country with poverty levels comparable to Africa, absent education systems, near zero literacy levels. How do you run a capitalist economy? The best you can manage with that kind of human resources is give them dumbest possible manufacturing jobs, by letting foreign investors control what is a newly independent country. Hence around 1947, the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru, came up education institutions the likes of IITs, IIScs and other regional colleges. Once you have these people first rung of talented human resources ready, you can now use them to build your private industries. But you can't wait till then, so you still have to build your bureaucracy with pretty darn high civil services exam standards. This is important because while you are building your people, you need to build some government owned industries. This will eventually feed momentum to later to come private industries. The net result is you get public sector industries, you get ISRO, you get DRDO, you get a stable bureaucracy. All of this will essentially run your country. The next set of work to do is to fix primary education. So that even the bottom most layers of the society can get a shot at doing good things in life. You also need healthcare. Because if 20% of your population is limping with polio or can't breath properly because of TB then you can't be a decent economy anyway. For all that is told about things like Bay Area. The edge California has is not US-101-N or the Caltrain, Its the people. The IIT guy is the first guy in decades who is taking sense, instead of trying to sell building websites(which any idiot can build) as progress. Fix your people, then your people fix everything.
hegz 8y ago
Since when did English == America? All of these words exist and are used in other English speaking countries.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Tall poppies seem to be unique to NZ.
  - lostsock 8y ago
    It's used in Australia too
  - shalmanese 8y ago
    Australia too
  - RikNieu 8y ago
    Aren't Tall poppies rich/snobbish people?
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      It is used to describe over achievers in general. From wiki: > Recent research performed at University of Waikato in New Zealand shows that a culture of tall poppy syndrome may result in a reduction in average performance of up to 20% for an organisation and explains how electronic cyberbullying can be considered a modern extension to the physical assassinations of King Tarquin's day.[17] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
    - phil21 8y ago
      Huh. I always thought it was more "the people that stand out get cut down" sort of thing. e.g. if you're gonna do crime, don't be the tall poppy that sticks out in the field of crime. Then apply that concept to more or less everything. Googling though shows you're right. Interesting.
    - hegz 8y ago
mdimec4 8y ago
yes this title is not true: I could now throw in some string ones in my taguage language Slovenian or in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
- WalterGR 8y ago
  I’ll bite. Teach us some.
marcoperaza 8y ago
Smart people seem particularly prone to intellectual fads (religions in their own way) and being eager to use coercion to implement their ideas. Maybe it’s good to have a great mass of down-to-earth, practically-minded folks as a counterbalance. Open ridicule of the hoity-toity elite has been quintessentially American for all our history.
- WalterGR 8y ago
  What do you mean by intellectual fads? I think some examples would help.
  - marcoperaza 8y ago
    Performance environmentalism (like plastic straw bans) and some of the whackier social justice stuff come to mind.
    - WalterGR 8y ago
      What are some examples of whackier social justice stuff? As far as I know, plastic straw bans are to reduce the amount of unrecoverable plastic waste as well as all the resources that went into producing it. And I wrong? I don’t see how it’s an intellectual fad so much as policy that you personally disagree with. Put another way, are these intellectuals who support plastic straw bans (who??) potentially going to 'wake up' and realize one day that they were incorrect, and that in fact plastic straws are not a source of unrecoverable waste?
  - mantas 8y ago
    For example many anti-vax people have higher education. https://www.seeker.com/anti-vaccination-parents-richer-better-educated-1770662854.html https://www.seeker.com/anti-vaccination-parents-richer-bette... https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-not-who-you-think-she-is/ https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-no...
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mantas 8y ago
Author should look more into Euro politics. Plenty of dumb people there. Plenty of ways to make fun of smart people too. In fact, US feels much more "cult of genius" than Europe... At least from afar.
- adventured 8y ago
  > In fact, US feels much more "cult of genius" than Europe... At least from afar. You're making the same mistake with that line of thinking that the author did.
- askmike 8y ago
  I very much disagree. If you look at most politicians in a high enough positions in a lot of European countries, you won't find any movie stars (Reagan, Eastwood, Schwarzenegger) nor reality TV stars like Trump. The Prime minister of my country would never qualify for the terminator[1]. [1] https://www.government.nl/government/members-of-cabinet/mark-rutte https://www.government.nl/government/members-of-cabinet/mark...
  - mantas 8y ago
    My country had "party of entertainment stars" take 2nd in parliament elections several years ago. Then long time TV star served as head of parliament. Most recent election was won by literally "farmers party" with quite a few.. interesting personalities. We alone should make up for NL being boring :) And then we got Italy...
peter_retief 8y ago
That is not true, I am from South Africa and there are dozens of uniques cultures here and they all have derogatory terms for smart people
mnm1 8y ago
The culture of anti-intellectualism is strong in America and children are indoctrinated in it from a very young age. Stupidity is worshiped. What would one expect from a society that loves stupidity so much it encourages violence against people who even appear smart, let alone those that are? Americans love stupidity because the majority are incredibly stupid.
- tomerico 8y ago
  Can you clarify more? My experience as an immigrant to America is that Americans tend to foster a culture of ultra competativeness on everything, including academics.
  - askmike 8y ago
    As an (European) outsider who visited the US a number of times: In academic circles you are right, but college and university are so expensive that your experience only applies to the elite (who are called all the bad words from the article by the majority of the country).
  - aikinai 8y ago
    The parent comment is extreme and ends in a baseless insult, so I definitely don't want to defend it wholly, but the gist is true. If you think Americans are competitive about academics, you're probably basing that on a very specific bubble. The "from a young age" mention is especially true; in most American public schools you basically cannot be both cool and get good grades, unless you hide the grades very well and show an appropriate amount of public disrespect for authority.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    In my experience, children are bullied simply for getting good grades or looking "nerdy" even if they don't get good grades. Other children are proud that they get bad grades, proud that they are not learning anything, and they are looked up to by a lot of other kids. They dictate a lot of culture in schools. People who go to college or university are often looked down upon in many parts of the country and many people are proud that they did not attend, as if being stupid is something to be proud of. We have climate change deniers, anti vaccine people, and huge percentages of the population believe the earth is around 10k years old or that the world will end in their lifetimes. High school curricula is beyond simple, almost nothing is learned, yet we still have a huge percentage of the population that doesn't even graduate that. The discourse now even on college campuses has turned from education to political correctness. Students are afraid of even being exposed to different ideas, lest they be offended, as if they have a right not to be offended. Speakers and comedians are often cancelled if they are the least bit controversial. People think their beliefs are equal to facts and they should be treated as such. The media certainly subscribes to this in the name of fairness, conflating fact and fiction just like the masses it reports on. This is anti intellectualism through and through from birth to death. I'm not saying we are unique, but it certainly is ubiquitous in our culture here. It's difficult to deal with because often stupidity and cruelty go together and it's hard to discern where one ends and the other begins. I could continue on, but I think this is enough to get the point across.
