We probably all do, but I’d argue that this is a bad thing, and we should do our best to examine these untouchable beliefs.
I don’t see how. The conclusion is itself conditional (“it is reasonable to generally assume…”). I listed exceptions to the general conclusion in the same paragraph. The logic of assumptions and rules of thumb is heuristic, not purely deductive.
~Max
Your premises say absolutely nothing about the capacity for critical reasoning of the non-educated. Therefore you can infer absolutely nothing about their relative credibility. You have to make a premise that says something about their credibility, not jump straight to it in your conclusion.
But it’s an invalid argument, so it is not reasonable to assume anything of the sort. That you are couching it as a conditional or an informal argument doesn’t remove the invalidity. It can be reduced to a syllogism, and as a syllogism, it’s an invalid one. That is sufficient to render its use as a rule of thumb also invalid.
This isn’t about the absolute truth of the premises. It’s about thinking that a statement only about the properties of the educated says anything about that of the uneducated (other than the tautological property they both possess).
That leaves aside the legerdemain of jumping from accreditation to credibility as though they were synonymous. That was just sophistry, but not the main fault in the argument.
I don’t think that this is necessarily due to anti-intellecutal prejudice being passed down. I grew up in an extremely pro academic household and town, but I still wouldn’t feel right boasting about my or my child’s (if I had ones) math ability. But that is due to being raised in an pro-humility anti-pride* background. Unless you gladly boast about your sons other achievements and just keep the math skills under wraps I think your fine.
*not using pride in the seven deadly sin sense here, not in the LGBTQ sense.
Even people highly educated on the same subject can reach different conclusions and have different opinions. Jordan Peterson has a lot of opinions on relationships, marriage, raising children, and so on that often make sense as long as you realize they are IDEALS based on his educated OPINIONS. But as much as I would love to never have my kids do anything that makes me dislike them, that’s easier said than done and there are actually a LOT of non-immature, non-delusional reasons for not wanting to have them in the first place.
But I digress.
People have talked a lot about a higher education tending to result in a higher capacity for reasoning and critical thinking, and perhaps that is true. But something that hasn’t really been touched upon is how the higher education system itself often seems to exist to create and perpetuate class-based prejudices.
Outside of profession-based degrees like engineering, accounting, or law, the goal of many students (such that they have one in the first place) often seems to be AVOIDING a job that requires real work. They presume their degree should afford them a job where they can manage or sell or advise or consult. Maybe not right away, but certainly after a few years “paying their dues”. They may understand the work in a sort of abstract way, but the actual “doing” would be performed by employees or outsourced somehow. People looked down upon as “the help”.
IMHO, it’s often why such a high importance is placed on “networking” and “relationship building” and “personal brand”. It’s basically the essence of “class structure”. Yes, we will hire the best of the best straight-A nerds…right after we’ve filled any slots needed by fraternity brothers, prep school chums, lacrosse teammates, and idiot nephews of our best clients.
IOW, people with less formal education aren’t being sneered at because they are less educated or not as “smart” (however you want to define that). They get sneered at because they don’t project the right class signaling cues.
That’s my theory at least.
You could reduce my argument to formal syllogisms, but I think formal syllogisms only recognize universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative, and particular negative. You would have to reduce my defeasible propositions to particulars. If that helps identify my error, have at it:
Main Argument (form: EIO)
- Prejudice is never reasonable. (axiom)
-
Sneering at people with less formal education is generally reasonable.
(form: IAI)
-
Speaking to or about people with less formal education, with the attitude that their opinions are inferior, is generally reasonable.
(form: AII)
- Speaking to or about people who are less credible, with the attitude that their opinions carry less weight (are inferior), is reasonable. (ignoring politeness, this is the axiom of credibility)
- People with less formal education are generally less credible. [Speaking to or about people with less formal education, with the attitude that their opinions carry less weight, is generally speaking to or about people who are less credible, with the same attitude.]
- Therefore, speaking to or about people with less formal education, with the attitude that their opinions are inferior, is generally reasonable.
- Sneering at people with less formal education means speaking to or about them with the attitude that their opinions are inferior. (axiom)
- Therefore, sneering at people with less formal education is generally reasonable.
-
- Therefore, sneering at people with less formal education is generally not prejudice.
(Click premises to expand/collapse a sub-argument. There are caveats that I didn’t write in for the sake of brevity: politeness, specificity of education or credibility to a given topic, explicit exceptions to general rules.)
