Was thinking that the smiley face was not much of an addition, but then clocked that you are probably the author of the piece, in which case the smiley face was probably fairly tactful.
Is an opinion piece based on a rational argument. You can argue against his assertion if you like, but to merely complain about typefaces and lack of hard data would seem to miss the point. For one thing, I strongly doubt that the author thought that using bold text made the opinion true, but rather that it added emphasis to what he thought were the important points.
Also, why not go and check the assertion yourself if data is what you require on this. Set up a study, go write up some surveys, get out there, nothing is stopping you.
I see a lot of programming debates start with assertions that look like this:
> Language A is dynamically typed, so it's more expressive, so you'll have working code sooner, so you'll be more productive!
or this:
> Language B is statically typed, so you can't fool the compiler, so your code is more likely to work on the first try, so you'll spend less time debugging and therefore be more productive!
Neither of these statements should carry any weight without actual hard data, no matter how compelling the argument sounds. And the fact that we can't come to an agreement about how to quantify things like productivity and "expressiveness" is itself evidence that these are subjective statements.
The whole point of science is that rational thinking alone is not enough. There must be empirical data. A rationally argued falsehood is as useless as an irrationally argued falsehood or an irrationally argued truth. A beautiful logical argument based on false premises is still wrong. Only empirical data can sort out which it is you have in hand.
Generally I agree. But there is a huge weasel clause in this whole line of thinking: Ultimately, I could always end up with "they haven't done the research or connected the dots because [insert something reasonable that is stopping them] so they are not stupid, just lesser informed or emotional" but essentially there will always be reasons that people do hard drugs or get involved in scams or get in fights at bars but "they are just so stupid" can sometimes suffice.
Although not a fascinating topic nor anything new, I think the main point of the article is a good one, and one that everyone should consider before name-calling, yelling, or interrupting for that matter. Many use these techniques to supposedly win arguments just because the other shuts up, or is offended.
Seriously though, people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do them. Change lanes without signaling, without looking - maybe you're not an idiot all the time, but at that moment you're acting like an idiot and endangering other people.
I think the point is that we vigilantly distinguish "that was stupid" from "that was a stupid person". Judging someone as stupid means we've stopped thinking about possibilities. Derek wisely says there's always more to the story (reminded me of this: http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-s...)
Labeling people is nearly always a substitute for thinking and empathy (both hard things).
Lest I forget, there is also ignorance-- willful cluelessness; can't be bothered to learn something; won't have a reasoned discussion. I do label these individuals "stupid." Don't get me wrong, it's not immediate prejudice, but it doesn't take much time talking to some people to learn that they are willful in their efforts to remain uninformed.
In an ideal world with infinite time for arguing with... well, I'll avoid an ad-hominem when responding to an argument about ad-hominem attacks, but... in an ideal world it would be worthwhile to drill down through the onion layers of rationality, irrationality and emotion which drive any argument we disagree with, every time.
Sometimes this spelunking is both constructive and instructive.
Sometimes though, dismissing the assertion that the earth was created 6000 years ago or that the world will be ending next month with a quantitative assessment of the intellectual capacity of the asserter is a completely appropriate shorthand.
I've given up on 'I don't know'. I only say that when I'm at the end of the line and there's nowhere to go.
Instead, I usually use anything else that indicates that I'm going to make inquiries. "That's a good question. I'll have to look into that." comes out of my mouth a lot now. Sometimes without "That's a good queston." at the start.
I like to form a hypothesis then test. Does that make me stupid for jumping to a conclusion? I'd rather approach something with "I don't know, but I think maybe...", lets test and see.
There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.
The same could be said about almost all behaviors, such as courage, promiscuity, or whathaveyou. However, over time people tend to display consistent patterns of behavior. As a consistent picture emerges, we tend to switch from thinking of people as acting a certain way, to thinking of people as being a certain way. Whether you want to say someone is acting stupid all the time, or someone is being stupid is just semantics.
But people tend to fixate on their first impression of others. It's very common to see someone do something stupid once, and then assume they're stupid forever-or the opposite. It's definitely worth recognizing the first impression bias, and doing your best to fight it.
