Reverse Intelligence
Since, by general agreement, we reserve the term “artificial intelligence” for non-human entities like computers, Daniel Greenfield was obliged to use the term “manufactured intelligence” to refer to a peculiar intellectual phenomenon.
I would call it reverse intelligence, though I am not certain that that is very much better.
Practitioners of “manufactured intelligence” do not spend their time trying to educate or inform. They excel at making their readers feel like they belong to a class of intellectually superior beings.
Writing on his Sultan Knish blog, Greenfield explains:
Today as never before there is an industry dedicated, not to educating people, but to making them feel smart. From paradigm shifting TED talks to paradigm to books by thought leaders and documentaries by change agents that transform your view of the world, manufactured intelligence has become its own culture.
Manufactured intelligence is the smarmy quality that oozes out of a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni and the rest of the gang who tell you nothing meaningful while dazzling you with references to international locations, political events and pop culture, tying together absurdities into one synergistic web of nonsense that feels meaningful.
Take Barack Obama. He has mastered the art of making other people feel smart… in part because they are smarter than he is, in part because they feel that supporting him makes them part of a group of superior minds:
… we all know that Obama is a genius. We have been told by Valerie Jarrett, by his media lapdogs and even by the great man himself that he is just too smart to do his job. And it's reasonable that a genius would be bored by the tedious tasks involved in running the most powerful nation on earth.
But what is "smart" anyway? What makes Obama a genius? It's not his IQ. It's probably not his grades or we would have seen them already. It's that like so many of the thought leaders and TED talkers, he makes his supporters feel smart. The perception of intelligence is really a reflection.
He continues:
Everyone who encountered him thought that he was smart because he made them feel smart. And that is the supreme duty of the modern liberal intellectual, not to be smart, but to make others feel smart. Genuine intelligence is threatening. Manufactured intelligence is soothing. And those intellectually superior progressives who need to believe that Obama is smart in order to believe that they are smart cannot stop believing in his brains without confronting the illusion of their own intelligence.
Obviously, you cannot make other people feel that they are smart if you are really smart. To practice reverse intelligence you need to be good at acting a role, that is, performing.
It’s a sociological phenomenon. Individuals who consider themselves members of an elite group exchange passwords and hand signals. These have no meaning beyond their ability to demonstrate that one belongs. In some circles you gain membership by tossing around nonsense words like heteronormative.
Greenfield explains:
It constantly invents new terms to provide the enlightened elites with a secret language of Newspeak buzzwords that mean less than the words they are replacing. The buzzwords, Thought Leader and Change Agent, quickly take on cultist overtones and become ways of describing how the group's leaders would like to use power, than anything about the world that they describe.
It’s all about the difference between thinking and feeling. If you are dealing with actual intelligence, you might have to think about what the person is saying. You might have to accept that he knows more than you do. You might even have to put in some effort, that is, some work.
If you are listening to someone who is practicing reverse intelligence, you do not have to think at all. You need to learn how to drop the right words and phrases into a conversation; you need to have the right opinions; you need to feel the right feelings; but that is all. Secure in your feeling that you belong to a superior class of individuals, you can bask in the glow.
It has more to do with enhanced self-esteem than with actually learning anything. Generations of American students have been taught that they are great, no matter what their actual achievements. Accustomed to receiving unearned praise they have lost the habit of thinking and working. They need constant affirmation of their brilliance, because they have always used their feelings as a way to avoid work. Besides, the last thing they want to hear is the truth about how smart they aren’t.
But, as Bob Dylan once famously wrote: “How does it feel?”
Greenfield explains:
It is its assumption of intelligence through compassionate self-involvement, progressive insights derived from an obsession with the self and the sanctification of Third World references, real or imaginary, invoking the spiritual power of the Other, the totem of alien magic, to transcend the rational and the pragmatic. It is upscale Oprah; egotism masquerading as enlightenment, condescension as compassion and soothing quotes as religion.
Those who traffic in reverse intelligence are not interested in doing anything. They are not worrying about solving problems. They are, Greenfield says, more interested in justifying their own positions of power and authority. Believing themselves to possess a superior intelligence,belonging to what Plato called the Guardians, they arrogate to themselves the right to make decisions for the rest of us.
Think of Obamacare.
stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com
Anonymous said... Ahh, so many things to say in support of Greenfield's thoughts here. I work in a profession full of people intoxicated with this kind of nonsense. When it somehow comes out that I'm pretty much an orthodox Roman Catholic Christian, there's a deafening silence. People are agog at how conventional and intellectually vacant I am. They're shocked that I could be so "stupid" and not "think for [my]self." Yes, I have been told these things verbatim. Meanwhile, these same critics lap up TED content with an old-time revival fury. "Did you see the latest TED talk?" is code to assess your level of intelligence and open-minded see, which is just chic conformity.
And think about it: these are the same high-minded, intelligent people who advocate for in-state tuition for illegal aliens at public universities. It may sound good, but it makes no sense whatsoever. That's the kind of thinking that passes for worldliness today.
Tip
January 5, 2014 at 12:18 PM 
Anonymous said... There is an astonishing lack of humility with such people.
January 5, 2014 at 12:26 PM
Anonymous said... One other thing: I suspect that everything Greenfield is talking about is an excellent hypothesis for why atheism is on the rise. It's to create this aura of pseudo-wisdom and rugged individualism. Our modern empirical world demands that spiritual truths conform to scientific proof. But they can't. People who don't understand this see religiosity as crazy talk. After all, intelligence is measured by this supposedly "objective" proof. If you can't prove God, it isn't good form, it's not chic... it leaves one open to ridicule. Meanwhile, talking heads from the manufactured intelligence class prattle on about this nice, cute, tidy view of love and how important it is that we all "love" everyone (as they do, of course). So I then ask them to prove love and I get stunned silence, followed by a change of subject.
I will never forget when an "enlightened" colleague told me that her Sufi teacher is non-denominational. It took everything in my power to not laugh in her face. It's sanitized transcendental self-congratulation masquerading as spiritual openness. It's silly. It gives me great compassion for real Indian yogis who lament that people in the West have co-opted and emptied yoga of it's deep meaning and spiritual value. |
