But on a side note - why is it considered funny to frown upon intellectuals who provide picture perfect answers to difficult questions?
I guess it's the same reason why more people watch Honey Boo Boo than Cosmos.
[/QUOTE]
"Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Not that people should be judged for not knowing music theory, but this thread is a very good example of how normal it is for people to reject pretty much everything that's slightly intellectually challenging and just joke about it.
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
It's too bad that this anti-intellectual attitude has taken root so deeply in society, I agree. We've been seeing an 'emancipation if stupidity' over the past decades, where lack of knowledge on a subject has become ever less of a hindrance for voicing an opinion. Scientists are dismissed offhand, and conspiracy theorists with political/ideological agendas are taken at face value. Being ignorant and unwilling to learn is considered a virtue by an ever-increasing section of the population, largely the same people who get excited by politicians like Donald Trump and like-minded individuals in other countries (drunken stockmarket thief Nigel Farage, thinly-veiled neo-nazi Geert Wilders, unveiled neo-nazi Viktor Orban, second-rate dictator Vladimir Putin, etc. I didn't name these people randomly - people who like one generally also like the others). That's a deeply worrying development that threatens the very basis of parliamentary democracy, because if voters don't care about facts and refuse to inform themselves properly, it WILL (not *might*, it WILL) degenerate into mob rule.
However, I don't think we need to get too excited over one documented troll (una999) throwing a slur and one other poster jumping on the band-wagon. The way I see it, we have two "my brain hurts!"-style complaints and at least half a dozen people who did like what they read. If those were the same proportions as with the democratic problem I sketched above, we'd be fine.
Saint Jiub · Member since
Such drama ...
What slur did una999 throw?
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
Ok, even that is too much credit. "One documented troll (una999) who heckled" would be a better phrasing.
