Smart people don’t think others are stupid | Derek Sivers
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Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
  • vonbaronhans@midwest.socialEnglish
    7·
    20 days ago

    I don’t think this is a particularly good argument.

    By the definition of “stupid” they use, you could witness someone demonstrate a pattern of stopping thinking and jumping to conclusions, and you could rightfully call that person “stupid”. That is in no way an admission of stupidity on your own part.

    The sort of phenomenon described by the article does, of course, happen. Often. But it’s certainly not true that that’s the only circumstance where somebody calls someone else “stupid”.

    • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      20 days ago

      Yeah it’s ignoring the cultural and definitional heuristics inherent in language, and provides an almost circular argument. “It is because of the way it is and that’s just how it is.”

      “They’re behaving in a frustratingly willfully ignorant and dangerously selfish way to the point I can’t distinguish it from malice” is not something I can concisely say half a dozen times on my commute to and from work. (Examples include: braking to an almost dead stop in the middle lane on an open highway, refusing to use their blinkers multiple times in a row, nearly cutting off the front of my vehicle while doing so even though I’m willing to give them space, etc.) I’m also not assuming everyone is “stupid” either; in my example my spirits are lifted when other drivers obey traffic laws and the surrounding social contract.

      We also can’t fucking mind-read so it’s not unrealistic to put a temporary mental marker on whether or not someone is worth spending more emotional and mental effort around. The use of shortened language to describe a situation is not the same as dismissing someone or something wholesale and to assert a wholesale assumption on others for a perceived behavior is directly contradictory to the author’s argument.

  • Miller@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    20 days ago

    This thought on philosophy is muzak to my ears, either I think you are stupid which means I am stupid or I think you are smart so I am smart too. So everyone is either smart or stupid depending on the side of bed you woke up on. That is not understanding comparisons, everything cannot be normal.

  • DeadDigger@lemmy.zipEnglish
    6·
    20 days ago

    I don’t think ppl are stupid most ppl are fucking idiots and that article is such dumb shit it did cost me some braincells