
On Britain's Intellectual Decline - rb808
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/05/on-britains-intellectual-decline.html
======
whatshisface
One major theme running through this article is the idea that smart people
should know what's good for us, and organize society so that we get it. I've
never understood how they are expected to actually do this: wouldn't they
always prefer to figure out what's good for _themselves_ and then organize
society so that they get _that_?

Try as we might to find a good crowbar to pry democracy off of our
representative governments, we can't forget that the "will of the people,"
however misguided it might be, _is the only thing that reliably includes not
ruining them as a priority!_

~~~
clarkmoody
I was with you on that first paragraph, then you had to bring in the "will of
the people."

Democracy simply replaces "smart people" with "a majority of voters," which is
almost always a minority of the population. So instead of the ruling elites
determining what's best for everyone, now you have a larger group of people --
still a minority -- determining what's good for themselves and foisting it
upon everyone else.

~~~
alien_at_work
That's not fair. Everyone had the _option_ of voting so nothing is forced on
anyone. If you don't like what the people who actually voted picked, then try
voting next time.

~~~
EliRivers
_Everyone had the option of voting so nothing is forced on anyone_

I don't follow. Forcing things on a set of people who wanted something else is
exactly how it works, and will still work that way with 100% participation in
the vote. When two wolves vote to eat the lamb for dinner, the lamb having
voted _not_ to be dinner doesn't make it any less forced on the lamb.

------
merraksh
_Long debates about philosophy might not have been what the public wanted, but
BBC bosses thought they were good for us._

I think a form of education is one of the primary purposes and
responsibilities of a country's national TV. Managing a broadcaster so that it
gives the public what it wants, rather than what's better for them, is akin to
giving kids fries and coke all day, because that's what they want.

~~~
briandear
Assuming the “public” is equal to “children.” A bit arrogant to suggest that.
Adam Smith suggests that people will always act in their own self interest;
perhaps advanced philosophical knowledge doesn’t have the same utility to
normal people. The attitude that the public doesn’t know what’s good for them
is disgusting; it’s the very core of the nanny state.

However, I will concede that many people would consume a healthier diet of
entertainment of it were available. But suggesting that people need to have
broadcasters or governments to be parents of an ignorant citizenry smacks of
the same though patterns condemned in the book 1984.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> The attitude that the public doesn’t know what’s good for them is
> disgusting; it’s the very core of the nanny state.

It’s very demonstrable though - it’s why practically every country has an
equivalent to US Social Security - and why most democracies are Representative
instead of Direct.

Your argument would have more strength if the BBC or national arts funds
operated in a vacuum - but they exist in competition with other private,
profit-driven organisations. I feel it’s important that the public get
exposure to programming that commercial sponsors (and thus network-
execs/channel directors) wouldn’t touch. And it’s also essential for unbiased
(or as close to unbiased as we can get) broadcast journalism.

(I accept that when a “Premium”-service customer base is large enough, e.g.
HBO-sized, the need for state funding is minimised - I think HBO in particular
is in a good place to launch a US-based, commercial-free broadcast news
service - but smaller countries and markets would definitely need to employ
some form of state funding to ensure editorial independence and an informed
populace - which can only be good for democracy)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Not quite "in competition". If I understand the way TV licenses work (or
perhaps worked, in the past) in the UK, you didn't have a choice of paying for
the BBC if you had a TV at all.

If that _has_ changed, it might lead to the BBC having to face competition
now, when it didn't in the past. That might have an effect on the content,
which might be (at least part of) what the article is observing...

------
inops
There's been a recent influx of this sort of discussion in Britain. Most of it
seems to be, at the core, the elites' (and those who would like to style
themselves as elites) attempts to justify their disillusionment with
democracy, which the referendum result caused. It's amazing how quickly people
turn on the idea of giving the everyman a say in government, when it gives
them the result they don't like. The referendum was a rare example in Britain
of where the result wasn't able to be hand-waved away, like is typical with
FPTP elections. The result was so significant because it saw the majority of
the public reject all the major parties' platforms on the issue, and --I
think-- undermined the pretenses of a lot of those in power, who like to frame
themselves as being "of the people". Hence the disillusion.

