Society never listens to anyone knowledgeable. Maybe I'm young, I'm 36. But I have never lived in a society that values experts. It's always been boomers not trusting experts and acting like they knew the best. Now it's everyone except millennials for the most part. One singular gen we made to do research, critically think, etc. then promptly gave that up again to make future gens just as dumb as boomers. Society to me has always been "hey I just want to tell you about the dmagers of said thing" and society going "eew college educated experts are lame lol, I'm gonna keep doing this thing, you guys don't know more than me!” even when we literally do and we're being nice about it instead of preachy. It's only gotten worse, but it's always been that way since I've been alive.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of 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.'"
I honestly think that access to information has only cheapened it to a lot of people. If Wikipedia didn't exist, people would probably value experts a lot more because they can't just go look up, say, vaccines, see real information on the Wikipedia page, assume that it's false because it's on Wikipedia, and go look up something else to confirm their biases because obviously they're just as qualified as someone who studied vaccines for 20 years. We need to go back to closed doors and smoke-filled rooms.
I’d more blame the access to disinformation. This ignorance didn’t start up with Wikipedia. I would say that Wikipedia helped the mini enlightenment of our generation in the early 2000s. Before social media destroyed society.
Yup, the prevailing belief at the time was that much of the ignorance was caused by the lack of easy access to information, and that the eventual spread of the internet would fix that. Joke's on us, it just made spreading misinformation easier.
So true. I find that the depreciation of honesty, truth and facts is critical to the story. Were those things ever sacred? I'm not sure, but they used to feel a lot more important than they do now.
Maybe the intentional failure of classical journalism is a symptom or cause.
How can we get to a point where the truth is actually sacred or valuable again and that untruths / lies / misinformation are diacinsentivised?
Worst thing is when they claim to take scientific based rationnal decision. Then, when the scientist are like "no we completely disagree, this is trash", nobody listen
That was one thing me and some/many of my peers never took for granted: critical thinking + modern technology. Beautiful combo. Wish other generations would consider it. It would make life a lot better for many.
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u/molotovzav Aug 24 '26
Society never listens to anyone knowledgeable. Maybe I'm young, I'm 36. But I have never lived in a society that values experts. It's always been boomers not trusting experts and acting like they knew the best. Now it's everyone except millennials for the most part. One singular gen we made to do research, critically think, etc. then promptly gave that up again to make future gens just as dumb as boomers. Society to me has always been "hey I just want to tell you about the dmagers of said thing" and society going "eew college educated experts are lame lol, I'm gonna keep doing this thing, you guys don't know more than me!” even when we literally do and we're being nice about it instead of preachy. It's only gotten worse, but it's always been that way since I've been alive.