I agree with you. A good example of this is what we experience when driving. If someone cuts me off, my instinctive reaction is to think, "What a moron!" Which is unfair, of course: it may have been a one-time stupid mistake.
Even if you think you see a pattern, someone who seems stupid at something may just be outside of their comfort zone/talent area. In another field, they may be quite smart.
Another example would be when a developer who build a framework at an organisation has left the company.
90% of the time, when people look at the code, you will hear comments like 'who wrote this garbage??'. In reality, the system was generally built to the best knowledge / requirements that were available at the time.
(I'm sure many people here have thought 'who wrote this crap' and then viewed the author to find out it was something they wrote many years ago, but have just gotten much better over time)
Actually there's interesting research on this.. I wish I could remember where I read it - I think a Malcolm Gladwell book.
In general, we only need to see someone being smart once and then we will forever label them as smart. It's as if being smart is an achievement and they've proven they're capable.
However, in general we only need to see someone being evil once, and we will forever label them as evil. It's as if that's their true self, and all the other instances of them being good are a ruse.
Fundamental attribution error from social psychology - you tend to attribute errors by others to their intrinsic flaws (stupidity, poor judgment, clumsiness) but your own errors to circumstances (I was tired, they tricked me, it was slippery).
I don't think much would change. You can very well use biases to rationalize whatever you want. It's the intention and attitude that matters the most, not how many biases you can recite.
I'm still for teaching common biases in secondary school. Won't hurt, and may sometimes help. But I don't think knowing biases changes people. At least that wasn't my experience.
Just a quick recommendation for "A Mind Of Its Own" by Cordelia Fine (especially Chapter 3 = The Immoral Brain) for anyone who would like to read more about this, or for anyone already familiar who would like a short, readable book on the subject to recommend to other people.
The problem with this is that humans are actually really bad at reading others' intentions-not to mention the fact that several people who commit atrocious acts see themselves as good, e.g. Al Capone.
My aim is to judge others by their repeated actions and track record. This is hard, but I've definitely found it worth doing.
An even more extreme example than Capone is Pablo Escobar. He fashioned himself as an honored man of the people in Columbia, even as he was ordering the (often brutal) executions hundreds of police officers, judges, public officials, and personal enemies.
Yet when he died, the people of Columbia wept in the streets.
Some activities do however prejudice my view of others, the most obvious one is smoking. While one former good friend is very intelligent and has a work ethic second to none she recently started smoking at work. Now since I knew her before this I am less likely to write her off as being stupid but I cannot say the same for others whom I first meet and find out or witness them smoking.
I've found that the length of time most people take to form a "consistent picture" of someone else is very short. Generally, it is whatever is the shortest length of time required to determine "are they acting in accordance with my desires or not?".
If the person is generally helping to make things happen which you want to have happen, you form a favorable impression of them quickly.
If they are unhelpful, you tend to think negatively of them. There is rarely a deep consideration of who the person actually is, or what might motivate them to behave the way they do.
Of course, if they are not only helpful, but are creating new opportunities, we call them "visionary" or "leaders". Great people.
If their actions are opposed (directly or indirectly) but very obviously to what we think our needs and desires are, we label them "enemy" and push them into that definition.
I'm having a hard time articulating what I want to get across, but it boils down to this: after a while, we stop acting on information that might change our perception of who someone is. We just think of them as "being a certain way" and observe all behavior from there on out as solidifying that definition in our minds.
I think a truly "smart person" is someone who is always staying open to the possibility of people changing radically, however unlikely that may seem.
Thanks, that was an awesome read. I'm going to get the book. While this post was short & to the point, I felt there was a lot of generalizing going on... I mean, what the heck is "smart" and "stupid" anyways? Don't we all define that in our own minds? Asymmetric insight; now that's some serious stuff to reflect on...
> I think a truly "smart person" is someone who is always staying open to the possibility of people changing radically, however unlikely that may seem.
