
Isaac Asimov Laments the “Cult of Ignorance” in the United States (2016) - teslacar
http://www.openculture.com/2016/10/isaac-asimov-laments-the-cult-of-ignorance-in-the-united-states.html
======
dade_
It isn't a cult, but I agree that it looks like one.

[https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-
Ralston-...](https://www.amazon.ca/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-
Saul/dp/0887847315)

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

~~~
dukeluke
There are plenty of people who would like to participate in citizenship in
America, but because our FPTP voting system creates a two-party system and
extreme partisanship, too many people believe the system is rigged and they
wouldn't have much of an influence. And judging from recent elections, their
belief is pretty reasonable.

~~~
ThomPete
Denmark have 9 parties and only 7 million people. People feel pretty much the
same there and I believe many other places no matter how many parties there
are.

The real problem IMO is that the political parties aren't able to really
influence what way the world moves anymore. It's now mostly in the hands of
technology and it's tendency to force change no matter who gets exposed to it.

I wrote many years ago that technology is like a tsunami which can't be
stopped. The only thing we can do is learn how to surf the wave.

~~~
aninhumer
Could you elaborate? What changes has technology brought about that people
dislike and can't be stopped? Not saying there aren't any, just trying to get
a better idea of your point.

My impression is that this kind of general dissatisfaction with government is
more a result of the globalism brought about by technology, rather than the
technology itself.

I think the reason governments end up doing things people don't want, even
before you consider blatant corruption, is that global companies are too
important for individual economies to ignore. So governments end up in a race
to the bottom to attract global business.

~~~
ThomPete
Technology moves faster than legislation and so it dictates a lot of what the
politicians have to make decisions about.

Any country, company, organisation who is not using technology and trying to
catch up the to progress of it is loosing. Any country, company and
organization who is trying to catch up is seeing itself needing less and less
to do the same things.

Technological jobs are more or less the only jobs that pays really well and
have some sort of a future and anyone who want to make money in todays economy
have to use technology to scale their business even if it means undermining
their own value.

The companies who are really transformative today and disrupting aren't just
disrupting industries they are disrupting the legal system.

Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, self driving cars, drones all push the legal boundaries
politicians are represented by special interest groups, these are at odds with
the advantages tech brings to consumers.

AI in pushes the need for humans to relearn at an ever increasing speed sooner
or later we can't re-educate ourselves fast enough.

Globalization is a byproduct of technology, we can't not have globalization if
we want progress, countries who don't want progress aren't going to be able to
compete with countries who do.

There are of course many other factors than just technology but it's my belief
that today technology is at the core of any human progress. Without it we
can't progress and and so we have no choice other than one that ultimately
leads to our extinction. Technology is natural. It's part of evolution. If we
don't adapt we perish.

------
bambax
I think the cult of "free speech" is a big part of the problem.

Free speech, as spelled out in the 1st amendment is the ability of anyone to
speak freely without fear of repercussions by the State. "Congress shall make
no law.."

But it has progressively help foster the idea that all speech should be
respected or listened to, that all speakers are equally respectable, and as a
consequence that every utterance of words is equivalent and should be given
the same screen time.

This is madness.

People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to, and to worship
any entity, without interference _from the State_. But they shouldn't expect
to be respected for it, and certainly not by the common man. Indeed, they
should expect the opposite: to be mocked and laughed at.

Same for "anti vaxxers" who are in fact utterly stupid, selfish freeriders and
should be addressed as such (and shunned from civilized society). Etc.

Anyway, my point isn't against free speech per se; it's the observation that a
certain idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to
shield themselves and the absurd views they hold, from criticism, and that the
non-crazies constantly fall prey to this obvious tactic.

~~~
Clubber
>People have an absolute right to be religious if they want to ... But they
shouldn't expect to be respected for it ... Indeed, they should expect the
opposite: to be mocked and laughed at.

Many people find religion for many different reasons. To categorize them all
as people to be mocked is equally doltish but the opposite to religious people
telling everyone they are going to hell (for whatever thing they don't like).
Your statement is an equal but opposite reaction to that which you loath. No
one likes a rabid conservative, no one likes a rabid liberal. Rabid is rabid
regardless of what comes out of their mouth.

>idea of "free speech" has been intrumentalized by a lot of people to shield
themselves and the absurd views they hold

I think you are practicing what you are preaching.