Regarding point i: it is fallacious to assume someone is wrong because they seem less credible, when the claim does not rest on credibility. That’s ad hominem. There’s a total disconnect between veracity and credibility. But there’s still a place for reasonable contempt when an opinion is less credible. Sneering is a form of contempt or disdain, but it usually isn’t implied that a person is wrong simply because they lack credibility.
Regarding point ii: it follows from: people with more formal education on a given topic are generally more credible on that topic (than people with less education on the topic). This isn’t fallacious denial of the antecedent. Either A is greater than B and B is less than A, or A is not greater than B and B is not less than A.
An Analogy
A is known to have attained a black belt, B is known not to. The black belt attests to A’s martial arts prowess, granted that strictly speaking, it says absolutely nothing about the martial arts prowess of B. But for all practical purposes, I am justified making an initial assumption that A is a more capable fighter than B on account of A’s certificate alone.
This is because the black belt is evidence of capability which the other person lacks. All other things equal, there is more evidence that A is a capable fighter. People with formal martial arts training are probably better martial arts fighters than people without training. The inverse necessarily follows: people without formal training in martial arts are probably less capable than trained martial arts fighters.
People with more formal education on a given topic are generally more credible (on that topic) if and only if people with less formal education (on the topic) are generally less credible (on the topic). Strictly speaking, yes, there are people without formal education who are more credible on a given topic. Or even most topics. Expertise is only one component of credibility, and education is only correlated with expertise. But my conclusion is conditional. I mentioned the expert and genius exceptions already. Sneering at people with less formal education usually isn’t prejudice.
~Max
But this very statement is in and of itself a sign of massive class bias. Sure, like any other oversimplification, there are plenty of formally educated individuals who want an “easy job”, but I think that’s a preference that applies to the majority of people, past, present and future.
To say someone who isn’t in “profession-based degrees” = looking for a free ride is a sneer as well.
Which is to say, there are absolutely people who fit your stereotype, but that’s all it is.
This is the premise you don’t actually state in your original post, which rendered it invalid.
Now you’ve actually stated it, it renders the argument form valid (still wrong, but at least a valid form)
This is you assuming the thing you actually have to show, as a premise.
No, you are not. All you are justified in assuming is A’s ability to pass a test in [Named Martial Art]. It only speaks to an aspect of A’s capability at fighting and says absolutely nothing about B’s. B could be a terrible fighter. B could also be the world champion in [Other Martial Art]. Or been about to take the same grade as A in [Named Martial Art], where he would have done better than A, but not able to afford the test fees. Or been trained in [Named Martial Art] by a wizened old teacher who passed down ancient secret techniques but wasn’t on the Belt Giving Board (gosh, wait, there’s a movie in that…). Or B is just really naturally good at ass-kicking.
You have no basis to infer anything about B’s abilities from only knowing about A’s abilities. You don’t know about B’s lack of ability, only that you don’t know. You need positive statements about B to make a comparison.
In my experience, they’re not rare exceptions. Experts are quite common (at least, in places where formal education wasn’t the norm)
Lastly, not directly addressing the form of your argument, but one premise;
Undergraduate university education for most streams, especially STEM and similar, isn’t a certificate of critical reasoning skill. It’s a certificate of exam passing and fact regurgitation. Original thinking mostly only kicks in at postgrad.
They may not see it as a “free ride”. In many cases, the job might actually be a lot of work. But often that work is abstracted from the people who actually get stuff done. There does seem to be a natural bias for people to assume the type of work they do is more important and work hard at it while minimizing the types of work other people do as beneath them.
And it might not have been clear, but I wasn’t implying that professional degrees are “better”. I often hear a tone of sneering from people who sometimes refer to them as “trades” or “not true academic degrees”. It’s basically that same sense of entitlement that the work is somehow “beneath them”, with a tone of resentment of someone of a “lower station” having the ability to lord that knowledge and expertise over them.
No, he pulls shit out of his ass and pretends it’s science. I watched a video where he argued that the reason we have poor people and always will is that poor people are stupid and we don’t have enough jobs for stupid people. He defined stupid as an IQ of 80 and claimed very few jobs could be done at an IQ of 80. He showed lots of fancy charts and everything to make it look like this is a credible idea.
