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Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

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Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#51

Post by crispyambulance »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #47

My working definition of stupidity is making poor predictions that lead to self-harm. The more stupid the predictions, the more extreme the self-harm. I'm not sure trying to improvise a way through a novel kind of conflict counts as stupid so much as untrained. Maybe there was someone in WWI saying "This is obviously wrong and won't work - we should do this other thing instead." Maybe there wasn't. At this distance i…

> One of the most toxic things that happens in politics is re-framing a problem away from rational competence towards emotive and narrative non-logic.

In politics emotional and even irrational narratives are a centerpiece of how effective leaders lead.

In virtually all sufficiently complicated human affairs there is NEVER enough facts and visibility at hand to make objective decisions. Moreover, now more than ever, influencers and thought leaders can easily cherry-pick whatever facts rhyme with their narrative and sound completely rational and "facts-based" to those who lack (or have been conditioned to lack) critical thinking skills and experience.

All effective leaders, regardless of whether they're good or evil, democratic or autocratic make decisions and motivate people by appealing to emotion, history, cultural background. "Logic and rationality" of course is necessary for success but it's only one component. The finest leaders are fully in touch with their subjectivity _and_ can also draw from deep knowledge and rational thought.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#53

Post by aj3 »

Shmebulock wrote: post #26
Animats wrote: post #18

The author may be onto something. Or they may have had one good idea and are now trying to make it fit too many problems. WWI did have moments of extreme stupidity. But the real problem was that, for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense. Machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches could resist most attacks. When that wasn't enough, both sides had plenty of railroad cap…

>for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense In the seminal book "On War" which was published in 1832 and is still required reading in many military academies, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz explicitly says that defense is stronger than offense. Maybe this intensified in WWI

Now we have cyber domain where this is definitely not true.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#54

Post by earthbee »

sokoloff wrote: post #49
oblio wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could force a drawn-out engagement, though, which in many cases the attackers couldn't support. You needed a lot fewer people to defend a castle than to assault it.

It seems much easier for the attackers to supply themselves (even in a foreign land) such that encircle-and-wait would virtually ensure an attacker victory if no one came to the defender’s aid.

Even where besiegers outnumbered the besieged by a huge margin it still often took months or even years to defeat a castle by siege, yet if the same two forces met in open battle it would be over in an hour or less. This clearly shows that in castle warfare the defence has a huge advantage.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#56

Post by Kinrany »

aj3 wrote: post #53
Shmebulock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense In the seminal book "On War" which was published in 1832 and is still required reading in many military academies, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz explicitly says that defense is stronger than offense. Maybe this intensified in WWI

Now we have cyber domain where this is definitely not true.

It's clearly true: it's cheaper to prevent vulnerabilities than to find and exploit them.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#57

Post by wnkrshm »

Animats wrote: post #18

The author may be onto something. Or they may have had one good idea and are now trying to make it fit too many problems. WWI did have moments of extreme stupidity. But the real problem was that, for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense. Machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches could resist most attacks. When that wasn't enough, both sides had plenty of railroad cap…

The difference isn't up to trench warfare, machine guns etc. It's that industrialized agriculture had been developed, and thus you could still feed millions of people who were fighting. That's what created the resiliance to prolonged war. In cultures without industrialized agriculture, losing that many people to war would doom everyone. If you wanted to survive, you'd have to stop for harvest or if you lost too many people, you couldn't harvest fast enough.

The resilience that suddenly was there in WW1, was that there were so many people you could throw into the fire, suddenly.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#58

Post by TeMPOraL »

crispyambulance wrote: post #51
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #47

My working definition of stupidity is making poor predictions that lead to self-harm. The more stupid the predictions, the more extreme the self-harm. I'm not sure trying to improvise a way through a novel kind of conflict counts as stupid so much as untrained. Maybe there was someone in WWI saying "This is obviously wrong and won't work - we should do this other thing instead." Maybe there wasn't. At this distance i…

> One of the most toxic things that happens in politics is re-framing a problem away from rational competence towards emotive and narrative non-logic. In politics emotional and even irrational narratives are a centerpiece of how effective leaders lead. In virtually all sufficiently complicated human affairs there is NEVER enough facts and visibility at hand to make objective decisions. Moreover, now more than ever, i…

Which is kind of why democracy got popular - it got rid of leaders, it confined appeals to emotion to the election circus, and replaced energetic leadership with boredom of mind-numbing parliamentary meetings - and in the process removed one of the biggest threat to ongoing peace and prosperity, namely leaders "appealing to emotion, history, cultural background" to get their subjects to do something stupid.

I mean, what you say is true - effective political leaders were/are like you describe. But I question whether we need that kind of leadership, and I'm convinced we should not glorify it. Being effective at manipulating and abusing people at scale is not a trait of a good person.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#59

Post by oblio »

sokoloff wrote: post #49
oblio wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could force a drawn-out engagement, though, which in many cases the attackers couldn't support. You needed a lot fewer people to defend a castle than to assault it.

It seems much easier for the attackers to supply themselves (even in a foreign land) such that encircle-and-wait would virtually ensure an attacker victory if no one came to the defender’s aid.

Supply wasn't the only factor: disease, troop morale, sabotage, etc. Few generals would have prolonged a war if they could do anything about it.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#60

Post by heresie-dabord »

acituan wrote: post #4

I wish the author[1] read a bit more about the science of wisdom and foolishness before ruining their good intuition with a stubbornly limited perspective. > Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pi…

The Wikipedia article offers some further interesting citations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupidity

James F. Welles, Understanding Stupidity

"The term may be used to designate a mentality which is considered to be informed, deliberate and maladaptive." Welles distinguishes stupidity from ignorance; where stupidity means one must know they are acting in their own worst interest in that it must be a choice, not a forced act or accident. Lastly, it requires the activity to be maladaptive, in that it is in the worst interest of the actor, and specifically done to prevent adaption to new data or existing circumstances."

= = =

Otto Fenichel, "The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946)"

"Every intellect begins to show weakness when affective motives are working against it". He suggests that "people become stupid ad hoc, that is, when they do not want to understand, where understanding would cause anxiety or guilt feeling, or would endanger an existing neurotic equilibrium."

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