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Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

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Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#21

Post by jrvarela56 »

ikrima wrote: post #19
andiamo wrote: post #3

Fascinating - I just listened to Rufus Fears' lecture on Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison before opening HN. Personally, I find Bonhoeffer's premises are easily accepted - 1) stupidity is not an intellectual defect and 2) stupidity as a more dangerous adversary than malice. It follows that liberation, not instruction, is necessary to overcome stupidity. "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the be…

I love this insanely insightful crystalization for me. I see you got a degree in IR and you used the word axiom so I'd refract back to you: reformulate stupidity as ignorance and assume a continuous conserved action exists between so that your observable is a danger measure-metric. Basically the reason ignorance is so danger is that it aliases between harmless stupidity and extreme evil, but it fails to trigger our c…

> Basically the reason ignorance is so danger is that it aliases between harmless stupidity and extreme evil, but it fails to trigger our collective species evil detection pattern coding which results in an unbelievable cascade evil failure mode.

Great summary. The problem with ignorance is that you are more likely to forgive the perpetrator whereas a malicious actor would have been cutoff once detected. You then stick with the ignorant for way longer and suffer loses beyond what a malicious actor would've likely caused. This is my impression from relationships at work.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#22

Post by elzbardico »

anal_reactor wrote: post #17
programjames wrote: post #5

If you've ever played Risk online, this becomes obvious, very quickly. The worst players to have around are not your enemies, but the stupid ones. They'll randomly block your troops from attacking mutual enemies, accidentally bait you into attacking other players ("attack red together?" . "okay sure!" . hits three of their troops, after you hit thirty ), not hold bonuses but not let you hold them either, waste all th…

> Something sobering to keep in mind is that the vast majority of people have the logical and mathematical capabilities of a good ten-year-old. I had a period of my life where I read a lot of "you're not special" on reddit, but then I finally understood that the ability to think logically on the most basic level already makes me very special. After spending some time with people from lower social classes and genuinel…

The years made me realize that too, but there's also plenty of stupid people in upper-classes. And usually, contrary to the first ones, I can't escape having to deal with those.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#23

Post by m_herrlich »

What a great read, it reminds me of "True Believer" by the great Eric Hoffer. "Stupid" as a word is a translation choice, it would be more effective if they had chosen a less derogatory term. 'True believer' would work better than 'stupid person'.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#24

Post by m_herrlich »

andiamo wrote: post #3

Fascinating - I just listened to Rufus Fears' lecture on Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison before opening HN. Personally, I find Bonhoeffer's premises are easily accepted - 1) stupidity is not an intellectual defect and 2) stupidity as a more dangerous adversary than malice. It follows that liberation, not instruction, is necessary to overcome stupidity. "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the be…

Well said. But 'fear of God' only works until religion itself is hijacked.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#25

Post by Survived »

ikrima wrote: post #19
andiamo wrote: post #3

Fascinating - I just listened to Rufus Fears' lecture on Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison before opening HN. Personally, I find Bonhoeffer's premises are easily accepted - 1) stupidity is not an intellectual defect and 2) stupidity as a more dangerous adversary than malice. It follows that liberation, not instruction, is necessary to overcome stupidity. "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the be…

I love this insanely insightful crystalization for me. I see you got a degree in IR and you used the word axiom so I'd refract back to you: reformulate stupidity as ignorance and assume a continuous conserved action exists between so that your observable is a danger measure-metric. Basically the reason ignorance is so danger is that it aliases between harmless stupidity and extreme evil, but it fails to trigger our c…

I think Bonhoeffer was referring to an acquired or affected stupidity; a position adopted defensively to fit into a social or political situation.

If the truth becomes dangerous or unpopular, a decent defense is adopting stupidity. I think that is subtly different from ignorance, which implies never knowing, as opposed to a rejection of truth.

Like much cognitive dissonance, it can be easiest to live with if you just change your beliefs rather than trying to rail against it.

The danger is, once truth is denied, reality becomes disconnected and atrocity much more abstract.

Maybe there is a better name yet for the phenomenon.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#26

Post by anal_reactor »

elzbardico wrote: post #22
anal_reactor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something sobering to keep in mind is that the vast majority of people have the logical and mathematical capabilities of a good ten-year-old. I had a period of my life where I read a lot of "you're not special" on reddit, but then I finally understood that the ability to think logically on the most basic level already makes me very special. After spending some time with people from lower social classes and genuinel…

The years made me realize that too, but there's also plenty of stupid people in upper-classes. And usually, contrary to the first ones, I can't escape having to deal with those.

That's true.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#28

Post by programjames »

ironman1478 wrote: post #12
SoftTalker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this hold true for most multiplayer online games? I don't play, but my kids could often be heard yelling "why would you do that?!?" when they had a game going.

This is really common in fighting games. Many okay players will get beat by really bad players who are really random. Better players in these games play in such a way as to mitigate effects of the randomness of their opponent.

That isn't a fair ranking. Some people are more idealist than you, and a priori want to believe others will play well. If you stick them in a lobby full of smashy noobs, they may not live long enough to update on those beliefs (within the single game). Of course, the same happens in reverse: if you go into a game assuming everyone is a smashy noob, and they're actually good at the game, you're going to end up in the losing position. The rate of mistakes changes the trembling-hand equilibria. The best players will, of course, figure out reputations for the other players as the game progresses, but calling some just 'okay' and others 'better' because they initialize the reputations to different values is not fair.

Think about this: you've probably driven a car to get from Point A to Point B before. If you existed in a society where people were constantly making mistakes, in the sense of crashing their cars several orders of magnitude more often, driving a car to get from Point A to Point B is no longer a good strategy. But it usually is a good, if not the best, move you can make right now, because people aren't making mistakes that frequently.

Here's another example: marriage (long-term relationships). Perhaps not all extra-marital affairs are mistakes, but a significant proportion of them are. If too many people are making these mistakes, leading to messy divorces, it's no longer worth it to even consider dating in the first place.

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#29

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

smitty1e wrote: post #20
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't scale There are 8.2 billion of them, so I think they scale just fine.

8.2n individuals, sure. But look how hard it is to wage peace in the Ukraine...

I understand your point, but it seems a lot better than some other scenarios throughout human history. Also, there are way more humans now than at those points.

Also, I am not sure how accurate this, but maybe something worth taking into consideration:

https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-here...

Re: Theory of Stupidity [pdf]

#30

Post by juancn » 

  The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity
If find this closing remark rather ironic in the context of the rest of the text.
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