Asimov knew from ignorance. What would he make of the ‘I do my own research’ movement?
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov
These words from Isaac Asimov, the noted author and writer, first appeared in January 1980 as a My Turn column in the American magazine Newsweek. My Turn was a pillar of the magazine, showcasing a different guest column each week.
Asimov, though best known as a science fiction author, was also passionate about public understanding of science, and took advantage of the opportunity to argue that the right to know is meaningless if so many people are ignorant. (And, yes, more than three decades before the MAGA movement, he critiqued how gaining knowledge and checking facts were being dismissed as activities of “the elite.”)
The quote above has travelled through time, and appears in numerous collections and quote websites. That’s because its theme was relevant then, and is at least as relevant now.
At the time of publication, there were no copy-and-paste conspiracy theories in your email inbox, fake screeds on Facebook, bogus claims in Instagram reels, anti-science evangelists selling unregulated supplements through your smartphone.
We’re in a remarkable time. The podcaster Joe Rogan alone has been a gleaming source of misinformation (he touted invermectin over vaccines), and the “I do my own research” meme has been attached to his show because it’s been a running theme of his guests.
Rogan is hardly his own best defender. “Lot of times, we’re drinking or we’re high, you know, and I say stupid shit,” he said in 2021; the quote is framed highly in this McGill University Office for Science and Society article titled Science Vs. Joe Rogan.
Earlier this year, I read The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols. It was first published in 2017, and updated later, once the COVID-19 pandemic struck. It’s a depressing — yet vital — book to read, and it speaks to Asimov’s quote: wilful ignorance is not new at all.
Things just change. In the social media era of disinformation, the seeds of all these things were in place: grifters are always going to grift.
In terms of the cult of ignorance, which allows scammers and fearmongers to flourish, things have just mutated.
Today they just seem to have even easier means than before, and for someone with doubts, it’s blindingly easy to find solace and confirmation — and, yep, a community, which is an important factor — in online spaces.
Asimov was stunningly prolific during his lifetime, churning out novels, short stories, guide books, reference works and non-fiction on everything from math to literary criticism to limericks.
Isaac Asimov died in 1992, at 72.