~~~
BlackFly
Your contention is simply false as you misunderstand the point.

Atheists expect to be mocked and laughed at by the religious.

The point is that religious people should expect to be mocked and accept that
fact. They should not argue that it is improper and that religion somehow
implicitly deserves reverence.

~~~
Clubber
Perhaps I did. When someone mentions religious people and anti-vaxxers in the
same thought as people who expect to be mocked, it's difficult to not see some
underlying scorn for religious people in there.

Also, religious people have been mocked, enslaved, imprisoned, tortured and
killed en masse for what? 6000 years now?

~~~
drewbug01
> Also, religious people have been mocked, enslaved, imprisoned, tortured and
> killed en masse for what? 6000 years now?

Frequently (though of course, not always) by other religious people. I don't
think that argument holds a lot of weight.

~~~
fdsak
Don't you think those "other religious people" may have used religion as
pretext to achieve whatever they desired. E.g currently "democratic" societies
act the same way to spread "democracy" through all means and at all costs.

------
erikb
I think it's widespread all over the world. Partly because not knowing stuff
usually includes not knowing what one doesn't know. Therefore we always feel
like knowing everything.

That leads to weird collisions between "elite" and "normal people" like me
being the most well earning person due to my IT master and job, but some
family members wondering at Christmas when I will learn a real job (that
allows me to use my hands instead of my brain).

~~~
m_fayer
It's also very simple "sour grapes" thinking. Most people can intuit that
knowledge leads to status and privilege, so when they don't have it
themselves, their ego suffers when adjacent to those that do have it. So, in a
simple act of self esteem preservation, they demean the very idea of
knowledge.

Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become, low-
knowledge people everywhere are now in a constant state of defensive ego-
preservation. Presto, wide-spread belligerent anti-intellectualism.

~~~
kbart
_" Given how pervasive our intelligentsia-dominated media has become"_

What?? Where did you find such media? Please share.

~~~
pdimitar
I think he/she is referring to intellectual snobs more than anything. One has
to be intelligent to be a journalist, but not necessarily have high emotional
intelligence (as a general observation I often feel you have to have zero EQ
to be a journalist...)

~~~
m_fayer
Exactly.

In addition, I am thinking of the many television shows starring educated
urban people's educated urban problems, or how often the lower classes, when
they are represented at all, are treated with either some condescension
(Family Guy, etc.) or are "sensitively" portrayed from a removed
anthropological perspective (Friday Night Lights).

------
throwanem
> ...the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good
> as your knowledge.’

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

~~~
iiii_iivii_iiii
Let's not forget the two slippery fish in our hands that is other people's
"ignorance" and our "knowledge."

~~~
throwanem
Oh, certainly. That's why I didn't swap the person of the pronouns from the
quote.

As may seem likely from the thrust of my prior comment, I don't favor the
universal franchise as a system of rule; it seems to me prone on the one hand
to severe corruption as various actors seek to regather the sovereign power
which this scheme so atomizes, and on the other hand to precisely the sort of
popular enthusiasm which the American founders sought to render harmless, a
purpose whose merit the events of the twentieth century do much to
demonstrate.

Most who espouse such an opinion of universal suffrage seem to imagine it
being replaced by a scheme in which they themselves still have some, indeed a
much larger, measure of the power to rule. I think this is a mistake; where it
isn't a deliberate satisfaction of arrogance, it seems to me prone to
encourage that arrogance develop. I'd rather see a scheme in which the
practice of rule is the province of those trained and skilled in that very
specialized profession.

Of course, the problem of competent rule remains, and it's not a simple one -
I don't think I could even produce a formal definition, although Singapore
seems like a good example in a lot of ways, and perhaps Sweden, or the Nordic
countries in general, in some others. In any case, recent history offers
little that I can see to suggest that universal suffrage offers a uniquely, or
even notably, reliable solution to this problem, either.

~~~
blowski
> I'd rather see a scheme in which the practice of rule is the province of
> those trained and skilled in that very specialized profession.

