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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Sometimes people appear to me unskilled, sometimes they appear unknowledgeable, sometimes they're thinking in twisted ways that they picked up from their environment, sometimes they're falling prey to cognitive biases, sometimes they're making one of a hundred other mistakes I happen to recognize.
And sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry.
Original article's error: The fact that a conclusion sounds nice does not save it from being patently false.
As a rule people are a lot smarter than they may appear to be at first contact. And people that think they are very smart are typically smart along some fairly narrow field and then extrapolate their smartness in that one area to all areas.
Thinking is interesting that way, if you're 'smart' it usually means that you know a lot about some subject but that isn't actually being smart. Being smart means that you can use the knowledge you've got in creative ways when presented with unforeseen problems or situations.
And there are plenty of people that would not normally be called smart that excel at that.
Being smart or not has nothing to do with making mistakes or falling prey to cognitive biases. The first is typically evidence of people trying things a little bit outside their envelope of experience, in turn they'll acquire new knowledge because of this. Guilty as charged, I make mistakes all the time. Your environment has nothing to do with you being smart or not either. Otherwise, how would you ever be able to recognize someone from a society with different levels of development as smart.
The fact that someone does not appear smart in a way that you recognize does not mean they are not.
Even people that are in general stupid may surprise you.
The problem with labeling someone as being stupid is that you're applying a stereotype to his behavior and by definition, you have preconceived ideas about stereotypes.
However, stereotypes are human-invented concepts and the world is much more complicated for that, as in fact everybody has a unique combination of knowledge and perspective that's dependent on his environment in which he grew up, his passions, his ideals, his education, his friends, his luck, his misfortunes and so on.
In my country we have a billionaire that started making money by herding and selling sheep. He's also a completely illiterate buffoon, a redneck that still has the same mentality as a sheep herder. Every time he talks, stupid things come out of his mouth. However, he's a billionaire that started from zero, while I have the income of a regular employee, he's also a politician with a seat in the EU parliament and he's also pretty involved in charity work, while I'm not. Judging by his words or actions that end up in the media, he's completely stupid, but judging by his accomplishments only, it's really hard to do that.
So be wary of calling people stupid, because stupidity is relative.
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).
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.
Then I stopped being a teenager and realized that, hey, most people are actually pretty cool. When they're being stupid it's usually just a lack of information and when you educate them a bit, they get better.
But then the internet reminded me that there are, in fact, stupid people all over the place, they just don't live in my IRL filter bubble.
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.
Indeed, for only a smart person can come up with a twisted and convoluted rationalization that a person with an IQ of 75 is not stupid and a person with an IQ of 125 is not smart. You'll find some of the most passionate arguments about the problems of IQ testing from people with IQs over 115. If you really think it doesn't matter, well, I'm sure there are some interesting ways to knock down your IQ quite a bit that you might want to try as a personal experiment. As a safer experiment, find someone with an IQ in the 90s or less (do you know anyone with sub-100 IQ?) and try to teach them Haskell.
Of course, we're all intelligent on a species-scale, but that's a separate distinction.
I heard that learning to "game" IQ tests is a common exercise in psychology classes. According to my friend it's fairly easy to get very high scores with the appropriate preparation.
A very good old friend of mine is a professionally trained waiter and never had "advanced" math classes. His knowledge of math was limited to the rule of three.
One day I tried to teach him functions, quadratic equations, basic analysis and other stuff. He grocked it immediately. Much much faster than most of my class mates when we had to learn these topics back at school.
I think it is important to distinguish between "knowledge" and "intelligence".
A good life lesson was given to me by my English teacher in high school. He always told us that when you notice that you have more knowledge in area than the person you are talking to, then it is your job to adjust your way of communication. Not the other way round. It's of no good to be smug. In fact if you fail to communicate your ideas, you might not be as smart as you might think.
I can't imagine anything more apt than a conversation about this subject on a forum made up of people who hold their own intelligence in a high regard.
I assure you that your definition of "stupid" is short-sighted. I've pre-judged a good many of people in my life as such and have been proven wrong almost every time, provided I'd spent enough time to try to understand what makes that person think the way they do.