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mercurialshark 8y ago
I think the author entirely misses the primary issue due to linguistic and/or cultural context omissions. Generally speaking, when someone is called a nerd or (insert uncool descriptive modifier), it's not implied that being smart or studious is something people should be embarrassed of. Instead, it's implying the lack of some other social skill, trait or normative behavior (i.e., not participating in sports as a child or general difficulty fitting in). For example, being a genius or reliable hard worker is almost universally admired. Yes, even in the United States. However, if an individual is brilliant yet lacks the social skills to fit in, appears to try too hard relative to the group or makes others feel uncomfortable, their behavior may be seen as idiosyncratic or weird. Individuals that can display their cognitive abilities while inspiring, impressing or leading others are usually admired.
GuiA 8y ago
I turned to Google Translate in search of a French translation for the English word “geek.” There wasn’t one. Maybe ask a French person then. “Intello” (dismissive diminutive of the word “intellectuel”) is in very common usage amongst school kids, and has been since at least the 60s. “Premier de la classe” (first of the class) is also used very pejoratively by children. Recently though, the French have been very happy to use the word “geek” (albeit pronounced with a French accent) in its original English meaning. On the other hand, languages like French are extremely rich in insults for stupid people: “bete comme ses pieds,” or “dumb as hell,” literally means “as stupid as his/her feet.” American English is full of expressions just as colorful than the French in that regard, eg “not the brightest crayon in the box”, “not the sharpest tool in the shed”, “dumber than a bag of hammers”, etc. This blog post is just a succession of these easily falsiable generalizations that try to use pseudo-linguistic reasoning to demonstrate a blanket sweeping subjective statement (“Americans hate smart people”).
- gboudrias 8y ago
  > This blog post is just a succession of these easily falsiable generalizations that try to use pseudo-linguistic reasoning to demonstrate a blanket sweeping subjective statement (“Americans hate smart people”). Much like psychologists, linguists suffer a constant barrage of comments and articles by people who think they understand the field but don't. It's quite easy to not know the sheer scope of our ignorance in these fields, unlike STEM where people at least tend to realize they know close to nothing.
- lloeki 8y ago
  Indeed I found the premise about romantic languages quite ridiculous as I could readily think of a few pejoratives in French from the top of my head, and pretty sure I forget or miss some of them, so when TFA reaches to French I was flabbergasted. "Intello", "être une tête" (can be used both positively and negatively), "grosse tête", "quatre-yeux" (typical image of nerds with thick glasses), "tête d'ampoule" (probably the closest to nerd together with "intello"), "avoir une tête de premier de la classe", "binoclard", "coincé", "pingouin", "rat de bibliothèque", "taupe"...
panic 8y ago
Is the entire premise of this article really based on the author typing words into Google Translate?
- blablabla123 8y ago
  I think they used a lot of training data from UN, EU etc
- PhantomGremlin 8y ago
  No, that's only half of it. The other half is to smugly remind us how much smarter Democrats are than Republicans. Clinton > Trump Gore > Bush Stevenson > Eisenhower Remarkable how, in this writer's mind, an intellectual noted for "promotion of progressive causes in the Democratic Party" is obviously superior to a five-star general who played a very key part in the Allies defeating Hitler in WWII.
  - cbsmith 8y ago
    I'm not sure I'd agree that. I felt it was more revealing about the author & their context than anything else.
- coldtea 8y ago
  And doing it badly -- all the countries he mentions have derogatory terms analogous to nerd, but he couldn't get to them in Google Translate by searching for "geek", so he came to the conclusion that they don't have anti-intellectual words at all.
ajuc 8y ago
Nowadays geek and nerd are in every language it seems, and they even become cool (I think so, but I'm too old now to be sure). But I've been at school in Poland in 1990, before most English influences started, and there were insults for people, not because they are smart, but because they focus too much on good grades. It was cool to be smart, it was uncool to show the effort and to care too much. Basically you didn't wanted to be a kujon (literally - a hammerer = someone who mindlessly hammers in every lesson to memory to get best grades). We also had bookworm (mól książkowy) and "inteligencik" (mostly political label given by communists and their supporters to intellectual workers who weren't on board with the whole communist thing). Outside of politics it was mildly negative label, and wasn't used too much. Also, there are a few new ones associated with political issues - "wykształciuchy" and "łże-elity" is a degrading way to call people who graduated some university and think they are better than you but actually know nothing. It's a word borrowed from political marketing of the current government, which includes anti-intellectualism (because most experts disagree with them on 99% of their policies, and their target demographics is less educated compared to other parties). TL; DR: I don't think anti-intellectualism is inherently American, it's a common theme in populism. American schools are just weird (we haven't had words for bully, cheerleader, jock either).
kbos87 8y ago
Sorry, but America is a society that enshrines and holds intelligence so, so high. If you are "smart", you are afforded all sorts of privileges that everyone else misses out on. The intelligent don't need a sob story or a defense in America, they are scoring a close second to those that already have and control the wealth and resources here.
- man2525 8y ago
  I don't remember where I read it, but there are supposed centers in America for which virtues are held in high esteem. Intelligence was Cambridge, MA, wealth was Manhattan, NYC, power was Washington D.C., and health was Berkley, CA.
- onion2k 8y ago
  America, and most western countries, hold wealth in high esteem. Intelligent people tend to make more money, so they get in to positions that afford them privilege more easily. But there are plenty of counter-examples to that. Stupid people get to the top through other means and win those privileges, and clever people who choose to work in less well paid jobs aren't given any privilege at all. Intelligence itself rarely commands much respect at all.
- labbyz 8y ago
  I see an extreme focus on GPA, even employers considering that score during hiring. This is fairly alien to the other Western cultures I've sampled. Also the latest "taboo" is discrimination on intelligence. You can not help it that you were born below the IQ Bell curve. "You just gotta work harder for it" is like telling an overweight person to "just stop eating so much". Difficulty learning new material puts you at an eternal disadvantage, with no way to catch up to what smart people are learning in their teens and early twenties. The big five openly discriminate on intelligence. Intelligence and aptitude is also correlated with your upbringing (Did you have smart parents to guide your academic career and interests? Were they rich enough to help put you through a good college?). For all the renewed interest in identity politics and combating discrimination, intelligence is really the odd one out. High school teachers berate you for something that isn't your fault, it is commonly accepted to call out your low IQ, no matter how much you want to work for a tech company -- even if they favor women, poor people, minorities, war veterans, the disabled -- you are not going to get hired to fill some neurodiversity quota. The ease with which the left ridicules, stigmatizes, and marginalizes right politicians (Bush & Trump) and those that vote for them is astounding to me. "Those idiot low-educated racists ruined it all! They are not smart enough to vote rationally!". Change "low-intelligence" with any other protected status and such language becomes vile and primitive.
shalmanese 8y ago
