>Anti-intellectualism is a profound skepticism or hostility toward science, higher education, and critical thought, often viewing intellectuals as detached elites . Driven by populist politics, religious dogma, and economic anxiety, it manifests as rejection of evidence and scientific consensus. It undermines democratic decision-making by prioritizing emotional narratives over expert analysis
I would say that there is another possibility to this. Experts and Expert opinions are susceptible to the same problem of social media echo-chambers[0].
Where new ideas and thought tend to be rejected because experts tend to rely too strongly in positions established over the course of a carrier.
So the concept of anti-intellectualism is not solely based on emotional responses. But also based on this concept of creating too much absolute certainty about a situation that doesn't always exist. People have a tendency to reject scientific basis of some information because of this echo-chamber as this dilemma tends to ignore other factors that are not well known. Also scientific pursuits have the possibility of being game by bad actors.
[0]: https://truenorthoutreach.com/the-science-of-echo-chambers-h...
uduni•1h ago
But that dynamic is way less true in other areas. People generally write code to build useful products, not for fun. As a software engineer who uses AI to write 100% of my code these days, I can tell you that LLMs are not replacing my reasoning at all. They are replacing the menial parts of the job (memorizing syntax, reading documentation, finding relevant examples... Essentially "plumbing"). This leaves much MORE room for creativity and reasoning in software development.
Every dev I know is experiencing this... The job requires way more deep thinking and architectural creativity now. Devs who lean on LLMs to think for them are getting fired, as AI slop is so easy to spot.