American distrust of scholarship

[Revoltingest]

There is a difference between the educated and the uneducated.
The educated have been taught to think, to analyse, to investigate and come to reasoned conclusions. While some of the uneducated may develop some of these abilities for them selves a majority of them do not.

There is a reason that so many educated people support liberal views, as that is where clear thinking and analysis of world situation leads them.

The less educated without these attributes. Tend to chose options that they believe will benefit Them selves or their affiliated group, but without consideration of society or the environment as a whole. They are more likely to think short term, selfishly, and believe leaders and those like themselves, who think little further than personal advantage and gain.

In my experience with edumacated & ignant folks,
critical thinking seems to correlate more with personality.
Education & intelligence appear to have less significance.

Caution:
This is just an impression.
Don't demand evidence, lest I make fun of your privates.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

So religion is your examples and that is it.
And all of the world is down to the US versus a part of the Western world for which that is all we have to consider.
Yet you speak for all humans with your "we" for all times and culture and with a certain in effect limited cultural understanding of what science is. Science is itself a human social and cultural construct in part, yet that is not relevant to consider.

Wow, you really take your own culture for granted. In effect for certain words you take in effect philosophical materialism for granted.

Of course I live in my own reality.
As do we all.

However people are free to believe in what ever they like, and live their lives under what ever belief system they can find or invent.

In the mean time the world moves on obeying such "principals", known or as yet unknown. that govern everything.
Science is simply the method used for such enquiry.
The "principals" already exist.
They do not depend on our knowledge of them.

 

[Secret Chief]

Free will implies the right to go against reason, common sense and the "Facts of the case"

Free will simply means freedom to choose, it has nothing to do with what may or may not be seemingly taken into consideration prior to making a choice.

There is a school of thought within the scientific community that free will does not exist, that the universe is totally deterministic and that justification for choices is a post (micro time duration) hoc occurence. Free will is therefore simply a "natural" and useful illusion.

What Neuroscience Says about Free Will

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-free-science.html

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Of course I live in my own reality.
As do we all.

However people are free to believe in what ever they like, and live their lives under what ever belief system they can find or invent.

In the mean time the world moves on obeying such "principals", known or as yet unknown. that govern everything.
Science is simply the method used for such enquiry.
The "principals" already exist.
They do not depend on our knowledge of them.

There is no everything as you use it, because everything is not objective. Nor is everything subjective.
Here is the joke: If everything is things independent of us, then I can't think, act and write "No!", but I can.

I don't believe in your everything, yet I am a part of everything and so are you.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

In my experience with edumacated & ignant folks,
critical thinking seems to correlate more with personality.
Education & intelligence appear to have less significance.

Caution:
This is just an impression.
Don't demand evidence, lest I make fun of your privates.

True some people are far more "capable" and "educated" than they think.

In the UK you can get a degree by providing evidence of "Prior learning."
This need not be in any way formal education, but evidence that you have learnt "on the Job" and by "evidence" of a successful career in a particular field. Proving this,is almost as onerous as doing a standard degree. so not for every one.
But useful for employment in jobs that require statuary qualifications, but where experience and flair, perhaps count for more in the real world. This is often true in the Digital world, and engineering, where people have often taught them selves to a higher level and skill than any degree course.

 

[Secret Chief]

In the UK you can get a degree by providing evidence of "Prior learning."

I don't think you can. You can get credit towards a degree, but that has been the case for many years. It's common practice, both in the UK (and, I think, in the US). Here's just one example, from the University of London website:

Recognition of prior learning

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Free will simply means freedom to choose, it has nothing to do with what may or may not be seemingly taken into consideration prior to making a choice.

There is a school of thought within the scientific community that free will does not exist, that the universe is totally deterministic and that justification for choices is a post (micro time duration) hoc occurence. Free will is therefore simply a "natural" and useful illusion.

What Neuroscience Says about Free Will

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-free-science.html

That is truly what some believe.
However it is counter intuitive so not what most of us choose to believe.
however if it were true and we are unable to discern the difference, then why should any one care.

When you examine quantum theory much of it is counter intuitive and "unbelievable"
however it seems to work, and is useful, it also encompasses many things that we do not know.
So should we disregard it as false?

When you enter the world of nanoscience almost everything involves Quantum theory. which itself makes a mockery of free will and choice, as we might know it at the world at large.

This is not something I propose worrying about very much at all, it is way above my pay grade.

 

[Secret Chief]

why should any one care.

Exactly. Hence my first comment about tyranny.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

That is truly what some believe.
However it is counter intuitive so not what most of us choose to believe.
however if it were true and we are unable to discern the difference, then why should any one care.

...

Only science and things. No beliefs or care or any of that subjective nonsense. Only science!!!

