Isaac Asimov famously said, “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.’”.
The idea that any idea is worth listening to because someone believes in it.
Show me the proof.
I think any idea is worth listening to, it’s the assertion that we must inherently accept their viewpoint as valid that is outright absurd.
I felt this way until recently, when I’m becoming much more aware of how limited our collective attention is. Every honest belief probably deserves to have one (maybe 3) reasonable people listen to it. But they definitely aren’t all worth national/state/city/expert attention.
On the playground sure, but at some level it’s show the receipts first or get fucked up to discourage gish gallop. If we don’t preemptively shut it down, we’re in extreme danger.
I see four downvotes.
Would love to know the position those people have. Are they threatened by their own ignorance being called out? Or are they just conservative?
I’d like to think that they are just mad that they have to see this quote so often these days.
I find this so confusing… it’s like the old saying, “if you don’t want to be called a fascist, don’t be a fascist!”
Conservatives have the strangest contradictions. They want to be all these socially and morally odious things, then get upset when we call them out on those very things.
Neoliberalism. The belief that owners of corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, because corporations always create the best outcome possible for society.
The result is stuff like the US Opioid Crisis. Purdue Pharma knew that opioid pharmaceuticals were extremely addictive. For decades, they lied and said it was not addictive. In private, they laughed about their victims.
They bribed doctors and dentists to overprescribe it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html
https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
They also paid think-tanks to defend them and aggressively challenged negative media coverage:
The tobacco companies used the same techniques before western governments cracked down on them.
In the 90s, they tried to prevent governments from acting by bribing politicians:
An NPR review of McConnell’s relationship with the tobacco industry over the decades has found that McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry’s request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades.
Soon after McConnell won a U.S. Senate seat, he was invited to the Tobacco Institute’s boardroom to give a speech in January 1985. The documents also reveal that McConnell and his Senate office frequently accepted gifts from tobacco industry lobbyists
The gifts included tickets to NFL and NBA games, a production of Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment, a Ringo Starr concert, “top-quality brandy,” and what McConnell called a “beautiful ham.”
When McConnell has sought re-election, tobacco company employees and PACs have typically donated to McConnell more than to any other member of Congress, according to data from the Center For Responsive Politics. Since 1989, he has received at least $650,000
One of the most striking episodes revealed in the tobacco industry documents came in October 1998. Just a few months earlier, McConnell helped defeat major tobacco legislation championed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The McCain bill would have ratified and strengthened the proposed settlement between the tobacco industry and attorneys general from most of the states. It would have also allowed FDA regulation of nicotine and penalized companies that failed to reduce teen smoking.
McConnell, who had repeatedly clashed with McCain over campaign finance legislation, helped lead the opposition. “We know, of course, that only 2% of smokers are teenagers,” McConnell said.
(In fact, nearly 90% of all smokers begin before they turn 18 years old.)
“That to me is the most egregious incident that I have seen about the appearance of corruption since I have been a member of the United States Senate,” McCain later said of McConnell
In many countries, tobacco corporations are still using mafia methods:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/big-tobacco-dirty-war-africa-market
For neoliberals, the corporations should decide what is acceptable or not. If there is a profitable market for something, then it means it should be legal. Period. They don’t give a shit about selling addictive poison to kids, destroying the environment or underpaying workers. Corporate profits are their religion.
Neoliberals believe citizens or lawmakers should never try to fix injustice, because corporations can’t create injustice. And if they want to be involved and threaten corporate profits, you have to punch them in the nose.
In 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was democratically elected President of Guatemala. He wanted to tax rich banana companies and ensure they didn’t own all the land. So the United Fruit Company lobbied the CIA to overthrow him. Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, accepted immediately. His brother, wealthy businessman John Foster Dulles, was chairman of United Fruits International. So the President Árbenz was violently overthrowed. At least 9000 people were killed.
That’s extreme neoliberalism.
Religion
Came here to say fascism, but you win. Religion is worse…
Especially since people use religion to bolster fascism. Fascists love to pander to a nation’s largest religion to lock in their support.
I think of all superstitions as being a microcosmic form of fascism in a way, in that the mouthpiece of the supernatural is the one dictating the rules of right and wrong and what can transcend reality.
some say fascism is a form of religion
I got downvoted to hell last time I expressed my views about religion, but it has served me well for 29 years now (having been born in the shadow of the Vatican), so I am willing to share again:
I work, collaborate, spend time and even sometimes have sex with religious people, all while maintaining the idea that each one of them is akin to a dormant terrorist cell, and that given the right conditions their fundamental distancing from reason and in some cases recognition of undeserved authority can turn against me and everyone else.
I live a subtly tense life, but usually I am already in a safe place when shit hits the fan.
I also have a very wide definition of religion and of priest.
I’d say monotheism is the real problem.
not necessarily
Name an ideological concept that has led to more killing and death then religion…
Natalism?
dogmatism
…
dogma
/dôg′mə, dŏg′-/
noun
A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a religion
dogmatism
noun
dog·ma·tism ˈdȯg-mə-ˌti-zəm
: the expression of an opinion or belief as if it were a fact : positiveness in assertion of opinion especially when unwarranted or arrogant
Capitalism is well on its way to making the planet uninhabitable so Imma have to go with that.