But a truly "person who is currently acting smart" may realise that they simply do not have the time to continue treating this "person who is currently acting stupid" as if they're simply acting that way, and may make a temporary value judgement about that person fully in the knowledge that it's an over-simplification and useful only in the present situation. Doing so may also be a smart thing to do, as it allows said person to actually get something done.
> I think a truly "smart person" is someone who is always staying open to the possibility of people changing radically, however unlikely that may seem.
That's a very humanities 1990s definition of "smart," and one that I don't think is remotely accurate, either.
> Whether you want to say someone is acting stupid all the time, or someone is being stupid is just semantics.
Actually I think there is a crucial distinction here that is not just semantics. When you say someone is stupid, it implies that this is an in-born and unchangeable condition. When someone is acting stupid, you can look at the information they have, the way society frames certain issues, and many other mutable factors which we can work on to solve the problem.
Exactly. Humans are more likely to attribute their own behavior to situational factors (I acted stupidly because I haven't gotten much sleep recently) and the behavior of others to inherent characteristics (he's stupid).
Smart people don't think others are stupid merely because of the beliefs they hold. That is, being a [Southerner, Northerner, Republican, Democrat, Indian, American, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Tauist, Piist, vi user, emacs user, ...] does not mean a person is stupid. There are smart people who really have thought things through and ended up at each of those positions for good reasons.
But smart people might conclude some specific individual is stupid because of consistently erroneous patterns of thought and analysis which do not improve with experience. There are a few individuals who I've spoken to on a variety of topics over the course of years who, as a rule, develop beliefs based on sketchy evidence and then retain those beliefs even in the face of mountains of contrary evidence. Even when they hold essentially the same views as I do, it's often for bad reasons; there isn't really a coherent thought process or a body of evidence that got them to that point. Such people really are stupid.
Even when they hold essentially the same views as I do, it's often for bad reasons
I noticed this too, and for a long time it bothered me. But I recently read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, and in it he points out that a lot of people appear to hold believes about a wide array of issues (politics, religion, consumer products, and so forth) that they don't really hold based on logic and evidence, but to signal group identification and affiliation.
In addition, he points out that, on a wide array of issues, people tend to have gut, intuition-based reactions first, then look for evidence to support their intuition, while a lot of us assume or want to assume that it works the other way around.
To your first point, some scientist believe it is hard wired in our DNA to associate with any form of group (as this played a role in evolution).
Here's a related interesting talk on TED that I recently saw:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral...
The real question is what to do with stupid people?
I usually try to hold it as their defense. Something like: "It's OK he said something like that because he's -- well, like that. Now let's change the subject quickly." This makes me look like a bad person but hey, it's better than pick on people because they didn't use their brain.
And then I try to avoid stupid people. There is only so much time.
Perhaps OT because of the age involved, but... as a kid, I was 'gifted' (not sure if that label is still used today or not). I would get people (adults or other kids) saying "you're so smart", and I would naturally try to deflect/downplay that - was never really told how to react to statements like that as a 7 year old. "Thanks" just sounds so bland, but, I didn't even think that far ahead.
Instead, I would usually protest some - "no, I'm not really". But eventually I adopted the attitude that yes, there was a difference between me and many other kids in my classes, but it wasn't that I was smart - it was that they were dumb. Relative to me, most of them were. But it wasn't so much a 'dumb' as in 'you're a lesser person', it was just hard for me to realize people didn't retain as much info as I did, nor could they make mental connections like I could, nor as fast.
I do remember having that line of thinking for a few years, and it wore off by early high school age.
This, except I'm in college now and it works that way. At times, I still have to consciously remind myself that X is not completely obvious to everybody.
It will probably go away in time. As I get older, it's more apparent to me how much I don't know any more, and my expectations for others knowing things I consider obvious has tempered some.
This is absolute BS. Odds are that the all of the people from the article, and the author, are relatively stupid. Maybe one or more of them isn't, but the odds are against them - that is just how it works.
I totally disagree. I get a lot of people saying crap to me about being smart or intelligent, I even got bugged into joining MENSA by other members. I still hold that I'm not really smarter than other people.
