

People Are Stupid - adamzerner
http://www.collegeanswerz.com/people-are-stupid

======
adamzerner
Can I get some feedback? I see via google analytics that 73 people viewed
this, but no upvotes.

~~~
foobarbazqux
I'd be careful about discounting emotions. A closed heart is just as dangerous
as a closed mind.

~~~
adamzerner
Agreed. However, I think you're misinterpreting my point about emotions
(probably because I did a bad job making that point clear).

I didn't talk about this in People Are Stupid, but emotions can be useful.
Sometimes they help you by motivating you and triggering appropriate thoughts.
Without them, often times you wouldn't reach the same thoughts as you do with
them. HOWEVER, often times they're used improperly. Often times things like
anger, spite, frustration and ego lead people to... be stupid. And again, this
happens both frequently, and about very important things.

It is this that is my point. I think it is both true, and important to say.
You can't solve a problem without admitting it. People are stupid, and the
world would be much better off it people weren't. So I'm saying it.

~~~
foobarbazqux
Well, labeling people as stupid is shaming. Instead of containing your anger
and frustration about their behavior, you're putting them down with shame. The
world would also be much better off if people didn't shame each other.

I think the answer is not simply more rationality but more self-awareness.
Awareness of one's thoughts, one's emotions, one's past and present
experience, one's hopes for the future, and the interplay between these
things. So the real challenge is encouraging people to embark on a quest for
self-awareness. People generally don't do this unless life's circumstances
force them to.

I think you didn't get any upvotes because it's essentially a philosophy essay
(i.e. it's kind of off-topic) and because we've all encountered ideas about
closed mindedness and assumptions before.

~~~
adamzerner
Thank you for you're explanations. They're useful.

I understand and sort of agree with what you said about the upvotes. I know
that it isn't really anything new, but I thought that I did a solid job of
articulating things that people think, but don't necessarily know how to say.
I know that personally, I always sort of thought them in an abstract sense,
but after writing this essay I became more aware of what it is I was actually
thinking. So for that reason, I thought people might like it enough to give it
significant upvotes.

Anyway, I understand what you're saying about this being insulting, and about
self-awareness, but I respectfully disagree. While I may have came across as
an asshole, I am actually a benevolent person. I care about the world and the
happiness of society. There are a lot of things I think I can do in my
lifetime to drastically improve the world. One of them, is making people more
rational.

I think that self-awareness, among other things, would be a consequence of
rationality. By thinking rationally, by definition -
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/),
you're making the right choices. Encouraging self-awareness would have its
benefits, but I think that encouraging rationality would have those same
benefits, as well as many many others.

Regarding the insulting nature of calling people stupid, I think it's
necessary. I feel hesitant to do so, but I really really think it needs to be
done. In our culture, people are so reluctant to disagree with one another and
offer constructive criticism. It is ridiculous. People are always encouraging
irrational thought by saying "you can think whatever you want to". It's ok to
disagree. Me calling people stupid is my way of proclaiming mass disagreement.
Granted, I could do so in a less insulting way. Still, I think that the costs
of me insulting people are outweighed by the benefits of 1) the fact that it
gets peoples attention, and 2) it more clearly conveys my point than me saying
that "people make epistemically and instrumentally irrational decisions both
frequently, and about important things".

Note: I think this conversation would be more productive and clear by me
giving an example of people being stupid, so you could picture that in your
mind instead of the abstract concept of people being stupid. People don't put
thought into what they're going to do with their lives. They just choose from
the handful of options that are common for the neighborhood in which they grew
up. See [http://www.collegeanswerz.com/i-graduated-high-school-now-
wh...](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/i-graduated-high-school-now-what) and
[http://www.collegeanswerz.com/being-wrong-about-what-you-
lik...](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/being-wrong-about-what-you-like).

~~~
foobarbazqux
What does rationality say about subjective experience?

~~~
adamzerner
It says that subjective experience can be analyzed in terms of desirability,
and that you should maximize desirable experience. (At least that's what I
say. See
[http://www.collegeanswerz.com/morality](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/morality))

~~~
foobarbazqux
I went through all these things when I was around your age. I wrote about as
prolifically as you. I used to think we could maximize happiness levels around
the world. You might be interested in a book called The Happiness Hypothesis.

I don't really know what to say. You're asking a lot of deep and important
questions. Keep reading, keep writing. Broaden the scope of your reading. One
thing that helped me a lot was to have somebody more experienced than me to
talk about these things with in person, in a kind of student-teacher
relationship.

~~~
adamzerner
I looked into that book, and I'll definitely read it. Thanks for the
recommendation.

~~~
foobarbazqux
Hey you're welcome, thanks for the conversation.

