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Originally posted by G:


Do you see the difference between "All Australians" and "Australians?" I only see a very subtle difference, one that allows someone to paint an entire nation, culture, race, society with a broad brush and then deny it.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

You want us to join you and solve - Global warming? Overpopulation? The ongoing mass extinction? Human aggression? Anything at all important?



Or do you want us to help you masturbate to your little obsession?
Eeewwwww ....

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Like your little fantasy is real. HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...


Btw - I've done more to help the planet than you've ever done about anything at all. I guarantee it. Total up family and volunteer work as well, and you'd have a hard time catching up to all the real things I've changed.

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But hey, just go back to your mom's basement, and keep repeating to yourself you're in service of a Great Cause. Because it's easier to immerse yourself in an ego-stroking fantasy of your own creation than deal with the real world.

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your lojik iz flawed. 1. You doing sum good duznt = my project iz bad.

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2. Wen did it bekum a competition? You are saying 'my good deedz are better than your good deedz so I dont hav to do anything.'

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
JO753, YOUR logic is flawed.

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Because, in your humble opinion, YOUR project is SO important that unless people buy into it they're "conservative" and "illogical" and "anti-intellectual"... despite the fact that they may be progressive, logical, and intellectual on every other project except yours.

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So in your humble opinion, YOUR project is SO important that whether or not someone participates in it or not trumps whether or not they're doing ANYTHING ELSE in politics, the environment, inter-relationships, food safety, education, war, or the myriad of OTHER things people might be doing on their own behalf and that of others.

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And your single-minded (some might say monomaniacal*) focus on phonetic spelling reveals itself right here

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I think that you're looking for a key that will unlock a new and better way of thinking for people, and while I agree that people need a new and better way of thinking (or maybe just a reliable way of engaging the thought process) I'm fairly certain that it'll take a lot more than phonetic language to get there.

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In fact, the ability to add new words ... to make concrete new ideas ... seems to have enhanced our ability to pass along stupid, baseless ideas, as well as useful ones.

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JO753, YOUR logic is flawed.- SIGNY

Severely! But less than most other peeplz-JO

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Because, in your humble opinion, YOUR project is SO important that unless people buy into it they're "conservative" and "illogical" and "anti-intellectual"... despite the fact that they may be progressive, logical, and intellectual on every other project except yours.- SIGNY

My opinion iznt humble. I tried the humble thing long ago and it duznt work. You gotta be bold and loud or you will be ignored.irony.

Like Mal sed to Safron "50 odd planets spinning round the Verse & not a 1 haz ever been inherited by the meek". -JO

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In the case uv the Nooalf Revolution, there iz no reazon to be agenst it. Being agenst sumthing without having a lojikl objection iz quintessential conservatizm. - JO

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So in your humble opinion, YOUR project is SO important that whether or not someone participates in it or not trumps whether or not they're doing ANYTHING ELSE in politics, the environment, inter-relationships, food safety, education, war, or the myriad of OTHER things people might be doing on their own behalf and that of others.-SIGNY

No. You can do other thingz. I'm just saying therez an opportunity here for anybody to help that takes very little effort and time for potentialy huje benefits.-JO

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Everybody needz to consider their ability to shape the future, not just billionairez. Doing sumthing pozitiv, even if its not sumthing that directly affects you.

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And your single-minded (some might say monomaniacal*) focus on phonetic spelling reveals itself right here- SIGNY

I believe we'v gon over this point befor.- JO

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You dont win the Olympics by casually training on weekendz wen you dont hav anything else to do. The obsessed guy (sum mite say monomaniacal) with the most talent will take the gold. The less talented obsessed maniacs will take silver, bronz, and all the other plasez. The non-obsessed weekend guyz are not in the competition. At best, they are in the audiens thinking "I couda dun that".

