Is There a New Geek Anti-Intellectualism?

Larry Sanger writes "Geeks are supposed to be, if anything, intellectual. But it recently occurred to me that a lot of Internet geeks and digerati have sounded many puzzlingly anti-intellectual notes over the past decade, and especially lately. The Peter Thiel-inspired claim that college is a waste of time is just the latest example. I have encountered (and argued against) five common opinions, widely held by geeks, that seem headed down a slippery slope. J'accuse: 'At the bottom of the slippery slope, you seem to be opposed to knowledge wherever it occurs, in books, in experts, in institutions, even in your own mind.' So, am I right? Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?"

Comments

Paradigm shift

[peacefinder]

Don't confuse anti-academicism with anti-intellectualism. People are just as interested in learning as they ever were, but the monopoly on higher education held by the university system for the last couple centuries is crumbling in the face of the freer exchange of ideas offered by the internet.

Universities are in the content delivery and certification business. They're suffering the same internet-related issues as other content delivery systems as other options become viable. (Khan Academy, anyone?) But worse for them, they've allowed their certification standards to steadily be weakened, while at the same time raising their prices far faster than inflation. Faced with paying ridiculous prices for weak degrees when free options abound, it's hardy surprising that many choose to opt out.

Where is the anti-intellectualism?

[Toonol]

The Peter Thiel-inspired claim that college is a waste of time is just the latest example.

I think you should be concerning yourself about whether college may be showing signs of anti-intellectualism. I think you could make some strong arguments that it is, and that its importance and utility has diminished.

Re:False Premmise

[obarel]

It didn't take long to start discussing the definition of a geek.

Any what is the definition? Are you saying that someone who spends all his time sitting in a library and reading every book about insects is not a geek? On the other hand, if you spend all your money and free time trying to build your own wind turbine then you're also a geek.

What is the conclusion? Either there is no definition, or any definition is broad enough to be useless.
One thing is clear: Chuck Norris is not a geek.

Re:False Premmise

[AK Marc]

I think the larger point is that spending 4 years in college doesn't make someone a geek,

Given that college is considered an intellectual pursuit, and geeks look down on people with college as having been "spoon fed" and it can't make one more geeky (I'm a geek with an MBA, so fuck you anti-intellectual geeks), it seems you are not disagreeing with the premise that geeks are anti-intellectual. The only exception to the "geeks look down on those with degrees" I've seen here is that engineering degrees are tolerated because they are required to be engineers, which is inherently geeky.

But then, I've found that the collection of "nerds" here (it is news for nerds after all) is not well representative of the nerds/geeks I've encountered in real life. And I'd say that geeks are anti-intellectual because so many geeks are inherently bad at school (a geek is a free-form learner and doer, and schooling is the opposite of free-form learning) and there is some jealousy between those who just can't do schooling and those who have completed a higher level. I know more than one geek millionaire that dropped out of college (and not in the "had an idea so I quit" sense, but the "failed all my classes so they didn't let me back in" sense) and went to work in tech. It wasn't that they weren't capable of learning all that college had to teach, but that they weren't capable of completing the classes in the structured environment required. Since a "real geek" would fail out of college (according to the geeks that fail or don't even try) then those that go on to get degrees must not be "real geeks."

And thus, anti-intellectualism is linked to geek-ness.