Having worked front line tech support, I have to disagree. People are inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases.
pats back Indeed, but you might be missing the forest for the trees.
People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
121–130 of 453 posts
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#122There are 25 countries where the average IQ is under 70, so it is both, and unfortunately the world is getting increasingly harder.
Can you give me sources? Would the people from these countries be exposed to the content being described in the article?
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#123Having worked front line tech support, I have to disagree. People are inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases.
> People are inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases
This is called optimisation and is in most cases okay. I choose to be dumb about cars. I ask specialists dumb questions and expect them to give me useful answers. Computers are similarly ancillary to many people’s core value added.
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#124This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…
What makes you think government is immune to these concerns? If anything, they can be more susceptible to certain kinds of adverse effects.
I agree with both you and the original poster. It's really important to have a culture of government accountability and iterative improvement. This has proven difficult in practice, as a sense of continuity and tradition is a hallmark of stable governments. But I think it's important to keep working toward that goal.
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#125and the world is hard(er) because people are dumb
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#126This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…
I don't think economists agree with the concept of Big Government. Here's an entertaining back and forth between Thaler and Gene Fama about the efficient market theory [1]: > Q: So policy makers should use bubbles as a way to step in? > Thaler: Yes, but very gently. It’s not like I think policy makers know what’s going to happen, but if they see what looks disturbing, they can lean against the wind a little bit. That…
Economists rarely have a good solution to societal problems. They have good solutions for facilitating trade but offer nothing with respect to social norms, nationalistic sentiment, etc.
We all agree that economists are good at maximizing resource allocation. Sysops are good at maximizing hardware allocation but we should let them dictate national policy :)
Politics is about taking all of the science and all of the human components of administrating a country and merge them into an ideal outcome. Economics is just one part of a bigger picture.
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
And many of our problems are collective action problems: where it makes sense for individuals to defect on their own, and they can only raise the standard for the group if they act together. At different scales this means unionization and professional organizations, government regulation, and international regulation, to prevent whole countries from defecting - this is in large part what the EU is about, and a signif…
As I see it, the corruption challenge of collective action is because it is so often not carefully, purposefully structured. Government is constructed with the express purpose of checking power. I read a bit I liked a while back about early feminism, in which members rejected wholesale the idea of power structures & authority, and established no authority. The author relates, however, that the power vacuum was natura…
I agree. As imperfect and corrupt as it is, democratic representation in government has taken a very long time to develop out of previous eras of might makes right. People who advocate for permanent dismantling of government instead of rebuilding it seem severely naive to believe that doing so won't devolve into violent contests between local armed powers.
Another very big factor in having a properly accountable government is reducing information asymmetry as much as possible. Democracy doesn't work well if education is crippled, and there's been a serious decline in the quality and breadth of education in the U.S. (I can't speak to other countries, but I hear of decline elsewhere as well) It sounds a little conspiratorial, but I don't believe the massive student debt loads and the disparagement of fields of study such as philosophy, which prompts critical authority-challenging questions, are accidents. It is my opinion that the upheaval of the 60's scared major U.S. powers and they took steps to nullify student activism.
People in general are very disengaged, apathetic, and distracted. Much of the corruption in government, media, and business could be countered effectively by a population that knows how to inform itself. Instead we seem to be sinking, like Rome did, into corruption, ignorance, and widespread superstition.
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#128Having worked front line tech support, I have to disagree. People are inherently dumb, and choose to stay that way in many cases.
Maybe it would be better to say that describing a person as ignorant without a scope rarely makes sense.
I mean I've worked with literal rocket scientists that can't figure out how to attach a PDF to an email. I would have a hard time describing them as 'dumb'. And don't even get me started on trying to help doctors and surgeons when I worked in medical.
Just because we might find something easy or 'intuitive' after spending most of our lives in front of computer doesn't mean it's actually easy.
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Politicians and civil servants are subject to behavioral concerns too. Who will watch the watchmen?
it doesn't have to be an endless hierarchy of people looking over one another. For example, we could watch the people that watch us.
>we could watch the people that watch us.
If this were possible, there would be no authority
Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
#130The world isn't that hard, some people just like to hoarde resources.