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Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

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Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#201

Post by aaron695 »

dahart wrote: post #93
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Counterintuitively, people love reading about and engaging in what they consider "stupidity". Internet companies capitalize on this by bringing an optimized stream of stupidity for your viewing pleasure. Take a look at the front page of Reddit (logged out, default subs): Half of the content highlights stupidity of others: /r/IdiotsInCars shows the worst drivers from around the world, /r/insanepeoplefacebook shows the…

> people love reading about and engaging in what they consider "stupidity Its true. I think it appeals to our inner Just-world theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

The Just-world idea I really don't think gets the attention is deserves.

It's obviously everywhere but you see it in tech when people say company X deserved Y because they didn't do Z when they get Black-Hatted for instance.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#202

Post by pdonis »

qsort wrote: post #193
pdonis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ancient civilizations knew full well the earth was not flat. Some did. Not all of them. The first one I'm aware of is the Greeks. Do you know of any earlier ones? Also, the fact that particular intellectuals knew the Earth was round in a society does not necessarily mean it was common knowledge in that society, much less that it was such common knowledge that the average person would think it absurd to question it…

(edit to answer the edit) There's evidence in some Sanskrit texts that early Indian civilizations did, but they are probably contemporary to the Greeks. But again, even superficial observations are sufficient. You don't really have to "trust" anybody or research anything. If anything, it's the belief in flat earth that requires extremely convoluted and unintuitive rationalizations. Again, I understand this stuff is f…

> even superficial observations are sufficient

That depends on what you consider to be superficial observations. The fact that there is plenty of evidence for ancient civilizations before the Greeks believing the Earth to be flat (for example, descriptions in their mythology) indicates to me that the observations needed to figure out that the Earth is round are not superficial. Sure, it seems like they are if you live in a society that already has the belief and can teach it to you. But that doesn't mean they actually are.

> this is really just a myth

The myth referred to in that Wikipedia article (which I fully agree is a myth) has nothing whatever to do with what I said, or with early Christians. You are attacking a straw man.

What I said, in fact, is stronger than the statements made in that Wikipedia article. The article only says that "scholars have supported" the view that the Earth is round since the 600s AD. I said that the Christian church had taught it since it accepted it as dogma, and that, AFAIK, was several centuries earlier than the 600s AD.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#203

Post by jariel »

pier25 wrote: post #188
jariel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't conflate 'religion' with 'arbitrary beliefs'. Of course within religion there is going to be a lot of 'arbitrary belief', but that's not what it is essentially. 'Parables' etc. are a function of how it's communicated and propagated, ironically, for the 'dumber folks' who 'need something material to believe in' and for whom more abstract concepts don't provide solace. Religion is a metaphysical perspective of ex…

> Religion is a metaphysical perspective of existence, one based on spirituality from which we develop our humanity, morality etc. and none of that is irrational. Humans have been naturally selected to cooperate over millions of years. Religion only exists because we yearn the feeling of community which is biological and it only makes sense that a unified culture makes a group most likely to survive. Also, any belief…

"Religion only exists because we yearn the feeling of community "

No, community is only part of it, and frankly, that we lived in communities beforehand is not relevant.

Religion is the 'foundational philosophy concerning nature of who we are' that transcends most other subjects - i.e. it's metaphysics at it's core.

The 'community' part arises only in the same way secular civic and legal issues arise in our own communities.

The misunderstanding is partly evident in your comment about 'very religious people'.

You're conflating 'people who say they are hardcore believers in XYZ' with necessarily 'very religious' people.

Fred Rogers - a trained priest, started 'Mr Rogers Neighbourhood' and did that for 50 years to help communicate more intelligent ideals to children. He didn't mention the word 'God' a single time on air, you wouldn't know directly that he was 'deeply religious'.

Fred was not 'anti science' or someone we might normally conflate with 'hyper religious'.

As I indicated, Barack Obama is religious. He literally worked for the Church for a few years at the start of his career. One might argue his whole career was a bit missionary. Certainly Jimmy Cater's life - and Presidency - was that.

They're also not what we would consider 'super religious' bent on 'magical thinking' - but Fred Rogers, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama are who I would think of for example when contemplating who are 'the most religious people'.

So in a way, the nature of the comment implies a kind of 'straw man' - plucking out those with the most specific and material orthodox 'beliefs' about a system, the kind for whom the parables are meant to be understood more literally because maybe they're not so capable of the more enlightened bits - and having them representative of 'the most religious' - which is a little unfair. The plebes are going to be prone to 'magical thinking' no matter what happens.

'Scientific materialism' as it applies to the nature of life etc. is a constant stream 'magical thinking' - the dissonance between 'physics' and 'morality' is a chasm completely too wide for anyone to seem to cross with sound thinking.