Here’s a list of jobs you can do with an IQ of 80.
https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx
Jordan Peterson is smart enough to know exactly what con he’s running. He’s presenting false and misleading information here because he wants to make an argument that we as a society shouldn’t even try to do anything about poverty. According to Jordan Peterson, it’s impossible to do anything about poverty… People are just too stupid. He’s a bad person and a bad psychologist, not to mention a great example of conservatives sneering at the uneducated.
Nitpick, but IMHO there’s a big difference between having a college DEGREE and having a college EDUCATION. You’re right, all a degree says is that you attended school and passed your tests. But if that’s all you got out of your degree, then either you or the school (or both) have failed.
Obviously it is very easy to put your degree on a resume and much harder to show that you actually learned from it; but in my experience people demonstrate whether they have these skills pretty dang quick once you start working with them.
Since we’re both arguing from a very subjective and generalized sampling, I don’t think we’d every be able to move much past an IMHO level of certainty. Which is -fine-, but I’ll still lean towards (in the US at least) less emphasis on class, but often more on income. Not that there isn’t correlation between the two.
My wife (who just finished her PhD) is somewhat familiar with the feelings between the various disciplines in terms of “purity” and “rigor”. She’s an experimentalist, and while I wouldn’t call it sneering, had less respect for pure theory types, who could just wave off on things like “well, if we assume x = 1, then my theory works!” But for her, if you don’t have data to show that x likely = 1, then it’s pointless. And there was a degree of reverse dislike for the “lab rats” as well.
But is this class / education based prejudice, or just an all too human feeling that your personal specialty is the best and no one else understands?
On a more direct comparison, her advisor, the current chair of the physics department, had a minor plumbing issue last year. He tried to fix it. It became a major plumbing issue. A professional came in and fixed it, who had (AFAICT) no formal education, but plenty of experience, and fixed the issue in a couple hours of hard dirty work.
There apparently wasn’t any sneering, but possibly some rueful head-hanging - not only could the PhD not fix it, but made it worse. And the apparent cost of the repair indicated that the man who spent 10+ years getting their formal education and 20+ as a teacher makes a fraction of the money that the plumber does.
Anyway - humans are a fuzzy topic. I think it’s closer to the truth that we can and do admire those who are capable of things we are not, whether it be practical/professional skills, or deeply analytical ones. The people who, regardless of class and education, dismiss the efforts of others as beneath them or unworthy are an issue regardless of the side of the educational divide.
And such sneers pale in comparison to those who manipulate information in order to profit from such divisions or any individuals ignorance in a specific field.
Pig Farmers and Astrophysicists don’t want each others jobs, but if those two were campaigning for Alderman in my district I would pick the Pig Farmer IF I was one as well. Intelligence and education are important but so is identity and trust.
This is what conservatives are talking about, I think, when the terms ‘East or West Coast Liberal Elite’ and such come up.
JBP makes sense if you realise that every single action he takes is to further a Confidence Scam with the ultimate goal of grifting money from people.
I’ll say first of all that I have the same outlook as @bump in that I have no patience with those who deny very clearly established facts and/or embrace nonsensical conspiracy theories, which is to say that I hold ignorance in contempt, not lack of education. The two are not the same. I believe there is significant overlap, though, in that education helps to develop critical thinking skills and a better understanding of how the world works, and in particular how science works.
That said, I see several problems with your reasoning here. It’s quite likely true that many of the talking heads and lobbyists who promulgate climate change denial have college degrees, and indeed off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen who have PhDs. So what? I’m certain that the majority of them know that they’re lying, but find that their lies bring in a lucrative income and in many cases ego-gratifying fame. A prime example would be Richard Lindzen, a former atmospheric physicist at MIT, whose public statements in support of AGW denial (but never his scientific publications) were often so ludicrous that there is no possible way he could not know they were deceitful.
The real problem is ultimately not the promulgators, but the dupes, because it’s the dupes who cast the millions of votes that elect AGW-denying politicians and empower them to enact policies hostile to the environment. Many of those politicians are also fairly well educated and probably know better but consider climate change denial to be a prerequisite to electability on the Republican slate, as Mitt Romney found out when he had to back-pedal his stance of even mildly acknowledging the reality of AGW.
Among those voting for these politicians, there are some who have financial vested interests in avoiding climate change action like emissions reductions, and many who simply vote Republican as a matter of ideology. But there are very large numbers who are easily duped by professional AGW deniers because they don’t understand how science works and lack critical thinking skills, and I would suggest that the vast majority of those have low levels of formal education. I would also suggest that these would tend to be the same folks who believe COVID vaccines contain tracking chips and make you magnetic.
