The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity • Hacker News Board

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#41

Post by mcantor » Sat, May 21, 2011, 10:23 PM UTC

sgentle wrote: post #12

This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. Just in case, I will critique in the spirit of the original article: The first immutable law of madeupistan is that this article makes no sense. If one quantifies by Q the amount of sense this article doesn't make, and divides it by L, which is how badly the sense it doesn't make is,…

You seem to be suggesting that the world would be better off if this article didn't exist. I'm interested to know why, because I found it mostly funny and a little thought-provoking. I didn't get the impression that the author claims his work has been subjected to any degree of scientific rigor, nor that he thinks people ought to be idolizing or congratulating him for sharing it. It's just kind of out there, for each reader to make whatever they want of it.

Also, what exactly do you mean by "parody"? I thought he was clearly poking fun at the world at large, but didn't get the sense that there was any particular other work which he was lampooning.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#42

Post by mcantor » Sat, May 21, 2011, 10:26 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #36

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart. You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it! You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, los…

Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it didn't actually seem to me like he was trying to say anything nasty about you. I thought he was just joking/reflecting on the universal appeal of the article--it's well-written and accessible, so it would make most readers feel smart, and everyone likes feeling smart.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#43

Post by Helianthus » Sat, May 21, 2011, 10:29 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #36

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart. You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it! You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, los…

>You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it!

Or it's meant to point out something that I, at least, happen to agree with. Reveling in identifying stupidity tends to obscure that we're all stupid at one point or another. Besides, it's not all too difficult to turn this around on you; you just called him stupid for no gain of your own.

>You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, lose/lose, or win/lose behavior.

Then he shouldn't use those terms over and over again in such a misleading fashion.

All of your post--which is essentially a smokescreen--fails to address the salient accusation, which is that applying mathy and logic-y terms to a discussion of stupidity doesn't quite ameliorate the distasteful sense that, in reading/enjoying the article, we're gloating.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#44

Post by arctangent » Sat, May 21, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

mcantor wrote: post #42

lionhearted wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart. You know what's funny? I think this is exactly what the author would call a "stupid" remark - it's meant to say something nasty about the person you're replying to, and you don't even gain from it! You see, the irony here is that the author isn't actually talking about stupidity and intelligence. He's actually talking about people who engage in lose/win, win/win, los…

Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it didn't actually seem to me like he was trying to say anything nasty about you. I thought he was just joking/reflecting on the universal appeal of the article--it's well-written and accessible, so it would make most readers feel smart, and everyone likes feeling smart.

If we could see how many votes each of the comments got we'd know who had done better out of the exchange :-)

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#45

Post by grovulent » Sun, May 22, 2011, 12:28 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #30

grovulent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a certain degree I emphasise - in spoken contexts I often fail to pick up sarcasm. But I have far less problems in navigating through subtle shifts in tone in a piece of text. While you seem to see it as a wolf in sheep's clothing and are terrified that the sheep are about to be devoured, I'm seeing the wolf, dressed in sheep's clothing, comically delivering a lecture to said sheep about avoiding wolves - and actu…

It's like meeting Beethoven and finding out that really he hates listening to Mozart. Apparently, Ludwig was rather taken with Wolfgang's music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_Beethoven

Indeed - so that's why it would be quite boggling to learn otherwise! ;)

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#46

Post by ilkandi » Sun, May 22, 2011, 1:22 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #37

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

> A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. You have to be careful with the "deriving no gain" part, though. In game theory, it's valid to punish someone by incurring a loss if they're trying to gain at everyone else's expense. That's used in the Tit-for-Tat strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma, for example…

It's under "frequency distribution". I like the redefinition of stupidity! There are times we think "yeah.. i see the pattern.. I know where this is gonna go". And we're right. Yet we take the lose-lose action just for the heck of it or just because we can. So intelligent, but stupid.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#47

Post by seri » Sun, May 22, 2011, 2:37 AM UTC

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #27

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

Of course you enjoy it. It makes you feel smart.

I think this is exactly the kind of comment that makes HN decline. Short and clever. But nasty.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#48

Post by vorg » Sun, May 22, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #37

lionhearted wrote: post #8

I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get just the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible. There's gems in there, too - > A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incur…

> A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. You have to be careful with the "deriving no gain" part, though. In game theory, it's valid to punish someone by incurring a loss if they're trying to gain at everyone else's expense. That's used in the Tit-for-Tat strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma, for example…

> our lack of knowledge about the circumstances can lead us to commit the fundamental attribution error. Are they "stupid" or are there circumstances of which we're unaware?

Such circumstances also depend on the timeframe of the people involved. One person might have a 30-day perspective, another person is thinking about the grandchildren.

The HISB-square looks a lot like the Win-win(intelligent), Win-lose(bandit), Lose-win(helpless), and Lose-lose(stupid) grid of negotiation theory. The time when Win-lose is a valid strategy is when there's no ongoing relationship between the two parties, e.g. bargaining for goods in a no-refunds market. The whole idea of commodity/stock/etc exchanges is built around this concept. When some bandit pulls a Win-lose when there's an ongoing relationship, it's easy for the helpless loser to turn a Win-lose into a Lose-lose situation. It might look like revenge, but it could be to establish a track record for their next negotiation.

Besides timeframe, such circumstances depend on information available. There's many bandits around who hide their true identity, and pose as intelligent for appearances sake, but are pulling some nasty banditry behind the scenes. I'd suggest a counter-rule to rule 1:

  Always and inevitably everyone overestimates
  the number of intelligent individuals in circulation.

The intelligent-posing bandits in that situation call the helpless losers who swung a win-lose into a lose-lose "stupid". After many such incidents, the helpless tend to always assume they're dealing with a bandit, even though the other person may be intelligent. These are school playground lessons.

So I'd propose a second corrolary to the fifth rule's first corrolary (i.e A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit):

  Stupid people become stupid because bandits pose as intelligent.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#49

Post by whimsy » Sun, May 22, 2011, 5:55 AM UTC

arctangent wrote: post #44

mcantor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it didn't actually seem to me like he was trying to say anything nasty about you. I thought he was just joking/reflecting on the universal appeal of the article--it's well-written and accessible, so it would make most readers feel smart, and everyone likes feeling smart.

If we could see how many votes each of the comments got we'd know who had done better out of the exchange :-)

Winning an appeal to the populous does not imply correctness.

Re: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

#50

Post by nazgulnarsil » Sun, May 22, 2011, 3:55 PM UTC

sirclueless wrote: post #40

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the bandit on the upper half isn't necessarily unpleasant. we applaud when someone manages to make money from stupid people. value transferred from stupid people to intelligent people is an important aspect of wealth creation on a society wide level. after all, stupid people often destroy what wealth they manage to get. but I agree with the conclusion of the article. It is an important measure of a society whether ba…

> stupid people often destroy what wealth they manage to get. Usually by giving it to bandits.

wealth isn't zero sum or mercantilist. you can easily destroy wealth right now by smashing your monitor.