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Stupidity

onepercentrule.substack.com

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Re: Stupidity

#21

Post by discreteevent »

Timely essay. "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice." I was thinking the other day that the real problem with people who have autocratic tendencies is not that they are bad people (although they may be) but that the systems they set up end up being so incompetent. The article is probably correct when it points out lack of humility as the root cause - Lack of humility being one of the defining characteristics of the autocratic type.

It also explains why intelligent people do stupid things. Just because they are a bit smarter than someone else doesn't mean anything relative to the complexity of reality. They still need to be humble but being told they are smart doesn't help.

Re: Stupidity

#22

Post by mdp2021 »

openrisk wrote: post #7

People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them. People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known. People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information. Finally, all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools that civilization has honed over millennia to fight stupidity. In the end "stupidity" is a social phenomenon, dee…

Sorry, I do not get one expression: what do you mean with «all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools»? Because some (many) people do train themselves and are trained on the mental tools etc. The expression as I read it seems to counter that.

Re: Stupidity

#23

Post by Propelloni »

openrisk wrote: post #7

People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them. People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known. People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information. Finally, all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools that civilization has honed over millennia to fight stupidity. In the end "stupidity" is a social phenomenon, dee…

A very humane post, thank you.

I'd argue that the universal quantifier "all people are not trained" should be changed. Surely we can say that some people are trained in at least some of the tools to fight stupidity we, humanity as a whole, developed over the millennia. So a phrase like "not all people are trained" seems to be more on the mark to me.

Beyond that I have little to say of substance, but I am curious. How do you fit "stupid actions", like putting your cat into a microwave oven, racing downhill on a gravel road in a shopping cart, or not running away from a blazing fire, into this framework? Is this a failure of reasoning, and therefore lack of training? (Training understood as guided or unguided learning) Is all stupidity avoidance empirical or are there stupidities (as an ontological object, LOL) that could be avoided on first principles?

Re: Stupidity

#24

Post by ruthmarx »

The thing I've noted is just how much we stigmatize the idea of being stupid in society. No one wants to be stupid, no one wants to be wrong, and it's gotten so bad that if people are wrong they are worried they will be seen as stupid.

This is proportional to how often people are wrong, or at least how frequently worried they are that they will be wrong, and not surprisingly this is more common in people that didn't have the chance to gain a proper education.

It's gotten so bad now though, this not wanting to be considered stupid at any cost, that we have entire swaths of people dedicated to 'alternative facts' because they're not wrong, they just have 'different interpretations of different evidence' or whatever.

That's what we need to fight as a society, because that leads to the crazy divide that exists in the US and to a lesser extent in other countries,and IMO it's what holds or disrupts progress and potentially even ends up being a contributor in setting up a civil war.

Re: Stupidity

#25

Post by bulatb »

mdp2021 wrote: post #22
openrisk wrote: post #7

People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them. People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known. People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information. Finally, all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools that civilization has honed over millennia to fight stupidity. In the end "stupidity" is a social phenomenon, dee…

Sorry, I do not get one expression: what do you mean with «all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools»? Because some (many) people do train themselves and are trained on the mental tools etc. The expression as I read it seems to counter that.

"All people are not trained" can either mean "no people are trained" or, less commonly, "it's not true that all people are trained." Using it the second way can be confusing because it doesn't really mean what the plain reading says, but I think that's what they're doing.

Re: Stupidity

#26

Post by openrisk »

Propelloni wrote: post #23
openrisk wrote: post #7

People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them. People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known. People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information. Finally, all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools that civilization has honed over millennia to fight stupidity. In the end "stupidity" is a social phenomenon, dee…

A very humane post, thank you. I'd argue that the universal quantifier "all people are not trained" should be changed. Surely we can say that some people are trained in at least some of the tools to fight stupidity we, humanity as a whole, developed over the millennia. So a phrase like "not all people are trained" seems to be more on the mark to me. Beyond that I have little to say of substance, but I am curious. How…

Recklessness seems like a good case study of misunderstood "stupidity".

The fact that younger people tend to be more prone to it is already an important clue. On the one hand their need to stand out in a competitive society creates an internal state that outsiders may not be able to appreciate. On the other hand their ability to assess the actual risk (take a calculated risk) may not be fully developed. E.g. unless trained formally (mock circumstances, games, history lessons, whatever), people will "train" simply through their own lived experience which in most cases is woefully inadequate for the range of situations they might face.

Re: Stupidity

#28

Post by sam_lowry_ »

openrisk wrote: post #7

People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them. People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known. People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information. Finally, all people are not trained to avail of the mental tools that civilization has honed over millennia to fight stupidity. In the end "stupidity" is a social phenomenon, dee…

> People can pretend to be stupid if it suits them.

> People can seem to be stupid if their reasons for action are not known.

> People can't help but be stupid if deprived of factual information or if presented with false or confusing information.

I put this in my fortune file and in the current signature. It explains so succinctly why we are so often frustrated in the workspace.

Re: Stupidity

#29

Post by tialaramex »

android521 wrote: post #2

in the real world, this word is mostly used to attack others who disagree with you. "He is so stupid" can usually be interpreted as "he disagrees with me/he can't see things my way". It is true especially in politics 99% of the time. Eg, just google how many times Elon musk is called stupid by people who disagree with him. Trust me, Elon is not stupid.

Why should we trust you that Elon, who acts stupidly and gets away with it because he's rich, is in fact not stupid?

I don't know anything about running a car company, but I do know enough about poker to know that "Just buy more chips and bet again" is not in fact a winning strategy.

Re: Stupidity

#30

Post by thrance »

IMO no one is born stupid, at least by the definition given in the article. One doesn't become "unwilling to change their views on a subject, no matter what" without external pressure.

Just look at qanon or proud boys for example, people in distress get radicalized by finding community in the worst places. They get pushed away by friends and family as they get more radicalized. They are then trapped, unwilling/unable to change their views as it would mean being rejected by their now only community. They develop cognitive dissonance and lead generally miserable lives.

You can find similar but less extreme cases in religion, politics, etc.

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