Why are Smart People So Dumb?

this video is brought to you by me, hey, funny helen, so something strange is happening lately to seemingly intelligent public figures, public intellectuals, if you will excuse me, neil degrasse tyson, who built a massive platform to spread scientific literacy, has been transformed into a strange guy, well, actually, who says very stupid things about philosophy, my concern is that the philosopher believes that they are actually asking deep questions about nature and for scientists it is what are they doing, why are they losing the time, why do they care about the meaning of the meaning that I If I'm still very angry at Neil, then there's that Elon Musk guy, who has leveraged his fortune and fame to become a self-proclaimed spokesperson on a wide variety of issues, but who routinely gives information that is crazy or just plain misleading to the point that even I, once a self-proclaimed Elon Musk fan, can no longer get behind it.

The institutions that publish public intellectuals are not doing well either. The New York Times can't seem to go a month without publishing a massively ridiculed op-ed by

smart

people

. like david brooks and then there are the hundreds or thousands or jesus, I can't even count the number of youtube talking heads with very dedicated followers, good and bad, they cover current events in pop culture, while it's too diverse a group to describe monolithically and I. I will not name any names for fear of provoking their legions. These YouTube public intellectuals might have found their feeds, for example, not understanding basic human anatomy.

It would be easy to think that our society is getting

dumb

er or that great thinkers are less rigorous, but that doesn't seem like a fair assessment, there are some truly great intellectuals who do great work and yet are chronically online

people

who are like to learn, we are convinced that there is something seriously wrong with the way knowledge is created and shared in the 21st century. So what if Degrasse Tyson's strange Twitter threads are a symptom of a much bigger problem, and what if the biggest threat to good ideas isn't at all what you thought? Let's find out in this funny edition about public intellectuals what happened, but first, here's a bad idea. letting your personal data float on the Internet forever this week's sponsor is mine.

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data assistant these days. It's easy to feel like your data is out of your hands, but mine helps you figure out where it is and what. type of data are available, the process is really simple and fast, all you have to do is go to Samemind.com using the link in the description and log in using Google Microsoft or Yahoo. It will give you a summary of everything that appears in your email. is attached, you can see how many companies hold your data and see if they are storing sensitive information like identity or financial information.

When you scroll to your footprint, you can see all the companies that hold your data and the risk of data breaches that exist. There are so many sites I haven't used in years that still collect my data, which sucks, so that's great. I can only submit a request to have them removed. Take control of who has your information by researching mine today. Click the link in the description to check it out for free It's a strange time for our society, intellectually speaking, the amount of money flowing into both liberal and conservative foundations to produce new and original research is unprecedented.

Authors receive tens of thousands of dollars to speak to public and private Curious Minds groups, there are entire conferences dedicated to exploring new and disruptive ideas, and places like YouTube have reduced traditional media's stranglehold on the spread of ideas. If there is a marketplace of ideas where good and bad information vie for supremacy, one might think this. It is a kind of golden age, but not many do it, what is happening to find out, let's talk about what academic Daniel Dresner calls the industry of ideas, a vast ecosystem of thought production that contrasts with the intellectual landscape of decades passes to dresner as public. intellectual is a person who comments on a variety of ideas knows enough about many things to be able to point out charlatans intellectuals expose accepted wisdom when it does not stand up to scrutiny and this is why a public intellectual is crucial to democratic discourse span the entire ideological spectrum people like william f buckley bertrand russell or james baldwin the french love them and people like jean-paul sartre simone de beauvoir and michel fuco were superstars in the bistro streets of their native country they went on television and radio and criticized the foreign policy of their government would debate race and racism and so on.

Public intellectuals still exist, but for everyone you can name, there are probably a dozen pseudo-intellectuals who come to mind much more easily. What Dresner calls opinion leaders, a horrible invention of the ideas industry. You probably know the kind of person with a big idea, an idea that will revolutionize everything, if a cantankerous public intellectual points out what's wrong with the worldview of others, a thought leader is an evangelist for his own public intellectuals, the Public intellectuals tread carefully and weigh the evidence that intellectual leaders have a product. to sell, and sometimes public intellectuals are seduced into becoming opinion leaders themselves.

Enter amy cuddy cutty is a social psychologist who spent the early years of her career doing the usual academic research on editorial thinking and then, in 2010, published a paper suggesting that one's stance could have effects not only on their psyche but also on your biochemistry by doing a power pose, let's say a person could not only experience feelings of power, but also increase their testosterone and reduce levels of cortisol, the stress chemical in their blood, intimidated before their big sales meeting , do a power pose. pose i have ace and exam power pose trapped in dark souls stand up put your legs in a wide stance and pick up that controller again, boy, it's not just about defeating demons, although Cuddy and her fellow researchers suggested that this simple trick could be Of particular use to those who feel chronically powerless, whether because they are the grump of an organization or because they belong to a social group that, in scientific terms, has been screwed by society.

