Comment by Raphmedia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Raphmedia | Hacker News Reader

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", "stylish or elegant in dress or appearance" and "appealing to sophisticated tastes".

I have read the article multiple times, and it seems to me that it fires in all directions. It addresses environmental cognitive issues (air quality, etc.), education, political polarization, etc. In short, it lumps multiple issues under a personal interpretation of a vague (and rude) word.

I avoid the word "stupid". Not only is it vague but it is ableist because it creates and enforces systemic and institutional bias.

Is a lack of education the same as having temporary cognitive issues? Is it comparable to having a condition which decreases someone's cognitive ability permanently? What about people who are unable to grasp social intelligence? What about people who take beneficial drugs that happen to have mental fog as a side effect? Where is the line? To me, the answer is no. Those are all unrelated social issues that need to be addressed separately.

It's disappointing how many examples in this thread are about lack of knowledge (or even just disagreeable beliefs).

If intelligence is taken to be about manipulating the world around you then this is to some extent connected to the ability to obtain and verify knowledge but the ability to act upon that knowledge is far more important. True stupidity is almost by definition self-defeating.

While I will admit that some supposed signs of stupidity whole 'flat earth' movement is catastrophically misguided, it is a bit sad to see people dismiss it with arguments that are somehow even worse than the ones given by the people who have somehow convinced themselves the earth isn't spherical (often with quite sophisticated, but wrong, arguments).

I'd argue, at least in part, that the discussion about "lack of knowledge" in these comments is at least partially a result of the author's own failure to define, or even maintain a consistent implied definition throughout his own hypotheses of, intelligence/stupidity (even going so far as to use "wisdom" in place of intelligence in some of the hypotheses).

That's possible but it's something that pops up more often. The problem with it is that people then try to fix it by just telling people the knowledge they supposedly lack (typically failing despite their supposed superior intelligence).

Needless to say it's somewhat pointless to just tell a flat-earther the earth is actually round.

I'd also argue that a failure to teach (i.e. "telling people the knowledge they supposedly lack") is also not in and of itself a failure of intelligence.

The failure of intelligence is not necessarily thinking that the earth is flat, it's why one thinks that; and, in the modern context, and some historical contexts, this specific conclusion is explicitly an illogical one (i.e. an unintelligent one).

The author's direct words: "The way we educate children went seriously sideways a while back, and so, yeah, stupid happened."

I'd argue that good judgement of how reliable different pieces of information are is one of the most important aspects of intelligence. Some people are horribly bad at it while others are pretty good. In the long run this shapes what knowledge you have, so we can assume that someone who believe a lot of falsehoods isn't very smart. A smart individual can distill valuable information even when surrounded by propaganda while a dumb individual will still fall for a lot of propaganda even when surrounded by mostly correct information since they can't tell the difference.

> I'd argue that good judgement of how reliable different pieces of information are is one of the most important aspects of intelligence.

I agree. In fact, while civilization has ameliorated many of the challenges to individual survival, that aspect has become much more acute.

> A smart individual can distill valuable information even when surrounded by propaganda while a dumb individual will still fall for a lot of propaganda even when surrounded by mostly correct information since they can't tell the difference.

I think that several things are going on here.

First, it has become increasingly difficult to distill and discern truth, in part because it has become more difficult to figure out what level of scrutiny any particular proposition merits.

Many of the proxies we have for trustworthiness are social and often co-opted by competing interests.

This also applies to the trustworthiness of scrutinizers.

I mean, anthropogenic global climate change is fairly well established at this point, at least in terms of mechanism and direction, but if you apply enough paranoia and squirt a bit you can discern a vested interest for doomsayers to minimize errors and collude in producing a false consensus.

The general public is more-or-less aware that enough money can either create a false consensus or cast 'reasonable' doubt at will (eg. globalization will lower unemployment and grow the economy, and smoking doesn't cause cancer).

So, given all that, a lot of people just fall back on tribalism (or more like "team-sport-ism") when allocating their limited time and attention in deciding who or what to trust vs. scrutinize, since no matter where you look you can find conflicts of interest (eg. the profit motive explains overprescription of OxiContin, so why shouldn't it explain pharma collusion to give people cancer and sideline cheap natural cures?).

It isn't that truth extraction is too hard per-se, it's the meta-task of choosing reliable sources as your starting point that has become impossible.

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

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