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I think that you're looking for a key that will unlock a new and better way of thinking for people, and while I agree that people need a new and better way of thinking (or maybe just a reliable way of engaging the thought process) I'm fairly certain that it'll take a lot more than phonetic language to get there.-SIGNY

True. Humanz on averaj are barely better than animalz at thinking, and thats only bekuz uv the small % uv outstanding jeniusez. Most are basicly herd beasts who benefit by being compatible with the teknolojy being created.

The brain power iz there. The software iz crap. Nooalf iz better software.
Where do you think America woud be now if English alwayz had fonetic spelling? The fact that other nationz hav fonetic systemz and havent dun az well duznt mean bad systemz work better for society.

You talk about China. It wuz stagnent for 5,000 yirz and their low literacy rates were a key part uv that. You probably know the story uv the Emperor who executed an advizor who segjested they create an alfabetic system. -JO

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In fact, the ability to add new words ... to make concrete new ideas ... seems to have enhanced our ability to pass along stupid, baseless ideas, as well as useful ones.- SIGNY

Dont you think it helps the spred uv nonsens if peepl dont expect thingz to make sense? That emperor sure did! - JO

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Hmmm... are you sure?

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You didn't recognize irony.

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I know some very conscientious progressive scientists who still believe in god.

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Everybody's got a bug in their thinking somewhere. Even you.

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The first is that there are things that can be done. Other than being generally supportive of the idea, what is there to do?

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The other part is that it takes little effort. That's where an explanation of what there is to do would help, then people could judge the effort for themseveles.

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The third is the potentially huge benefit. That is where I think I disagree the most. I see a real benefit ... I watched my MIL, husband, and daughter struggle with spelling (for different reasons) and I think written English is a bear to learn. But I don't see a potentially huge benefits, because phonetic languages have not proven themselves to be able to deliver on that.

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I wholeheartedly agree. But many people are ALREADY doing something positive, just not in your area of concern.

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No, I didn't.

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I guess people have two flaws in their thinking, but I think it's hard-wired in,...

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You're standing in a theater lobby at which tickets are still being sold, and you lose your $20 ticket. Would you buy another one and still go into the theater?

You're standing in the same lobby with your $20 ticket, and you lose a $20 bill out of your pocket. Would you still go into the theater?

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Dont you think it helps the spred uv nonsens if peepl dont expect thingz to make sense? That emperor sure did! - JO

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"You talk about China. It wuz stagnent for 5,000 yirz and their low literacy rates were a key part uv that."

During that time Europe and Western Russia were inhabited by warring tribes that had no written language at all, and then later by illiterate fiefdoms - despite the fact that Europe adopted various forms of phonetic alphabets.

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There are many people who've looked at this question - how did Western Europe make such rapid technological advancements in the last 200 years? None that I've read attributed any outcome to the style of alphabet.

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In any case, off of the topic of phonetic alphabets and on to human mentation, I'm going to posit that a large fraction of what we 'know' comes through language, irrespective of the form of our alphabet, or whether we even have one.

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The form of the alphabet has, in my opinion, less to do with the human experience than the color of the decoration on a cake has to do with the flavor of the batter. In other words - it's completely irrelevant.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
This idea that the simplification of spelling will increase literacy is kind of a meh concept.

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Originally posted by JO753:

It may be soon. Wen computerz can dezine new stuf with no human help, it wont matter if Joe Sixpak can read or not. Too bad for him, but the world wont spin any slower. Up until then, we are dependent to sum degree on each person being able to pull hiz own wate on averaj. A guy driving a forklift who cant read the warning that woud hav stopped him from starting the chain reaction that destroyz a factory will hav a negativ net productivity for hiz life.


http://www.nooalf.com

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In the main we Australians get along pretty well, as long as we don't try to talk to one another about anything complicated. In that event, the name-calling begins. We're at each other's throats.

Then we try and put things back on an even keel, show that we're a top bunch of blokes and move on as best we can. Because what we really want from, say, the Adam Goodes imbroglio is the same thing we want from asylum seekers and climate change: we want the trouble to go away and for everything to be lovely.

Perhaps the most pressing question facing Australian society isn't: are we racists? Because, no matter the call for a national discussion, we're not ready to pull that one apart.