Most people are average, I get a lot of attention for things I do that people don't understand. But I'm not really a smart person, I just like puzzles and I do them quite often. There plenty of situations where I appear like a bumbling idiot.
Heres how I see it. People who have an interest in something invest lots of energy into understanding it. Judging someone by there ability not to understand something that they have invested a lot of time into doesn't make you smart, it makes that person a jerk.
And heres the reason. Calling someone stupid is an insult, a way of asserting a dominant position i.e. "I am better than you because my understanding is more advanced." Guess what, thats one hell of arrogant position to have.
As someone who usually runs teams I'd probably ask to someone who used statements like that to be transferred. If said person held an attitude like that, its not helpful to the team, potentially damaging to someone trying to get up to speed, undermining confidence. And lastly it wrecks of someone who would hold a something over someone else to look better rather than cooperate, build needlessly complicated code that half the team couldn't work on at a decent speed.
Anyway theres a quote attributed to Einstein I'm sure you've heard which sums it up nicely for me "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
In my experience, I think smart people often think others are smart. And that's sometimes a problem-- because they believe that others are smart as well, they should think everything through the way they do (Also, I'd really like to say we here, but pride is never good karma :-))
Then you start wondering why they are doing something so obviously unwise, and then tend to rationalize it with some enormously complicated theory. Perhaps, this is the reason why Hanlon's razor is useful and recognized-- without it smart people are kinda lost.
Right, but brain capability is not a one dimensional quantity, and measurements of it are time-varying and noisy. This suggests that one shouldn't jump to conclusions before careful measurement, and that it is not trivial to compare measurements from different people along just one axis.
Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.
All evidence suggests that the universe/world will end upon my death in any sense that matters to me. Once my brain has stopped functioning it will be impossible to ever receive stimulus from pysical phenomenon again for all eternity. So, if you can agree with that then you could agree that the world will end sometime during most people's lifetimes assuming I don't outlive them. So from my point of. View they are right, but for the wrong reasons.
All evidence suggests that the universe/world will end upon my death in any sense that matters to me. Once my brain has stopped functioning it will be impossible to ever receive stimulus from pysical phenomenon again for all eternity. So, if you can agree with that then you could agree that the world will end sometime during most people's lifetimes assuming I don't outlive them. So from my point of. View they are right, but for the wrong reasons.
The author makes an interesting point; however, he seems to make the same assumptions that he is actively protesting. If smart people do X, then would not doing X mean people are not smart?
This generalization that can be inferred from the article--as well as demonstrated in this comment section--seems to fall into this same trap.
As a reader of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", I think there is a better way to go about this. Rather than "smart people do X [therefore if you do not do X, you are not smart]"; it should be: people do X, which is smarter than doing Y.
People can change. If they have a consistent ability to do stupid things, it just means they are acting in poor judgement and possibly could use help. If they fail to accept help, or are too headstrong/temperamental/can-never-be-wrong then it just means that their behavior and mindset should change [in order to be more productive].
Although, I would sometimes choose a less-intelligent person that is of no fault of their own, than a willingly ignorant person who should know better, but does not act it.
I'm well aware of the words he chose. I am referring to his actual meaning.
The fact is that there are stupid people on this planet. The fact is that we can know there are stupid people. The fact is that we can identify a stupid person. And it is utterly stupid to pretend otherwise. He's made a very stupid generalization based on the behavior of the masses -- yes, most people who call others stupid are themselves stupid. But that doesn't mean we can't know who is stupid nor does it mean that it's wrong to call someone stupid.
Interesting choice including Republican and Democrat, there.
I don't think they're stupid, but if someone identifies themselves as "a Republican" or "a Democrat", as opposed to "the Republican party best fits my views", or "I'm a registered Democrat", I pretty much write off any chance of having a decent political discussion with them.
A large segment of the population follows politics the way they follow football, except without even watching the games, just the commentary and opinion pieces afterwards.
Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely unproductive avenues.
But it's just a numbers game; there are invariably going to be people a level above me intellectually who this will filter out. But I can live with that.