Great idea! We can get everybody to vote on who those people are!

~~~
throwanem
It's really not a simple problem to solve! But one doesn't need to solve it in
order to realize the parallel with, say, a heavily politicized and deeply
factional user group voting on who will be the next datacenter admin. And then
voting on who should vote on whether the maintenance budget gets approved. And
so on.

~~~
blowski
How would you feel if Donald Trump removed your right to vote, and then
instituted a bunch of experts with whom you viscerally disagree?

If you think some people are not educated enough to vote, then persuade them
that they need to be educated.

~~~
throwanem
I'd feel as though nothing of significance had changed. But that's rather
beside the point, don't you think? We're arguing the merits of democracy, not
those of Mussolini- or Hitler-style dictatorship. While I concede that the one
has frequently been seen to lead to the other, I'm not sure that that's in the
scope of the conversation at hand, save as a particularly ugly failure mode.

~~~
blowski
The only difference I can see between your suggestion and my hypothetical
scenario is whether you like the experts in charge. If you advocate for
technocracy, you have to accept that you might not like the technocrats who
end up in power.

When it comes to making policies on things like tax, healthcare, government
spending, military intervention, etc, there are no right and wrong answers,
just opinions. And often there are equally well-founded opinions that
contradict each other.

Democracy solves that conundrum by getting both sides to appeal to the
'demos', with universal suffrage defining the demos as (almost) the entire
adult population. How would you solve it?

~~~
throwanem
I don't believe I have advocated for technocracy, either. I'm not suggesting
that professional _scientists_ should govern; I'm suggesting that good
governance is itself a professional specialty, parallel with, say,
engineering, but very different in its nature, and should be approached as
such, rather than by relying on the supposed wisdom of crowds.

> How would you solve it?

I wouldn't! I'm not remotely competent to do so. I think few people are, just
as few people are competent to administer a large datacenter - a comparison to
which I keep returning, because that's also a highly technical and rather
abstruse specialty whose details and nuances are largely opaque to anyone not
herself closely familiar with the task. But one need not be a skilled
professional administrator to recognize that critical problems exist.

~~~
blowski
If AWS manages its datacentre in a way that I am not happy with, I can switch
to Azure. If the UK is managed in a way I am not happy with, democracy allows
me to vote to change the managers.

To keep with your comparison, restricting the right to vote is like
restricting the right to switch datacentres. Restricting the right to stand in
an election is like restricting the right to run my own datacentre.

Of course, in a nation state I can't secede and run my own government and that
is the intractable problem. How do you administer a country with millions of
people in such a way that all of them are happy with your administration? It's
impossible, whichever system you choose.

~~~
throwanem
> democracy allows me to vote to change the managers

Does it? There's that appointed civil service with which to contend, as
another commenter mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and like any
bureaucracy, one of its primary efforts is that of ensuring its own continuity
through changes in the elected administration alongside which it operates.
(Perhaps "above which", depending how much credence you give the idea that
it's the civil service which actually runs a country, and the electees are
more or less just there to amuse the proles. I've known a few civil servants
who gave this idea considerable credence, which makes it difficult for me to
dismiss out of hand.)

Even leaving that aside and assuming democracy works according to the junior
high social studies model, to what extent does your vote enable you to predict
a given candidate's behavior once elevated to office? Is there any reason at
all, in the modern era, to imagine that we ever vote for anyone based on any
real knowledge of how he or she will behave once elected? Why does the phrase
"campaign promise" connote as it does?

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

~~~
ajarmst
By a man who died in 1992.

~~~
macintux
Asimov may well be the only "celebrity" death that I distinctly remember. I
guess I also remember where I was when Princess Diana died, but only because
my wife was utterly devastated.

~~~
ajarmst
Yes. I particularly remember Asimov's death as it came only a few years after
Heinlein's. It was a reminder that we were losing the last of that first
generation of greats. I got drunk and cried on my father's copy of "Across the
Sea of Stars" when Clarke passed.