Rather, the question we need to answer first: are we just a bunch of anti-intellectual hicks who can't see beyond labels and slogans?
Advertisement

Psychology Today published a piece in June that argued anti-intellectualism was the cause of social dysfunction in the United States. To wit, mass shootings, black shootings, climate change denial and the rise of Donald Trump.

It was a sneering and over-reaching piece and the response to it was loudly divided.

When boiled down, the intellectual is simply someone – trakky daks and a paucity of teeth are no barrier – who applies critical thinking to a problem. It takes patience and practice but it's not rocket science.

Yet the view of the intellectual as an airy pontificator remains, and one has to wonder to what extent this serves to discourage people from putting on their thinking caps.

Sure, we may be a clever country as far as scientific and medical innovation go, but we're not fostering generous, creative thinkers who can lead us out of the moral swamp (asylum seekers, Indigenous history and identity, radicalisation of unhappy youth).

Reaction sucks up vastly more oxygen in the public sphere than reflection. And for reflection to do its work, raw-scab opinions must be put aside, at least for the moment, while other possibilities are considered. Not happening. How come?

Five years ago, former Labor MP and bright boy Lindsay Tanner wrote about the value of intellectual life: "Perhaps it's one of those things that should be restricted to consenting adults in private. Few politicians would own up to being an intellectual. In the present age of vacuous populism, intellectual means elitist, theoretical and out of touch. I suspect a new version of Barry Jones would struggle to win community support."

Indeed, 20 years ago, Barry Jones was asked to name the nation's top intellectuals but only managed 17 names.

Joy Damousi? is professor of history in the University of Melbourne's School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, whose research includes the history of intellectual life in Australia, which has flowered periodically.

"During the post-war reconstruction, Australia led the world in social reforms ... and there was a lot of debate around those issues," she says. "Those enduring policies didn't make political or economic sense, but they made social and cultural sense ... there was a commitment to a set of principles and values in terms of what kind of society you wanted to make for the next generation."

For evidence of intellectual decline, Damousi points to the current level of political debate. "Compared to that in France and the US, it's arguably fairly undeveloped, unsophisticated" – a consequence of politicians "electioneering most of the time rather than leading. The whole political landscape has changed".

The complaint that politicians are held captive by a 24-hour news cycle and the tyranny of the sound bite, is old hat. So too the complaint that our leaders lack vision.

Jeff Kennett recently declared Australia has been leaderless for a decade. There's a tendency to shrug and say "way it goes". Not good. The reliance on knee-jerk slogans – "you're either with us or you're against us," to quote our Prime Minister – is papering over looming issues that desperately need to be addressed.

For example, Associate Professor Christopher Cordner?, a philosopher with the University of Melbourne, paints a scenario that would cause a flame-out on talkback radio.

"This kind of divisiveness is increasingly prominent, not just in our political culture but everywhere. If you take a broad enough perspective, you can see it as an index of our sense that the days of the nation state are numbered.

"It's not something that happens overnight. Issues of climate change, mass movement of refugees, the interlocked global economy put pressure on this unit of self understanding ... the influx of Africans into Europe is an index of the issue ... it's not going to stop."

The short version: there are big changes happening in the world, and the rhetoric of protecting our borders plays to people's sense of their own identity being under threat. That's not a discussion I can see happening any time soon. The response instead is to put the walls up, by way of towing back the boats and closing down discussion.

"There has always been nationalism, a certain kind of rallying together," Cordner says. "It can be healthy and productive ... or a kind of bunkering that leads to a ratcheting up of problems, rather than a creative plan in dealing with them."

An impediment to making a creative plan is the oppositional nature of debate in Australia, both at the political level and at the footy ground. "Your position tends to be defined by your opposition to something rather than a creative articulation of possibility. Look at the history wars, the culture wars: it's all about being against what the other stands for."