We all have our methods. You might call them madness - or stupidity - but the moment you do, your ignorance becomes your bold weakness.
tl;dr: Get over yourself.
Downvotes... Let's continue the point...
"Sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry." [1]
"people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do them." [2]
"Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely unproductive avenues." [3]
"Maybe politically correct people don't think others are stupid, but smart or not, there are definitely some morons out there." [4]
"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" [5]
"Odds are that the all of the people from the article, and the author, are relatively stupid." [6]
"Smart people don't think others are stupid as the truely smart know that others are stupid." [7]
"at LEAST 15% of the world is stupid. That's just getting started." [8]
>So when someone says “They are so stupid!” - it means they’ve stopped thinking.
Don't listen to this !!
If you don't stop thinking , pretty soon you'll be deconstructing socio-economic behaviour of wage employees, thrashing between cultural/societal programming and why that is so, then you will move on to swarms surviving and problem-solving in groups and why programming is necessary for this, then you will proceed on to variety in nature, and degrees of freedom and 'coincidental' interlocking of such degrees of freedom of various entities leading to formation of stable ecosystems of assemblies of moving parts .
By this time your soup would've gone cold and the opportunity to tell the establishment that this is not what you ordered would be far gone.
Maybe politically correct people don't think others are stupid, but smart or not, there are definitely some morons out there.
I for one, do not need to be PC to be smart. I don't claim to know everything, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who know less who also decided a long time ago to stop learning/embracing new ideas.
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.
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.
Sorry but no. Most people are cattle. Utter retards. The only thing missing them is drooling on the floor and making feces. They're little more than animals that can speak. Anyone even remotely smart knows most people are stupid compared to himself.
Of course, smart people don't go around whining about it. But they do KNOW they're surrounded by retards.
I disagree. Labels are sometimes derived of prejudice and bigotry. But if someone is obese, and I call them fat - it's not a label that I invented because I'm "not thinking" and "I don't realize the possibilities". I am thinking, and I do realize the possibilities, and the person is still fat and the person might be me looking at the mirror. And if I don't know I'm fat because I'm afraid that by admitting it; I've jumped to a conclusion, which would in turn mean that I've avoided thinking and have jumped to a conclusion - wait, I mean stupid -- then how am I ever going to know that I can do something about it? Bleh. Fallacious logic is not logic at all.
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.
[+] [-] coffeemug|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bitops|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SatvikBeri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elemenohpee|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] galfarragem|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lotharbot|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jseliger|14 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] nosse|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] loceng|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] guynamedloren|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eliezer|14 years ago|reply
And sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry.
Original article's error: The fact that a conclusion sounds nice does not save it from being patently false.
[+] [-] jacquesm|14 years ago|reply
Thinking is interesting that way, if you're 'smart' it usually means that you know a lot about some subject but that isn't actually being smart. Being smart means that you can use the knowledge you've got in creative ways when presented with unforeseen problems or situations.
And there are plenty of people that would not normally be called smart that excel at that.
Being smart or not has nothing to do with making mistakes or falling prey to cognitive biases. The first is typically evidence of people trying things a little bit outside their envelope of experience, in turn they'll acquire new knowledge because of this. Guilty as charged, I make mistakes all the time. Your environment has nothing to do with you being smart or not either. Otherwise, how would you ever be able to recognize someone from a society with different levels of development as smart.
The fact that someone does not appear smart in a way that you recognize does not mean they are not.
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
The problem with labeling someone as being stupid is that you're applying a stereotype to his behavior and by definition, you have preconceived ideas about stereotypes.
However, stereotypes are human-invented concepts and the world is much more complicated for that, as in fact everybody has a unique combination of knowledge and perspective that's dependent on his environment in which he grew up, his passions, his ideals, his education, his friends, his luck, his misfortunes and so on.
