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Dontknownothin's avatar

Overall I'd say that intellectuals are MORE susceptible to conformity manipulations. PhDs and MDs have done nothing but conform to attain the highest levels of their fields.

How do you get into a PhD program? Good grades and acceptable ideas. How do you get good grades? Absorb the information and regurgitate it. How do you get acceptable ideas? Believe what you're told. This occurs at every level of education. So what happens when you inject cancerous social ideas into that information stream and then grade students on that material? You get intellectuals who are well credentialed but can't think. Since credentials are proxy for intelligence, those who have no way of assessing the information themselves listen to the "experts" with credentials and those experts simply believe what they're told to believe.

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Casey Preston's avatar

I agree. Also, intellectuals worth in society is entirely predicated on their ability to convince other people that they “know” the answer. Non- intellectuals might be willing to change their mind because they never pretended to know in the first place. When an intellectual changes their mind or admits they don’t know, they’ve just admitted that they are not good at their job. And US society is becoming more and more overrun with intellectuals. Manufacturing and trades are being dismissed. Kids are being taught that being an “activist” is a career. I agree with EGM that the woke authoritarianism is just a natural outcome of a technocratic society.

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John Cougar Misanthrope's avatar

Outside-the-box thinking is punished, not rewarded, in academia, the military, and most spheres of business. Advancement requires promoting the narrative, not challenging it, ad infinitum. The original commenter's observation regarding Ph.Ds and M.D.s is illustrative.

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Geowhizz's avatar

Einstein, initially clerked in a Swiss patent office. Was where he developed his early theories. Maybe we wouldn’t have nukes if he’d landed a job at a prestigious indoctrination spot where free thinking vas verboten.

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Debbie Beatty's avatar

Absolutely. The longer one spends inside the brainwashing apparatus posing as education in this country, the more compliant and unthinking one becomes. Just look at how the overwhelming majority are of doctors enthusiastically bought the narrative.

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Rafael's avatar

"So what happens when you inject cancerous social ideas into that information stream and then grade students on that material?"

Glad you brought this point up. In 1984, Yuri Bezmenov, ex-KGB agent, explained fully how our own public education system would be used to INDOCTRINATE the future generations. We're experiencing the results.

https://youtu.be/Z1EA2ohrt5Q

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Maureen Hanf's avatar

Back in the ‘80’s, when I first went to college for being an English literature major; I asked a professor (who worked in my small town) who claimed to have been to Oxford, what he liked about English as a major. He told me “it teaches you how to think.” That has stayed with me since that day, and I think it’s one of the crucial ingredients missing from upper education today.

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