Deakin University anthropologist Rohan Bastin suggests anti-intellectualism in Australia "is a result of a value we hold very dear: a deep sense of equality. But how can a racist be egalitarian? Well, it's easy when they confuse equality with sameness and immediately create an in-group."

In other words, our famed egalitarianism relies on assimilation, a flattening out of identity and a failure to recognise, value or simply cope with difference. Professor Bastin says anybody "who refuses to assimilate for reasons of their history of suffering at our hands or because they subscribe to their own sense of identity and, within that, their own concepts of equality," is on the outer.

All of which limits the scope of the national conversation as to who we really are and what we can aspire to.

But surely professional thinkers such as Bastin – a member of the academy – should be taking up the slack? If they had the time, sure. The problem there, he says, is that universities, ever on the scrounge for funding, put a lot of pressure on their faculty to publish papers at a great volume, but without much concern for quality.

"Which means that a lot of what is being published, to satisfy your KPIs (key performance indicators) is drivel," he says.

Michael Pusey is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales. He is also author of Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes its Mind. He introduced the term into public usage. His book was published in 1991 and all but predicted the social cost of neo-liberal, free-market reform.

Part of that fallout is a diminished public intellectual conversation: economics dominates all policy deliberations.

In an email Pusey writes: "Even 40 years ago we were clear that economics was nothing more than a tool kit for improving the quality of life of a national population. Today it is an ideology that reduces and limits all intelligent discussion to an economic calculus that is discredited and which is for the most part inimical to both good governance and its proper aim, which is to serve the larger interests of a national population."

For Pusey, it is the quality of life for a national population that ought to set the terms of all political debate and policy. "But this, with all other discussion, has been hollowed out."

In a phone interview, Pusey notes that a rigorous national conversation "about the things that matter" – notably climate change and the environment – can only flower in a society that values critical thinking.

"The very notion of criticism has been radically devalued," Pusey says. "Today criticism, for the government, just means you're knocking us, you're the enemy – when true criticism serves in the quest for a better argument."

If we're not seeing it happen among our leaders, what example do we have to follow at home?

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/is-antiintellectualism-killing-the-n
ational-conversation-20150801-gipidj.html#ixzz3j3VEPHgn['quote]

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
This idea that the simplification of spelling will increase literacy is kind of a meh concept. Literacy levels depend upon people sending their children to school, that they have the resources to send them there and not have them working to contribute to family income at an early age. If you look at world literacy rates, its pretty easy to see that poor,developing or war torn countries have poor literacy rates.

Literacy is about economics. Not phonetics.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:


I have to disagree here. Both my husband and MIL were immigrants, and our daughter is brain-damaged, and they ALL had problems learning to read, and husband and MIL never could spell correctly. I also recall other kids in my Catholic school learning how to read, and it was a struggle. When I learned how to read, it was the phonetic method, which works well for words like cat and hat and pan, but then you get to the long "a's" and the "silent e's" and then it gets worse from there. The "SH" sound in fish is easy to explain, but how do you explain it in "action"?

Yes, teaching and literacy is a matter of time and effort balanced against resources, but if the time and effort is greater in one system than another, given equal resources you'll have less success with the more effortful system.

The one statistic that indicates this is the general scores of literacy, math, and science across the globe. ALL English-speaking nations do worse in math and science. Is it because English-speaking peoples are inherently stupid or lazy? Or is it because so much time and effort of every day is put into "I before E, except after C, or when sounding like A, as in neighbor or weigh"?

I'm not claiming that phonetic English will suddenly make people logical, but what it WILL do is make learning to read and write English a lot easier.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/is-antiintellectualism-killing-the-n
ational-conversation-20150801-gipidj.html#ixzz3j3VEPHgn]

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Magon's

I don't believe that people are logical at our core. Even the impulse to reform is the product of some felt value.

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AFAIK people think by heuristics, which are mental shortcuts.

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So the problem as I see it is not that we're insufficiently intellectual, it's that we can't examine our currently held paradigms, logical or not, and ask - is this working? And - what do we want instead?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
He makes many claims that are on their face untrue.