------
squozzer
Keep in mind some of Asimov's best-known works do not flatter the
intellectuals or even technology:

Foundation Trilogy --

1) The Encyclopedia Foundation epitomizes ivory-tower (and mostly
retrospective) intellectuals who find themselves outmaneuvered by a mere
politician, Salvor Hardin. This same Hardin uses deceit and treachery to keep
Terminus independent against menacing breakaway provinces. Hardin's successors
oversee the hegemony of the Foundation, even as Terminus' government devolves
into autocracy under the Indburs.

2) The savior of humanity Hari Seldon essentially keeps Terminus in the dark
about crises he was able to predict decades / centuries in advance. Only the
arrival of an aberration (The Mule) throws his predictive power to the wind.

3) Moreover, Seldon establishes a shadow group of telepaths, mathematicians,
and psychologists, ostensibly to gaurd against aberrations such as The Mule,
but whose ultimate goal is to eventually rule the galaxy on the blood and
sweat of the First Foundation.

Galatic Empire novels --

1) Hyperspatial travel, once considered liberating, becomes the primary
mechanism for inflicting human politics on an unsuspecting galaxy.

Robots of Dawn novels --

1) Robots initially free humanity from drudgery but eventually render the
societies that use them vulnerable to a droid-phobic Earth. Earth wins the
inevitable war between itself and the robot societies, but becomes
uninhabitable.

Considering his background, Dr. Asimov had a certain autocratic streak.

------
hugh4life
"Arguments, that is to say, have come to be understood in some circles not as
expressions of rationality, but as weapons, the techniques for deploying which
furnish a key part of the professional skills of lawyers, academics,
economists, and journalists who thereby dominate the dialectically unfluent
and inarticulate." \- Alasdair MacIntyre

It's not surprising that people turn to demagogic populist buffoons when
"rational" managerial class tell obvious lies in order to increase their
powers.

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

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

~~~
dang
The reflection on American intellectual history in this comment is welcome.
Its trollish and uncivil aspects are not. Please edit those out if you're
going to keep commenting here.

~~~
iiii_iivii_iiii
Wait, what part was trollish? Last sentence?

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

~~~
grive
> 'intelligence' is simply the recapitulation of stuff people have already
> talked about and done

Your definition of intelligence is simply knowledge. That's a shaky foundation
to build any sensible reasoning.

You make efforts not to call "American ingenuity" as intelligence. No, this
ingenuity (which has nothing specificaly american about it) is just
intelligence.

The actual application of 'prejudice' to the unknown is simply ideological
rambling. American exceptionalism will never stop to astound me in its
vacuity. Note that European are, or at least were equally guilty of it. But
americans are only starting to know what it is to be an old society. To have
entrenched interests furthering inequalities and hindering innovation (divide
between the golden people from california and the inner-country pop). The new
age of protectionism is there and America is on its forefront.

> Is it no surprise then that Americans have eschewed blind worship of an
> elite priesthood?

"Is it no surprise that humans applied very human behaviors to employ
conceptual shortcuts in trying times?"

You reek of arrogance. This is pretty ironic, considering that the subtext of
your comment is itself a critic of a supposed european smugness.

------
NumberCruncher
>> It may be that only 1 per cent—or less—of Americans make a stab at
exercising their right to know.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. / Matthew
5:3-12 /

We think only because technology evolves humanity does it too. But we are
still where we have been 2000 years ago.

------
boot13
Related: [https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-
pr...](https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-
the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/)

------
partycoder
It's not really the cult of ignorance but the cult of money.

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

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

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

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

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
FWIW, most evangelicals I know reject the notion that faith and reason ought
to be in contradiction. I think you'll find that few well-respected Christian
theologians or pastors would embrace such a contradiction either.

AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take
the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in
the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your
eggs in one basket".

And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and
theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.

~~~
aaron-lebo
You are arguing against an ideological worldview.

It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has
very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters
throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious.

Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also
thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through
fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer.
Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
> It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has
> very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters
> throughout history with faith or non-faith.

I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say.

The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between
reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the
non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a
monster.

Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If
so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?

------
Shivetya
In essence, if you don't vote or think like us you are wrong and it is because
you are irrational and/or ignorant?

yet another post election political slam of voters because they didn't choose
"correctly" and not something that should be on this site.

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