I think almost every culture has a term for people who are on the asperger spectrum and have high IQ but low EQ. In Chinese, "理工男" translates to roughly "Science Guy" and refers to people who are like Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory. "书呆子" means bookworm and refers to people with a lot of book smarts but not much street smarts.
seanhunter 8y ago
Anti-intellectualism is pretty strong in the UK too. For example in one of the defining moments of the Brexit campaign, Michael Gove was confronted by an open letter from a large number of leading economists saying how damaging Brexit would be to the economy and said “people in this country have had enough of experts”.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >“people in this country have had enough of experts”. Well, in an era when experts give their "expert" opinion based on who pays their bills, that's true for most of the world...
- Smaug123 8y ago
  While I have no love of Gove, this is a very unfair and context-free quote. The full quote is as follows: > I think that the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying - from organisations with acronyms - saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong, because these people - these people - are the same ones who got consistently wrong.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Wow. I've seen the quote often, but never with that surrounding context. Completely makes you understand why politicians would be unwilling to talk with the press.
    - lordgrenville 8y ago
      Do you think that there's a substantial difference between "the public is tired of experts" and "the public is tired of experts from fancy organisations getting things wrong"? Sincerely asking - I think the context helps, but the short version doesn't seem like a misrepresentation of the main idea.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Yes, there is. One is made to look like you don't want "experts" in general, e.g. because you're anti-science or whatever. You might not even want an expert doctor, but instead e.g. pray. The second is about not wanting BS experts (analysts, media pundits, economists) on the payroll of some "fancy organization", that have a track record of being wrong.
noobermin 8y ago
Can anyone who's lived in more than one culture share whether American is more anti-intellectual than other cultures?
- ionised 8y ago
  It definitely seems that way to me.
- phreeza 8y ago
  Fwiw, I had the opposite experience when coming to the us as a high school exchange student from Germany. I did well in school, and got much more derision for this in Germany than in the US. Could possibly have something to do with me being an exotic foreigner though, not sure.
  - davvolun 8y ago
    Yeah, as an American, I would be inclined to think the people who would insult you for being intelligent were more distracted by you being a foreigner, and would latch on to that to "insult" first, whereas the people who would appreciate your "exotic foreigner" status probably wouldn't insult your intelligence either. I really don't think that is unique to the U.S. though.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    Per chance, did you transfer from a public school to a private school?
    - phreeza 8y ago
      No, public to public.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    It's also possible that, as a foreigner, you simply were less aware of crappy behavior because the culture was unfamiliar. A lot of the details can get missed or be misunderstood. (Or, alternately, they failed to grasp how smart you were because you were foreign, so they left it alone. Which might be the same thing you are saying.)
mirimir 8y ago
Interesting, yes. But there's more to "geek". In circuses and carnivals, a geek would capture chickens, bite their heads off, and eat them. Now you gotta remember that most of the audiences lived on farms, or had family who did, so chasing chickens and cutting their heads off was pretty normal. But still ... So anyway, "geek" is very different from "bookworm" or "egghead". It's more like unconventional, daring and uninhibited.
- goliatone 8y ago
  As a foreigner learning American English + (pop) culture in the US one of my favorite things is to ask people to tell me the difference between geek and nerd. Originally because I was having a hard time grasping not so much the meaning of the words but the connotations and projected values by those using the words. I still ask that question and find the discrepancies amusing. But I never heard anything about bitting chicken heads off and all that. Amazing!
  - mirimir 8y ago
    That died out in the 1940s, as I recall. It never made it to TV, not even on the Red Skeleton Show.
jancsika 8y ago
> On the other hand, languages like French are extremely rich in insults for stupid people No you cannot use "on the other hand." Languages like English have at least as many if not more insults for stupid people: dumbass, shit-for-brains, dipshit, blockhead, imbecile, dullard, doofus, slack-jawed yocal, and the famous one from Mark Twain, "an idiot of the 33rd degree." > After food and wine, the French worship the life of the mind. And apparently the films of Jerry Lewis[1]. So let's say those end up canceling each other out[2]. > The United States, on the other hand, elected Donald “Celebrity Apprentice” Trump over Hillary “I Have a 12-Point Plan” Clinton. I certainly cannot defend Trump's ban on Muslim face coverings in public schools[3]. There is no denying that is due to virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that has grown to dangerous-- one might say fascistic-- levels as of late. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lewis#French_critical_acclaim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lewis#French_critical_ac... [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082501/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082501/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
zakum1 8y ago
In South Africa, the previous President, Jacob Zuma, famously used a label “clever blacks” for well educated black people who he felt didn’t support his populist / traditionalist policies. across cultures in SA, there is a definite “macho” bias and a bias towards “eloquence” (sometimes at the expense of thoughtfulness). I have spent substantial time in Asia and both of these differences are very obviously different. I would say that Europe is somewhere in between.
ivan_ah 8y ago
"You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSCRoYyM-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSCRoYyM-Y
cbsmith 8y ago
The author has a track record of intellectual humour, particularly with a political bent to it. I'm trying to decide if this article is unintentionally ironic or just pretending to be unintentionally ironic.
TomMckenny 8y ago
From the comments it looks like we have a more interesting question than the article's. Why do humans frequently/occasionally dislike smart people?
coldtea 8y ago
There are insults for smart people in many countries. In Britain, for example, there's a whole attitude about anybody daring to appear smart, well read, etc that's combined with class putdowns and terms like "pretentious wanker" and such. Or, what americans would deride as a "nerd" for Brits it would be a "swot" (but it's meaning I think combines nerd with teacher's pet and bookworm). French have "intello", a derogatory term for intellectual types. Greeks have a similar connotation "kulturiaris" (and a term for nerd/geek that's "spasiklas"). In Spanish, where the author says he couldn't find a term for "geek", they have "empollon". In Italian the same would be secchione.
- bolaft 8y ago
  > French have "intello", a derogatory term for intellectual types "Intello" is not derogatory, it's just short for intellectual.
  - rntksi 8y ago
    It can be derogatory. But yes it's not that commonly used as a defamatory comment.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Well: intello m, f (plural intellos) (informal, derogatory) highbrow (informal, derogatory) nerd, egghead Also, "intello coincée" and such. It can also stand for just shorthand, as many terms have dual informal derogatory and friendly use (for that matter, geek has also been used positively in the US as well for a few decades).
- jaffathecake 8y ago
  Ok smart-arse.
JoachimS 8y ago
I've noted that the journalists at The Register are unable to write an article about scientists discovering, inventing something without using the word "boffin". See for example: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/28/hacking_motion_control/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/28/hacking_motion_cont... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/27/screaming_channels_attack/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/27/screaming_channels_... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/
- bbcbasic 8y ago
  Satire my friend.
- wemdyjreichert 8y ago
  They're British.