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It doesn't matter whether it was a struggle or not. The end result is that you are literate -

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not sure about your daughter but disability would be a key reason in western countries for not be able to read and write.

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can afford tertiary education.

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The statistics still indicate clearly the nations that have high literacy rates are economically well off. They also indicate that literacy rates are high, in that there are high rates of tertiary education in the population.

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Originally posted by RahlMaclaren:
Just out of curiosity, how does Nooalf spell 'onomatopoeia'?

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Suppoze the system iz so bad that it takes 50 yirz to learn how to read & rite. Do you think orally passing along information will suffise to get potential sientists and inovatorz up to speed soon enuf to take advantaj uv their most productiv yirz? (and dont forget they are spending a major chunk uv their waking owrz learning to read)

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

First of all, it DOES matter. For many children (and adults) for whom reading is difficult, they NEVER learn how to read, or never learn how to read WELL. IF you're spending your reading time picking through the vagaries of spelling, simply trying to identify the words ... how much of the content do you think you're going to get? How much do you think that person will be reading? Will they ever read for pleasure? Or will their difficulty with reading will be a LIFELONG BARRIER to knowledge?

And for those that DO learn how to read, the hours, days, weeks, months, and years spent on learning that particular information, what about all of the time they could have spent on OTHER things, like mapping (in our DD's case) or arithmetic?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

We're coming at it from different perpectives, you are talking about the personal and I am about the global. Sorry that probably made me sound like an arsehole, which wasn't intended. I didn't mean to say that the struggle doesn't matter to the individual, but it doesn't impact on rates of literacy.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
MAGONS, I agree that phonetic English isn't a world-shattering idea. Nonetheless, it would still be a useful tool for making ENGLISH literacy easier. I work with immigrants for whom English is a third or fourth language, and they all say that learning English spelling is difficult. YOUR immigrants sound like the sons and daughters of the wealthy, who can afford to spend a lot of time and effort on something other than working for a living. For the many poor - especially women- easier English may mean an easier pathway to learning.

So what I'm talking about is global, not personal, and you have not changed my mind.

OTOH, you're right, this discussion has been threadjacked. I'm ready to move off the topic pf phonetics.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Deakin University anthropologist Rohan Bastin suggests anti-intellectualism in Australia "is a result of a value we hold very dear: a deep sense of equality. But how can a racist be egalitarian? Well, it's easy when they confuse equality with sameness and immediately create an in-group."

In other words, our famed egalitarianism relies on assimilation, a flattening out of identity and a failure to recognise, value or simply cope with difference. Professor Bastin says anybody "who refuses to assimilate for reasons of their history of suffering at our hands or because they subscribe to their own sense of identity and, within that, their own concepts of equality," is on the outer.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
This for me is the crux of Australian anti intellectualism. I wonder if it has a different cause in the US.

I very definitely get a flavor of what you're saying. It's a kind of affable, lowest-common-denominator friendliness to everyone who conforms. A 'we're all just blokes' attitude. (I hope I'm understanding it, and not misusing your English too terribly.)

I think in the US it's a lot more brutal and unforgiving. It's EXTREMELY racial. It's EXTREMELY sexist. It's EXTREMELY religious. It's EXTREMELY hate-filled. People who don't or can't conform because of skin color, sex, accent, intellect or talent aren't merely excluded, they're targeted. There's a reason a lot of conservatives viscerally hate Obama that has nothing to do with his political party, or his actions in office.

But I THINK it has the same social function, which is to define a group of people who are to be relatively privileged. I think whenever there is bias, it has to do with making up reasons why the haves should have, and the have-nots should be without. Maybe the original defining haves determine the characteristics of the group, leading to different profiles of haves around the globe due to purely historical reasons. But I think it's the same function.

So to address your question, I think it's superficially different, but essentially the same.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I didn't realize there was a strain of anti-intellectualism in Australia, altho I did notice that a lot of men are sports fanatics and drink beer.

OOC, MAGONS, is anti-intellectualism as prevalent in women?

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