This essay can be read in my 2020 book, Essays on Free Knowledge. Perhaps ironically, it is no longer free.
UPDATE: I’ve posted a very long set of replies.
UPDATE 2: I’ve decided to reply below as well–very belatedly…
This essay can be read in my 2020 book, Essays on Free Knowledge. Perhaps ironically, it is no longer free.
UPDATE: I’ve posted a very long set of replies.
UPDATE 2: I’ve decided to reply below as well–very belatedly…
1. Experts have been known to be wrong, sometimes to the impediment of scientific progress. Ideas should be weighed on their own merits, based on available evidence.
2. Books are heavy, voluminous, expensive, and difficult to search. I find myself reading more ebooks these days. That’s just about the medium though. People were upset when bound codices started replacing scrolls; the world didn’t end. I’d argue that some physical books are functionally obsolete; telephone directories and printed logarithm tables are notable examples.
3. The literary canon changes over time. New books get published, and old ones fall out of fashion. It’s been that way since around the time vernacular European literature started catching on. People started reading Boccaccio, and Boethius started to become less relevant. Scientific works are a special case; the published works of Newton, for example, are seldom used as physics textbooks.
4. Rote memorization should not be confused with knowledge. I don’t bother memorizing phone numbers. Yeshiva students don’t bother memorizing the Talmud. Memorization started falling out of fashion with the advent and increased popularization of writing, followed by printing. Actors may need to memorize bits of Shakespeare; the rest of us can look it up when we need to.
5. There are many paths to success, and there is no objective definition of success.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Now, get off my lawn!
Redefining Success in Aboriginal Learning
http://www.ccl-cca.ca/ccl/Reports/RedefiningSuccessInAboriginalLearning.html
i would not equate “anti-intellectualism” with a skepticism of academic institutions and existing “trusted” sources.
For many really sharp folk with a passion for something they can make money doing college is often a waste of money. Of time? Thats debatable. But certainly money.
For people who are sharp or not, who don’t know what they want to do. Or for folks who want to be in a “old world” established career like Medicine or Law it’s an absolute necessity. How else would a person growing up on a farm or in an inner city housing complex get exposure to particle physics?
However, what many of us (myself included) have discovered is that most of what we learned in school is either a.) Opinion more than fact. b.) True for that time because we didn’t know any better or c.) Total BS someone said years ago that everyone blindly followed like lemmings.
As a result, it’s very hard to understand why I should have spent 20k a year to get an education that was 5-10yrs out dated when I graduated and may be proven to be totally wrong 20yrs later?
Only if I needed structure, needed to learn how to learn, needed to learn social or team building skills, needed to learn how to binge drink, needed to be exposed to many things to see what it was I wanted to do, or wanted to go into an “old world” career that demands such degrees.
Otherwise, I can get all the info from iTunes University, TED, Youtube, Discovery Channel, reading on my own, seeking out and befriending those who already know what I want to, or any other source of learning I can find online. And most of it’s FREE
as a basic rule you should not charge for knowledge. It’s wrong
“[Students] can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google.”
This attitude has been percolating through the Education Establishment for 30 years: learn how to learn, drill and kill is bad, facts are irrelevant.
Society is just simply reaping what anti-Western pseudo-Intellectuals sowed in Academia 40 years ago.
There seems to be some confusion between elitism and intellectualism. Intellectualism is recognizing the importance of ideas and the creation of knowledge for its own sake. While some intellectuals are also elitists, its not a requirement. And many geeks are elitists, convinced of both their own superiority and that they are therefore deserving of more authority. Certainly more authority over their own lives.
As a an argument between two sets of elitists over who is superior and should be given more authority, this discussion makes sense.
More simply, this sounds like a simple power struggle, where credentialed gatekeepers are afraid that their power over other people is being threatened.
“credentialed gatekeepers are afraid that their power over other people is being threatened.”
Except that credentialed lawyers (via politics and the eternal fear of lawsuits) are gaining power every day, and egg-headed denizens of the Ivory Tower have little control over me.
Who would prove your expertise?
The learning COMMUNITY on the field will prove your expertise, this community is integrated for people with and without degrees, children or adults, indigenous or urban,
etc, etc. The most important is their practical and applicable knowledge they have on the field.
How you will prove your expertise?
In a practical and concrete way: helping your community with your expertise, with a free and volontaire work.
“spending less time checking basic facts leaves more time to create new knowledge, which is the cornerstone of true intellectualism, in my opinion.”
Without checking older ideas, facts, methods, you are just re-inventing the wheel over and over (& getting it wrong over and over) while patting yourself on the back regarding your own cleverness. (BTDT)
“5 minutes in the library can save you 5 weeks of work” G. Westweimer.
[…] PERHAPS THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE INTELLECTUALS, NOT THE GEEKS: Larry Sanger: Is There A New Geek Anti-Intellectualism? […]
There is a kernel of truth here. Intellectuals are expecting the non-intellectuals to think and that, for many, may not be much of an option.
Consequently, we may soon see a day when we don’t have scientists, as they will all have been done away with as an unnecessary government expense.
Fear not, Larry Sanger. The intellectuals are not diminishing. It’s merely that the internet has given the rabble a voice. These individuals didn’t concern themselves with intellectual pursuit before the internet, and nothing has changed since it’s advent. The majority didn’t store information before Wikipedia either – they just didn’t “know” OR have access to information.
Those who are intellectual have not been impeded at all. I don’t believe the ratio has shifted at all in the new generations either. The only difference is now you experience the chorus of voices of the incompetent and inadequate, that previously one would not have been exposed to.
There is a balance. There are those that refine new concepts and those that break the mould and define new concepts.
The defining can be done by anyone, although it will be skewed to those that break the mold – independent of education level. The refining process usually takes some level of knowledge and experience in the field.
Both of these types are needed, arguably the scales tip in different directions at different times.
Realize that a lot of the “drop-out” successes that we see have conceptualized without the education, but then have built empires based on the “educated” people building the systems. Most of the companies that these people have founded will not hire drop-outs without a bucket load of experience.
From what I have seen even within Google, you can’t transfer into some roles without a high GPA – which means you need the education to get progress.
Find it interesting in the article and in comments it sounds like Information and Data are being confused with knowledge. I agree that the Internet has made memorization largely redundant- but memorization of facts does not constitute understanding of those facts. By study and consideration, does an intellectual come up with new concepts and ideas.
One can be an intellectual without having formal education at a societally approved/licensed educational establishment. In fact, i would posit that those who refuse to have their minds twisted into calculators by the Ivy Leagues as more intellectual, at least they come up with their knowledge honestly, instead of the vast majority of those going to college in order to make a bigger paycheck.
The author confuses Intellectualism, Intelligence, and Education. The three can be connected but are mutually exclusive.
I’m not so sure. There is clearly a rise in anti-intellectual behavior, particularly coming from those who do not want science telling them they are wrong.
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