121 points by Leary 8y ago

That's far from true. We have many words for smart people in Portuguese and German as well. The other two languages I know.

sabedevops 8y ago

"It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws - for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advanced, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world's greatest artists AND the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed... by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” ― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom Script Episode 1

8bitsrule 8y ago

I suspect that 'smart-people insults' are somewhat universal. Ironically (the article's from japantimes.com) there's a (reportedly well-known) Japanese saying that might explain it: “The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down.” (Found that at this longest-url-contender:) https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-proverb-The-nail-that-sticks-out-shall-be-hammered-down-Do-you-think-its-cruel-Or-do-you-think-its-normal-Or-are-there-any-similar-proverbs https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-p...

liftbigweights 8y ago

Even in ancient greece there were jokes. Plato wrote about Thales: "Thales was studying the stars and gazing aloft when he fell into a well; a witty and amusing Thracian servant-girl made fun of him because, she said, he was wild to know about what was up in the sky but failed to see what was in front of him and under his feet."

anonu 8y ago

This was a really fun article to read. However, extrapolating American's insulting words for smart people to ...... the culture as a whole is dumb and uneducated .... is insulting. Anti-intellectualism in American politics, as the author pointed out with Bush, is mostly made up. In most cases it's designed to make the politician more appealing and easier to understand.

IshKebab 8y ago

This doesn't sound remotely plausible.

cafard 8y ago

Don't the English say, "too clever by half"?

jankotek 8y ago

America PAYS smart people, France not so much...

sremani 8y ago

He missed IYI. 16 years of school makes you good at one thing, test taking. America recognizes more than other cultures the high probability of bs vendors among this test taking class.

abraham_lincoln 8y ago

Never was a fan of 'GeekSquad'. I feel it is derogatory. But, it was well parodied in the series 'Chuck' as the 'Nerd Herd'.

rectang 8y ago

> Maybe it’s time to take a cue from our proudly pro-intelligence and pro-education cultural cousins across the Atlantic. Nope. I can live with the downsides of anti-intellectualism in trade for escaping the cult of "genius". People who claim to know better than the rest of us are dangerous.

