To clarify here, I don’t feel like I’m significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying “facts.”
Keep in mind that you, along with everyone else, know very little all in all.
The things you do know will be important to you, naturally. Their understanding and their importance will also feel obvious, also naturally.
So anyone not knowing these obvious important things will instinctively feel like an absolute idiot to you.
This is a mental trap. Try to avoid it. The less respect you have for others, the less able you will be to really listen to other standpoints and learn from them, leading to a vicious cycle of alienation.
know
Wine is wine, bread is bread. Let us not conflate lack of reasoning (stupidity) with lack of knowledge (ignorance).
this is the most reddit post i’ve seen on lemmy
There seems to be a shortage of critical thinking and problem solving skills, that’s for sure.
What I see that makes it worse now than in the past is the Internet. It’s easy now to find a group that agrees with your delusions and live in an echo chamber where mistaken beliefs are not challenged.
Yes, but they’re literally being conditioned into it. You and me too. No one is immune to propaganda.
I used to hold people accountable for their (lack of) knowledge, but there’s literally billions being poured into subverting these people daily. You can’t really hold that against (most of) them.
In my experience, I have found the least intelligent people to also be the most vocal, which makes it look like they are overrepresented in the population.
Especially thanks to social media. E.g. there’s a video of the ISS on instagram and the comment section is filled with flat earth people and other crazies.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
They’re actively driving the bus off the cliff.
Think about every scientist and official at cop28 desperately working to halt a 1.5c red line. Did the public rally around this effort? Did coal rollers stop intentionally injecting uncombusted fuel into their exhausts to pwn the libs? Did the governments of the world including the US stop subsidizing new extraction?
1.5c is gone; by the time people ‘agree’ it’s fucked and unify to stop pollution at all levels we’re going to be in dire straits.
It’s an easy thing to just assume people are stupid. It makes the world nice and simple and if only people would stop being stupid and start being smart (smart like you, obviously!) All the problems of the world would be solved.
For a lot of people, reality isn’t so simple. The common man is already struggling. Throughout history, the age people get married and have kids has been indicative of the stress civilizations are under, and many people aren’t having kids before they get too old to have kids because that’s the level of stress the common man is under. Global civilization is facing a demographic bomb as every continent except Africa is facing a massive reduction in population in coming decades because nobody is having kids because life is so hard.
As a study in contrasts, just look at wages vs. rent while I’ve been an adult. Minimum wage went from 11/hr to 15/hr. Meanwhile, my first 2 bedroom apartment was 350/mo, and today you can’t get anything for less than 1200. A few years before I rented, there were decent houses available for $50,000 and today the average house price nationwide is $800,000. (Not the US, obviously)
So when a bunch of the business leaders and politicians who magically seem to get richer every time something is done “for our own good” – politicians who make as much as a senior engineer on paper but all of whom seem to become fabulously wealthy regardless (huh wonder where all those extra millions came from) while the common man has suffered – get together to figure out new ways to squeeze the common man, is it really so stupid to be skeptical? “Don’t worry everyone, we’re going to make your life even harder but it’s all for your own good.”
Having the summit in Dubai is fitting – a city of extreme inequality, paid for with oil money, built by slaves, ruled by kings.
You can try to guilt and shame people into not caring about basic biological drives, but you actually can’t. Entire generations of people have been pushed so far that their family lines will end with them. It’s comfortable enough – like being in a pool of comfortably warm water right up to your neck that you can’t escape from, but when you can see people plotting to add more water to your pool the next step is you drown.
In previous eras, common people being this stressed out led to the fall of the Roman empire, the French reign of terror, the end of the Romanov dynasty in Russia or the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. While you call people stupid for not listening to their leaders, historically speaking those same leaders will be lucky to keep their heads on their shoulders.
Exactly my point, there will always be people like you to apologize and say “oh the end of civilization won’t be that bad, stop demonizing the very fucks that got us into this mess.”
Thanks.
Ah, you’re illiterate. I guess it’s easy to think everyone else is stupid if you can’t comprehend the words they say.
A moron would follow this line of thought so I’m not surprised to see you pursuing it. Your grand children will curse your name, if a woman is ever reduced to the state where they have to procreate with you.
You might be surprised, on many fronts.
Empathy for others who are not exactly like you is actually considered a virtue when you’re not in the little bubble that is reddit’s toxic, hateful political disease. Despite what you seem to think, empathy for someone who isn’t exactly like you is a key requirement of a healthy marriage.
Man, I hope I live to see my grandchildren read my book, The Graysonian Ethic: Lessons for my unborn son (He’s born now, and he’s beautiful). I bet parts of it will seem archaic, since it’s directly addressing contemporary issues, but other parts will likely be timeless. It’d be really interesting if I could see them come of age and we’d get to see what they thought of their grandparents. The world will likely be a much different place by then, and not in ways you think.
To paraphrase George Carlin, by definition half of the population is below average intelligence. But nobody thinks they’re in that bottom half.
This is interesting to me though. Didn’t most people (at least in developed countries) take tests in school? Get grades? I would think if you did below average on those you kind of…should know that you’re in the bottom half?
I get that it’s possible to make changes after schooling, and grades are only somewhat reliable (in that they also rely on effort) but still.
You ever see the people who get As in school take an aptitude test? They don’t always get high scores.
Not to mention grades are about doing the work and having the discipline and organizational skills. There are plenty of people who are very intelligent, but lack both of those. US testing metrics (is that the right word?) are heavily flawed. This isn’t even bringing up the racist aspect of most institutions, including educational being headed up and formulated by white people.
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You are so generous ❤️ because i think 99% it’s stupid
And when I see and feel people on important jobs just because they are parents or friends or friends from friends from someone on the top and not because they are right skilled for that job… Then… You smell the stupidity 10km far away And nowadays it’s what you find on all companies 🤮
When i’m the bad guy because I know that any person who is pregnant is a woman… yeah
You are the embodiment of Dunning-Kruger.
see, anytime i say something like this you folks just say something like that. You don’t have facts behind you, you have an idea that psychologists came up with in the 1950’s, that’s it… but sure, just keep insulting me and saying " i can’t believe you believe this, what an idiot!" while proving nothing except that your words speak everything about you and nothing about me.
