Are We Idiocracy Yet?

Post by ern_ave » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #580

ern_ave wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question should be: why do you have a right to bring a gun to a fist fight? Great question. The answer is: bad people are often significantly stronger than their victims. Have you ever seen this video [1]? The woman is 72 years old. She might be able to defend herself with a gun, but she has no chance with fists. How about this video [2]? I have many, many examples like this. It's honestly kind of terrible that…

Are you serious? Like, actually serious? Killing someone for pushing you over is not "self defense". This is a category error.

> Are you serious?

Yes.

> Like, actually serious?

Actually, yes.

> Killing someone for pushing you over is not "self defense".

> This is a category error.

No, it's a definition error on your part. Let's define self defense.

A person is justified in using, or threatening to use, lethal force, in order to defend themselves or another person against:

(1) eminent death (e.g. being shot or stabbed)

(2) great bodily harm (i.e. injuries that could lead to death)

(3) the eminent commission of a forcible felony (e.g. rape or kidnapping)

A 72 year old woman being violently attacked by a young man unambiguously qualifies as condition (2). I'm terrified and disgusted that you watched that video and then characterized it as "pushing her over"

Some reports I've seen indicate that this woman, who is in her 80s, died [1]

Intentionally attacking an old woman is very, very likely to cause her great bodily harm, and completely justifies a lethal response. If you disagree, I encourage you to show that video to your friends and family. I'm interested to hear how many of them can dismiss it as you just did.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQYyDH2l0h4

Post by eszed » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #428

jfengel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to know the average IQ of, say, climate deniers. I suspect it's still a perfect 100. I don't think it's about general intelligence. In some ways just the opposite: very smart people have a talent for convincing themselves that they are right. Unfortunately I fear it's more like EQ than IQ. The driver is more about the people. They do not like the kind of people who are trying to prevent climate change,…

One other thing that's interesting -- at least in my personal observations, climate deniers don't usually actually argue the science. They might do this when publishing or speaking publicly. But, at least when you're talking with them and they're at ease and speaking freely, they seem to offer a different argument. The argument I've seen, which really sticks with me, is that climate change is false, yes, but that's s…

This exactly is what drew in my late father, who was a scientist (not climate, obviously!) with raw intelligence several standard deviations above average. "They" were using climate change as a stalking horse for communism / woke-ism / whatever other "big government" thing he thought was counter to the interests of people like him.

He wasn't always like that. Maybe he wouldn't have described himself as such at the time, but in his twenties and early thirties he was a Liberal. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, attended Civil Rights marches, advocated on behalf of gay people, argued for gender equality, strongly opposed the Vietnam War, and was appalled by Watergate.

Fast-forward to the last decade of his life, in which my father donated to all three Trump presidential campaigns, displayed a Gadsden flag on his mantle, rejected his trans-gender grandchild, and made (at the very least) replacement-theory adjacent noises. Oh, and preferred Ivermectin over covid vaccination, of course.

What I think happened was that he was culturally out of step with most people who otherwise shared his politics in the 1970s - he was religious, so viscerally disgusted by drug use and "extra-marital" sex - and got captured by the propaganda machine that others in this thread have described. I believe the biggest turning point was 9/11: it terrified him, even if he couldn't quite admit that to himself, and he lived the rest of his life in a state of inchoate fear - stoked, naturally, by Fox News and other right-wing media.

So, that was the (white) American Baby Boomer Experience, writ small. He did materially well, but I think was a better and wiser person in his twenties than he became later on.

Rejecting climate change ("anthropogenic climate change", my father would point out, which let him off any evidentiary hook) is only a small part of an entire ideological project, which demands to be swallowed whole.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?