minikites 8y ago
I wish this attitude was applied equally to people in private industry like Elon Musk instead of only slamming government employees like the original article (and most similar articles).
- askmike 8y ago
  That's exactly what the article talks about: > Despite the rise of Silicon Valley and its technoelites, the Revenge of the Nerds in the South Bay has managed to line stock portfolios without moving the needle on America’s cultural values. Jocks still rule high schools that spend millions on new football stadiums while starving the arts. Elon Musk isn't considered a national hero or someone to look up to (in most parts of the US - not talking about cali).
WalterGR 8y ago
In what ways have our "cultural cousins" across the Atlantic succumbed to the cult of genius? What have been the consequences of that?
nerflad 8y ago
There are plenty of "public intellectuals" with cults in the US, though. Jordan Peterson and Neil Tyson come to mind.
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  Tyson can be a little annoying, he's just very excitable but generally knows what he's talking about. Peterson on the other hand...
- 8y ago

gnufied 8y ago

I am not sure how much of this is true. In India for example - people do get called "Kitabi Kida"(bookworm) and I forget but there is a insult for people who have gained knowledge from reading books but aren't street smart. India elected Narendra Modi who is decidedly nowhere as educated as previous prime minister. The state I am from(Bihar) had series of Chief Ministers who weren't all the educated(or even intelligent as a matter of fact). I think people select their politicians differently than how they would select their Doctor or mechanic to repair their car or engine. I don't need my doctor to relate to my economic difficulties to treat my illness but this may be a desirable trait in a politician. The point is - smart people are not always likable and in a politician likability and ability to relate yourself to him/her(even if faked) are desired qualities. The author may have a point about schools spending lot of money on stadiums and sports and ignoring investment in science and technology but there may be other reasons for that - other than unbridled hate for smart people.

virtuabhi 8y ago
> India elected Narendra Modi who is decidedly nowhere as educated as previous prime minister. Yet he promotes technology (Startup India, Paperless/Digital Locker, Digital ID, Live tracking of projects online, EVMs, Soil testing labs, Solar) much more than one of the IIT educated Chief Minister. The point is that a good leader does not need fancy degrees from fancy colleges.
- kamaal 8y ago
  The IIT guy is only saying if you don't fix education and healthcare, you won't have people who can do basic knowledge work, let alone write operating systems and do other big research work. That was the whole idea behind Nehruvian socialism. The problem in essence is in a country with poverty levels comparable to Africa, absent education systems, near zero literacy levels. How do you run a capitalist economy? The best you can manage with that kind of human resources is give them dumbest possible manufacturing jobs, by letting foreign investors control what is a newly independent country. Hence around 1947, the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru, came up education institutions the likes of IITs, IIScs and other regional colleges. Once you have these people first rung of talented human resources ready, you can now use them to build your private industries. But you can't wait till then, so you still have to build your bureaucracy with pretty darn high civil services exam standards. This is important because while you are building your people, you need to build some government owned industries. This will eventually feed momentum to later to come private industries. The net result is you get public sector industries, you get ISRO, you get DRDO, you get a stable bureaucracy. All of this will essentially run your country. The next set of work to do is to fix primary education. So that even the bottom most layers of the society can get a shot at doing good things in life. You also need healthcare. Because if 20% of your population is limping with polio or can't breath properly because of TB then you can't be a decent economy anyway. For all that is told about things like Bay Area. The edge California has is not US-101-N or the Caltrain, Its the people. The IIT guy is the first guy in decades who is taking sense, instead of trying to sell building websites(which any idiot can build) as progress. Fix your people, then your people fix everything.

hegz 8y ago

Since when did English == America? All of these words exist and are used in other English speaking countries.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Tall poppies seem to be unique to NZ.
- lostsock 8y ago
  It's used in Australia too
- shalmanese 8y ago
  Australia too
- RikNieu 8y ago
  Aren't Tall poppies rich/snobbish people?
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    It is used to describe over achievers in general. From wiki: > Recent research performed at University of Waikato in New Zealand shows that a culture of tall poppy syndrome may result in a reduction in average performance of up to 20% for an organisation and explains how electronic cyberbullying can be considered a modern extension to the physical assassinations of King Tarquin's day.[17] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
  - phil21 8y ago
    Huh. I always thought it was more "the people that stand out get cut down" sort of thing. e.g. if you're gonna do crime, don't be the tall poppy that sticks out in the field of crime. Then apply that concept to more or less everything. Googling though shows you're right. Interesting.
  - hegz 8y ago

mdimec4 8y ago

yes this title is not true: I could now throw in some string ones in my taguage language Slovenian or in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian

WalterGR 8y ago
I’ll bite. Teach us some.

marcoperaza 8y ago

Smart people seem particularly prone to intellectual fads (religions in their own way) and being eager to use coercion to implement their ideas. Maybe it’s good to have a great mass of down-to-earth, practically-minded folks as a counterbalance. Open ridicule of the hoity-toity elite has been quintessentially American for all our history.

WalterGR 8y ago
What do you mean by intellectual fads? I think some examples would help.
- marcoperaza 8y ago
  Performance environmentalism (like plastic straw bans) and some of the whackier social justice stuff come to mind.
  - WalterGR 8y ago
    What are some examples of whackier social justice stuff? As far as I know, plastic straw bans are to reduce the amount of unrecoverable plastic waste as well as all the resources that went into producing it. And I wrong? I don’t see how it’s an intellectual fad so much as policy that you personally disagree with. Put another way, are these intellectuals who support plastic straw bans (who??) potentially going to 'wake up' and realize one day that they were incorrect, and that in fact plastic straws are not a source of unrecoverable waste?
- mantas 8y ago
  For example many anti-vax people have higher education. https://www.seeker.com/anti-vaccination-parents-richer-better-educated-1770662854.html https://www.seeker.com/anti-vaccination-parents-richer-bette... https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-not-who-you-think-she-is/ https://qz.com/355398/the-average-anti-vaxxer-is-probably-no...

