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Has academia became intellectually conceited?

Eddiehaskell

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What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

Hope its not Harvard. I may have fibbed on that digital lab study :lol:

As for your bigger question, yes. To me global warming is the biggest intellectually dishonest band wagon I have ever seen.
 
I’ve attempted to have the discussion with folks I know and it’s almost taboo.

I feel like broadly accessing information in currently available formats somewhat funnels people into paths greatly impacted by group think.
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

It would be interesting to know more about the research. If I understand your post correctly I believe your experiment has merit.

Social media is neither good nor bad. It might be fair to say that social media comes close to ruling our daily lives. One of the major issues I see is that Americans are victims rather than masters of social media. Social media has taken us full-tilt into the Age of Information and far too many people rush unarmed into the battle for truth. Education is key. We don't appear to be meeting the challenge. Ironically social media often makes it far too easy to become intellectually lazy.
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

I would say that is certainly the case with social media since users largely control what content is presented to them and who they interact with. But, on a broader scale, the internet makes it possible to access the sum of human knowledge so it boils down to how people choose to use it.
 
It’s as though the realm of social media does have a somewhat balanced impact. It essentially gives all ideas and thoughts a platform.

And in my personal opinion liberal thought process in America could somewhat use a wholesale enlightenment/transformation. I feel like we are essentially a society who’s thoughts on existence are essentially getting uglier to some degree before they get better.
 
The problem is that with such a Everest of information it is almost impossible to have a full scale understanding of the information presented. The subject of “internet“ is one that could have it’s own degree awarded.

Take a 12 yr old and unleash them on the internet for decades....THAT is the real world society lives in. Not the physical one you can touch.

Edit: digital existence is the wild Wild West in what we call “human” or “universe”.
 
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What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

Or have we become complacent with academia?

It might be the better question.

If the "pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual" then we have no choice but to look at the means for where flaws may be, and it means slightly more than an evaluation of where social and information shortcuts are taken (i.e. the laziness of producing and consumption of information via social media.)

You could argue false expectation of information from social media as being sufficient to engage in political discussion is a huge flaw, I may counter with does that expectation also collide with purposeful conditioning of that expectation from these very large and successful business models into an attention span flaw.

To put it simpler, and perhaps harsher, does that "larger scale" even know the difference anymore?

Social media, amplified by the laziness of the medium, of course impacts national discourse and it may be hand in hand with corporatization of that news cycle. We already know we have a decreasing number of organizations with an increasing presence in delivery of the news, commentary, information, social media influencers, what have you.

Dumbed down information exchange drags down with any sense of political discourse, and more importantly those in politics using this to their own advantage. Probably speaks volumes as to how we become so polarized as a nation again. Our avenues of exchange are helping this now in a way unseen in US history.

Take a 30 second political ad seen on television. That same clip can spread across social media, with commentary and/or meme like statements, in seconds to millions... hundreds of millions... of useful idiots consuming such message as fact. It was always foolish to assume one clip would do the trick but doing this repeatedly has half the nation thinking Biden will turn us into Cuba and the other half thinking Trump will turn the nation into Nazi Germany.

I've referred to this often as "bumper sticker thinking," and what that really means is the distance between intellectualism and commonality from social media is that much greater.

Being intellectual has not outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual, our avenues of exchange have degraded discourse to the point becoming intellectual has fewer means and involves more effort than people care to apply.
 
Look at the Milgrom experiment. I shudder to think about the potential power of the internet with sufficient control.
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

academia has ALWAYS been intellectually conceited. Comes with the territory.

I think you are simply applying the very common human condition of one's reach exceeding one's grasp to the world of academia. You can apply it in virtually every other line of individual human endeavor.

OTOH, there is also a very large % of "intellectuals" who recognize the expertise of others and incorporate those "opinions/perspectives/facts/visions/predictions/etc" into their own library of opinions, making some of those opinions more informed than others.
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

With social media, the same thing is happening that has always happened with information, it is just happening at an exponentially accelerated rate. Important information used to spread through global society in a matter of months or years and affect national discourse for good or ill for years at a time, and if that information was false, it was unlikely to be corrected for many more years to come: Far too late in most cases.

While it now takes a matter of minutes for widespread misinformation to circle the globe (perhaps an alarming disadvantage to social media) it can be identified as misinformation almost as fast and corrected. Sure, many with dishonest agendas or irrational fears will certainly still cling only to the misinformation, but the important thing is that the correct information is readily available. This drastically mitigates the damage of misinformation compared to the damage it used to do to nations.

All in all, this is a huge advantage to social media. It is just not, and is never going to be, a place to immediately receive reliably accurate information.

Social media is an information amplifier. It amplifies the harmony and the dissonance in equal measure.
 
No, in the sense that some of it has always been like that, so it cannot become.
Check out:
The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase
I got turned on to these ideas by Robert Heinlein.
"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship."
 
What I’m asking is if the pursuit of being intellectual has somewhat outpaced the ability to actually be intellectual. In a larger scale — could normal/intelligent people somewhat become exposed to group think without knowing.

The entire political discussion in this country has become somewhat of a news cycle with people waving in the wind.

I work at major university and we have performed an experiment to study how social media impacts national discourse — the results have been very interesting so far.

Anyone understand where I’m going with this?

Tertiary education does not make anyone a intellectual, or guarantee critical thinking. I see just as much "group think" among the academia folks as I do the non diploma folks on social media.
 
academia has ALWAYS been intellectually conceited. Comes with the territory.

I am reminded of a story told by Umberto Eco back when he was doing research for Name of the Rose.
Two Dominican monks are discussing whether a cow has teeth, using Aristotle to support or oppose their arguments, and being unable to come to an agreement. Meanwhile there is a barn with cattle in it literally next door, which none of them thinks to pay a visit.

If nothing else, it illustrates that the idea of academia is udderly (p/i) unaffected by the culture and inadequacies of academic circles. No need to conflate them.
 
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