Well, one argument is that politics is essentially a football game. The stakes are far, far higher, but fundamentally it comes down to all the institutions of a society self-organizing themselves into coalitions for the assumption or protection of power. "Reason" amounts to a way to mask rhetorical flourishes to convince dupes that they're morally better or smarter than the other side.
And if you're turning to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times to learn about the finer points of Nozick's critique of Rawlsian liberalism... well, then you're the dupe, even if it's of a "pox-on-both-your-houses" variety. Thinking too hard about whatever outrage-of-the-day Mitt or Obama has done is a similar waste of time--it's not that there isn't conceivably some correct position about whether eating a dog or strapping them to your roof reflects worse on your character, it's just that it's all a smokescreen.
Given that, I'd say you have to pick a side. If you end up rejecting politics because it isn't the Oxford debating society, you've essentially let the other side deprive your own side of a valuable resource. It might suck that you're stuck in a game not of your own choosing, but if someone's kicking you on the ground, you don't quietly accept it because they're not following Marquees of Queensbury rules.
I agree with your first two paragraphs. The position you advocate in the third would make sense if political affiliation conferred a tangible benefit or our participation in the process affected the outcomes. But neither of those is true, and it undermines your case.
Affiliation is rife with intangible benefits of a vaguely religious character: believing that you're right, believing that you're benefiting the righteous and confounding evil, etc. But there is no 10% discount for Democrats at the Toyota dealership, and Republicans don't get a $1500 tax deduction simply for being Republicans. The only tangible benefit to affiliation is the ability to vote in the primary—a benefit so dubious we all personally know people who affiliated opposite their beliefs just to muck up the process.
> The only tangible benefit to affiliation is the ability to vote in the primary—a benefit so dubious we all personally know people who affiliated opposite their beliefs just to muck up the process.
OT: I don't know anyone who's done that, but I've long wondered if the most effective way to get the result you want is to simply destroy everyone opposing it, rather than promoting the result directly. It seems that it'd be much easier to manipulate the system (and the people) using a negative influence than positive. It's definitely not right, but seems like it could be effective. Then again, as I write this I realize that this is half of what happens already.
I like to read about new ideas, advances in science and technology, and political developments, especially where the Internet is concerned. I accept that people have different lifestyles and viewpoints, and if variations on those sorts of things are presented as "hey, here's a different way to live", then that's alright. On the other hand, if the message is "hey, do it this way because I'm right" then I'm inclined to stop reading.
Thanks. I like to write about personal hacks -- debugging the wetware, fixing health issues at their roots that doctors claim cannot be fixed, effective parenting for challenging children. So you are probably not my target audience. Trying to think such things through for myself, I guess. I agree with your distaste for what amounts to lecturing. I have a half formed thought for a piece about that which might get written, or at leasted started, today.
Smart people don't think others are stupid as the truely smart know that others are stupid.
Thinking is not 100% knowing. Think about that.
Also there are two types of stupid, those that are naturaly gifeted in such arts and those that work at it. It is the later that are truely stupid and the former who are just limited.
That's provably wrong. In the first place, both his definitions of "smart" and "stupid" are wrong according to the dictionary. You can't just redefine words so that they suit your argument. If that's an acceptable approach, I can just as easily say all living humans are stupid by defining "stupid" as "not Einstein".
Secondly, even if we allow that his private definitions be used for the purposes of this argument, he's still wrong. People do exhibit consistent behavioral tendencies, after all. Some people consistently think things through, while others consistently jump to conclusions. So I think there is pretty good justification in applying the heuristic of thinking a person is stupid if he consistently jumps to conclusions.
I hate to say this, because I have much respect for Derek Sivers, but this post was pretty stupid.
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadAlso, why not go and check the assertion yourself if data is what you require on this. Set up a study, go write up some surveys, get out there, nothing is stopping you.
> Language A is dynamically typed, so it's more expressive, so you'll have working code sooner, so you'll be more productive!
or this:
> Language B is statically typed, so you can't fool the compiler, so your code is more likely to work on the first try, so you'll spend less time debugging and therefore be more productive!