deleted 8y ago

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mantas 8y ago

Author should look more into Euro politics. Plenty of dumb people there. Plenty of ways to make fun of smart people too. In fact, US feels much more "cult of genius" than Europe... At least from afar.

adventured 8y ago
> In fact, US feels much more "cult of genius" than Europe... At least from afar. You're making the same mistake with that line of thinking that the author did.
askmike 8y ago
I very much disagree. If you look at most politicians in a high enough positions in a lot of European countries, you won't find any movie stars (Reagan, Eastwood, Schwarzenegger) nor reality TV stars like Trump. The Prime minister of my country would never qualify for the terminator[1]. [1] https://www.government.nl/government/members-of-cabinet/mark-rutte https://www.government.nl/government/members-of-cabinet/mark...
- mantas 8y ago
  My country had "party of entertainment stars" take 2nd in parliament elections several years ago. Then long time TV star served as head of parliament. Most recent election was won by literally "farmers party" with quite a few.. interesting personalities. We alone should make up for NL being boring :) And then we got Italy...

peter_retief 8y ago

That is not true, I am from South Africa and there are dozens of uniques cultures here and they all have derogatory terms for smart people

mnm1 8y ago

The culture of anti-intellectualism is strong in America and children are indoctrinated in it from a very young age. Stupidity is worshiped. What would one expect from a society that loves stupidity so much it encourages violence against people who even appear smart, let alone those that are? Americans love stupidity because the majority are incredibly stupid.

tomerico 8y ago
Can you clarify more? My experience as an immigrant to America is that Americans tend to foster a culture of ultra competativeness on everything, including academics.
- askmike 8y ago
  As an (European) outsider who visited the US a number of times: In academic circles you are right, but college and university are so expensive that your experience only applies to the elite (who are called all the bad words from the article by the majority of the country).
- aikinai 8y ago
  The parent comment is extreme and ends in a baseless insult, so I definitely don't want to defend it wholly, but the gist is true. If you think Americans are competitive about academics, you're probably basing that on a very specific bubble. The "from a young age" mention is especially true; in most American public schools you basically cannot be both cool and get good grades, unless you hide the grades very well and show an appropriate amount of public disrespect for authority.
- mnm1 8y ago
  In my experience, children are bullied simply for getting good grades or looking "nerdy" even if they don't get good grades. Other children are proud that they get bad grades, proud that they are not learning anything, and they are looked up to by a lot of other kids. They dictate a lot of culture in schools. People who go to college or university are often looked down upon in many parts of the country and many people are proud that they did not attend, as if being stupid is something to be proud of. We have climate change deniers, anti vaccine people, and huge percentages of the population believe the earth is around 10k years old or that the world will end in their lifetimes. High school curricula is beyond simple, almost nothing is learned, yet we still have a huge percentage of the population that doesn't even graduate that. The discourse now even on college campuses has turned from education to political correctness. Students are afraid of even being exposed to different ideas, lest they be offended, as if they have a right not to be offended. Speakers and comedians are often cancelled if they are the least bit controversial. People think their beliefs are equal to facts and they should be treated as such. The media certainly subscribes to this in the name of fairness, conflating fact and fiction just like the masses it reports on. This is anti intellectualism through and through from birth to death. I'm not saying we are unique, but it certainly is ubiquitous in our culture here. It's difficult to deal with because often stupidity and cruelty go together and it's hard to discern where one ends and the other begins. I could continue on, but I think this is enough to get the point across.

deleted 8y ago

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mercurialshark 8y ago

I think the author entirely misses the primary issue due to linguistic and/or cultural context omissions. Generally speaking, when someone is called a nerd or (insert uncool descriptive modifier), it's not implied that being smart or studious is something people should be embarrassed of. Instead, it's implying the lack of some other social skill, trait or normative behavior (i.e., not participating in sports as a child or general difficulty fitting in). For example, being a genius or reliable hard worker is almost universally admired. Yes, even in the United States. However, if an individual is brilliant yet lacks the social skills to fit in, appears to try too hard relative to the group or makes others feel uncomfortable, their behavior may be seen as idiosyncratic or weird. Individuals that can display their cognitive abilities while inspiring, impressing or leading others are usually admired.

GuiA 8y ago

I turned to Google Translate in search of a French translation for the English word “geek.” There wasn’t one. Maybe ask a French person then. “Intello” (dismissive diminutive of the word “intellectuel”) is in very common usage amongst school kids, and has been since at least the 60s. “Premier de la classe” (first of the class) is also used very pejoratively by children. Recently though, the French have been very happy to use the word “geek” (albeit pronounced with a French accent) in its original English meaning. On the other hand, languages like French are extremely rich in insults for stupid people: “bete comme ses pieds,” or “dumb as hell,” literally means “as stupid as his/her feet.” American English is full of expressions just as colorful than the French in that regard, eg “not the brightest crayon in the box”, “not the sharpest tool in the shed”, “dumber than a bag of hammers”, etc. This blog post is just a succession of these easily falsiable generalizations that try to use pseudo-linguistic reasoning to demonstrate a blanket sweeping subjective statement (“Americans hate smart people”).

gboudrias 8y ago
> This blog post is just a succession of these easily falsiable generalizations that try to use pseudo-linguistic reasoning to demonstrate a blanket sweeping subjective statement (“Americans hate smart people”). Much like psychologists, linguists suffer a constant barrage of comments and articles by people who think they understand the field but don't. It's quite easy to not know the sheer scope of our ignorance in these fields, unlike STEM where people at least tend to realize they know close to nothing.
lloeki 8y ago
Indeed I found the premise about romantic languages quite ridiculous as I could readily think of a few pejoratives in French from the top of my head, and pretty sure I forget or miss some of them, so when TFA reaches to French I was flabbergasted. "Intello", "être une tête" (can be used both positively and negatively), "grosse tête", "quatre-yeux" (typical image of nerds with thick glasses), "tête d'ampoule" (probably the closest to nerd together with "intello"), "avoir une tête de premier de la classe", "binoclard", "coincé", "pingouin", "rat de bibliothèque", "taupe"...

