Comment by ihavequestions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ihavequestions | Hacker News Reader

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I am convinced the world is "stupid", but it's not because I passively browse the front page of reddit more than I should. In fact, before you pointed out that it's mostly a stupidity concentrator (nice term btw), I didn't even notice that. When I read the front page of reddit I don't deduce the average intelligence of the participants by the most popular (mostly negative) posts of the day, I'm banking on the most upvoted posts being somewhat entertaining to me, nothing more.

What has convinced me the world is stupid is that as a whole we cannot get our shit together to deal with a global pandemic. You signal your intelligence when you show blatant disregard for the rules/law when you don't wear a mask when required. There are so many reasons why people do this (not knowing any better/not believing they work comes from lack of education), but it all stems from lack of intelligence (in my opinion). The fact that some parts of the world have effectively contained while others are miserably failing, causing so many needless deaths, knowing what needs to happen to create this outcome, you can only conclude that as a whole, we are morons.

So yeah, I'm sure social media is definitely doing some damage, acting as a conduit for false information, spreading theories on 5G towers spreading the virus etc, but taking 5 watching some dumbass total his car via /r/idiotsincars because it was upvoted into /r/all does not make me feel hopeless, what makes me feel hopeless is getting on a tram, making a quick scan and concluding that I have to move into the next section because in the current one there are too many people not wearing a mask.

Your post has made me reconsider browsing /r/all though.. it is all pretty bland these days and /r/WCGW isn't entertaining as it was when I first found it

> You signal your intelligence when you show blatant disregard for the rules/law...There are so many reasons why people do this (not knowing any better/not believing they work comes from lack of education), but it all stems from lack of intelligence (in my opinion)

Coming from a country which had low enforcement of laws even before the pandemic(one of the reasons why it's still under "developing" category instead of "developed"), I doubt the disregard of law is due to lack of intelligence. On the contrary, the more intelligent/shrewd someone is, higher is their chance to get away disregarding the law(in these places). They are more selfish than stupid.

In every country I've been to I've seen the same levels of stupid. It's comforting to know that people aren't so different from each other.

But I think that what you are attributing to stupidity would be better attributed to culture, size, or strength of authority -- the countries that have handled the pandemic well score favorably in one of those attributes. Here in the 'states we are strongly individualistic and historically distrustful of government, and bad actors have been stoking those flames for a while so we are in a particuarly vulnerable state right now.

Now, in my opinion, stupidity is humanity's seeming refusal to not act more switfly about climate change, but I'm sure someone else would argue that's attributable to some other, er, attribute

"I'm banking on the most upvoted posts being somewhat entertaining to me, nothing more." - i do the same and i get stupider everytime it seems. i just watched for the first time on youtube "judge calls" which is basically video snippets of us american tv of judges sentencing ppl - i never knew such things existed before and i find its allowance on tv first and on youtube second pretty disgusting and inhumane.

'Stupid' is very subjective. Let’s take your example of the face masks. You (scientists including) call stupid whenever people aren’t wearing the masks. Others (also including scientists) might say that wearing a mask is stupid (because it’s weakening your immune system).

Another example. If you’d be living in the Middle Ages and there would be a growing group believing the earth wasn’t flat, you’d be called stupid. Now, it’s the other way around.

Either way, stupidity is very subjective when applied at an intellectual level.

At a more practical level, stupid would be a child that just heard their parents say not to touch the furnace but still touches it and burns itself. One could call it stupid, but it’s also a way of learning, exploring and getting experience.

So even at this level, 'stupid' is subjective

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