It's hard not to notice a certain pattern in the videos and―more importantly―the people that YouTube promotes to me.
Sam Harris: Uses fake erudition in the defense of the kind of bigotry you can practice just as well without literacy.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Undoubtedly an intelligent man in person, but never produces anything but thought terminating clichés.
Adam Conover: The show title "Adam Ruins Everythng" is the kind of self-deprecation you practice when you think highly of yourself.
I'd gotten used to classing them as the stupid person's idea of a smart person, but then it hit me: There's no other kind.
The purpose of smart people at this point is to keep you stupid. Intelligence is indeed not just the memorization of facts and figures. It starts with questioning things. It continues with being able to see those questions through. No one really wants a bunch of people who are smart by those criteria. The safest thing is just to give them a bunch of false idols.
2 comments:
I'm not quite sure what you mean about youtube promoting certain people to you. I've found that the site has videos next to the one I've chosen to watch with other broadcasts by the same person or others made about similar subjects. Maybe I missed your point.
I do agree with you about the impetus that compels some people in the public eye to promote their own views on subects they have no business declaiming about. Of the three you named the only one I'm moderately familiar with is Neil DeGrasse Tyson because he was advertised as the return of Carl Sagan and didn't match the charm and erudition of Sagan when I watched one episode. I blew off the obvious attempt to turn a pretender into someone who'd introduced so many to interesting scientific concepts - not that he was always right but you could feel as though you had been free to differ. Tyson presents everything as proven fact.
"It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
This is one of my favorite quotes as it's more true with each passing day.
I agree about the purpose of smart people is to keep you stupid but intelligence doesn't necessarily prevent stupid - plenty of smart people do and say stupid things. Evolutionary pressures push organisms to the most adaptive characteristics, so the logical conclusion is that average intelligence is the best, most adaptive level of intellect a human can possess.
It also appears that as time has gone by the general level of discernment has been lost. There are very few truly brilliant masters and many more who pretend to be.
By "promoting" I mean that the videos next to the one that I went specifically to watch will tend to include these people, even though I've never exhibited any interest in anything featuring them. I don't know if you're usually logged into Google when you go to YouTube, so you might not be getting the full force of the algorithm.
Early in his public career Tyson was cheerleading Isaac Newton and there was a certain goofy charm to that. But you're right that he's no kind of replacement for Carl Sagan. Sagan had some outspoken political opinions--not all of which you or I might agree with--but his primary message had to do with the wonders of the universe. By contrast, I get the feeling that Tyson is always inserting himself into public debates because he needs the attention. Of course the tendency to put your pet issues beyond debate is a common one now.
That's a Carlin line that always cracks me up as well. He was definitely onto something. At many points he was also on something but that's another story.
I know intelligence doesn't prevent one from doing stupid things. I know that quite well. Part of the reason for that is that mental capacity is never as good at keeping you out of trouble or getting what you need as you think it's going to be. Maybe you're right and it's the middle line that's the most adaptive from an evolutionary perspective.
The thing about discernment is that it takes time. A society that prides itself on moving fast is unlikely to afford the time to learn deeply, or even to recognize those who do.
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