Neither of these statements should carry any weight without actual hard data, no matter how compelling the argument sounds. And the fact that we can't come to an agreement about how to quantify things like productivity and "expressiveness" is itself evidence that these are subjective statements.
The whole point of science is that rational thinking alone is not enough. There must be empirical data. A rationally argued falsehood is as useless as an irrationally argued falsehood or an irrationally argued truth. A beautiful logical argument based on false premises is still wrong. Only empirical data can sort out which it is you have in hand.
Before someone concludes the obvious about my comment I'll point out that those are not my rules.
Seriously though, people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do them. Change lanes without signaling, without looking - maybe you're not an idiot all the time, but at that moment you're acting like an idiot and endangering other people.
Labeling people is nearly always a substitute for thinking and empathy (both hard things).
Sometimes this spelunking is both constructive and instructive.
Sometimes though, dismissing the assertion that the earth was created 6000 years ago or that the world will be ending next month with a quantitative assessment of the intellectual capacity of the asserter is a completely appropriate shorthand.
The key is judicious application. ;)
Define usually. More often than not when I hear "I don't know" it is offered as an excuse/explanation for laziness and shirking responsibility.
Instead, I usually use anything else that indicates that I'm going to make inquiries. "That's a good question. I'll have to look into that." comes out of my mouth a lot now. Sometimes without "That's a good queston." at the start.
and intelligence as The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
Perhaps the author does not often meet people who lack the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
The same could be said about almost all behaviors, such as courage, promiscuity, or whathaveyou. However, over time people tend to display consistent patterns of behavior. As a consistent picture emerges, we tend to switch from thinking of people as acting a certain way, to thinking of people as being a certain way. Whether you want to say someone is acting stupid all the time, or someone is being stupid is just semantics.
Even if you think you see a pattern, someone who seems stupid at something may just be outside of their comfort zone/talent area. In another field, they may be quite smart.
90% of the time, when people look at the code, you will hear comments like 'who wrote this garbage??'. In reality, the system was generally built to the best knowledge / requirements that were available at the time.
(I'm sure many people here have thought 'who wrote this crap' and then viewed the author to find out it was something they wrote many years ago, but have just gotten much better over time)
In general, we only need to see someone being smart once and then we will forever label them as smart. It's as if being smart is an achievement and they've proven they're capable.
However, in general we only need to see someone being evil once, and we will forever label them as evil. It's as if that's their true self, and all the other instances of them being good are a ruse.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/sway-the-irresistible-pull-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
They are closely related but people always forget the second one.
I'm still for teaching common biases in secondary school. Won't hurt, and may sometimes help. But I don't think knowing biases changes people. At least that wasn't my experience.
My aim is to judge others by their repeated actions and track record. This is hard, but I've definitely found it worth doing.
Yet when he died, the people of Columbia wept in the streets.
So yeah, it is hard to fight a first impression.
I've found that the length of time most people take to form a "consistent picture" of someone else is very short. Generally, it is whatever is the shortest length of time required to determine "are they acting in accordance with my desires or not?".
If the person is generally helping to make things happen which you want to have happen, you form a favorable impression of them quickly.
If they are unhelpful, you tend to think negatively of them. There is rarely a deep consideration of who the person actually is, or what might motivate them to behave the way they do.
Of course, if they are not only helpful, but are creating new opportunities, we call them "visionary" or "leaders". Great people.
If their actions are opposed (directly or indirectly) but very obviously to what we think our needs and desires are, we label them "enemy" and push them into that definition.
I'm having a hard time articulating what I want to get across, but it boils down to this: after a while, we stop acting on information that might change our perception of who someone is. We just think of them as "being a certain way" and observe all behavior from there on out as solidifying that definition in our minds.
I think a truly "smart person" is someone who is always staying open to the possibility of people changing radically, however unlikely that may seem.
Indeed. I believe this is called the illusion of asymmetric insight: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:youaren... (cache since the site seems inaccessible).
