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Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

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Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#91

Post by cactus2093 »

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 always assumed the flat earth thing was more of a troll/protest than a genuine belief, basically people just want to assert that "you can't force me to believe a certain thing". Even if in this case that certain thing is in the class of completely irrefutable facts, it doesn't really matter because they're just asserting their power to disagree. Like a toddler that gets in a mood where they just say "no" to everything. Trying to reason with that type of response is useless and it's also beside the point, the point is that they just want to exercise their free will. And they also probably are enjoying that it is frustrating other people.

A mental illness framing is kind of interesting though, I've never really thought about it like that. It implies that it could be treatable, which I'm not really sure is true. Can you "treat" a troll?

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#92

Post by googthrowaway42 »

cryptica wrote: post #16

The Reserve Banks of the world are making people dumber by aiming for full employment... This means stimulating the economy and giving companies an incentive to create jobs which don't need to exist... Because the jobs are useless, people start to focus on increasingly menial and tedious tasks and lose their sense of pragmatism. We've all seen meetings going around in circles for hours, people arguing about tedium, c…

The fact that you're being downvoted is so typical of the kind of midwits that inhabit HN. People vastly underestimate (read: do not even consider) the role that vast monetary manipulation has on a society. It creates so many distortions at so many levels. People spend so much of their energy and time on earth engaging with the monetary system and when you do very extreme things to that it creates a lot of problems (many of which have to do with distorting pricing signals and staving off bankruptcy which lead to many people doing completely unproductive work while at the same time giving them the feeling that they are).

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#93

Post by dahart »

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

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#94

Post by pdonis »

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. It's good for engagement.

I don't think it even has to be deliberate; the algorithms social media uses, by their very nature, are going to promote stupid and blatantly wrong beliefs, since so many people will enjoy mocking them and there will always be some believers willing to argue back and keep the discussion going indefinitely.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#96

Post by qsort »

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 don't mean to attack you, but I don't think you are approaching this the right way.

There are exactly zero people who believe the earth is flat. Some join conspiracy groups because they are social outcasts who enjoy being part of a tight-knit group, while for the most part they are being isolated and rejected (sometimes, admittedly, because of faults of their own, unrelated to being flat-earthers).

They aren't insane, they are desperately lonely.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#97

Post by henrikschroder »

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.

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 common is that they reject the mainstream view, they reject the consensus. And in turn, they embrace outlandish explanations, and the communities around those, because it gives them a false sense of superiority. They know something the rest of the sheep don't!

So these two psychological defense mechanisms interact with each other, and when the information flow in society is increasing, the threshold for how smart you need to be to keep up also increases. So people in general probably aren't getting stupider, but they're getting more and more overwhelmed, which looks the same.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#98

Post by cblconfederate »

Raphmedia wrote: post #56

I would be curious about what is the author's definition of the word "stupidity"? "Lack of judgment"? "Lack of knowledge"? "Unintelligent"? "Mental slowness in speech or action"? Perhaps, "Lack of education"? In a lot of the points, the author uses "smart" as the opposite of "stupid". Smart is also a vague word that comes up with multiple definitions such as "having or showing a high degree of mental ability", "styli…

Both the words stupid and genius are vague and undefined yet you know them when you see them. For one , they make you feel genius or stupid, respectively

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#99

Post by pdonis »

qsort wrote: post #96
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 don't mean to attack you, but I don't think you are approaching this the right way. There are exactly zero people who believe the earth is flat. Some join conspiracy groups because they are social outcasts who enjoy being part of a tight-knit group, while for the most part they are being isolated and rejected (sometimes, admittedly, because of faults of their own, unrelated to being flat-earthers). They aren't insa…

> There are exactly zero people who believe the earth is flat.

I don't think this is true. At any rate, if it is true, there are certainly a significant number of people who are giving an extraordinarily convincing imitation of believing that the Earth is flat. So convincing that it's hard not to allocate at least some probability to the hypothesis that they actually believe what they say they believe and aren't giving an imitation at all.

Re: Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses

#100

Post by klyrs »

Doomscrolling is objectively the best thing that I can do for the environment. If I put my phone down, I'd get bored, be productive, and probably make stuff. No good comes of that.

People aren't stupid. But there's little incentive to exercise one's intelligence, once the dopamine pathways get plowed the wrong way too many times.

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