On Dec 6, 2007, at 3:40 AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote: > Warren Ockrassa wrote: >> >>> Most people is stupid _and_ most stupid people have an instinctive >>> drive to mindlessly obey the orders of those that they believe are >>> more intelligent - and this is what prevents extinction. >> >> This is an interesting pair of claims and I'd be intrigued to know >> what evidence you have to support either one of them, >> > Evidence? None, except accumulated experience that comes with > old age.
Which can be translated as curmdgeonhood. ;) >> and more >> particularly why you've arrived at the conclusion you have. What I >> mean is that it almost looks like you've made a decision and are >> doing >> a post hoc analysis to support it. >> > Which decision? That people are stupid. The argument you offered suggests you decided that people are stupid, and were doing an after-the-fact expansion on the point of view. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but that the structure of what you wrote seemed to be justifying a conclusion rather than building a foundation for it. >> It might help to define what you mean by "stupid", but what I'm >> reading here could be inverted as this: >> > Stupid = not able to think clearly. People who believe that > a fairy may turn 2 + 2 into fish. Oh, that's not stupid; it's surrealism! :D More seriously, though, even the term "not able to think clearly" doesn't necessarily indicate much about a given person's mind or mental faculties. Many people are not able to think clearly when they're angry, for instance, which renders temporary stupidity; as Julia pointed out some *choose* not to think clearly, which tends to lead others into ... anger. Some people don't have the tools to think clearly but that's only because they lack the training; others are genuinely organically dysfunctional and blameless about their inability to think clearly. >> And with groups in play, stupidity might be relative. Consider, for >> instance, that a YEC would consider most biologists, paleontologists, >> anthropologists, physicists and geologists as being incredibly stupid >> for not seeing the obvious clarity of the point of view that aligns >> to >> strict Biblical interpretation. >> > Ah, the relativity of evaluation... Yes, that's correct. Were you rebutting the validity of the above? >> And that is relevant, because Isaac Newton was a young-earth >> creationist and, when he wasn't inventing calculus in order to define >> physics and optics, he was trying to find proofs of a literal >> interpretation of Biblical teachings. So which was he? Stupid or >> brilliant? >> > At that time? He was extremely brilliant! Not being a literal > interpreter > of the Bible had dangerous consequences those times, like having his > brain physically separated from his heart by more than 2 meters. During the Enlightenment? Not so much so. Inventing physics from nothing was a heck of an achievement, but the literalism he tried to justify was much more than simply a hobby or something he was doing to save face. He was genuinely committed to proving the literal truth of the Bible. >> If you're thinking of "stupid" as meaning "inclined to mental >> laziness", I'd probably agree, but my personal working definition of >> "stupid" is (more or less) "totally incapable of comprehending >> something". I don't believe the concepts are equivalent, and I don't >> believe most people fit that definition of stupid. >> > Maybe everybody is totally incapable of comprehending something - > after all, human knowledge is much bigger than the size of human > brains :-) Yeah, you're probably right that everyone is probably guaranteed to be incapable of total comprehension of *something*; I was being a little narrower in intent, though, as in "Totally incapable of comprehending X," where X is something presumably simple to grasp, such as number lines or the dangers of lighting firecrackers and swallowing them. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
