
America's Cult of Ignorance (1980) [pdf] - georgecmu
http://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
======
SapphireSun
I love Asimov, and he's right that we should educate our population better,
but why would anyone pay attention to the papers when it seems completely
remote and irrelevant to people's lives? People pay close attention to stuff
that they feels significant to them and that they can control. People read the
sports section because they can talk about that with their friends and are
invested in the outcome. You and I read the politics section for the same
reason even though without popular mobilization, we have basically the same
effect on outcomes as a sports game.

If policies are promoted that people actually like as opposed to barely
resent, they'll start reading and talking and you won't hear the end of it.

~~~
carrier_lost
"why would anyone pay attention to the papers when it seems completely remote
and irrelevant to people's lives?"

Local elections directly affect people. Local boards and councils set tax
rates and allocate money to schools, police, fire and other public services.
Local elections often are covered extensively by local newspapers. Yet voter
turnout often is quite low. Why?

~~~
crdb
> Yet voter turnout often is quite low. Why?

The idea is that only the knowledgeable vote. If you do not feel confident
that you have a good grasp on political issues, your vote dilutes the signal
sent by those less ignorant.

Encouraging ignorant voters to vote is often the visible part of the
propaganda iceberg, the kind of politics we have increasingly witnessed in
most of the Western world in the last two decades and that used to be the
preserve of third world dictatorships.

You then see elections via mud-slinging and highly visible non-issues taking
on most of the mindshare, and the media is captured by interest groups who
need it to hijack a larger percentage of the vote. It is harmful to the fabric
of society as _all sides_ of the political debate become vote harvesting
machines and the citizenry is radicalised and encouraged not to reason about
issues [1] [2].

"A free society gives its citizens the right to vote but that right should
come with the responsibility to not abuse that right by voting ignorantly."
[3]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qffh9/vot...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qffh9/voting_relationships_between_senators_in_the/)

[2] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-
care/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/) \- "the
research [...] found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined
since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. [...] during
this same period students’ self-reported narcissism has reached new heights"

[3] [https://www.quora.com/Is-this-reason-for-not-voting-valid-
or...](https://www.quora.com/Is-this-reason-for-not-voting-valid-or-
reasonable/answer/Robert-Frost-1)

~~~
SapphireSun
The mobilization of the ignorant doesn't really matter. If they vote randomly
and both sides are equally mobilized, the ignorant votes cancel out and the
biased (hopefully knowledgable) participants actually determine policy. This
becomes harmful when particular factions are mobilized in isolation.... thus
US politics.

~~~
ew6082
The culture of outrage we see in TV news is carefully crafted to capture and
cultivate these votes.

------
anotherevan
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our
political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means
that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

    
    
        — Isaac Asimov

------
faragon
Before that, in 1930, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (two
surnames) published "The Revolt of the Masses" book [1], going even further.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Masses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Masses)

~~~
axtscz
I think that's the first time I've seen a y (and) added between Spanish last
names. Any idea where that practice comes from?

~~~
dsantiago
Jose Ortega y Gasset was a relative of mine, and I asked this as a kid. What I
was told (by my grandmother, his niece) is that it is sometimes done when
there's a weirdness in the combination of the two last names that would make
it ambiguous, such as someone who has a compound first name like Jose-Maria
that makes it harder to tell where a first name/last name breaks, or in this
case, where it results in a repeated sound (ga-ga) that feels weird to say.
But I have not found any corroboration of this online.

~~~
axtscz
Thanks for answering. As a Spanish speaker this makes sense. My dad is from
Mexico and no one in my entire family has this so maybe it's limited more to
Spain?

~~~
faragon
It was until the 19th century, when it was somewhat normalized (census, etc.).
Since the 20th century naming in Spain is pretty the same as Mexico and other
Spanish speaking countries. All my known relatives names/surnames are without
"y".

~~~
dsantiago
Yep, we are talking about someone who was born in the 1880s. Though as a
counterexample in the modern age, there is a well-known Spanish economist at
Columbia named Xavier Sala i Martin.

------
Koshkin
No doubt, there are benefits in being ignorant. As they say, ignorance is
bliss! And they are right; especially because truth is almost always
confusing, unpleasant, troubling and often downright scary. Knowledge rarely
brings happiness...

~~~
paulpauper
I dunno how true that is. What about people who enjoy learning things

~~~
Koshkin
Well, one might enjoy learning about the six-legged things living under
everyone's eyelids, but the knowledge of the fact can hardly make one happy.

Learning history can serve as another example.

~~~
etiam
I find some measure of joy in how remarkable that is.

Ignoring the disagreeable parts of reality may be pleasant as long as
reality's ignoring you back, but when it presents real dangers, ignorance is a
recipe for getting into real trouble more effectively.