Two years later, Cuddy would give a Ted Talk on the topic that will become the second most popular platform with over 40 million views, the implication of course is that if you are powerless in society, the power pose can help you rise to the top of the social hierarchy, thus combating inequality and I realized that she had not just pretended. until she made it, she had actually faked it until she became it, also tickets to Ted's talk cost between five and ten thousand dollars. I don't make the rules, while Cuddy is certainly an academic, her success in Ted had thrown her into the role of a thought. leader as author anand garadartas writes in her book winners take all her academic work now she was competing with a budding career as a speaker and a self-help book.

Time magazine named her a revolutionary in 2012. She had a product and that product was the power pose, of course, as an academic, she was interested in other types of research that in theory she would also like to expose to a wide audience, but instead of boost her other work, her Ted fame did the opposite, as artist Garrett points out, despite Cuddy's growing fame, she found herself in a dilemma: she was an academic interested in studying the complexities of prejudice and sexism and, However, his Ted Talk had drowned out everything else he had said and he was now responding to lucrative invitation after invitation to offer his ideas to the lack of interest.

In his other work it wasn't exactly a coincidence that Cudi had made waves on the ideas circuit defined by events like Ted South by Southwest or the Aspen Ideas Festivals and had reached the big leagues of the ideas industry at the time. Authors like Drezner and The Girod Artists note that people like Cudi basically become paid intellectuals for the kind of people who can dish out 10 grand to attend a Ted Talk in the first place. Once you've impressed your wealthy audience, you can give more talks to executives or staff at goldman sachs facebook or google and there's a reason these organizations weren't interested in further cuddy research their bottom line the audiences with the that cudi spoke and those who paid him lucratively wanted to hear only certain types of messages that were disruptive but not disruptive to their own place in the world the googles facebooks and goldman sachs of the world are interested in hiring someone like cuddy as long as when your message is a win-win power pose is a safe solution to saying sexism in the workplace no complex changes have been made to the company culture to occur and most importantly no one has to lose money, so What especially moved such audiences, Eurodartus writes, was the interpretation of social problems as unintimidating, digestible now, Cuddy is not a lone wolf, she exists among a bunch of names that you probably recognize those who write.

Books that end up in airports give talks at big conferences and are referenced by important people doing important things and their soul comes from corporate benefactors who like their win-win mentality and this is not without consequences. Professor Gotham Mukunda of Harvard Business School argues that Wall Street clings to power, but by promoting ideas that promote the rightness of that power, they reward those who agree with them and punish those who don't as often. . Sinclair said it is difficult to get a man to understand something, but his salary depends on not understanding it. If the result can be an entire society distorted to serve the interests of its most powerful group, we can also compare it to someone like Cheryl Sandberg, who wanted to offer a win-win solution to sexism by encouraging women to rely, of course, on academics serious included understand that these problems are too complicated to have quick solutions but complexity is not what interests the ideas industry cuddy is not walking through the door of the coca-cola center for civil and human rights, which is a real thing for asking tough questions about why union leaders at his South American bottling plants have repeatedly disappeared, but he could get a nice paycheck for explaining to his progress boss how workers can grow personally by feeling safer.

Cudi is an interesting example precisely because she seems so self-aware. These issues have become a fascinating topic to document in Gerhardis's book, but Cuddy's introspection is not universally present in the many opinion leaders who talk to anyone who can write a $50,000 check and make no mistake, that's actually what they pay some of them. Historian Niall Ferguson reportedly received between 50,000 and 75,000 per speech. Malcolm Gladwell also receives over 50,000 per speech. And if he were mad because Hillary Clinton was getting $200,000 to talk to a bunch of Wall Street executives, that's common practice for tons of politicians, including all the exes. presidents like george w bush and bill clinton, with the rare exception of jimmy carter, it's not like every idea any of these people have had is bad, while we could say they get paid, who cares, it creates a perverse incentive So that intellectuals and former politicians do not rock the boat too much unless they want to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, this incentive also creates an echo chamber of ideas paid for and consumed by the people who run the world as Gyrodardus writes that money can free to top thought leaders at institutions and colleagues who might otherwise provide them with some form of intellectual control while turning their ideas into advertisements rather than freelance work.