In my country we have a billionaire that started making money by herding and selling sheep. He's also a completely illiterate buffoon, a redneck that still has the same mentality as a sheep herder. Every time he talks, stupid things come out of his mouth. However, he's a billionaire that started from zero, while I have the income of a regular employee, he's also a politician with a seat in the EU parliament and he's also pretty involved in charity work, while I'm not. Judging by his words or actions that end up in the media, he's completely stupid, but judging by his accomplishments only, it's really hard to do that.
So be wary of calling people stupid, because stupidity is relative.
[+] [-] delinka|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scottw|14 years ago|reply
Labeling people is nearly always a substitute for thinking and empathy (both hard things).
[+] [-] donaq|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Swizec|14 years ago|reply
Then I stopped being a teenager and realized that, hey, most people are actually pretty cool. When they're being stupid it's usually just a lack of information and when you educate them a bit, they get better.
But then the internet reminded me that there are, in fact, stupid people all over the place, they just don't live in my IRL filter bubble.
Evidence: http://notalwaysright.com/ http://clientsfromhell.net/ http://textsfromlastnight.com/
[+] [-] mgkimsal|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Inufu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|14 years ago|reply
Of course, we're all intelligent on a species-scale, but that's a separate distinction.
[+] [-] kitsune_|14 years ago|reply
A very good old friend of mine is a professionally trained waiter and never had "advanced" math classes. His knowledge of math was limited to the rule of three.
One day I tried to teach him functions, quadratic equations, basic analysis and other stuff. He grocked it immediately. Much much faster than most of my class mates when we had to learn these topics back at school.
I think it is important to distinguish between "knowledge" and "intelligence".
A good life lesson was given to me by my English teacher in high school. He always told us that when you notice that you have more knowledge in area than the person you are talking to, then it is your job to adjust your way of communication. Not the other way round. It's of no good to be smug. In fact if you fail to communicate your ideas, you might not be as smart as you might think.
[+] [-] speg|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] enobrev|14 years ago|reply
I assure you that your definition of "stupid" is short-sighted. I've pre-judged a good many of people in my life as such and have been proven wrong almost every time, provided I'd spent enough time to try to understand what makes that person think the way they do.
We all have our methods. You might call them madness - or stupidity - but the moment you do, your ignorance becomes your bold weakness.
tl;dr: Get over yourself.
Downvotes... Let's continue the point...
"Sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry." [1]
"people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do them." [2]
"Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely unproductive avenues." [3]
"Maybe politically correct people don't think others are stupid, but smart or not, there are definitely some morons out there." [4]
"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" [5]
"Odds are that the all of the people from the article, and the author, are relatively stupid." [6]
"Smart people don't think others are stupid as the truely smart know that others are stupid." [7]
"at LEAST 15% of the world is stupid. That's just getting started." [8]
1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985594
2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985040
3: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985265
4: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985575
5: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985050
6: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985118
7: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3984894
8: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985224
[+] [-] lani|14 years ago|reply
Don't listen to this !!
If you don't stop thinking , pretty soon you'll be deconstructing socio-economic behaviour of wage employees, thrashing between cultural/societal programming and why that is so, then you will move on to swarms surviving and problem-solving in groups and why programming is necessary for this, then you will proceed on to variety in nature, and degrees of freedom and 'coincidental' interlocking of such degrees of freedom of various entities leading to formation of stable ecosystems of assemblies of moving parts . By this time your soup would've gone cold and the opportunity to tell the establishment that this is not what you ordered would be far gone.
[+] [-] kappaknight|14 years ago|reply
I for one, do not need to be PC to be smart. I don't claim to know everything, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who know less who also decided a long time ago to stop learning/embracing new ideas.
[+] [-] ArcticCelt|14 years ago|reply
Before someone concludes the obvious about my comment I'll point out that those are not my rules.
[+] [-] reitzensteinm|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scarmig|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hansef|14 years ago|reply
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. ;)
[+] [-] barbazfoo12|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] blackhole|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dave1619|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alvarosm|14 years ago|reply
Of course, smart people don't go around whining about it. But they do KNOW they're surrounded by retards.
[+] [-] jacquesm|14 years ago|reply
Indeed...
[+] [-] rizzom5000|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfc|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] moistgorilla|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sylvanaar|14 years ago|reply