Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing • Hacker News Board

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#101

Post by daveslash » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #13

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…

Tactics evolved a lot during WW1, e.g. creeping barrages and shock troops. It was also the first true industrial war. It saw submarines and the first combat use of aircraft, in bombing, close air support, recon and air combat. And it let to the invention of the tank. Haig so, for all his support pf veterans after the war, IMHO never understood what he really did. The Germans wanted a decisive battle, which they didn'…

Regarding "It was also the first true industrial war", you may like this quote by Scott Westerfeld on the Wikipedia page for Dieselpunk [1]

    "But to me, World War I is the dividing point where modernity goes from 
    being optimistic to being pessimistic. Because when you put the words 
    "machine" and "gun" together, they both change. At that point, war is no 
    longer about a sense of adventure and chivalry and a way of testing your 
    nation's level of manhood; it's become industrial, and horrible."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieselpunk

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#102

Post by tstrimple » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #88

jonplackett wrote: post #37

> 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 pigeonholes. Most western governments: "Don't worry, COVID is just like the Flu"

I don't know which planet you're from, but on planet Earth, all Western governments are currently in the middle of aggressively coercing their citizens into getting vaccinated.

You're simply wrong. We've got plenty of conservative politicians celebrating low vaccination rates and pushing anti-vaccine misinformation.

https://wset.com/news/local/us-rep-greene-congratulates-crow...

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/71921

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#103

Post by Joker_vD » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #13

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…

Tactics evolved a lot during WW1, e.g. creeping barrages and shock troops. It was also the first true industrial war. It saw submarines and the first combat use of aircraft, in bombing, close air support, recon and air combat. And it let to the invention of the tank. Haig so, for all his support pf veterans after the war, IMHO never understood what he really did. The Germans wanted a decisive battle, which they didn'…

> Haig wanted to use tanks to brake through German lines, the hole should then be exploited by horse mounted cavalry.

That makes a lot of sense actually. For example, Red Army has shrunk its cavalry dramatically during the pre- and early WW2 period, down to 13 divisions (about 80 thousand people) in favour of tank divisions... and then when the Germans came, the Soviets suddenly found themselves lacking highly mobile forces, so they reverted that decision: during the 1941, almost 110 new cavalry divisions were created. And the Soviets have been using cavalry (in form of cavalry-mechanized groups: tanks plus cavalry) throughout the rest of the WW2 precisely for the purpose of penetrating deep into the rear of the German lines and interrupting supply and reinforcement movements there. And no, they weren't charging with swords drawn, they were essentially mounted riflemen.

So Haig was pretty much on the spot: make an opening with tanks, rush into it with cavalry. Sure, mechanized corps would perhaps be better but you gotta fight with what you have.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#104

Post by acituan » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

fuzzfactor wrote: post #91

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…

> So stupidity is tough to fix. I think there's a lot of people who have a higher bar than that (or lower bar depending on your perspective), but there is good traditional agreement; You can't fix stupid. That's one of its defining features. Regardless, it's sometimes necessary to work year-round on maintenance & repair. And everyone knows the effort involved polishing a turd and putting lipstick on a pig takes up al…

> You can't fix stupid.

What if this is one of the ways we’re being stupid?

One of the other properties of stupid is that we don’t know when we are being stupid, because if we did we could have gotten ourselves out of it.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#105

Post by jimmaswell » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:10 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…

If the west would commit to occupying every inch of territory the "geurillas" threatened to take hold, I think it would go differently, but nobody seems to want to make such a full commitment. Maybe that's just intractable.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#106

Post by bena » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

I think one of the biggest issues is confusing knowledge with intelligence.

Haig may have known everything about the previous generation of warfare, that doesn't necessarily make him intelligent. It makes him knowledgeable.

Now, he was also likely intelligent enough to apply his knowledge of then conventional warfare to various then conventional situations. And this likely made him excellent at his position. In so much that he was appointed a leader of his nation's army during WWI.

But he lacked the intelligence to achieve anything novel. He lacked the speed of thought to see where the current situations couldn't apply to his breadth of knowledge. He lacked the ability to deduce where his knowledge could be adapted to this new situation.

That's why "smart" people seem "stupid". Because they're likely knowledgeable, not intelligent. Every single person I've considered intelligent, it wasn't because they knew a lot of facts. It's because they're always a couple thoughts ahead of most people. They're able to see what others are getting to, sometimes before the others even know they're about to get there.

Intelligence is a multiplier. It's not a thing on its own. That's why most decent intelligence tests test abstract reasoning.

We also make the mistake of confusing success for intelligence. That if someone is successful, they must be intelligent. That's not the case. Success is multi-faceted and there is no one thing that will make you successful.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#107

Post by fallingfrog » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

We have a whole generation of people right now who grew up in an environment where the USA was number one in everything, and could push around any other country, had the best technology and the biggest economy and all the smartest people, and that’s an assumption so deeply embedded in the national consciousness that’s it’s impossible to jettison. That’s why we’re facing such a tidal wave of stupid right now. That historical period is over now, but to acknowledge that is so unthinkable that people will seek an answer that makes it still true. Hence you get wacky conspiracy theories and disastrous military adventurism.

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#108

Post by steve76 » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

> Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job.

Some lack morals and are dishonest, drunk, cruel, barbarous, and selfish. Some people survived a stroke, or fighting addiction, or live in pain. Some people come from a bad environment, as in, people are trying to kill them. Give any those people mastery of the concept, they'll still mess up the job. Odds are the job is messed up more from those than just lacking the concept. Don't have those, and lack the concept, job still likely gets done.

> it is more the property of a political culture than of the individuals in it, needing to be tackled at that level

No. Leave people alone. There's no changing people. Replace them. Meddle, you provoke them, wake them up, and make it so much worse.

Your argument is very arbitrary. Has anyone taken a good long look at the war on poverty like they do to the war on drugs? War on poverty failed greater under the same criticism. It just doesn't reward everyone with a license to be drunk all the time. Education, or civil rights, or multiculturalism, or activist celebrity governing of fools telling everyone what to do from far far away, ever ask if those are stupid? Why not? Just because it makes you upset?

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#109

Post by topher_t » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

Kinrany wrote: post #56

aj3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it cheaper to find and prevent ALL vulnerabilities than to find and exploit ONE?

Re: Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing

#110

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Joker_vD wrote: post #103

hef19898 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tactics evolved a lot during WW1, e.g. creeping barrages and shock troops. It was also the first true industrial war. It saw submarines and the first combat use of aircraft, in bombing, close air support, recon and air combat. And it let to the invention of the tank. Haig so, for all his support pf veterans after the war, IMHO never understood what he really did. The Germans wanted a decisive battle, which they didn'…

> Haig wanted to use tanks to brake through German lines, the hole should then be exploited by horse mounted cavalry. That makes a lot of sense actually. For example, Red Army has shrunk its cavalry dramatically during the pre- and early WW2 period, down to 13 divisions (about 80 thousand people) in favour of tank divisions... and then when the Germans came, the Soviets suddenly found themselves lacking highly mobile…

True. Everything I saw so far doesn't show that Haig came to that conclusion put of an understanding of armored or combined arms warfare but rather from sticking to tactics he knew. And IMHO the reason why you come to a conclusion can be as important as the conclusion itself.