One consequence of an academic receiving these massive payments like Ferguson is that he doesn't have to please his editors, for sure. like heck, it doesn't have to please academics, it has to please corporations and high net worth individuals, what's more, Cuddy's power posing research wasn't very good, just like good science, someone tried to replicate their findings, they failed their co-author, they even repudiated the study. The point is, this isn't the kind of thing the ideas industry cares about: they want executive-feel-good bits, not objective science, what we're left with is a whole universe of incredibly smart people who don't have no incentive to criticize the status quo.They have gone from being critics of everything, like a public intellectual, to opinion leaders who are evangelists of ideas that are not too disruptive for Silicon Valley, as Dresner writes.

Ted talks are designed for thought leaders to appeal to plutocrats in less than 20 minutes, fortunately they are short. Perfect format for potential sponsors Rich workers are busy people who operate on a compressed schedule You have certainly come across many trendy ideas secreted by the ideas industry and its corporate benefactors The very real and cool practice of mindfulness meditation has been Stripped of anything that might interfere with worker productivity, as we discussed in our episode on the topic, Malcolm Gladwell's idea of ​​ten thousand hours has come under scrutiny for being completely wrong. Then there is something like the 4-hour work week that promises your regular economic output if you only work 4 hours. pay little for personal assistance abroad, of course, Ted Talks and lecture gigs are not writing Neil Degrasse Tyson's bad opinions on philosophy or a legion of YouTube creed-filled rage, but the public sphere of ideas is being injected by a constant stream of Ted heads leading to superficial takes. that they are easy targets for long invectives we are left debating with a torrent of garbage instead of quality ideas and the pressures that cudi feels is the same pressure that is put on intelligent people who seek to be heard but we will get there it also gives the incentive people once they have risen to prominence to close themselves off from criticism thomas friedman has stated that he can basically write whatever he wants i'm in this terrifying and enviable position he said i can go to my editor and tell him i want to write a book, here it is the check, don't you want to know what it is?

But the public speaking circuit isn't even the scariest source of our portfolio of junk ideas, so we have to resort to thinking. American think tanks began to emerge in the early 1900s, when people began to wonder if the governor's drinking buddy was perhaps less equipped to deal with trade policy than some kind of expert. These think tanks claim to be non-partisan, although they certainly had their own ideologies. Some of them still exist today, such as the Council on Foreign Relations which publishes Foreign Affairs and the Brookings Institute, whose goal is to analyze public policy issues at the national level, as Dresner writes, they were there to help government bureaucrats work. together with them at the same time they were funded by the very rich, the Carnegies and the Rockefellers of the world, while the think tanks were never some kind of perfect organization.

The events of recent decades have cemented its position as a way for people with a lot of money to launder. ideas to politicians and the general public, while the new model could be exemplified by the conservative Heritage Foundation under former Senator Jim Demint, it has since gained popularity among liberal and progressive think tanks. Deminch was very good at fundraising, but most notable was that he had his staff review all inheritance documents to make sure they fit the think tank's official policy. It was Heritage's success that would convince people like billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler to write a $20 million check to John Podesta to create the liberal center.

For American Progress, like its conservative counterparts, the Center for American Progress is about promoting a certain worldview, not creating rigorous studies or thinking, as the director of the competitive enterprise institute told an interviewer, groups like ours, how we gain credibility, we have a very strong point of view and we have never deviated from that point of view while dealing with incredibly complex issues like poverty alleviation and fiscal policy. It wasn't the facts that drove their conclusion, but rather their pre-existing beliefs, as author David Callahan summarizes to the think tank. was invented in the 20th century to offer objective analysis of complex issues, although think tanks now often operate as motherships for ideological movements on both the left and the right, these think tanks don't just think in a bubble, they are a huge part influential.

In American politics, for example, changes were made to the federal welfare system in 1996, after millions of dollars were invested in research, arguing that much social spending only worsened poverty and, as Callaghan points out, the vision of foreign policy behind the Iraq war was created in part by a think tank, the blueprint for the new American century In another example, the United Arab Emirates gave large sums of money to centrist think tanks like the Middle East Institute. If think tanks were once a way to provide independent expertise to governments, they have become a way for a donor. even a foreign government to influence policymakers you've probably been exposed to even paid for ideas while watching TV on YouTube or browsing Facebook, for example, public opposition to a 2015 Iran nuclear deal skyrocketed after a large influx of advertising dollars from interest groups and think tanks, if disruptors and opinion leaders seem so attractive, it could be because many have sensed a kind of intellectual bankruptcy around the world lately;

It seems like everyone is rushing to present their own facts and figures that tell their side of the story exactly. lead to a kind of factual nihilism my facts are objective and yours are created by some shill funded by george soros and the existence of think tanks is very likely to fuel this problem, not that we could all be on the same page otherwise but think tanks have disguised ideological propaganda as objective studies to return to our quote from Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it, this is the marketplace of ideas in which one seeks to become a public intellectual. must deal unless they are willing to change their views, they are unlikely to survive in a think tank, they could get a job at a university, yet the editor's doom model encourages them not to interact with the public and instead double down on writing for an audience of a few dozen specialists and then there's the internet in the midst of think tanks, Ted bosses and countless paid outlets, there are podcast hosts, political commentators, Twitch streamers and vloggers Eager to impart wisdom, but these thinkers are not just thinking in a vacuum, they are developing intellectual brands.

