Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing • Hacker News Board

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#71

Post by Joker_vD » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:33 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #61

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…

Makes me wonder whether we could have defeated an organization such as Taliban with say COVID. The very unfortunate side effect (understatement) would be all the civil casualties, but that is also part of guerilla warfare (e.g. happens in Israel/Palestina conflict as well). But nevertheless, something like COVID could've been used as a biochemical weapon, with the side launching it being vaccinated, or knowing how to…

Jeez, just drown the land in VX-5 then, seriously, it's faster, probably cheaper, and actually safer. I mean, your goal is already quite clearly "kill the entire country's population" — because you have trouble with guerilla warfare only when the population actually supports them and replenishes their resources, including human resources — so just go with a more optimal tool, would you.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#72

Post by Jedd » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:36 PM UTC

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…

> There have been societies that couldn't even think about that problem.

This sounds like what Iain Banks referred to as an OCP - an Outside Context Problem [0].

As TFA describes:

"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 pigeonholes."

I suspect the cautious thinkers are always alert, to the point of being hyper-sensitive, to this risk - manifesting in imposter syndrome through excessively cautious, highly qualified caveats around their messages, etc.

We circle back towards a generic DK effect, while introspection leads to further introspection.

[0] http://outsidecontextproblem.org/

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#73

Post by karatinversion » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:41 PM UTC

wnkrshm wrote: post #57

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…

> In cultures without industrialized agriculture, losing that many people to war would doom everyone.

The Black Death killed an estimated 40-50% of Europeans between 1347 and 1351, but the survivors were not doomed. In fact, living standards increased as the amount of agricultural land per person increased.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#74

Post by rualca » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:46 PM UTC

wnkrshm wrote: post #57

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…

> It's that industrialized agriculture had been developed, and thus you could still feed millions of people who were fighting.

That sounds like a factor in determining how long an attacker can sustain attacks, but the underlying hypothesis is that defense far outweighed the ability to sustain attacks.

To quote the OP:

> "But the real problem was that, for the first time since castles vs. troops without cannon, defense was stronger than offense."

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#75

Post by anyonecancode » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #10

Calling trench warfare stupid because of conceptual obsolescence seems suspect. It was a new problem with no obvious solution. Trench warfare in the US Civil War didn't end in such a stalemate so there wasn't much precedence, There were newer automatic weapons and a vast scale of the armies covering an entire front that hadn't been seen before. A stalemate might have been the best available outcome at the time where…

> Trench warfare in the US Civil War didn't end in such a stalemate so there wasn't much precedence

I suppose this hangs on one's definition of stalemate, but I'd consider the nine months of the siege of Petersburg to qualify.

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

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#76

Post by dukeyukey » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

karatinversion wrote: post #73

wnkrshm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In cultures without industrialized agriculture, losing that many people to war would doom everyone. The Black Death killed an estimated 40-50% of Europeans between 1347 and 1351, but the survivors were not doomed. In fact, living standards increased as the amount of agricultural land per person increased.

Sure, but less people means less mouth to feed, whereas supporting the large conscript armies of the 19th and 20th centuries just meant less farm workers, and if anything more required calories.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#77

Post by acituan » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #43

stareatgoats wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the science of wisdom and foolishness I had no idea there was such a thing. Care to link to some relevant resources?

The OP seems to be coming from a Buddhist perspective. If that's correct, then I think he's got the wrong end of the stick; the mental impairment he is contrasting with "wisdom" is usually referred to in Buddhist literature as "ignorance", which means a propensity to ignore things, to deliberately refuse to know.

Not exclusively. It is also a very Socratic perspective (which happens to be a contemporary to Buddha).

Buddhist interpretation of ignorance overlaps more with Socratic interpretation than our current use of the word. It is not a mere lack of knowledge in “propositions”. It is an existential state. If you think about it framing problems are also ignorance problems; ignoring relevant information/perspectives/action in our problem formulations.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#78

Post by acituan » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #31

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…

> I wish the author[1] read a bit more about the science of wisdom and foolishness There is no such science.

You’re one google search away from liberation: “Wisdom cognitive science”

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#79

Post by contravariant » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #61

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…

Makes me wonder whether we could have defeated an organization such as Taliban with say COVID. The very unfortunate side effect (understatement) would be all the civil casualties, but that is also part of guerilla warfare (e.g. happens in Israel/Palestina conflict as well). But nevertheless, something like COVID could've been used as a biochemical weapon, with the side launching it being vaccinated, or knowing how to…

Perhaps surprisingly the main problem with current warfare isn't the lack of options to kill enough people in some general area.

Although if you were to go in that direction COVID-19 would be a minor inconvenience when it comes to warfare so I'm not too sure what you're aiming at there. The Spanish "used" diseases that were a heck of a lot more severe.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#80

Post by sumtechguy » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

api wrote: post #70

> In at least some cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowing pernicious rationalisation This is something I’ve believed very strongly for many years. I’ve met some amazingly stupid geniuses who believe things so absurd it actively hobbles their ability to function. I’ve met many others who advocate almost psychotically destructive (to others) beliefs that they have meticulously rationalized. Totalitari…

I also know a few people who would be considered learning impaired. They exceed at making bad decisions. They will never do good in life. You can flat out show them how it is bad. They will still do it. I also know some who are in that same spectrum and they will freely admit they are wrong and willing to learn better. They usually are willing to not do silly things. But sometimes to an irrational degree. Rationality in different systems and IQ I would suspect are not correlated. One thing I have found that does help with many is saying 'i am probably wrong' or 'i dont know'. If you are at least willing to say those two things you can at least maybe do better in life.