However, just go ahead and go to walmart for an hour to see what the average person is. We're the outliers and exemplars of thought... And there is plenty of ways to go down.
I just hope easy access to knowledge makes everyone smarter.
I spent five years working in various discount supermarkets as a cashier. The average person there is struggling with challenges that make typical hacker problems look trivial.
- They either have very unfulfilling jobs, or none at all
- Many people they meet pre-judge them as weak or stupid because they're poor
- The community that does support them also holds them back, by criticizing attempts to get ahead and condoning self-destructive behavior
- They have no safety net for when they screw up. Failures like a marriage breakup or losing a job have massive and immediate impacts on their lives
- On top of all this, they're often raising kids in the same environment, desperately hoping they can escape
Don't take too much comfort that we're 'outliers and exemplars of thought', actions and attitudes that we regard as obviously stupid have a strong internal logic in their world. Religious fundamentalism is a joke? I agree, but for a woman who's had a family devastated by marriage breakups and substance abuse, its tenets are pretty damn attractive. Smoking or overeating? If the rest of your life is unfulfilling, at least you can be guaranteed a little pleasure in your day.
I don't really think so; one of the reasons I often speak out against articles like that appearing here is that most of us are perfectly capable of getting into nasty arguments on the internet. Perhaps more so than average people who might just walk away rather than getting upset that "someone is wrong on the internet!".
I agree, and I think that's what TheAmazingIdiot means by outliers. The intelligent thinkers that frequent HN have such a command and understanding of some topics that they would feel compelled to provide, er, 'helpful input', but not when the consequences of doing so might be more destructive than constructive. I may be wrong, but I think such people are outliers.
I wouldn't count on it. At the very least, I think it will make everyone smarter, but those at the bottom, many of whom place little value on expanding their knowledge, will get slightly smarter, those at the top, most of whom love learning and find random Wikipedia articles genuinely interesting, will get a lot smarter, and even though the world is a less stupid place, we'll be even more frustrated because the gap will be bigger.
So it will probably get a little better on an absolute scale, but it will seem to us like it's getting worse.
Reminds me of the fact that one study indicated that less than 0.5% of Americans are "poor" by the standards of people in India but America routinely identifies 12% to 14% of the population as living "below the poverty line".
As for humanity, I am pretty personally burnt out of late on the way I've been treated (in some circles, I guess). Yet, more objectively, I still think most folks mean well much of the time. A lot of conflict grows out of difficult circumstances and tragic misunderstandings and isn't originally rooted in malice. Malice typically takes root later, in part because most people seem to routinely believe that if they got hurt, then there was malice. Initially, that is very often not true. It isn't terribly satisfying to realize that but it does make it easier to not be grudging.
http://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Book-Two-Reasons/dp/B00123...
... and its author is a guy who won a contest to come up with successors to Murphy's Law. Backstory here:
http://www.statusq.org/archives/2001/11/26/ http://www.statusq.org/archives/2001/12/04/
A very similar line occurs in a Robert Heinlein story.
Edit: Googling around, I ran across the following quote from a German general which was cited as an antecedent to the above. While it only vaguely resembles that idea, it is a marvelous specimen of that distinct microgenre, witty aphorisms by dudes from European military history:
I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!
Isn't that great?
The rule of thumb is: if a famous person said it, it will be easy to find a precise textual citation on Google. So if you can't find the precise text, it's likely inauthentic.
Wikiquote is pretty good at distinguishing between sourced and unsourced quotes and providing precise references for the former. Take a look at their page on Napoleon (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France) and see how many of them are traced to his letters. (By the way, the "never attribute to malice..." one is listed under misattributions on that same page.)
We're the outliers and exemplars of thought