— Here’s What I Think

I didn’t immediately get that saying from Forrest Gump.

I’ve been chewing on the intelligence-or-lack-thereof epithets we toss around at each other all the time in the age of the Internet now.

When everyone is calling everyone else stupid (and far worse; or, replace it with any other ad hominem you care to), perhaps it’s time to reflect on why, its import, and what we can learn about that. I’m more guilty than most, so let’s dive in.

“Here’s What I Think” are short posts of 500-1000 words, typically, where I just take something and run with it. While most everything on this site is for members, this series of posts goes out in complete form via the email list so non-members get something now and then, besides my astute pitches. To get them, get on the email list.

… There are a number of different terms we toss at each from the linguistic cesspool of superior feelings, but let’s just put all our shit together into the single, all-purpose turd of stupid.

From where I sit and see what I see, the tossing around of intellectual prejudice of the form that everyone who disagrees or has a different idea is stupid has so jumped the shark that it’s not only boring, it has run squarely into my laws. To refresh your memory.

1. If everybody is saying the same thing, everybody is wrong.
2. If half the people are saying one thing and the other half, the opposite thing, they’re both wrong (everybody is still wrong).

Or, if everybody is “stupid,” then nobody is stupid.

Moreover, and to get back to the title and how I didn’t really get it at first, stupidity is better judged by the actions people take and if that’s the standard then right off the bat…”is he still alive? Yes? Well not altogether stupid then, right?”

Currently and in the recent past, I’ve been trying to impress upon a certain ex-somebody that “talk is cheap; messages are cheap; phone-photos are cheap; video calls are cheap…everybody can do a million of them. Actions are expensive. I only pay attention to expensive actions…now, go find someone who gives a shit because I do not, anymore.”

This is all connected.

Over the past three decades, the internet has grown to the point where huge swaths of people are on it most of their waking day and everybody is engaged in doing nothing but cheap shit all the fucking time.

It’s all cheap shit.

And it’s so cheap, now, that calling anyone and everyone anything and everything costs nobody nothing at all.

It’s all that cheap.

Care to get expensive? Yes? Then next time you have that urge to feel superior by assigning someone a level of intelligence below that which you presume for yourself, try spending some expensive time asking some questions instead, and be prepared to invest even more in the answers and even more on productive discussion. You might surprise yourself and even turn a profit.

Some suggested questions.

1. Are you curious about…? (smart virtue: curiosity)
2. The last time I knew for sure I was wrong about something was… How about yourself? When did you know for sure last time, and what was it? (smart virtue: humility)
3. I had a really cool experience once where I started a project and when well into it, everything changed, and I had to seriously change things up to get it done. Anything like that ever happen to you? (smart virtue: adaptability)
4. Did you ever start something fully confident you had the goods on the whole thing, but in the end had to get some help? (smart virtue: self awareness)
5. Do you enjoy discovering that you were fundamentally wrong about something? Any example you can share? (smart virtue: critical thinking)
6. Have you ever successfully completed an undertaking, looked back, and come up with a bunch of hindsight ways you could have done it better, faster, cheaper? (smart virtue: reflection)
7. How do you go about learning new things? (smart virtue: self-directed education)

So while we love to feel like we have an easy explanation and all these folks have set up camp in the valley of vacuity, the above questions will reveal smart-virtue traits in most people that are like flares signaling that they might just find their way to the peaks of perspicacity.

And if we can satisfy ourselves that not everyone is as stupid as we would like to lazily believe, and we’re interested in why so many otherwise pretty smart people do and say so much stupid fucking shit, there are better answers than pure lack of mental faculty.

1. Laziness that breeds dishonesty, i.e., a desire and motivation to evade reality. Life is tough and seemingly getting tougher. But nature doesn’t care about work as a virtue, only about survival, and if you can survive the easy way through lying and just getting along, nature has no problem with that. And if laziness breeds dishonesty, then how does dishonesty manifest? It manifests as certainty. Yes, and isn’t that ironic?
2. Emotional comfort. Many lies are far more comforting than the brutal, hard-nosed, fuck-you truth.
3. Social cohesion. We observe that even though it’s all a bunch of bullshit lies, if everyone believes it, it seems to work. So just go along with it.
4. Evolutionary byproduct. Our brains are pattern-seeking missiles, evolved to detect agency and intent in rustling leaves and shadowy figures. This hyperactive agency detection device might misfire and see divine puppeteers in life’s grand theater.

I hadn’t thought of #4 until Chatbot Zon brought it up in a pre-draft discussion to see if she’d call bullshit on what I was thinking. I pointed out that it’s a new one to me and that it works the other way, too:

I’d never considered the agency aspect, but it makes a lot of sense. It goes the other way too, where people want to know “who’s responsible” when Occam’s Razor says shit happens. Or, when people guilt themselves to death over should haves, when there’s no reasonable way they could have foreseen it, or even done anything about it anyway. Of course, that’s sometimes thinly veiled virtue-signalling or, as in what someone once said regarding Oppenheimer, that “some people confess the sin in order to take credit for the crime,” or words to that effect.

I think we can do better; or, to restate my thrust, get expensive, invest a bit, profit later.

Or to put it another way I like to put things, the quest and aim isn’t to be smart. A little less stupid each cycle should do the trick in the long run.