But a truly "person who is currently acting smart" may realise that they simply do not have the time to continue treating this "person who is currently acting stupid" as if they're simply acting that way, and may make a temporary value judgement about that person fully in the knowledge that it's an over-simplification and useful only in the present situation. Doing so may also be a smart thing to do, as it allows said person to actually get something done.
That's a very humanities 1990s definition of "smart," and one that I don't think is remotely accurate, either.
But I have to agree with the others, I think there is more to being "smart" than just being able to accept that others may change.
Actually I think there is a crucial distinction here that is not just semantics. When you say someone is stupid, it implies that this is an in-born and unchangeable condition. When someone is acting stupid, you can look at the information they have, the way society frames certain issues, and many other mutable factors which we can work on to solve the problem.
Edit: What I may have slightly mischaracterized is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error, and I guess I'm one of many pointing it out here.
But smart people might conclude some specific individual is stupid because of consistently erroneous patterns of thought and analysis which do not improve with experience. There are a few individuals who I've spoken to on a variety of topics over the course of years who, as a rule, develop beliefs based on sketchy evidence and then retain those beliefs even in the face of mountains of contrary evidence. Even when they hold essentially the same views as I do, it's often for bad reasons; there isn't really a coherent thought process or a body of evidence that got them to that point. Such people really are stupid.
I noticed this too, and for a long time it bothered me. But I recently read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, and in it he points out that a lot of people appear to hold believes about a wide array of issues (politics, religion, consumer products, and so forth) that they don't really hold based on logic and evidence, but to signal group identification and affiliation.
In addition, he points out that, on a wide array of issues, people tend to have gut, intuition-based reactions first, then look for evidence to support their intuition, while a lot of us assume or want to assume that it works the other way around.
I probably learned something from The Righteous Mind on every page, and I say this about very few books; I also wrote at more length about it here: http://jseliger.com/2012/03/25/jonathan-haidts-the-righteous... .
(BTW, I agree with your basic point and think it's well put.)
I usually try to hold it as their defense. Something like: "It's OK he said something like that because he's -- well, like that. Now let's change the subject quickly." This makes me look like a bad person but hey, it's better than pick on people because they didn't use their brain.
And then I try to avoid stupid people. There is only so much time.
Instead, I would usually protest some - "no, I'm not really". But eventually I adopted the attitude that yes, there was a difference between me and many other kids in my classes, but it wasn't that I was smart - it was that they were dumb. Relative to me, most of them were. But it wasn't so much a 'dumb' as in 'you're a lesser person', it was just hard for me to realize people didn't retain as much info as I did, nor could they make mental connections like I could, nor as fast.
I do remember having that line of thinking for a few years, and it wore off by early high school age.
Most people are average, I get a lot of attention for things I do that people don't understand. But I'm not really a smart person, I just like puzzles and I do them quite often. There plenty of situations where I appear like a bumbling idiot.
Heres how I see it. People who have an interest in something invest lots of energy into understanding it. Judging someone by there ability not to understand something that they have invested a lot of time into doesn't make you smart, it makes that person a jerk.
And heres the reason. Calling someone stupid is an insult, a way of asserting a dominant position i.e. "I am better than you because my understanding is more advanced." Guess what, thats one hell of arrogant position to have.
As someone who usually runs teams I'd probably ask to someone who used statements like that to be transferred. If said person held an attitude like that, its not helpful to the team, potentially damaging to someone trying to get up to speed, undermining confidence. And lastly it wrecks of someone who would hold a something over someone else to look better rather than cooperate, build needlessly complicated code that half the team couldn't work on at a decent speed.
Anyway theres a quote attributed to Einstein I'm sure you've heard which sums it up nicely for me "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
Then you start wondering why they are doing something so obviously unwise, and then tend to rationalize it with some enormously complicated theory. Perhaps, this is the reason why Hanlon's razor is useful and recognized-- without it smart people are kinda lost.
Even smart people sometimes make stupid arguments.
And good arguments can be made by anyone.
It's very difficult to be right 100% of the time.
It's also quite unusual to be wrong 100% of the time.
Evaluate the reasoning, not the author.
Stupid argument, not stupid person.
