I'd like to see what a "full-spectrum crackdown" on anti-intellectualism in the US would look like, given that most of its population struggles to discern fact from fiction in the news cycle, healthcare and legal proceedings. The introduction of generative AI has only made that worse, pushing more distrust of any information that didn't come from a source counted among "one of us." Our problem stems from an intentionally poorly educated populace that still heavily relies on idolatry, allowing whatever demagogue with the means to rise and essentially manipulate the masses.

I'm pretty sure, at this point, this was intentional, individuals and orgs with the resources to create finely tuned systemic problems having been at it since the country's inception.

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kotaKat 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Banning TikTok could have been a great first step, but too may people were cooked by the algorithm to stop it.

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zdragnar 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

FWIW, my friend was accused of acting white probably around the year 2000 or so, well before anything algorithmic.

Not to say that tiktok is innocent, but it certainly isn't the root cause.

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ethbr1 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The irony is that TikTok et al. could also be the very solution GP wants, depending on algorithm.

Imagine kids glued to an app that shows them engaging and intellectually-positive content. (Which at that scale could actually be inferred)

Fast social isn't intrinsically evil: recommendation algorithms that maximize engagement at the expense of other social goods are. (Or even that operate blind to them)

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lo_zamoyski 4 days ago | parent [-]

You're ignoring the effect of the medium itself.

Education requires sustained engagement. Books are conducive to that kind of deep engagement with the material. It requires perseverance, an ability to sit with a topic at the expense of indulging all the cheap distractions that may be available to them (the internet furnishes these gladly and easily). TikTok and bite-sized social media is certainly not conducive to that. The train never leaves the station. Social media's very form consists of feeding the impulsive indulgence of distraction. It only produces superficiality and trains the user's attention span to contract, or to never develop in the first place.

Gamifying learning is a fool's errand. Children are easily distracted, because they haven't yet learned discipline. They need something to counteract these urges, like removing the tempting distraction, an environment that is saturated with relationships and habits that enable good behavior and pursuits, or the threat of punishment for straying from good behavior.

	▲	ethbr1 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed in principle, but you're never going to substantially remove distractions from children, because school doesn't control them at home (nor should it) and most parents are too busy to be involved (DIWK). They're going to be bathed in the omnipresent social environment radiation for a large portion of their time. And they're going to form part of their self image and life goals from that. Better to make it as positive as we can. Or at least prevent it from being explicitly anti-intellectual.

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sneak 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Burning books and censoring media has rarely been a path to fostering intellectualism.

You call it an app ban, but really it’s just press censorship.

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eunos 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Media from mainstream to alternative march in tune with pro intellectualism messages. Any works of art that espouse anti intellectualism would be swiftly and immediately canceled (including its authors) without hesitation. Do this for a generation or two minimum.

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boppo1 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Get sydney sweeny to date alec radford, make sure there's lots of PDA.