Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Brotherhood of Morons

ludic.mataroa.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#71

Post by pdimitar »

nemo44x wrote: post #59
angiosperm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Harris, you say.

Well yeah, there is that. I love Taleb's writing (Black Swan was an important book) and observations (Power law distributions are the world globalization trends towards) but truth be told he does come off as a bit of an ass. I mean, he really just had the key observation and then somehow wrote a few thousand pages around it and more or less got lucky with a trade once.

> but truth be told he does come off as a bit of an ass.

Being able to look past that is what constitutes one of the meanings of the expression "going out of your comfort zone" which is basically how you learn new things.

Like your sibling commenter, I distill wisdom and experience any chance I get. If I find myself being irritated by somebody, my first reaction is to ask myself why. If the reason is emotional I almost always dismiss it.

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#72

Post by pdimitar »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #32
borbulon wrote: post #4

> What Taleb calls the Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) - someone who has the mannerisms and interests of a superficially intelligent person but who nonetheless is unable to self-reflect or deal with nuance, such as the Harvard-educated Ben Shapiro. I worked in Harvard Square for 5 years (dead center, across the street from Curious George, between the Greenhouse and the Coop), and it was always my assertion that Harvard…

The problem is that we select for high fidelity parrots and virtue signaling monkeys in admissions, rather than providing a support structure for people who want to create or discover things.

Well, that's because the previous generation are high fidelity parrots and virtue signalling monkeys so they perpetuate the cycle.

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#73

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

pdimitar wrote: post #70
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an art teacher that had a poster on his wall: "An education is no substitute for intelligence." Some of the smartest people that I've ever met, had little to no education.

[waves to say hi] I never studied computer science, I can't code a graph path-finding algorithm out of memory and yet I've been told by many former colleagues that I am one of the best programmers they ever met. Which is quite hilarious because I still think I am quite bad, to this day, after 22 years of career. And no this is not humble-bragging, more like to outline how different our perspectives on ourselves can b…

I'm a high-school dropout. GED.

I have a couple of friends that are quite rich, and run a successful company. Both dropouts. I think that she never even got her GED.

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#74

Post by ericyd »

nataliste wrote: post #67
ericyd wrote: post #2

I got part way through and quit. I appreciate the author's perspective, but I'm kind of tired of people so adamantly avoiding empathy. It's easy to say someone is acting stupidly; it's much harder to put yourself in their shoes and understand why they might be acting that way. I dunno, maybe there is some wisdom I missed because I didn't finish it.

FTA: >Then there is the third kind of person who, upon reading anything like the quote above, immediately insists that the complainant must secretly be the insufferable one, because actually smart people don't experience frustration for reasons unknown. The implication is that they're the smart ones because they live in a world where the ultimate marker of intelligence is not the ability to discern sound action from…

lol definitely didn't get this far in the article, sounds about right

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#75

Post by low_tech_love »

pdimitar wrote: post #68
ericyd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are people in the world who regularly trample on common notions of ethics and morals. It is really sad and frustrating that such people exist. I still find empathy to be a better reaction than blame and contempt. It is foundational to the way I choose to live my life. And with this response, I'm pushing my values on you in a way which is probably immoral! The author suggests that this "Brotherhood…

Sorry for several edits, I got a bit worked up. :) Your parent is singling out a group that absolutely are NOT doing their best, not in a unobtrusive way anyway. Your empathy is cute but does not align with reality and, if anything else, betrays how privileged your life is that you can afford it. Case in point: I live in 5 minutes walking distance from a major road artery in the capital city I inhabit. I have saved b…

One important thing I think many miss about this discussion is that we’re not advocating some kind of asshole witch hunt, or new laws for banning assholes to concentration camps or anything. It’s just that IMHO content like this article is important because it’s inherently human; it’s a person ranting and letting the steam off. He is an individual who has made a decision to stay away from people who don’t make him feel good. Reasoning about things like this and making such decisions (and sharing them with those around you) are precisely what makes us human (at least in a free society).

We should treasure subjective but honest content like this even if we don’t agree completely with it. Considering that most of what we see published online nowadays is targeted optimized content to make you feel or do something specific, and considering the future we’re heading towards, where much (maybe most?) of the content will be AI-generated , I treasure this very much.

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#76

Post by slowmovintarget »

drewcoo wrote: post #64
SamPatt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem with redefining commonly used terms like stupid. We tend to view it as lacking intelligence, and intelligence we often define as something like IQ, but the author explicitly rejects that and makes it about destructive (to themselves and others) behavior. The doctors were likely not stupid according to the standard definition, but were harmful towards both their patients and themselves, thus stupid…

> This is the problem with redefining commonly used terms like stupid. Maybe like Eskimos have many words for snow, we need many words for stupid. Or idiots should learn to use thesauruses. /s

We have many words. Foolishness and stupidity are common companions, but one does not require the other. Intelligent people behave foolishly all the time.

The distinction is one of a failure of either imagination or effort. We have other words like ignorance, incompetence, impairment, and none of these require a lack of cognitive ability, though the latter implies diminished capacity.

Bombast, however, typically seeks to oversimplify for the sake of provocation.

Re: The Brotherhood of Morons

#77

Post by ericyd »

low_tech_love wrote: post #75
pdimitar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for several edits, I got a bit worked up. :) Your parent is singling out a group that absolutely are NOT doing their best, not in a unobtrusive way anyway. Your empathy is cute but does not align with reality and, if anything else, betrays how privileged your life is that you can afford it. Case in point: I live in 5 minutes walking distance from a major road artery in the capital city I inhabit. I have saved b…

One important thing I think many miss about this discussion is that we’re not advocating some kind of asshole witch hunt, or new laws for banning assholes to concentration camps or anything. It’s just that IMHO content like this article is important because it’s inherently human; it’s a person ranting and letting the steam off. He is an individual who has made a decision to stay away from people who don’t make him fe…

I never said I wanted to censor the author, just that I was personally tired of people with this kind of "me vs the world" view of humanity. I agree subjective expression and free speech are fundamental to healthy existence.
Post reply on HN