panic 8y ago

Is the entire premise of this article really based on the author typing words into Google Translate?

blablabla123 8y ago
I think they used a lot of training data from UN, EU etc
PhantomGremlin 8y ago
No, that's only half of it. The other half is to smugly remind us how much smarter Democrats are than Republicans. Clinton > Trump Gore > Bush Stevenson > Eisenhower Remarkable how, in this writer's mind, an intellectual noted for "promotion of progressive causes in the Democratic Party" is obviously superior to a five-star general who played a very key part in the Allies defeating Hitler in WWII.
- cbsmith 8y ago
  I'm not sure I'd agree that. I felt it was more revealing about the author & their context than anything else.
coldtea 8y ago
And doing it badly -- all the countries he mentions have derogatory terms analogous to nerd, but he couldn't get to them in Google Translate by searching for "geek", so he came to the conclusion that they don't have anti-intellectual words at all.

ajuc 8y ago

Nowadays geek and nerd are in every language it seems, and they even become cool (I think so, but I'm too old now to be sure). But I've been at school in Poland in 1990, before most English influences started, and there were insults for people, not because they are smart, but because they focus too much on good grades. It was cool to be smart, it was uncool to show the effort and to care too much. Basically you didn't wanted to be a kujon (literally - a hammerer = someone who mindlessly hammers in every lesson to memory to get best grades). We also had bookworm (mól książkowy) and "inteligencik" (mostly political label given by communists and their supporters to intellectual workers who weren't on board with the whole communist thing). Outside of politics it was mildly negative label, and wasn't used too much. Also, there are a few new ones associated with political issues - "wykształciuchy" and "łże-elity" is a degrading way to call people who graduated some university and think they are better than you but actually know nothing. It's a word borrowed from political marketing of the current government, which includes anti-intellectualism (because most experts disagree with them on 99% of their policies, and their target demographics is less educated compared to other parties). TL; DR: I don't think anti-intellectualism is inherently American, it's a common theme in populism. American schools are just weird (we haven't had words for bully, cheerleader, jock either).

kbos87 8y ago

Sorry, but America is a society that enshrines and holds intelligence so, so high. If you are "smart", you are afforded all sorts of privileges that everyone else misses out on. The intelligent don't need a sob story or a defense in America, they are scoring a close second to those that already have and control the wealth and resources here.

man2525 8y ago
I don't remember where I read it, but there are supposed centers in America for which virtues are held in high esteem. Intelligence was Cambridge, MA, wealth was Manhattan, NYC, power was Washington D.C., and health was Berkley, CA.
onion2k 8y ago
America, and most western countries, hold wealth in high esteem. Intelligent people tend to make more money, so they get in to positions that afford them privilege more easily. But there are plenty of counter-examples to that. Stupid people get to the top through other means and win those privileges, and clever people who choose to work in less well paid jobs aren't given any privilege at all. Intelligence itself rarely commands much respect at all.
labbyz 8y ago
I see an extreme focus on GPA, even employers considering that score during hiring. This is fairly alien to the other Western cultures I've sampled. Also the latest "taboo" is discrimination on intelligence. You can not help it that you were born below the IQ Bell curve. "You just gotta work harder for it" is like telling an overweight person to "just stop eating so much". Difficulty learning new material puts you at an eternal disadvantage, with no way to catch up to what smart people are learning in their teens and early twenties. The big five openly discriminate on intelligence. Intelligence and aptitude is also correlated with your upbringing (Did you have smart parents to guide your academic career and interests? Were they rich enough to help put you through a good college?). For all the renewed interest in identity politics and combating discrimination, intelligence is really the odd one out. High school teachers berate you for something that isn't your fault, it is commonly accepted to call out your low IQ, no matter how much you want to work for a tech company -- even if they favor women, poor people, minorities, war veterans, the disabled -- you are not going to get hired to fill some neurodiversity quota. The ease with which the left ridicules, stigmatizes, and marginalizes right politicians (Bush & Trump) and those that vote for them is astounding to me. "Those idiot low-educated racists ruined it all! They are not smart enough to vote rationally!". Change "low-intelligence" with any other protected status and such language becomes vile and primitive.

shalmanese 8y ago

I think almost every culture has a term for people who are on the asperger spectrum and have high IQ but low EQ. In Chinese, "理工男" translates to roughly "Science Guy" and refers to people who are like Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory. "书呆子" means bookworm and refers to people with a lot of book smarts but not much street smarts.

seanhunter 8y ago

Anti-intellectualism is pretty strong in the UK too. For example in one of the defining moments of the Brexit campaign, Michael Gove was confronted by an open letter from a large number of leading economists saying how damaging Brexit would be to the economy and said “people in this country have had enough of experts”.

coldtea 8y ago
>“people in this country have had enough of experts”. Well, in an era when experts give their "expert" opinion based on who pays their bills, that's true for most of the world...
Smaug123 8y ago
While I have no love of Gove, this is a very unfair and context-free quote. The full quote is as follows: > I think that the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying - from organisations with acronyms - saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong, because these people - these people - are the same ones who got consistently wrong.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Wow. I've seen the quote often, but never with that surrounding context. Completely makes you understand why politicians would be unwilling to talk with the press.
  - lordgrenville 8y ago
    Do you think that there's a substantial difference between "the public is tired of experts" and "the public is tired of experts from fancy organisations getting things wrong"? Sincerely asking - I think the context helps, but the short version doesn't seem like a misrepresentation of the main idea.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Yes, there is. One is made to look like you don't want "experts" in general, e.g. because you're anti-science or whatever. You might not even want an expert doctor, but instead e.g. pray. The second is about not wanting BS experts (analysts, media pundits, economists) on the payroll of some "fancy organization", that have a track record of being wrong.