In short, I believe there is a correlation between this kind of ignorance and lack of college-level education. I don’t know how strong the correlation is, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than can be attributed to random chance.
I’m not so sure. The problem of “bread and circuses” has been around for a couple thousand years at least, and in a sense, this is that updated for the 21st century. One side is warning of a path that requires some degree of sacrifice, cost, and trouble, while the other is in essence saying “Go ahead, keep on doing what you’re doing, it’s ok!”. Why? Because it gets them votes, and keeps the proletariat/hoi polloi/proles/dupes happy.
And let’s not mince words- it’s not like there’s this big divide between the “dupes” and whatever your term for the uneducated working class is. They’ve always been that, and largely their problems have been the same all along. And largely people of any socioeconomic class have very short temporal and geographic thought horizons- they don’t think very far away or far ahead in time. It’s all very short-term and close to home. Places like Alaska or Benin may as well be Oz, Barsoom, or the Island of Sodor for al they know and care, especially when it comes to political topics.
It’s the breathtaking cynicism of the educated politicians, talking heads, and lobbyists that is the real problem- they’d rather let it all burn down/heat up and make a buck in the short turn, than make inconvenient decisions and secure the future for their children, country, and species. They’ll happily take advantage of that to in essence portray the people who are trying to do something about AGW as people who will disrupt and diminish their lifestyle, and cost more in the bargain. Cars will be slower, washing machines/detergents will take longer and not work as well, and so forth, AND this stuff will cost us more. And for what? So the liberals can solve a problem that doesn’t exist! Or so they say.
Can’t deny the truth of that. But it’s rather a chicken-and-egg feedback loop. It’s the gullible dupes that allow these frauds to pull in the bucks and sometimes even gain some degree of fame. At the same time, the frauds reinforce the AGW denial message and pull in even more dupes.
The only way to break the feedback loop is with irrefutable evidence backed by solid science, but science is hard for the uneducated who have no understanding of the rigors of the scientific method, and are easily persuaded with arguments like “climate scientists are just scaremongering to get more grant money”. The IPCC assessments are overwhelmingly persuasive in their presentation of the evidence about the science, the impacts, and the essential mitigation strategies around climate change. But even the summary reports are fairly long and contain a lot of big words, whereas the fraudsters tailor their simplistic lies to the appropriately low intellectual level for the rubes to take in. In a more enlightened, educated world, these fraudsters would have no credibility and no audience.
I agree, but I’m not so sure that actually accomplishing mass scientific education to the point where the masses will be able to discern what’s bullshit and what’s not, is actually achievable.
I think the next worst problem is that the other side has built a large chunk of “don’t trust government”, “don’t trust people who think they’re smarter than you”, and “your opinion is just as valid as their facts” into their rhetoric. So these people are out there distrusting all reasonable information sources saying AGW is a thing, and then are being told that their own opinions (carefully shaped by the GOP) are equally valid as those of a person with a PhD in climatology.
It’s every bit as moronic as the notion that “parents always know what’s best for their child” No, they don’t always know, not when you get outside of how to deal with your child’s individual personality, and into larger issues like immunization, spanking, education, etc… But the same forces are pushing that line of BS because they can then use that to pummel school board candidates who “think they know better” and the like.
It’s the assault on authority/authoritative sources that is the problem here, and having constructed a whole alternate news/information distribution apparatus that’s not held to factual account at all is a huge issue IMO.
Oh, man, you’ve really captured a classic one here – “your opinion is just as valid as their facts” is absolutely the epitome of uneducated ignorance about science and medicine.
It’s not so much “mass scientific education” that’s so essential, but rather, the ability to distinguish between trustworthy information sources and those that regularly spout bullshit disinformation. The article below is tangentially related to this, although the context is foreign propaganda. It calls this ability “media literacy” and cites the need to strengthen this skill in the general public:
But, here’s the rub. Many of those with less formal education and/or critical thinking skills which are traditionally but not universally taught with higher education define “trustworthy information sources” as ones that support the viewpoints they already hold.
Fully granting that formally educated individuals can and do make that same error, but the whole anti-Vax, Qanon, Trump-witch-hunt societies are quite literally built around the “Don’t trust your eyes / anyone else, just listen to me!”
Facts are quite literally a dirty word for these groups and many others, and they refuse to accept them, when they see them personally, much less when they’re being released by parties they’ve been taught to distrust.