Look at what Alsup said to Boies.
Still, this is easier said than done.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/us-mayancalendar-p...
^at LEAST 15% of the world is stupid. That's just getting started. That's one poll, about one thing.
This generalization that can be inferred from the article--as well as demonstrated in this comment section--seems to fall into this same trap.
As a reader of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", I think there is a better way to go about this. Rather than "smart people do X [therefore if you do not do X, you are not smart]"; it should be: people do X, which is smarter than doing Y.
People can change. If they have a consistent ability to do stupid things, it just means they are acting in poor judgement and possibly could use help. If they fail to accept help, or are too headstrong/temperamental/can-never-be-wrong then it just means that their behavior and mindset should change [in order to be more productive].
Although, I would sometimes choose a less-intelligent person that is of no fault of their own, than a willingly ignorant person who should know better, but does not act it.
"Not being smart" != "is stupid" is exactly the distinction he is making.
The fact is that there are stupid people on this planet. The fact is that we can know there are stupid people. The fact is that we can identify a stupid person. And it is utterly stupid to pretend otherwise. He's made a very stupid generalization based on the behavior of the masses -- yes, most people who call others stupid are themselves stupid. But that doesn't mean we can't know who is stupid nor does it mean that it's wrong to call someone stupid.
I don't think they're stupid, but if someone identifies themselves as "a Republican" or "a Democrat", as opposed to "the Republican party best fits my views", or "I'm a registered Democrat", I pretty much write off any chance of having a decent political discussion with them.
A large segment of the population follows politics the way they follow football, except without even watching the games, just the commentary and opinion pieces afterwards.
Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely unproductive avenues.
But it's just a numbers game; there are invariably going to be people a level above me intellectually who this will filter out. But I can live with that.
And if you're turning to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times to learn about the finer points of Nozick's critique of Rawlsian liberalism... well, then you're the dupe, even if it's of a "pox-on-both-your-houses" variety. Thinking too hard about whatever outrage-of-the-day Mitt or Obama has done is a similar waste of time--it's not that there isn't conceivably some correct position about whether eating a dog or strapping them to your roof reflects worse on your character, it's just that it's all a smokescreen.
Given that, I'd say you have to pick a side. If you end up rejecting politics because it isn't the Oxford debating society, you've essentially let the other side deprive your own side of a valuable resource. It might suck that you're stuck in a game not of your own choosing, but if someone's kicking you on the ground, you don't quietly accept it because they're not following Marquees of Queensbury rules.
Affiliation is rife with intangible benefits of a vaguely religious character: believing that you're right, believing that you're benefiting the righteous and confounding evil, etc. But there is no 10% discount for Democrats at the Toyota dealership, and Republicans don't get a $1500 tax deduction simply for being Republicans. The only tangible benefit to affiliation is the ability to vote in the primary—a benefit so dubious we all personally know people who affiliated opposite their beliefs just to muck up the process.
OT: I don't know anyone who's done that, but I've long wondered if the most effective way to get the result you want is to simply destroy everyone opposing it, rather than promoting the result directly. It seems that it'd be much easier to manipulate the system (and the people) using a negative influence than positive. It's definitely not right, but seems like it could be effective. Then again, as I write this I realize that this is half of what happens already.
For example, people who smoke get irritated by being constantly told not to. Non smokers, of course, take no notice.
Thank you for the feedback.
Then again, religion is a great way to cope with the paradoxical and absolutely absurd reality we live in so maybe they aren't that stupid...
Thinking is not 100% knowing. Think about that.
Also there are two types of stupid, those that are naturaly gifeted in such arts and those that work at it. It is the later that are truely stupid and the former who are just limited.
Secondly, even if we allow that his private definitions be used for the purposes of this argument, he's still wrong. People do exhibit consistent behavioral tendencies, after all. Some people consistently think things through, while others consistently jump to conclusions. So I think there is pretty good justification in applying the heuristic of thinking a person is stupid if he consistently jumps to conclusions.
I hate to say this, because I have much respect for Derek Sivers, but this post was pretty stupid.