A lot of the discussion reminds me of the arguments put forward by the
hereditary peers in the late 90s, before most of them were chucked out of the
House of Lords: that their experiences and positions in society made them
uniquely able to make important decisions about the country. It's all rather
ironic.

~~~
dageshi
I think in addition there's a more visceral reason as well. It's the first
time in a long time that a decision taken by the populace will adversely
affect the "elite" directly. People who have done very well out of EU
integration will suddenly find themselves actually having to figure out what
to do without it.

Most of them are wealthy and will be able to adapt, but for the first time in
a long time they haven't been insulated from the consequences of public
opinion.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I suspect the wealthy will be fine and it will be the poor who suffer if there
is any suffering to be done.

------
jimduk
My view would to rephrase the hypothesis as "the quality of 'Britain's public
intellectual debate' has declined".

This seems true in parts, a friend became intrigued by the quality of debate
for Britain's membership of the EEC in 1975 vs. Brexit. Two examples for 1975
are (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2jUYryRYII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2jUYryRYII)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBFh6bpcMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBFh6bpcMo))
and these certainly seem of higher quality.

One hypothesis (similar to Curtis above) was that there were two energised
generations, post WW2 and 1960s, who believed that public debate and ideas
could change things, and a variety of new-ish institutions and technologies
(BBC, TV) could enable that change. They were partially successful, but the
energy and enthusiasm dissipated over time.

Another argument is that Britain is reasonably anti the public intellectual
(e.g. unlike the French but much better than the US), apart from during
certain times of fairly major change (Royal Society/Glorious Revolution;
Scottish Enlightenment; post WW2 settlement etc.) and we are going back to our
dormant state.

A third may be that the nature of 'public' has changed, and the debate is
going on, but not in media forms which stifle and trivialise it (Less
optimistic here, the Greens tried hard to change public debate, some say
Momentum, certainly we are quite good at up-market PR, brand design and
marketing, all of which suck the energy/deflect from certain debates)

In my experience, in private the quality of debate isn't too bad, though a
touch cynical

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> the nature of 'public' has changed

There was "public" debate/discussion before. And then there was the
conversation at the tavern, which was a different (and less intellectual)
thing. What's changed is the internet, which kind of combined those worlds.

Someone would make a speech or state a position. It would get reported on, in
a newspaper article. Many people would have comments, but the newspaper would
only print one or two replies (the very best ones) for the world to see. The
rest of the discussion would happen in the tavern, where only a few people
would hear any individual comment. Such comments would be clearly distinct
from the replies printed in the newspaper.

But now the reporting is online, with a comments section, which doesn't filter
the replies. The equivalent of the tavern ( _all_ the taverns put together) is
now right alongside the original article.

And I think that this may have changed the level of the reporting to some
degree, too. They're moving toward the level of the comments - not all the
way, but in that direction.

------
DC-3
I don't really buy into this. There's still a lot of great academic and
intellectual programming on the BBC - Life Scientific and In Our Time come to
mind - and British universities are ranked as the best in the world [1].

[1] [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankin...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankings/2018/world-ranking)

~~~
donquichotte
And let us not forget the educational masterpiece that is "Cunk on Britain".

------
krona
_On both front benches today there are pitifully few people one could call
intellectuals (as distinct from intelligent): Jesse Norman and Barry Gardiner
are the only ones I can think of..._

It's rare that a whole thesis can be undermined by the author in less than a
full sentence.

~~~
cfv
Not knowing who any of those people are, I could use some context. Care to
please ellaborate?