And finally - every modern politicized subject, even those adhered to by 'intelligent people' is chock full of 'magical thinking'.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#204

Post by d_tr »

mcbits wrote: post #165
TallGuyShort wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that crossed my mind as well. People who have so little understanding of the mechanics behind it all that they think it's impossible we've put anything in Earth orbit - how could ANYONE understand that? In one case though I had someone say that I wasn't hitting satellites, I was hitting a solar-powered high altitude plane. When I pointed out that it would have to be going at 23 times the speed of sound at sea le…

My conclusion about flat-earthers is that the vast majority are just trolling. There are probably also a fair number who get sucked in by the idea, but they aren't the ones out there making the arguments for it. The frustratingly persistent people who can come up with one outlandish argument after another are too smart to actually believe what they're saying.

I am not a mental health expert but I do not think of this type of persistent trolling as healthy behaviour. At the very least it is shitty and disrespectful behaviour towards someone trying to make a point using facts.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#205

Post by TallGuyShort »

seppin wrote: post #174
qsort wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would suggest that it's possible this need is subconscious It's definitely possible. I'm saying I'd be more inclined to believe the "need" in question is a social need, rather than bad media/"fake news" influence.

Bingo. A study I can't find after trying on Google took people with objectively wrong opinions and payed them for accuracy. Magically, people corrected their own opinions when they had a financial incentive to do so.

I'd be curious about the inverse though: does the rate at which a random sample of the population is willing to tell you something incorrect if you paid them change significantly?

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#206

Post by wobbegongz »

karlerss wrote: post #131
wobbegongz wrote: post #37

In the past people believed in lots of stupid things like "god exists", "the poor deserves its situation and the rich has earned its situation", "hatred toward blacks, Jews, neighbor country, homosexuals, handicapped and many more", "kings are good and democracy bad", "the strong country has a right to invade the week country", "the rich are evil and the poor saints" and so one. So I think the idea that stupidity has…

All of those statements are statements of value. Maybe, in the past stupid was mainly reserved for people who knew very few facts. Knowing or having access to facts was much less common before the internet. So people used to argue about facts. But since those arguments were about facts, they always died down (someone was right and someone wrong) and you did not have a feeling of "expanding stupidity". Since access to…

Stupidity is about lacking intellectual capacity (not necessary the same as IQ, also things like not being interested in thinking, or lacking necessary facts about a subject can give you a lack of capacity.)

Both stating wrong facts and having ridiculous values is correlated with being stupid. So I do not really see how the Fact-value distinction can be used here, stupid people fail at both. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction)

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#207

Post by biolurker1 »

This could/should be measurable by Sat scores or other measures of intelligence if the writer agrees that rationality is related to the definition of IQ. Maybe it's not and it encompasses more than solving problems but also jugdjing probabilities without emotion.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#208

Post by hhjinks »

grenoire wrote: post #42
TallGuyShort wrote: post #32

I've engaged a few flat earthers to actually listen to their arguments and show them my own evidence that it's real (locating amateur radio satellites using data shared by people around the globe and demonstrating the doppler effect on them). The response strikes me as being indicative of mental illness. And I don't mean that as an insult - I mean that when confronted with that they're clearly irrational. And somethi…

I think there is too much information around for the average person to filter and process and digest. All three are important parts of living in a society and it looks to me like even with e.g. economic issues alone, it's just very hard for (to be fair) anybody to keep up. In turn, people reach out to conspiracy theories to simplify the world around them with obvious answers and explanations. My theory, sort of.

How does that work when flat earthers actually weave elaborate "theories" about the physics and mechanics leading everyone else to conclude that it is round? It's not like they say it's flat and stick their fingers in their ears. They respond with plausible-sounding retorts that, while obviously untrue, often make sense in isolation. For everyone else, the explanation of "the earth is round and gravity goes brr" is far less cognitively intensive than all the mental gymnastics flat earthers engage in.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#209

Post by ravitation »

contravariant wrote: post #180
ravitation wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue, at least in part, that the discussion about "lack of knowledge" in these comments is at least partially a result of the author's own failure to define, or even maintain a consistent implied definition throughout his own hypotheses of, intelligence/stupidity (even going so far as to use "wisdom" in place of intelligence in some of the hypotheses).

That's possible but it's something that pops up more often. The problem with it is that people then try to fix it by just telling people the knowledge they supposedly lack (typically failing despite their supposed superior intelligence). Needless to say it's somewhat pointless to just tell a flat-earther the earth is actually round.

I'd also argue that a failure to teach (i.e. "telling people the knowledge they supposedly lack") is also not in and of itself a failure of intelligence.

The failure of intelligence is not necessarily thinking that the earth is flat, it's why one thinks that; and, in the modern context, and some historical contexts, this specific conclusion is explicitly an illogical one (i.e. an unintelligent one).

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