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Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

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Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#241

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

wolfgke wrote: post #114
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…

> 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 most bizarre clips from social media, /r/choosingbeggars highlights the dumbest negotiation…

My fave is the intro: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#242

Post by bena »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #219
bena wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your own life if you think of the stupidest people you know they tend to be the most "intelligent" (software engineers, PHDs, doctors, lawyers, etc). That's modernity. I have not found that to be the case at all. In fact, I've often found the stupidest people I know tend to be the people who think "the stupidest people tend to be the most "intelligent"". It's means to discredit intelligence and expertise and rep…

> It's means to discredit intelligence No > and expertise Yes > and replace them with shouting loudly No See: Nassim Taleb's IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot)

First, if you're going to use an initialism and the term, parenthesize the initialism, not the term, on the first occurrence.

Next, I think you're way over-applying the concept of IYI. Also, the concept smells. If it's true, then why doesn't it apply to Taleb himself? And if it does, how can we trust the concept?

He also tells you not to trust him. His life is basically giving advice. That's what his books are at their core level.

Also, anyone who idolizes Ron Paul needs to be met with a certain level of skepticism.

I don't think you should trust anyone who tells you to not trust expertise or intelligence. They're usually selling something they don't want you to think about.

Finally, "No" and "Yes" aren't rebuttals, they're refusals to engage.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#243

Post by dahart »

sellyme wrote: post #237
dahart wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I think you’re misunderstanding what Dunning & Kruger presented, which is precisely why references to this paper need to stop. You cannot read literally into the graph as saying that the bottom quartile of people believed they were at the 57th percentile of ability, that’s not what the experiment measured.

Have you read the actual paper? The respondents were 1- all Cornell undergrads volunteering for extra class credit, 2- asked to rank themselves, not to rate their abilities, 3- asked about such “skills” as the ability to get a joke. It seems pretty wild that anyone ever took this paper seriously. The conclusions that it makes in it’s wordy prose are not supported by the data they present.

Take a little more time to understand Tal’s primary argument - that this paper most likely is measuring regression to the mean. Because these kids were asked to rank themselves, and they didn’t know how good their peers were, there is good reason to expect a correllation less than 1. Because the authors were barely out of undergrad school themselves at the time, and not studying statistics per se, there is plenty of reason to suspect that the methodology isn’t perfect ... beyond the fact that it wasn’t a random sample of the population, it studied all rich kids who (self-selected) needed extra credit, it included no difficult mental skills, and that followup papers have shown a complete reversal of whatever effect is there, when applied to more difficult skills like law or engineering.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#244

Post by geomark »

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…

"...people will similarly jump in to correct the wrong belief."

This works really well when you have a question about something. If you post a question asking for answers or ideas you often get crickets. But if you post an idea that is clearly wrong you usually get lots of people jumping in to correct you.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#245

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> I really think social media companies are deliberately promoting stupid and blatantly wrong beliefs.

I don't find them particularly worse than the major mainstream media.

> If you've ever watched someone be completely wrong about something you know a lot about

This happens whenever I read a mainstream media article about something like airplanes.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#246

Post by pksebben »

geomark wrote: post #244
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"...people will similarly jump in to correct the wrong belief." This works really well when you have a question about something. If you post a question asking for answers or ideas you often get crickets. But if you post an idea that is clearly wrong you usually get lots of people jumping in to correct you.

That's called Cunningham's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#247

Post by hdjdjdjs »

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 have the same experience with Republicans.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#248

Post by randcraw »

olladecarne wrote: post #122
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 if you look at the brain as a neural network then it's easy to see how this happens. Not everyone is born to educated parents and receives high quality education. If a lot of the information your brain received growing up was bad, then you can easily reach bad conclusions. The collapse of institutions makes it worse because now no one trusts anything. So to many the information on the internet is as valid as…

Yeah, I think our schools have long done US students a disservice in underemphasizing “information quality” — how to deal with incomplete, ambiguous, questionable, and bad info. A very large fraction of tests in school reinforce that every question has only one right answer. The notion of minimizing error is seldom even imagined. Instead it's taught that all learning must seek only one goal: “knowing the one and only truth”. Yet all too often, competing facts are not mutually exclusive and can change with time.

And don't get me started on the poor coverage of concepts like “necessary” and “sufficient” in judging evidence in support of an assertion or model.

After working in science for the past 15 years (drug development), I've come to appreciate how little in medicine we know in absolute terms. With any system as complex as the human body, generally the best you can hope for is to be less wrong.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#249

Post by NoPicklez »

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…

My opinion is this is due to a reduced level of trust that we place in either each other or large companies/organisations. It is known among the business industry that trust is lower than it was historically. Companies and people are increasingly seeming to engage in shadier and shadier practices, or we're becoming more aware of it. This erodes the level of trust we place in each other, research bodies, governments, policing and science etc.

In addition, where someone with an extremist view might be considered an outgroup, historically their views might have been suppressed among their peers or shutdown. Now they can engage online with thousands if not millions of other people who believe in the same out group ideas, potentially strengthening their view point.

One of the interesting psychological discussions is around people with extremist views such as flat earthers. These individuals are often minorities or outcasts of society and as such, many of those with extremist views form bonds with like minded people and their relationships and well-being are tied to those relationships. What this means is that not only are they less likely to respond pragmatically to opposing viewpoints, but that they would struggle to actually change their ways given that their relationships are tied with this belief. And if they were to believe differently, they would have to say goodbye to those bonds.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#250

Post by asdff »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #240
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 almos…

facets you mean
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