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I don't think you can. You can get credit towards a degree, but that has been the case for many years. It's common practice, both in the UK (and, I think, in the US). Here's just one example, from the University of London website:

Recognition of prior learning

You most certainly could.
Before I retired some 20 or so years ago. A number of us senior managers at the College where we worked, were offered the opportunity to do so, and a number of us took it up. I was too near to retirement to bother. Though the chief accountant did. he was a fully qualified accountant but had no degree (he was more into paperwork than I was.) There was no course work whatsoever. it was all documentary.

My area of interest, Photograph, design and Printing had no degree available in the UK when I qualified, a College diploma was the best you could get on a three year full time course. A few years later a Photography Fine Art degree was introduce at the Royal College of Art. (with no career prospects what so ever.)

 

[Wandering Monk]

Well, it seems from posts on this thread that the academic world is failing in at least one other area: teaching critical thinking skills.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well, it seems from posts on this thread that the academic world is failing in at least one other area: teaching critical thinking skills.

Maybe, but since you haven't given examples, you have failed as for now, because you haven't backed up your claim.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Exactly. Hence my first comment about tyranny.

I do not see any Tyranny.

 

[Wandering Monk]

I do not see any Tyranny.

Talk of tyranny in Western societies is hyperbole. It's what losers do.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Basically, if you do not have enough carefully vetted respect for scholars, scientists, experts, and so forth, then you are the naive lamb in any conversation about any reality that someone or some group has decided to mess with your understanding of the topic.

Very nicely put, and this is a common failing. Its not plain to everyone, not obvious, what a degree implies. Its easy to downplay the intelligence of others and to assume they are frittering away their lives only to make ostentatious sounding claims. How can a nation counteract such natural impudence?

And the OP is certain to lessen that respect for at least some people.

Um, no. Not even a tiny bit. The opposite. I wouldn't have written it for such a purpose, and you underestimate the value of bringing this subject out for discussion. That being said my threads never last very long. I don't stimulate controversy for its own sake.

 

[Secret Chief]

I do not see any Tyranny.

The reduction in the belief in free will over time could lead to subjugation of freedom by the state. The science based utopia you envisage would be a dystopian place.

 

[metis]

What do you think? Why do Americans in particular distrust scholarship, or do you think it is more widespread?

Americans have long been suspicious of those with a greater education because it may diminish our ego. Remember those referred to as being "nerds"? A teacher I know sometimes told his students to "Be nice to nerds as they probably will be your boss someday".

 

[Secret Chief]

Be nice to nerds as they probably will be your boss someday

- seen it on posters; attributed to Bill Gates I think.

 

[sayak83]

Let me mention to you the distrust of scholarship in this country and why I think it exists so strongly. Scholarship has a reputation for betraying us. We don't trust scholarship, because while it seems ideal it is often used against the uneducated and poor. Its used as an excuse to take away property rights, used to swindle west virginians out of their land, destroy ways of life. Scholars make arguments to destroy God with. They blame religion for everything. They make better weapons, excuses to make us work harder, reasons to doubt ourselves. They invent things like scientific management. They try to take away the children to re-educate them in foreign ways and claim it will be better.

Since 1800 in relative isolation a nation of poor farmers (USA) has of necessity grown its own bible interpretations and its own seminaries. Meanwhile our standard high end professional seminaries have gradually become critical of our bibles, critical of our lowborn opinions. Snooty universities for the wealthy classes. We are criticized continually, but what comes of the wisdom of scholars? More junk, more wars, more theft, more trouble. Now everything is scientific, and the rules change so fast you can hardly recognize yesterday. In news usually the poor are to blame for everything evil such as crime, and scholarship is the highlight of humanity!

We read this in our bibles: "Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:20) To a farmer and a poor man this message resounds. It says "My bible is written to me and is meant to confound the scholars."

Yes this completely misconstrues the true context of the scripture, but added to this are the contrivances and the machines of the scholars which provoke every poor man.

I'm speaking in general terms of how this seems to us as a whole, but I value scholarship. I understand the importance of having people dedicated to study. I'm not saying its evil, nor am I saying Americans are right to distrust scholarship. I'm saying why we don't trust scholars.

********************

What do you think? Why do Americans in particular distrust scholarship, or do you think it is more widespread?

Certain institutions in US ( and in other places) distrust scholarship as education and ability to think skillfully (good thinking is a skill) impacts their influence and hold through emotive rhetoric ( of religion, ideology, nationalism, class warfare, ethnicity etc.)

 

[Brickjectivity]

Certain institutions in US ( and in other places) distrust scholarship as education and ability to think skillfully (good thinking is a skill) impacts their influence and hold through emotive rhetoric ( of religion, ideology, nationalism, class warfare, ethnicity etc.)

I am curious what institutions. Are you talking about religious institutions? Sales? Hopefully not schools.