- Registrado
- 20 de Dic, 2022
[Preface: I made a thread the other day which got very little interest. Only thing worth note that came of it is a short debate that the other guy evidently got bored of. That discussion is the inspiration for this thread and I'm only a little ashamed to admit it.]
You have undoubtedly heard, and echoed, something along these lines: "Most people are stupid. They just repeat mantras without engaging in any real thought."
I've done it too. Just about every comedian has a bit predicated on the idea. Despite its "rude" subject matter, it's a safe mantra to repeat in pretty much any setting and you'll rarely find a room where you're in the minority for believing it.
But you're not stupid. You, like most other people, recognize that this is precisely one of those mantras that many people repeat without giving any real thought. Well let's give it some thought here.
Obviously, "dumb" is relative. When you call someone stupid, you're saying they're significantly less intelligent than yourself. Most people self-report their intelligence level at about 7/10 regardless of how intelligent they actually are, with 5/10 being average. So, assuming most people are dumb, let's tentatively say "dumb" is about 2/10 points below yourself. That's not hugely informative, but it gives us something to work with. It also leads nicely into the point I'm making with the subtitle:
The dumber you are, the dumber you think everyone else is.
If we follow the baseline I proposed above, we can use people's assumptions about other people to get a rough idea of how intelligent they actually are. Whenever someone says "people so stupid they can't even do [x]," it is an indicator that [x] is at the outer edge of what they consider "trivial."
To be more concrete: think about the kind of guy who says something like "I looked at the issue from both sides." In my experience, these have been some of the dumbest people attempting to engage in discourse I have ever met. They think the capacity to understand a position you don't agree with is beyond most people because it's barely within their own capacity. And that stupidity shows ever more clearly the longer you try to listen to them.
There is a direct relationship between how intelligent someone is and what they expect other people to be able to understand.
Notes:
You have undoubtedly heard, and echoed, something along these lines: "Most people are stupid. They just repeat mantras without engaging in any real thought."
I've done it too. Just about every comedian has a bit predicated on the idea. Despite its "rude" subject matter, it's a safe mantra to repeat in pretty much any setting and you'll rarely find a room where you're in the minority for believing it.
But you're not stupid. You, like most other people, recognize that this is precisely one of those mantras that many people repeat without giving any real thought. Well let's give it some thought here.
Obviously, "dumb" is relative. When you call someone stupid, you're saying they're significantly less intelligent than yourself. Most people self-report their intelligence level at about 7/10 regardless of how intelligent they actually are, with 5/10 being average. So, assuming most people are dumb, let's tentatively say "dumb" is about 2/10 points below yourself. That's not hugely informative, but it gives us something to work with. It also leads nicely into the point I'm making with the subtitle:
The dumber you are, the dumber you think everyone else is.
If we follow the baseline I proposed above, we can use people's assumptions about other people to get a rough idea of how intelligent they actually are. Whenever someone says "people so stupid they can't even do [x]," it is an indicator that [x] is at the outer edge of what they consider "trivial."
To be more concrete: think about the kind of guy who says something like "I looked at the issue from both sides." In my experience, these have been some of the dumbest people attempting to engage in discourse I have ever met. They think the capacity to understand a position you don't agree with is beyond most people because it's barely within their own capacity. And that stupidity shows ever more clearly the longer you try to listen to them.
There is a direct relationship between how intelligent someone is and what they expect other people to be able to understand.
Notes:
- Obviously, caveats abound. Intelligent people with exceptionally uncharitable views about people exist. So do idiots who are exceptionally charitable. If you harp about obvious exceptions without forwarding the discussion or addressing the core point in any meaningful way you are outing yourself as a moron.
- Likewise, if you come in here trying to farm stickers by spouting shit about niggers or some other group the community at large doesn't like, I will mock you. You're engaging in exactly the sort of mantra repetition you purport to take issue with and what you're doing is transparent as fuck.
- People do generally seem dumber than they actually are. You are likely no exception. I expand on this in some detail in the "Illusory Polarization" thread but the long-and-short is basically that the problem is usually communication and not comprehension.