~~~
KineticLensman
Two British politicians, [0], [1], Conservative and Labour respectively, both
educated at well known institutions, and both of whom have been academically
active. They are being compared against other front benchers, but not the
wider British intellectual community.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Norman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Norman)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gardiner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gardiner)

------
roywiggins
Consumer culture is approximately as old as the Industrial Revolution (maybe a
little bit older). You might be able to argue a qualitative or quantitative
change at some point, but you can blame just about anything on a "rise in
consumer culture" happening at about any point in recent history...

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Well yes but that's the author's point. Where it used be that 'the men in
Whitehall' resisted consumer culture and aired programs which were not
necessarily something the public wanted but something that was good for them,
they've now given in and just air whatever gets the most viewers. It's a case
of consumer culture penetrating an area that used to be slightly protected
from the revealed preferences of the public.

And I suspect it's not even really an aversion to big ideas, I think it's an
aversion to depth. People love big ideas, look at Malcolm Gladwell and similar
authors, they have plenty of big ideas but there's a bit of a pop-shallowness
to them. Unfortunately the depth is what's needed and I'm not sure a culture
which focuses on individual preferences will ever give it to the public at
large.

------
petermcneeley
BBC documentarian (and intellectual prophet) Adam Curtis has detailed this and
other issues.

Here is a link to a short doc that aligns with this article:
[https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tv-
journal...](https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tv-journalist/)

~~~
Panjam
That was excellent. Thanks for posting. It's a short film, so it's not a
criticism, but I hope he explains _why_ this happened in more detail.

------
icebraining
Maybe voters have more power now?

 _\- Bernard, if the right people don 't have power do you know what happens?
The wrong people get it. Politicians, counsellors, ordinary voters._

 _\- But aren 't they supposed to, in a democracy?_

 _\- This is a British democracy!_

 _\- What do you mean?_

 _\- British democracy recognises that you need a system to protect the
important things of life, and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians.
Things like the Opera, Radio Three, the countryside, the law, the universities
... both of them._

\-- Yes, Prime Minister (S02E05)

------
randcraw
This effect is easily confirmed by comparing a periodical from today with back
issues written 50 years ago. By contrast, today's fare has been simplified for
both style and substance, presuming the reader has no foreknowledge of
science, and more markedly, zero facility in math.

This is no more apparent than in "Scientific American". The writing in the
issues from the 1980's back through the century before was intended for
professionals -- the engineer, scientist, or serious amateur. By contrast, the
literacy of today's SciAm has declined to the level of a middle school. And
substance suffers comparably; regular contributors of fare that required
nontrivial thought like Martin Gardner and Doug Hofstadter are long gone.

But SciAm isn't an isolated case. Even today's more literate magazines like
Harpers and The New Yorker seem to have difficulty writing for a thoughtful
audience, all too often preferring to provoke the reader not with provocative
ideas or fresh perspectives, but by eliciting anger with the injection of
irrelevant references to base politics.

This problem is hardly unique to Britain.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
But is the readership smaller today than it was 50 years ago?

I'm totally fine if SciAm writes for a broader audience because it has grown
from a niche publication for academics to something that most American's have
at least heard of.

But if the reading level has declined AND the readership has declined, that
might indicate a problem.

I still hold out hope that this is a result of knowledge fragmentation more
than anything. The computer scientist of 50 years ago, may have been better
inform broadly on all the sciences, but maybe gave up that breadth of
knowledge to read focused journals on quantum computing, and other topics the
computer scientist of 50 years ago would have trouble understanding.

~~~
randcraw
Would knowledge fragmentation explain why general interest pubs (like SciAm)
would have less appeal today, leading to their being "dumbed down"?

Conversely, if as I think you suggest, there had been a rise in the number of
literate thoughtful in-depth pubs focused on narrow specialization, then I'd
accept that today's minds are equally active as yesteryear's but have just
turned their attention inward. But I see nothing like that. Even semi-
technical pubs like those in the computing space have degenerated into product
and project promos (as MIT Tech Review has done).