Of course, being dead is an incredibly effective way of avoiding one's
personal inconveniences too, but for some reason we don't seem to lionize that
to anywhere near the same extent...

~~~
Koshkin
> _being dead_

This or, rather, the theory of having never existed in the first place, is,
indeed, a very interesting subject, but in the context of the present
discussion it can only be taken for what is known as a "strawman argument".

~~~
etiam
_> in the context of the present discussion it can only be taken for what is
known as a "strawman argument"_

Not at all. I'm sure if you make a sincere effort you could, for instance,
find a way to take it as a (little-needed) reductio ad absurdum.

Moreover, with the way you run your discussion here you are hardly in a
position to throw stones with regard to disingenious argumentation. You're
uncomfortably close to trolling, so if you're seriously making an argument for
this position wholesale, which I find doubtful, ease off on the equivocation
and cherry-picked examples and keep a civil discussion with the other
commenters.

------
wyclif
The go-to book on this is "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" by Richard
Hofstadter: [http://a.co/aJf0UKt](http://a.co/aJf0UKt)

I'd also highly recommend Sertillanges on the intellectual life:
[http://a.co/91XX11G](http://a.co/91XX11G)

------
alphanabla
OCRed version.
[https://womanorgod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/asimov_1980_c...](https://womanorgod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/asimov_1980_cult_of_ignorance-2.pdf)

------
partycoder
The prospect for America's future is not good.

America's golden years were right after WW2, with the creation of the Bretton
Woods system. But since the Nixon shock, the US dollar depends on exclusive
deals to retain a relative value to other currencies. e.g: convincing oil
exporting countries to only sell their oil in dollars and buying US treasury
bonds.

But as these deals become redundant (e.g: as oil becomes less necessary), the
US dollar will lose value, and so will things valued in dollars (e.g: savings,
wages, etc).

Unless the US finds another way to keep the US dollar afloat, printing more
dollars to subsidize the economy will stop helping and the US will lose its
privileged position in the world, which this generation takes for granted.

------
13of40
"Yes, _provided they can read!_ "

I'm (nominally) a professional, and somewhat educated, but I honestly question
whether I can actually _read_. There are plenty of things written in good
English that I cannot read. Many articles in _The Journal Nature_ , most prose
written before about 1850, technical books written in other than encyclopedic
form...

------
Kenji
> We can _all_ be members of the intellectual elite, and then, only then, will
> a phrase "America's right to know" and, indeed, any true concept of
> democracy, have any meaning

Come on. We cannot _all_ be members of the intellectual elite. And I'm not
being facetious because of a few mentally disabled people. Half the population
has an IQ below 100. Let that sink in for a moment. There are (more or less)
innate IQ differences and some people excel at intellectual tasks while others
do not and actually cannot as a matter of the body they possess. Just ask any
school teacher: There are bright kids who get things easily and quickly get
ahead and others who cannot progress even if they put in all the hard work and
hours they can.

This entire piece seems like Asimov is salty because not everyone is an
intellectual. Well, too bad, there are people who enjoy a simple life without
the sorrows that come with being an intellectual.

~~~
kleer001
Why the down votes? It's correct. There's tons of dumb people. We can't all be
elite. That's not how variation in a species works. Intelligence leans heavily
on biology so it's got to be varied. Not everyone wins the lottery. Right?

Asimov was from New York, he's f-n salty. He'd probably quickly admit it then
laugh and compose a limerick about it and slap you on the ass.

Also we need dumb people. We need people happy to swim in the shallow end of
the pool of ideas. And we need to help them, take care of them, love them like
any human. Give them opportunities to do important work. We certainly
shouldn't let them have governmental or military powers.

Now, we can shift the average intelligence to the right by a standard
deviation, but that requires some real gumption. And only a rare group of
people is that brave.

~~~
paulpauper
It's all relative. If everyone had an IQ of 150, the elites would be those
with IQs of 180

~~~
vinceguidry
You're assuming that IQ is what makes people elite.

~~~
kleer001
"Intellectual elite", pay attention boy! Pedantry is only for school.

------
swifting
Americans should be allowed to gamble on political races, they would be more
invested in the discussion of policy!

~~~
mistermann
This is actually not a bad idea....if they were allowed to gamble on actual
individual bills, I can see how it would be worthwhile for some people to
become deeply interested in the nuanced content of proposed legislation, the
political actors involved and their public words vs actual actions, the public
mood, etc.....because I think some people could make money at it.

Although, just as politicians are (were?) allowed to insider trade on the
stock market, they'd do this (or pass tips to their friends and family) and
take everyone's money.

I think modern democracy simply doesn't stand a chance against a well
organized communist government in China. Long term, the only way China loses
is if they make a _big_ mistake, and I just don't see anything compelling on
the horizon.

------
losteverything
Asimov seems to have been sitting in a room with only TV and newspapers. How
can he see anything else? So he wrote this column and i see a ladder to climb
(assume effort required) to get the right to know.

But today he would spin on a sit n spin with his hands out where a web of bits
bury his body. Slowly

What would he write now?

