Intellectual Snobbery - Why?

[Pink Gregory]

Just reading around the internet today, forums and the like, and something has begun to rankle me in the most unpleasant ways possible.

And that is intellectual snobbery.

Always with the attacks on the implied intellect of people, always with the posturing, always with the snide ad hominem comments.

And since it's cathartic to discuss terrible things, I wanted to know what you fellers think about it.

So, intellectual snobbery, has it happened to you? Do you do it? Why does it happen? and so on.

 

[Vegosiux]

I try not to attack other people's intellect in discussions, but I do imply they might not genuinely beinterested in the discussion and are only there to antagonize people if that's an image they push accross consistently; I also attack their lack of willingness to lead by example if I feel they're being hypocritical.

I'm not above agreeing to disagree, but the split has been 50/50 in that regard, half the time the other person keeps it civil and we leave the table both having maybe learned a thing or two, but the other half are people who just have to have the final say in it and instead go for that last strawman/ad hominem after I've noted I have nothing more to say. I have learned to ignore that (depending on how it gets across, ignoring the person as well) and to stand by stepping ut of the discussion.

PS: I'm not above hypocrisy either, but I do try to call myself out on it whenever I feel like I'm throwing rocks inside glass houses.

PPS: I also have the habit of editing my posts if I feel I didn't clarify my points well enough...that sometimes aggravates people. (case in point - I just did that)

 

[Pink Gregory]

Briss!

Huh, quite fascinating.

Kinda relates to something I heard on the radio the other day; admittedly I might have been trying to shoehorn what this person said into not quite what she meant, because I like to disagree loudly with the radio sometimes, but it went thus. The quote was something along the lines of, "Brightness will actually get you further in life than academic experience."

Now, to me, that sounded like she was saying, "Innate ability is more important than effort." Which I'm sure you'll agree isn't a fantastic idea to put across. Of course it's completely nebulous what she might have meant by 'brightness', it wasn't discussed in much detail, far as I remember.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Briss 2 : The Revenge

To be fair I was probably trying a bit too hard to disagree with what she was saying, I think it was a radio interview promoting some BBC audience participation show (Britain's Brightest? or something along those lines.)

I completely agree, though, especially on being doubtful of the concept of 'overall intelligence'.

On topic, I just find condescension (in particular, to broadly define what goes on in intellectual snobbery) is a form of intellectual bullying that seems to occur a lot on the internet; and I don't understand how supposedly intelligent people reason that that's somehow something in their interest to do, but maybe I'm overanalysing...

 

[Angie7F]

I was very elitist, but recently I have totally changed my mind.
Many of my high school grad friends are far more intelligent and competent than the super elites I work with.

When I watched the documentary film "waiting for superman, i was surprised to see that it was easy for kids to get As when they were younger, but more difficult they grow older, making it discouraging for kids and they drop out of school.

I think it is impossible to come up with a system that can save every kid from failing, but I think we need a broader scale to look at kids and people in general.

 

[Frungy]

Just reading around the internet today, forums and the like, and something has begun to rankle me in the most unpleasant ways possible.

And that is intellectual snobbery.

Always with the attacks on the implied intellect of people, always with the posturing, always with the snide ad hominem comments.

Hang on a second, I recently accussed of intellectual snobbery and being arrogant because I had the audacity to point out that someone was "wrong" (i.e. incorrect, mistaken, and quite possibly ... wrong) on an entirely factual matter.

Having cited several reputable sources (no, not wikipedia), the person persisted in not arguing the point, and instead engaged in personal attacks and restating their initial, incorrect, position. At which point I called them an idiot and refused to respond to any more of their trolling.

Thus I would, most humbly, suggest that you may be lumping together the actions of a troll and an entirely reasonable response to idiocy into one category. Both people engage in ad hominem attacks, but for the troll it is, to paraphrase and old saying, their only way of dragging you down to their level and then beating you with experience. However for the reasonable man it may well be an ad hominem attack, but it is also an entirely correct response to someone who's being, for lack of a better word, an idiot.

Trolling is indefensible. However if someone persists in acting like an idiot then isn't it fair to call it like you see it?

 

[Pinkamena]

I guess it's just part of who we are. If we're better at someone else at something, whether it be intellectual or athletic, we have a tendency to look down on people who are not as good. On the internet, it's very easy to get the idea in your head that the person you're conversing with must be an idiot or mentally challenged.

 

[Lieju]

If you get a high score, you must be smart. That's an attribute internal to you that can't change. If you get a bad score, that means you were never smart to begin with, and that makes the bad score a shameful secret that must be hidden from others lest they find out you aren't as good as they think you are.

But it might be important to also make sure you ARE praising hard work.

I have always been good at math. In other subjects too, but especially math. Especially as a kid. I never had to work for it at all. But, as I was a girl, and it was 'common knowledge' that girls aren't 'naturally' good at math, if a girl gets good grades it's because they work hard, so that what I was always told, when in fact I didn't work hard, and in fact got massively bored in school, and saw no point in doing math problems that were way too easy.

And because other kids knew it, they assumed I must cheat, and would gossip about me, and tell me I should go and kill myself when I got 'only' a 9 (on a scale of 4 to 10) on a test... Which has led to me getting panic attacks if I have to do math in a public place, although I still enjoy it if I can do it alone, and do well in university courses where I can do the assignments at home.