Where are today's equivalents to Creative Computing or Dr Dobbs or WiReD circa
1998 or InfoWorld circa 1985? The closest I've seen might be the
Maker/Arduino/Pi pubs, but their agenda isn't insight, it's small specific
ideas of projects (like Popular Mechanics often was in the 60's). All deeper
fare on science faded out about 20 years ago. I side with the OP's
interpretation; their absence is striking and suggests something big has
changed.

Doesn't such a "shallowing" (a la Nicholas Carr) and narrowing of interests
imply we've all become less generally curious? Aren't these signs that we're
less inclined to explore novel possible worlds, or we're satisfied to do so in
less depth, than a generation (or two) ago?

Online forums are no substitute for serious recreational inquiry, even the
(very) few that are as constructively and generally clued-in as HNN.

------
rb808
I've met a lot of British people who did humanities undergrad degrees followed
by something more commercial like Software/Law/Finance for a masters. Is that
really common? Looking back I think I'd have loved to have done that.

~~~
giobox
It's not all that common - I don't have the figures to hand but its probably
likely the number of those in the UK with Masters degrees is dwarfed
enormously by those with just undergrad ones.

That said, I certainly noticed an uptick in post-grad popularity in my cohort
of friends (including me!) around 2010, but for us anyway this seemed driven
by a tough post-recession job market and a desire to have more directly
marketable skills, which a Software Masters provided in relatively short
order. I was fortunate enough to study in Scotland where an undergraduate
degree is still paid for by the State and Masters are relatively affordable -
this is increasingly not the case in the rest of the UK, especially England,
so if anything it's likely only going to get less common than it is now.

------
boffinism
> On both front benches today there are pitifully few people one could call
> intellectuals (as distinct from intelligent).

Thank goodness. I think we could all do with more intelligence and less
'intellectual' snobbery.

~~~
cs02rm0
Quite.

 _Equally, whilst Thatcher and Attlee disagreed about almost everything they
had at least one thing in common – a loathing of referenda._

There's been a lot of faux intellectualism and requoting of Poppler et al
since the last referendum. Seems a very thinly veiled article to me.

~~~
jacquesm
> There's been a lot of faux intellectualism and requoting of Poppler et al
> since the last referendum.

The irony of that typo is hopefully not lost on you.

------
Theodores
The problem is the all prevalent Western Media Mindset - as the Russian media
describe it.

Since Kosovo and onward many lies have been told. Dare to say so and you are
deemed Communist. The Overton window is set by the BBC in the UK, this being
the acceptable spectrum of thought, from left to right.

Because of the deep lies about how these wars start there is belief instead of
knowledge. So it is a church with some different doctrines but no questioning
of the creation myths.

Lies have to be disseminated, truths can be arrived at by studying facts. We
normally have gatekeeper radicals to keep the pretence up, for decades it was
Tony Benn. Only Tony Benn dared to question Trident, today we have the likes
of whatshisname Brand gatekeeping the acceptable radical thinking.

If you were someone others respected and you told them you were ditching the
job because you wanted to go into politics then people would think you had
gone mad.

The odd thing is that there is no escaping it. People are deeply conditioned
in the UK. Luckily there is Brexit to shake things up a bit.

Maybe we can escape our shackles of history then and engage with the world as
grown ups to be treated as we wish to be treated.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't know why you think that, the leader of the opposition is against
renewing Trident and that is widely reported in the media, at the BBC and
elsewhere.

------
collyw
We admire the Beckhams and Kardaishins though, so all is not lost.

------
wyclif
The author discredits himself by referring to Daniel Hannan as an "ignorant
gobshite" on Marx or anything else; Hannan speaks French and Spanish fluently
as well as English, which, I suspect, is two languages more than the author
does. Hannan studied History at...wait for it...Oxford University. So that
'ignorant' line alone made it difficult for me to take this blogger quite
seriously (though I upvoted this story as I have no doubt the overall
trajectory of Britain's intellectual decline is accurate as otherwise
described, all things considered).

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Hannan might not be ignorant but he is definitely a gobshite. Everything I
have heard him say comes through the lens of his dislike of the EU, there is
little room for fact or even nuance.

