this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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We are careening toward the "end-game" for the rampant anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-critical thinking mind virus that plagued this country for at least the past 80 years.
This is what happens when you condition people for nearly a century, to get angry and defensive when someone who's more versed on a subject tries to teach them something (or god forbid, correct them). It has become a kneejerk reaction for so many Americans (mostly conservatives). They are so insecure that they view any type of education as a direct insult to them or some stupid bullshit like that. Like deep down, they know how ignorant they are, but for some reason they'd prefer to stay that way, so anyone who challenges that (regardless of how pure the motive), is a "smug piece of shit talking down to them."
And instead of even retaining what the person said, let alone learning it, they become even more radicalized against... well, reality.
I truly have no idea how something like this can ever be fixed at this level. We're talking over 50 million people give or take tens of millions (unsure how many have regrets).
And this is nation-ending shit.
Edit: Slightly related, but something I just thought about... Imagine if we ever have a prion-based pandemic (if that's possible?). That could straight up be the end of humankind. Prions are terrifying.
Don't forget the "liberal" (closed minded in their own way) hippie types who think cancer can be cured with some magic herb or something. They are just as likely to be against vaccines and science in general. I know too many of these people.
They know deep down inside that they are dumb and uneducated but think their "instincts" and gut feelings are equivalent or better than years of studying and analytical thought. They also are jealous of people smarter than them and instead of raising themselves up they prefer to pull them down.
What do you think BSE was? We were lucky to keep that within the cow population.
I didn't know what it meant and had to look it up, and for anyone else wondering:
Correct. And it can transfer to humans, where it is then known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, with the same results. One of those medical topics that make me really shudder when thinking about it.
This is what happens when you construct a society around screwing everyone else over while preaching cooperation. People stop trusting everything
Yeah, the US government is so well known for "preaching cooperation". What a fucking joke.
Politicians are always preaching "unity" while not acting united in the least.
Well said, extremely on point. I'm just curious about your view on the timeframe - you'd say this started in the 40s or earlier? In my mind it was more around the 60s, together with the rise of neoliberalism
American religious anti-intellectualism as we know it really started with the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism in the 1890s-1900s. But it goes in phases: Pentecostalism emerges in the 1900s, fundamentalism and the rejection of modernity and science in the 1930s, anti-liberalism and various “youth” movements in the 1950s, television ministries and mega churches in the 1970s, religious political conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of the non-denominational “bible follower” churches in the 2000s.
But America also experienced several “awakenings” in the 1800s, which gave rise to all sorts of new flavors of spiritualism and Christianity ranging from Mormons to abolitionists. And there’s the rise of the (literal) Salvation Army in the US in the 1880s (but we really have the UK to thank for them).
It’s been incubating here for a long, long time.
It was a death sign once they allowed intelligent design as a legitimate argument in schools
... Intelligent Design was the "default* up until the Scopes Monkey trials though?
To be honest, I just threw a number out there without bothering to do the math... I guess I was thinking post-WW2, but yeah it could have been slightly later.
Prion based pandemic is entirely possible.
I anticipate prions becoming a part of biological warfare in the coming years.
Maybe... Prions are a different beast altogether in terms of illness. Even the most terrifying forms take years to debilitate and kill you. I don't think most countries want to wait that long to cripple an opponent, and definitely won't want to unleash anything on a neighbor that will certainly come back at them. Right now the only thing that truly gets prions to be gone is incineration levels of heat.
So I don't think biological warfare is going to be on the table. Maybe terrorist type attacks, where the asymmetrical nature of the opponents makes the user unconcerned about potential effects on themself.
I'd say the most likely path to prion outbreak would be lack of food regulation. Thousands of people could get sick/ die from contaminated ground meat, and without FDA functioning, it will be too late to prevent it.
Prions unlikely, they don't possess the infectious nature of pathogens.. additionally it's a pretty rare disease, because animals showing signs of prions are usually eradicated and burned. Also humans can carry inheritable forms, which is even rarer than cow prions.
Even if someone manufactured it?
It's a simple problem, the lack of trust; and a relatively simple fix.
But you will have to abandon liberalism, capitalism, and all such tools of the rich that only exist to oppress the poor. While those systems of oppression exist, anti intellectualism is a natural defense mechanism.
There's a reason black folks in the US tend not to trust doctors, a good one, one of the best. It's the same reason native Americans tend not to trust the law, immigrants tend not to call police even if they're legal, and smart poor people don't trust vaccines. It's all the same reason, all the same cause, even with different incidents from that cause.
And you can't fight it and keep the systems that spawned it, it is impossible.
Black people in generally are also ignored by doctors when they display life threatening symptoms such as heart attacks
Additionally people become bitter w.and conservative once they get a degree and never ended up in their field( they should know better), this is probably a small group but it does track. A lot of people love to choose majors like psych without researching you need a PsyD at the most to have a career
Hey, asshole, quit talking about me like I'm not here!
/cries_silently_in_B.S._/_Graduate_degree_ratios_in_psychology
spoiler
For those who aren't aware, the last time I checked (hoo boy, this is getting close to two decades ago now... fuck me) approximately 1 in 18 college students graduate with a degree in psychology. That's freaking 6% of the college graduates! Kind of understandable when the bachelor version of psychology is essentially the degree of human interest. 'Come find out how and why humans are funny/stupid/doing X/interesting' is a powerful lure when you're surveying a bunch of different classes and don't have a degree/career in mind yet.Meanwhile, it's harder to get into psychology doctorate programs than medical school. When I was looking into it, I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of ~5-10% of applicants to doctoral programs would get accepted. It looks like recently it's sitting at 12%. Meanwhile, medical schools are around 44.5% right now.
Now, yes, I could show the higher acceptance rates to masters programs for psychology listed in that APA link, but that gets messier and needs more nuance than the bare bones I wanted to throw up there.
Huh? Yeah, sorry, not gonna get on board with your bizarre misunderstanding of very important fields.
It's not a misunderstanding. It's well known that it's easier to get relevant jobs in certain science fields than others.
Psychology is one of the hardest science fields to get a job in, and it's also one of the most popular undergraduate majors. Put the 2 together and the end result is that the vast majority of psychology majors end up being unable to find a job in psychology.