Different people learn differently, and different children are more naturally inclined towards different topics. I don't think there's shame in admitting that.
I was told all my childhood I got good grades because I worked hard to please the teachers, because I was quiet and an easy child.

So I never did learn to work hard, before university, anyway, because I never had to study.

 

[jetriot]

What Pink said. People can pretend they don't look down on people that are less intelligent than themselves but we all do it. The Escapist has a higher percentage of academics and is likely curved to the right on the IQ scale. As a result, there is more intellectual snobbery. This doesn't mean intellectuals think others are less than they are(not always) they simply feel intellectually(which is often only academic) superior.

The primary problem that intellectuals have is that they generally believe that because they are 'smarter' their beliefs hold more weight. What they have in knowledge they often lack in experience, thus the phrase ivory tower elitists. These attitudes are particularly prevalent in liberal arts colleges. Yet despite these attitudes, in my experience, these people are the most out of touch with reality.

 

[Eddie the head]

Hmm. That just made me think of this video.


If you are thinking of people as "they are against me" rather than "this is a person with something to say," you're not going to make much headway in an argument.

Edit. I don't think it's "intellectual snobbery" as much as it's "I don't know you and the reason we are likely talking is due to an argument."

 

[Smokej]

Without knowing what they meant and what the context was, I can't really say much. But I have mixed feelings about the line you put in quotes. On one hand, yes, effort is absolutely critical to success, and I would say is more important than overall intelligence (in fact, from what I've studied I am skeptical that such a thing as overall intelligence even exists.) On the flip side, academic experience is not a very good measure of learning, effort, or intelligence. I know people with fancy degrees who struggle to grasp really basic stuff, sometimes even within their field. I know people with only BAs whose working experience has made them as good at their job as people with post-graduate degrees in the field. So education can help someone, but I don't believe a diploma proves much at all.

Well the majority of the scientific community in psychology, neurology and educational science agrees on the existence of general intelligence. Furthermore educational success in form of final grade certificates is correlated with high general intelligence. Of course adaptation to the education system and social background have a strong influence on who is able to successfully participate in those educational opportunities.

Concerning the point with the degrees, it is always dependent on the corresponding country. For example in USA a bachelor says nothing on itself because it is the standard degree. So it depends on the university/college you're graduating (could be another example of social selection as well though).And to sort the wheat from the chaff, especially regarding international comparability, you have to get at least a graduate or professional school education (to make my point clear with an example, the general education you learn in a non research orientated american college, excluding the specalisation of the majors, is part of the normal! curriculum I have to teach at an academic highschool in Germany). The same goes with alot of degrees out of southern europe, africa and south east asia. So the educational worth of the degree is always linked to the country of origin, the college you graduated, and even sometimes like here in Germany it is solely linked to the corresponding faculties of the universities (because most unis are not that seperated in terms of general quality of university teaching, but some unis have very prestigous faculties; like Aachen for engineering, Heidelberg for medicine etc.)

That leaves the point of the OP over arguing or insulting someone because of their education and intellgence on the internet. Which is rather pointless, because the internet proves nothing. It isn't formalized in any way. Sure you can quickly tell if someone is (or plays) a total retard, but that's about it.
A good face to face conversation let's you gain so much more insight about your conversation partner and additionally in such a situation degrees don't tell that much either. (which on the other hand in a conversation over the internet, they can give you at least a quick estimate about the other)

 

[King Billi]

While I can't deny that it is certainly easy on the internet to make assumptions about the intelligence or motives of most people I tend to try and make an effort not to resort to condescension or overly dismissive remarks when posting

Looking at it another way however I am certain alot of the time that the way I present myself in alot of my posts does make me look alot stupider or at least clueless than I actually consider myself to be. I often find myself editing my posts numerous times after reading them as I often find when I'm trying to form my thoughts and opinions into words I end up often misinterpreting my own opinions.

The lesson is of course just to think before you post. whether it be in giving your own opinion on a given topic or debate or replying to someone you think is misinformed.

 

[MazdaXR]

I do agree that there is some snobbery out there, but I also think that people often confuse snobbery with people who genuinely know more about a certain subject, and don't like feeling that it might be the case.

This happens in the general as well as the specific, for example I worked with books for a number of years and had a passion for reading, I would try to read anything and everything. This lead to me liking some pretty obscure books and authors, and it was the same with my colleagues, yet we were constantly told by management that we were not meant to really talk about these books to customers as it may come across as if we were trying to be obscure and niche, or hipster even, but it wasn't the case we just wanted to tell people about the awesome books they may not have heard of, we were not trying to make them feel stupid. This kind of "protection" from the idea that someone knows more than you in a certain field is pathetic and actually aims to decrease peoples ideas and knowledge rather than broaden them.

However I do feel that trying to put people down or in turn raise your self above people by using any form of snobbery whether it intellectual, wealth etc is wrong, because it involves you believing you are a better human being for it.

I have a friend that can tell you the exact chemical processes that happen within a combustion engine, and I have one that can take one apart fix it and put it back together in no time at all, and in my opinion neither of them should have intellectual snobbery to the other one.