This is surely the correct answer and for the reason you give.
If we’re honest (and informed - a big ask, here) then we should concede that capitalism has been generally good for our species. A quadrupling of human population at the same time as a doubling in longevity - the numbers don’t lie and they perfectly track the victory of capitalism as the world’s economic system. Leftists don’t want to hear it, but it’s clearly true.
But whatever this ideology did for humanity, it has been a complete disaster for all the other forms of life that we share our planet with. And that fact is going to catch up with us soon enough.
I think capitalism was a great and necessary thing to get humanity to it’s current post-scarcity state. As you said, production and innovation were really aided by capitalism in the early days of man, but now that we have all the shit we need to survive, all it does is deprive those without.
I don’t see how capitalism deprives people of anything. Surely that’s a problem of wealth distribution, which is politics rather than economics.
But otherwise agreed.
Any religion. It makes people think of themselves as superior to other groups. It doesn’t even matter which religion. They’re all bad.
Its not necessarily an ideology but all the worst ideologies have at root a lack of empathy and active methods to extinguish any trace of it. So lack of empathy or the violent suppression of it root and stem
I’ve been warning that the average American lacks empathy for YEARS. Conservatives seemingly lack the ability to feel empathy at all, which is why Musk “warns” that empathy is dangerous.
Look where we are now 🙃
Great, now we have metaideologies.
I go deep
Greed.
Religion has been said, but religion is always just the excuse for justifying greed
Belief that some unfalsafiable deity is behind you, and therefore any of your actions are righteous is incredibly dangerous, because there’s no accountability. How many atrocities are justified by religion, and the belief that justice will be done in the next life?
Religion is used to justify things like the fascist movement currently sweeping through the US, abhorrent regimes in the middle-east, and the subjugation of people (particularly women) everywhere
Of course, religion is the justification, but the real objective is to gather more wealth and power
From the mega-churches in the US, to the Vatican, to the mullah in a village somewhere in the world, it’s all about having more
Fascism. It makes people loose their humanity. Fascists endure anything as long as people outside their group are suffering.
American Exceptionalism.
gestures broadly
Well, Islam is definitely up there - and you only need to look at the Middle East for evidence. What makes it particularly dangerous, in my view, is the doctrine itself - especially the parts concerning treatment of women, martyrdom and hatred of infidels.
As someone who escaped Islam - 100%. Unlike other religions that take original texts as interpretations Islam takes the original texts as literal words of God and is essentially stuck. It’s a dead religion that exists only through force.
Yeah, my understanding is that the interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadiths doesn’t allow for the same kind of flexibility or reform that the Bible does, for example. Of course, that doesn’t mean someone can’t practice a non-fundamentalist version of Islam - and many do - but it’s much harder to justify when you’re going against what’s considered the literal word of God.
Nazism seem to be the worst since it’s an awful mix of nationalism, imperialism, totalitarianism, state racism, eugenics.
A nazi state basically invades its neighbors and genocide their inhabitants based on race, community or health condition.
So far, only the Third Reich applied it, leading to World War II and the Holocaust, but Japan applied some similar behavior in Asia during WWII.
Bonus point: it doesn’t even oppose capitalism, so rich people can still greed.
Well, Israel seem determined to resurrect it
Oh the irony…
Nazism wasn’t particularly pro- or anti-capitalist as an ideology. Free markets, international finance, and trade weren’t embraced, and private property and businesses were only allowed as long as they aligned with the goals of the state. The government largely dictated production and would nationalize, heavily fine, or even destroy companies that didn’t serve its interests.
“Us vs them” mentality.
Religion, because they all believe that they are the only ones who are right, and everyone else needs to believe what they believe, or else something bad will come of it.
The certainty of being right.
Why? Because when (any)one is sure to be right it means the other must be wrong and since they’re wrong they probably should not even be allowed to say what they have to say.
I cut a very cherished friend out of my life on Tuesday because of this mentality. When he said “I’m not going to read what you write or consider the point you’re trying to make” the first time it was enough. The second time was too much. I expressed my wish for his life to improve, told him good-bye, and removed/blocked him.
The next morning I woke up to a text claiming I didn’t value his friendship and that he’d be here for me when I got better. That’s when I truly realized how long he’d been disregarding the support and compassion I’d been sending his way.
I spent Tuesday mentally digging a grave for the friendship. I spent Wednesday filling it in, and that night I drank to the loss of a friend and to the health of the man who replaced him.
It ends in either replacing humans with AGI or massive atrocities in an attempt to achieve it.
And there are people in positions of real power who believe in this stuff and act on it.
Andreessen posted a manifesto where he said that deliberately delaying AGI is basically mass murder and should be treated as such.
I too, think this is a really dangerous one that hasn’t quite pinged on most peoples’ radar yet because it’s so niche, but like you said, when people with power and influence can actually act on it, they have the capacity to cause a lot of harm over what would normally just be fringe philosophies.