It is the brands of people like Amy Cuddy that allow them to continue winning speaking contracts or the brands of columnists like Paul Krugman or Barry Weiss. those who rack up book deals, while in some sense this is nothing new, some unique challenges are faced among today's aspiring intellectuals there is a growing sense that intellectuals of all stripes are cynically producing knowledge with a certain agenda in mind and if you're looking for what's coming out of policy institutes, think tanks and the speaking circuit, you're not there. The misguided general distrust of mainstream ideas, coupled with a diminishing faith in government institutions, appears to have attracted us many of us toward dishonest outside commentators and public intellectuals.

When everything is broken, it makes a lot of sense to seek an outside perspective. Elon Musk, as a thinker, is precisely attractive. Because America's infrastructure is crumbling, maybe you like how he's trying to revolutionize transportation or maybe you think he's deeply misguided, but most probably agree that the problems he's addressing are problems to begin with. , Bill Gates, both the public intellectual and the person who funnels money into intellectual endeavors. that fit his view of the world may receive a lot of praise and praise precisely because of our dwindling public health infrastructure, but what's going on with Neil?

If the marketplace of ideas loves one thing, it's competition, and if you're looking to create an intellectual brand, then we have to compete with the rest, as David Carr wrote in 2012, the now-old rounds of credibility in small magazines and newspapers, hard, menial jobs as we learn that the business has been eliminated, replaced by a social media heat algorithm and traction from blogs, social media, especially Twitter. and Facebook have made it possible to very easily quantify the currency of an idea through equity participation. If they retweet me more, they listen to me more and I am winning in the ideas industry on my way to closing deals.

New York Times columns and lucrative speaking engagements, and while this might be the pinnacle of the marketplace of ideas, it also exposes a problem with that marketplace. Markets are great at finding the balance between supply and demand. It can really help me decide how to price my 80 potatoes so I can sell them all, but this mathematical equation doesn't solve the truth, but it does find out exactly how many people want to retweet neil degrasse tyson complaining that a marriage story should be called a story of divorce the free market of ideas often overvalues ​​brand-name intellectuals who have long given up on being insightful dresner explores how many intellectuals have decided to hire staff who go so far as to outsource the writing or research of their work, fareed zakaria, for For example, you have a team of eight people to run your show and write your columns.

Neil Ferguson has a full-time researcher and college students to help you, and in the end it can lead to a serious decline in quality. Intellectuals are terrible at managing subordinates Dresner argues appropriately In 2012 Zecario was accused of plagiarism after cutting and pasting from a New Yorker essay in 2015 there were dozens of such accusations against him that had piled up, it should be no surprise that the Most of the dialogue that occurs on YouTube or Twitter is the definitive solution that no one is looking for solid ideologies. to criticize they are looking for idiots making seemingly bizarre claims about wild pigs or elon musk making bad predictions about kova deaths youtube commenters are looking for the

dumb

est and most outrageous thing to make a video about to absorb easy views we demand it and supply it, it also fuels a market for good stuff, in fact from people like Neil Degrasse Tyson who can complain incessantly that we all misuse the word awesome and on the other hand there are people like Michael who can't wait to leave a concise answer. about how silly his opinions on Twitter are, at the same time as sociologist Will Davies writes that the truth has become a kind of war zone that is not very good at finding the truth.

The truth, according to him, comes from dialogue and consensus, not from a strange fetishization of conflict and debate. When scientists, for example, are trying to create a coveted vaccine, the guy yelling at me debating his theory of microscopic minions is not the missing piece of the scientific puzzle, there are certainly still public intellectuals out there and, like all things, there are good and bad. but the really scary thing is how difficult it is to navigate where the good information is, even as a chronically online millennial. I can't help but wonder about every item that appears in my newsfeed.

Is it some intellectual leader shouting into the void? Will it be an intellectual leader? paid for by a think tank study, but what do you think has ruined intellectual discourse with the rise of the thought leader? Twitter makes any search for objective truth impossible, let us know in the comments. Many thanks to our sponsors for all their support, hit the subscribe button like you. We are retweeting Degrass Tyson's bad take and as always peace.