4 ms·

Germany, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan come to mind.

wetpaws 7y ago
Russia copies a lot of anti-intellectualism from US. (just watch russian television if you dont believe me)
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> Russia While under the Soviet Union intellectual pursuits were more appreciated among the general population than in other countries (though naturally there were significant restrictions on what topics could be breached in art and literature), a lot of that culture disappeared in Russia after 1991. You don’t see many commuters reading belles lettres on the metro any more, chess still has its fans but nowhere near like in the socialist era, and Russian television today is as garish and sensationalistic as anywhere else. One of the reasons that there was such a book culture across the Eastern Bloc is because books were extremely cheap by local standards, but there was little other media to consume or few other products to spend one’s money on. After the fall of Communism, books were no longer as cheap because the state no longer artificially set their prices at low levels, and there was an explosion of new, free television, radio, and magazine media that the population could consume instead, and there were new consumer goods to spend money on (when one had money, as there were some rocky times).
oarabbus_ 7y ago
Korea is excessively conformist. I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. While if we're giving more credit to historical influence than modern day, Germany would make the list, I think they fall off if you give weight to the modern day. Nothing wrong with them, they're simply no longer a remarkable, intellectual nation on 2019's leaderboard. Russia, China, and Japan I'd agree with, although I am not a big fan of the "brand" of intellectualism the first two adhere to.
- naringas 7y ago
  > I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. what about success within traditional academic institutions?
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your point. By the criteria of traditional academic success, Korea would not make a "most intellectual" shortlist of nations, at least according to a fair sampling of unbiased individuals. In fact, your point about academic intellectualism only gives more credence to the point I was making in the first place.
- philipov 7y ago
  Conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive. Intellectualism doesn't imply contrarianism, as there are a great many intellectual pursuits that involve studying and continuing traditional bodies of knowledge such as Confucianism, or Mathematics and Science. Korean culture definitely venerates academic achievement, even if those achievements shouldn't include upheavals in social philosophy, and even if there is a strict social order for determining who is allowed to have creative license. Simply learning the lessons of the past, and skillfully transmitting them to future generations, is a more important social function than making new advances. I would go so far as to say that one of the causes of American anti-intellectualism is the fetishization of groundbreaking discovery to the extent that being a skilled teacher is looked down on. An intellectual community can't survive across multiple generations without a respected class of specialized teachers who also deeply understand the topics they are tasked with passing on to children. The dominant attitude in America is that teaching is for failures; the saying goes, "those who can't do, teach."
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Correct, conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive, but they do approach orthogonality. I expanded on this point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014

Russia copies a lot of anti-intellectualism from US. (just watch russian television if you dont believe me)

> Russia While under the Soviet Union intellectual pursuits were more appreciated among the general population than in other countries (though naturally there were significant restrictions on what topics could be breached in art and literature), a lot of that culture disappeared in Russia after 1991. You don’t see many commuters reading belles lettres on the metro any more, chess still has its fans but nowhere near like in the socialist era, and Russian television today is as garish and sensationalistic as anywhere else. One of the reasons that there was such a book culture across the Eastern Bloc is because books were extremely cheap by local standards, but there was little other media to consume or few other products to spend one’s money on. After the fall of Communism, books were no longer as cheap because the state no longer artificially set their prices at low levels, and there was an explosion of new, free television, radio, and magazine media that the population could consume instead, and there were new consumer goods to spend money on (when one had money, as there were some rocky times).

oarabbus_ 7y ago

Korea is excessively conformist. I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. While if we're giving more credit to historical influence than modern day, Germany would make the list, I think they fall off if you give weight to the modern day. Nothing wrong with them, they're simply no longer a remarkable, intellectual nation on 2019's leaderboard. Russia, China, and Japan I'd agree with, although I am not a big fan of the "brand" of intellectualism the first two adhere to.

naringas 7y ago
> I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. what about success within traditional academic institutions?
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your point. By the criteria of traditional academic success, Korea would not make a "most intellectual" shortlist of nations, at least according to a fair sampling of unbiased individuals. In fact, your point about academic intellectualism only gives more credence to the point I was making in the first place.
philipov 7y ago
Conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive. Intellectualism doesn't imply contrarianism, as there are a great many intellectual pursuits that involve studying and continuing traditional bodies of knowledge such as Confucianism, or Mathematics and Science. Korean culture definitely venerates academic achievement, even if those achievements shouldn't include upheavals in social philosophy, and even if there is a strict social order for determining who is allowed to have creative license. Simply learning the lessons of the past, and skillfully transmitting them to future generations, is a more important social function than making new advances. I would go so far as to say that one of the causes of American anti-intellectualism is the fetishization of groundbreaking discovery to the extent that being a skilled teacher is looked down on. An intellectual community can't survive across multiple generations without a respected class of specialized teachers who also deeply understand the topics they are tasked with passing on to children. The dominant attitude in America is that teaching is for failures; the saying goes, "those who can't do, teach."
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Correct, conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive, but they do approach orthogonality. I expanded on this point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014