~~~
wyclif
Dislike of the EU != "gobshite." Hell, if that were true then half the world
might be classified by you as gobshite! Perhaps you'd be better off
demonstrating what you find so objectionable about Hannan's view of the EU and
which "facts" he's mistaken about (given that he speaks three of its languages
fluently) instead of engaging in ad hominems.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_Dislike of the EU != "gobshite."_

I never said that it does.

------
oblio
I find this blog post somewhat ironic. The author starts the post by saying
that the trigger for the post was Marx's 200th birthday.

Britain might have declined slightly, but Marx's home country, Germany, has
comparatively fallen from the top of the world, intellectually. It's still a
heavy hitter, but if you compare it to pre-WW1/pre-WW2 Germany, it's just a
ghost.

Why?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_von_Liebig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_von_Liebig)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Rontgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Rontgen)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Geiger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Geiger)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Born](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Born)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List)

etc, ad infinitum.

~~~
rb808
Many on that list are Jewish so that could be a reason.

~~~
oblio
But not the majority (I've actually counted and it's 4/16) and definitely not
the majority from this list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists)

Also, I forgot to include philosophers... a very scary concept, considering
the caliber of German philosophers (Kant, Nietzsche, etc.).

~~~
throwawayjava
This misses the point a bit. Intellectuals are not a commodity. How do you
weigh one Fermi or Einstein against 3 other scientists?

~~~
oblio
You're assuming that the native Germans were somehow second rate scientists.
Re-check my list :)

Germany not only destroyed its Jewish population willingly, therefore losing
some of Germany's best minds but also destroyed its own research facilities,
economy and even a good chunk of its native German scientists by shipping them
off to war or having them bombed back at home.

Folly of the greatest magnitude, any way you look at it.

~~~
throwawayjava
I don't see where I made that assumption.

Kick out a few key faculty members and the rest of the good ones will follow,
Jew or not, because they are good and have the choice to leave. You don't need
all your faculty to be Jewish in order to lose all your good ones by kicking
out a single Jewish faculty member.

If you lose 4/16 of your academics but all 4 of those were the Giants, then
you haven't decimated your department, but you have lost what made it good in
the first place.

Even before the war reached the borders, German mathematics was decimated.
Sometimes by numbers, but always by the numbers that mattered. Because anyone
good knew someone effected, and everyone good had the option to leave.

------
jankotek
> _The commemorations of Marx’s 200th birthday_

As someone from east Europe, I find this pretty funny.

> _Today, his most high-profile critics are ignorant gobshites._

You must read 10k pages of related work, before you can criticize someone like
Hitler or Nazism....

~~~
parrellel
No, but it can't hurt.

~~~
jankotek
I know many people who studied Marxism. We had entire university dedicated to
Marxism.

Trust me it causes brain damage :-)

------
amriksohata
Lots of working class mums that are young and single, literally paid to breed
and live off benefits, which increasingly is creating a big underclass. The
richer are having fewer kids.

~~~
petepete
Ah, the old "single mums are to blame for all social ills" line. Classic.

Incidentally, if you _really_ think that Britain's burgeoning peasant
underclass is the fault of self-impregnating single mothers you've been
mislead; I suggest you change newspapers.

~~~
magduf
I don't think the OP is blaming any social ills on the single mums, he's
instead pointing out that this is a symptom of a much larger problem, like the
canary in a coal mine.

Having most of your kids being born to a society's most impoverished and
least-educated members is not a recipe for long-term success. Saying this
isn't blaming the poor, it's pointing out that there's something seriously
wrong with the society, and it's not going to lead to the society improving in
the long-term, but probably rather the opposite.