noobermin 8y ago

Can anyone who's lived in more than one culture share whether American is more anti-intellectual than other cultures?

ionised 8y ago
It definitely seems that way to me.
phreeza 8y ago
Fwiw, I had the opposite experience when coming to the us as a high school exchange student from Germany. I did well in school, and got much more derision for this in Germany than in the US. Could possibly have something to do with me being an exotic foreigner though, not sure.
- davvolun 8y ago
  Yeah, as an American, I would be inclined to think the people who would insult you for being intelligent were more distracted by you being a foreigner, and would latch on to that to "insult" first, whereas the people who would appreciate your "exotic foreigner" status probably wouldn't insult your intelligence either. I really don't think that is unique to the U.S. though.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Per chance, did you transfer from a public school to a private school?
  - phreeza 8y ago
    No, public to public.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  It's also possible that, as a foreigner, you simply were less aware of crappy behavior because the culture was unfamiliar. A lot of the details can get missed or be misunderstood. (Or, alternately, they failed to grasp how smart you were because you were foreign, so they left it alone. Which might be the same thing you are saying.)

mirimir 8y ago

Interesting, yes. But there's more to "geek". In circuses and carnivals, a geek would capture chickens, bite their heads off, and eat them. Now you gotta remember that most of the audiences lived on farms, or had family who did, so chasing chickens and cutting their heads off was pretty normal. But still ... So anyway, "geek" is very different from "bookworm" or "egghead". It's more like unconventional, daring and uninhibited.

goliatone 8y ago
As a foreigner learning American English + (pop) culture in the US one of my favorite things is to ask people to tell me the difference between geek and nerd. Originally because I was having a hard time grasping not so much the meaning of the words but the connotations and projected values by those using the words. I still ask that question and find the discrepancies amusing. But I never heard anything about bitting chicken heads off and all that. Amazing!
- mirimir 8y ago
  That died out in the 1940s, as I recall. It never made it to TV, not even on the Red Skeleton Show.

jancsika 8y ago

> On the other hand, languages like French are extremely rich in insults for stupid people No you cannot use "on the other hand." Languages like English have at least as many if not more insults for stupid people: dumbass, shit-for-brains, dipshit, blockhead, imbecile, dullard, doofus, slack-jawed yocal, and the famous one from Mark Twain, "an idiot of the 33rd degree." > After food and wine, the French worship the life of the mind. And apparently the films of Jerry Lewis[1]. So let's say those end up canceling each other out[2]. > The United States, on the other hand, elected Donald “Celebrity Apprentice” Trump over Hillary “I Have a 12-Point Plan” Clinton. I certainly cannot defend Trump's ban on Muslim face coverings in public schools[3]. There is no denying that is due to virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that has grown to dangerous-- one might say fascistic-- levels as of late. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lewis#French_critical_acclaim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lewis#French_critical_ac... [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082501/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082501/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering

deleted 8y ago
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zakum1 8y ago

In South Africa, the previous President, Jacob Zuma, famously used a label “clever blacks” for well educated black people who he felt didn’t support his populist / traditionalist policies. across cultures in SA, there is a definite “macho” bias and a bias towards “eloquence” (sometimes at the expense of thoughtfulness). I have spent substantial time in Asia and both of these differences are very obviously different. I would say that Europe is somewhere in between.

ivan_ah 8y ago

"You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSCRoYyM-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSCRoYyM-Y

cbsmith 8y ago

The author has a track record of intellectual humour, particularly with a political bent to it. I'm trying to decide if this article is unintentionally ironic or just pretending to be unintentionally ironic.

TomMckenny 8y ago

From the comments it looks like we have a more interesting question than the article's. Why do humans frequently/occasionally dislike smart people?

coldtea 8y ago

There are insults for smart people in many countries. In Britain, for example, there's a whole attitude about anybody daring to appear smart, well read, etc that's combined with class putdowns and terms like "pretentious wanker" and such. Or, what americans would deride as a "nerd" for Brits it would be a "swot" (but it's meaning I think combines nerd with teacher's pet and bookworm). French have "intello", a derogatory term for intellectual types. Greeks have a similar connotation "kulturiaris" (and a term for nerd/geek that's "spasiklas"). In Spanish, where the author says he couldn't find a term for "geek", they have "empollon". In Italian the same would be secchione.

bolaft 8y ago
> French have "intello", a derogatory term for intellectual types "Intello" is not derogatory, it's just short for intellectual.
- rntksi 8y ago
  It can be derogatory. But yes it's not that commonly used as a defamatory comment.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Well: intello m, f (plural intellos) (informal, derogatory) highbrow (informal, derogatory) nerd, egghead Also, "intello coincée" and such. It can also stand for just shorthand, as many terms have dual informal derogatory and friendly use (for that matter, geek has also been used positively in the US as well for a few decades).
jaffathecake 8y ago
Ok smart-arse.

JoachimS 8y ago

I've noted that the journalists at The Register are unable to write an article about scientists discovering, inventing something without using the word "boffin". See for example: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/28/hacking_motion_control/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/28/hacking_motion_cont... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/27/screaming_channels_attack/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/27/screaming_channels_... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/

bbcbasic 8y ago
Satire my friend.
wemdyjreichert 8y ago
They're British.