I’ve come to think that stupidity is the default condition of humans. And I don’t mean in the sense of “you start off not possessing much knowledge.” I mean stupidity, not ignorance.
If you study some evolution and anthropology, you learn that the brain is an incredibly expensive organ. Most life forms opt for a lower level of intelligence that’s good enough to get some food in their face and their genitals where they need to go. The brain is a massive risk and it’s miraculous how it’s managed to pay off in our case.
Still, thinking is hard work. I think most people would rather do hard physical labor than actually think hard about something difficult. The brain itself functions like a shortcut machine, too. It doesn’t do hard calculations on where that tennis ball is going to bounce. It makes a “good enough” guess, and that’s it. People instinctively look at what other people are doing because it’s so much easier to let your neighbor figure it out and then copy them. And, yes, people love to subscribe to a worldview, political position, or belief set that someone else is selling and just let them do all the big thinking for them.
You could look at it as willful self deprivation, and it is, but I think it’s also just the basic gravity of pure resource management constantly pulling people down into lower levels of mental activity. Thinking takes a tremendous amount of energy.
I think it’s arrogance that is the default condition. Specially if you are educated, because now you feel confident your opinions are correct, and others are wrong and must be stupid.
This is mostly why people don’t get along very well. Everyone thinks they are right and they have this need to fight people who says something differently.
Massive downvotes with no comments is a sign of this behavior.
I’m not sure that last sentence tracks, if people need to fight people who disagree, wouldn’t they be leaving comments, vocally disagreeing/verbally attacking the other user or their position? Just downvoting and moving is still “getting along” so to speak.
Downvoting is the lazy version of that…just press a button if you don’t agree with something. It’s a bit like giving reviews to people based on what you think about what they write.
You call it “lazy,” I call it time management. No one has the time or intellectual bandwidth to respond to all the deeply stupid comments on the Internet, so downvotes give us a quick and easy to register our opinion and move on.
And tribalism is really strong. For many it doesn’t matter if what they’re fighting against is actually logical, as long as they’re doing it together and they have a common enemy like some nonexistent deep state that was made up by the Russians to sow dissent in the United States
Ignorance appears to be like rabies in at least one way, once it rots enough of your brain you become fearful of anything and everything around you.
I’ve come to think that stupidity is the default condition of humans. And I don’t mean in the sense of “you start off not possessing much knowledge.” I mean stupidity, not ignorance.
If you study some evolution and anthropology, you learn that the brain is an incredibly expensive organ. Most life forms opt for a lower level of intelligence that’s good enough to get some food in their face and their genitals where they need to go. The brain is a massive risk and it’s miraculous how it’s managed to pay off in our case.
Still, thinking is hard work. I think most people would rather do hard physical labor than actually think hard about something difficult. The brain itself functions like a shortcut machine, too. It doesn’t do hard calculations on where that tennis ball is going to bounce. It makes a “good enough” guess, and that’s it. People instinctively look at what other people are doing because it’s so much easier to let your neighbor figure it out and then copy them. And, yes, people love to subscribe to a worldview, political position, or belief set that someone else is selling and just let them do all the big thinking for them.
You could look at it as willful self deprivation, and it is, but I think it’s also just the basic gravity of pure resource management constantly pulling people down into lower levels of mental activity. Thinking takes a tremendous amount of energy.
What an interesting take, fits my world view perfectly.
I think it’s arrogance that is the default condition. Specially if you are educated, because now you feel confident your opinions are correct, and others are wrong and must be stupid.
This is mostly why people don’t get along very well. Everyone thinks they are right and they have this need to fight people who says something differently.
Massive downvotes with no comments is a sign of this behavior.
I’m not sure that last sentence tracks, if people need to fight people who disagree, wouldn’t they be leaving comments, vocally disagreeing/verbally attacking the other user or their position? Just downvoting and moving is still “getting along” so to speak.
Downvoting is the lazy version of that…just press a button if you don’t agree with something. It’s a bit like giving reviews to people based on what you think about what they write.
You call it “lazy,” I call it time management. No one has the time or intellectual bandwidth to respond to all the deeply stupid comments on the Internet, so downvotes give us a quick and easy to register our opinion and move on.
Explains all the memes being popular I guess… Minimum effort :)
And tribalism is really strong. For many it doesn’t matter if what they’re fighting against is actually logical, as long as they’re doing it together and they have a common enemy like some nonexistent deep state that was made up by the Russians to sow dissent in the United States