Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#231

Post by pdimitar » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:40 AM UTC

azhu wrote: post #196

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…

> If 90% of your insight into social interactions comes from clickbait social media sites selecting the most egregious stories and videos from around the world, of course you're going to think "stupidity is expanding" Agreed. Isn't this the majority of people though? And if this is in fact the majority of people, then doesn't it mean that stupidity is in fact expanding? I don't think any of us are going to hit upon t…

Hasn't been my experience that most people are stupid. I mean yeah, most people I ever met were quite helpless in various semi-emergency -- or just unusual -- situations but that doesn't make them stupid. It makes them kind of pampered and not well prepared, nothing more.

I think what you describe can be attributed to our brain noting the negative things much stronger in its memory while it always writes off the usual / slightly positive events as "normal".

In short, we get outraged easily, but it's hard to make us positively impressed in a lasting manner, it seems.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#232

Post by seppin » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #205

seppin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Look at how the Soviet Union functioned. You got a government salary as long as you looked the other way and pretended that obvious lies were the truth.

Works for a while, not forever.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#233

Post by sowbug » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

Variant of 8 and 13: people overall are actually getting smarter, and more people are figuring out how to communicate more widely. The iceberg of relative stupidity was always there, but now you can see more of it.

See also Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#234

Post by sellyme » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:55 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #97

grenoire wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was research last year that showed that cynicism is a way for less intelligent people to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. Basically, if you know you're not smart enough to figure out if other people are genuine or out to scam you, defaulting to assuming that all strangers are lying is a winning strategy. The same kind of logic fuels conspiracy-minded people. The one thing they all have in commo…

> cynicism is a way for less intelligent people to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. Basically, if you know you're not smart enough

I think "know[ing] you're not smart enough" inherently excludes you from belonging in the category of "less intelligent people".

One of the most defining characteristics of stupid people is that they think they're smart.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#235

Post by eyelidlessness » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

Asking the wrong question makes for a lot of interesting hypotheses, but it’s possible it’s still the wrong question even after exploring.

What if stupidity is neither expanding (in quantitative terms) nor not expanding (in that the same volume of stupidity is experiencing expanded impact, influence and importance)?

Many of the hypotheses on both sides of the original question could be true, but the lessons would be drastically different.

If roughly the same proportion of people are roughly engaged in the same level and variety of stupidity, but that stupidity has more social sway (pandering, bullying, exhaustion, laziness, opportunism, inertia, collective trauma and coping, probably a list longer than I could compile), focusing on the stupidity isn’t much more than an escape.

Obviously I’m biased toward my hypothetical. But I think “thinking” oriented exploration might want to spend some time on “what makes people react to things that are incorrect in a favorable way” and less time on defining what correctness is when there’s a wealth of literature on the latter and a great deficit on the former that isn’t dismissed as inherently biased in this kind of discussion.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#236

Post by googthrowaway42 » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #227

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're speaking in very black and white terms, but yes in general that is my view and like all historical trends these things tend to decrease or increase in their effect over time. It's not a binary thing. Certainly I am saying that the number of people who read the Bible has decreased as a percentage of the population substantially since 1785. > Is it possible that becoming an MD might require a base level of menta…

> 6. They’re not getting stupider; I’m just getting more conceited. This seems like the most likely explanation in your case.

What I'm expressing is not a novel or unique perspective. This is a very basic critique of modernity.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#237

Post by sellyme » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

dahart wrote: post #222

tankenmate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar vein of thought; Any sufficiently advanced technology (knowledge) is indistinguishable from magic -- Arthur C. Clarke So people just see competing ideas as a choice between two forms of magic. Add in identity politics and hey presto, changing their mind means denying themselves (a rather difficult thing for most to do). Add in Dunning-Kruger, through no fault of their own, and then people think there…

> Add in Dunning-Kruger, through no fault of their own, and then people think there is a rational reason for denying objective evidence. No, this isn't true. References to Dunning-Kruger need to die. I haven't seen a case yet where using Dunning-Kruger to explain behavior is not misinformation. Dunning-Kruger's data actually demonstrated that the more confident someone is in their ability, the higher their ability, s…

> Dunning-Kruger's data actually demonstrated that the more confident someone is in their ability, the higher their ability, statistically.

It also demonstrated that the worst-performing individuals estimated themselves to perform MUCH better than they did, while the best-performing individuals expected to perform slightly worse than they did.

This comports with the average reference to the phenomenon ("stupid people think they're smarter than they are, smart people think they're stupider than they are").

The article you linked for some reason makes this comparison:

> So the bias is definitively not that incompetent people think they’re better than competent people. [...] they typically still don’t think they’re quite as good as people who, you know, actually are good.

This is just categorically false, and the chart linked not one paragraph above completely torpedoes it. The bottom quartile of people thought that they would perform at around the 57th percentile. They clearly expected to perform better than more competent individuals.

Perhaps the author meant to write "not that [they] think they're better than competent people do", which would be correct, but the rest of the conclusions seem to follow off of this flawed reading of the data.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#238

Post by onecommentman » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #84

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…

I really think social media companies are deliberately promoting stupid and blatantly wrong beliefs. It's good for engagement. If you've ever watched someone be completely wrong about something you know a lot about, you know how strong the urge to correct them is. On social media, promoting clearly wrong beliefs and ideas (Flat Earth, for instance) is good for business because people will similarly jump in to correct…

Maybe social media are just tapping into the human need to have “fools” on the stage. It’s a pretty universal archetype. Silly fools, wise fools, serendipitous fools. Only the Jester can speak truth to the King sort of thing. Been around so long in so many places that it has to be useful for human culture...

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#239

Post by throwawaygh » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #236

throwawaygh wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6. They’re not getting stupider; I’m just getting more conceited. This seems like the most likely explanation in your case.

What I'm expressing is not a novel or unique perspective. This is a very basic critique of modernity.

“You are a midwit” is not a critique. It’s just name-calling. I suppose I somehow agree that name calling is a common critique of pretty much anything.

More importantly, it also shuts down conversations. Behaving like you’re the only non-idiot in the room makes you an unpleasant interlocutor. Consider the possibility that the people you interact with and think are midwits are actually intelligent but are optimizing for “have as short an interaction with this unpleasant egomaniac as possible without being unpleasant myself”. Particularly irl.

I’m still interacting with you because I hope you realize that your dismissal of basically every accomplished person in society as a midwit might have more to do with your insecurities than the broad structure of society, and that your obsession with this insecurity is eroding your long-term relationships. I have old close friends who talk and think like you are in this thread, and their attitude toward others has turned them into lonely old men. It’s sad.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#240

Post by hunter-gatherer » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #126

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…

> stupidity concentrators Wow, that about sums it up in a succinct and bittersweet way. Back in 2012-ish I began to honestly worry that the steady accretion of anti-information would eventually crush the internet if something wasn't done. Nothing has been done. Now add to that the effectiveness of SEO and searching Google or DDG, or even boutique sites like Stack Overflow or Epicurious reveals a huge quantity of chaf…

> Back in 2012-ish I began to honestly worry that the steady accretion of anti-information would eventually crush the internet if something wasn't done.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. A friend of mine and I spent a lot of evening hours talking about [loosely summarized] "where the internet was going" from 2010-2013. Unfortunately we seemed to be correct on many fronts, and it has made some faucets of technology almost unbearable.