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> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons... I hate this super-condescending attitude. Even if you do happen to be smarter than the ave

• deleted 11y ago
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• toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear > it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed... Devil's advocate: If you're above average intelligence, you're smarter than a majority of the populace by definition. Why would you not then dismiss the thoughts and ideas of those less educated? One person's condescension is another person's logic.
  • rictic 11y ago
    Because your brain is going to lead you into thinking that your ingroup are the smart minority and your outgroups and people that you don't understand are the simple minded majority.
  • GhotiFish 11y ago
    because people don't exist on a continuum of smart and dumb.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I'm surprised to hear that, considering the story on HN the other day about how educated woman don't marry down. It seems a non-insignificant number of people want to partner with and befriend those of the same or higher intelligence. Anecdotally, I gravitate towards above average intelligence people for friendships and romantic relationships. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-single-in-america-changed/for-the-college-educated-there-is-a-man-deficit-in-the-us http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-si...
      • chris_wot 11y ago
        Percieved same or higher intelligence.
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          Whether its perceived or not, thats how its playing out on a macro scale.
          • chris_wot 11y ago
            Really? Care to back that up with actual evidence?
            • tormeh 11y ago
              Goddammit. Seriously. It's well-known that all kinds of intelligence are correlated, at least at the lower end. There is such a thing as a benchmark of the brain that gives a one-dimensional result that tells us a something significant about that person. You're just being touchy-feely superstitious (which is way better than the scared-of-different kind of superstitious, but still).
              • chris_wot 11y ago
                Then I'm sure you'll find it very easy to provide the study that confirms your claims. You are the first person I've ever heard that called asking for evidence "superstitious". You might want to look up the definition of that word. Goddammit indeed. Try not to get too touchy-feely in your reply, just give me the studies you are referring to.
  • JackFr 11y ago
    http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1999-15054-002 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1999-15054-002 Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
    • deleted 11y ago
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  • LanguageGamer 11y ago
    One of the best things a person can do with their intelligence is try and understand the perspective of other people.
  • im3w1l 11y ago
    Because you live a different life than they do, they have experiences you don't and they know things you wont. Doesn't mean you should uncritically accept their ideas, but it does mean you should at least give them some weight.
  • smithkl42 11y ago
    The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.
    • enraged_camel 11y ago
      Interesting. I'm not sure I can relate, though. I'd rather listen to Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins talk about evolution and atheism than someone of average intelligence.
      • jimbokun 11y ago
        Because you really just want reinforcement for ideas you already believe?
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          Dangerous slope. I want constructive arguments, to be sure, especially with people who hold a different view than my own on different topics. But your opinion does not carry the same weight as a fact. Quite a few people I've encountered don't understand that.
        • enraged_camel 11y ago
          I didn't say anything about whether I agree with those ideas or not. Stated simply, I'd rather hear any given argument from someone who is intelligent than someone who isn't. Extraneous factors, such as the arguer's humility or tone of delivery, don't enter the picture for me when evaluating the merit of the idea being argued.
      • whatshisface 11y ago
        Intelligence allows you to search through ideas faster. This is worth nothing if you are evaluating them badly. It doesn't matter if you are the greatest geinus to ever live - if you are looking for a reason to believe what you already want to, being smart just means you find it. "You can always design a cryptosystem that you yourself cannot break." Humility and an open mind are probably worth more than intelligence in this way.
  • mwfunk 11y ago
    That person's logic is narcissism, not insight. I get that they think they're being logical, but really they're just lacking self-awareness. They're not revealing themselves to be smart people making rational choices, they're revealing themselves to be conceited people who aren't as smart as they think they are. Put another way: someone who believes the stated Devil's Advocate position is by definition someone who doesn't understand the nature of intelligence, doesn't understand themselves, and doesn't understand other people. They might be making logical choices based on those misunderstandings, but correct logic based on false axioms is just as wrong as incorrect logic based on true axioms.
• Spooky23 11y ago
  There's a certain scale where a group of people turn into a mob. And mobs are ruled by the id, a perfectly normal, conscientious person's behavior transforms when part of an anonymous mob or when interacting with a faceless entity in an impersonal way. When I worked as a retail salesman, you'd see it all of the time. From people pushing expired coupons to return fraud to outright theft, people degrade in that sort of environment.
• abakker 11y ago
  I believe this was the article's point - that Fry no longer wanted to partake in discussion where people were getting offended on other people's behalf. Its not the best way to engage his comment.
• stickfigure 11y ago
  A casual perusal of the comments on any popular youtube video will disabuse you of this.
• marcosdumay 11y ago
  What?!? Masses usually act like morons. That's a well known phenomenon, old enough to become jokes in movies, and the entire audience (a mass) to get it. When people are acting smartly, they each do different things, and don't form a mass at all.
  • madaxe_again 11y ago
    Or is it the other way around, that people act smartly and rationally individually but when taken as a whole become a singular moronic entity? See also: corporations, nations.
    • humanrebar 11y ago
      If that's true, why is it so hard to beat the market in the long run. It's better to say that experts are better at some things and crowdsourcing is better at others. Though that's neither snarky nor pithy.
    • deleted 11y ago
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    • alexashka 11y ago
      People act dumb both in groups and individually. You don't see very many intelligent people joining big groups and becoming moronic - they're smart enough to recognize groups cater to the lowest common denominator and avoid them. The exception being young people who have the potential to be intelligent but lack life experience. As much as you'd like to believe that people are smart somehow - the average IQ is 100. 100 is really, really dumb.
  • mryan 11y ago
    > The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it. - Terry Pratchett, Jingo
• chriswarbo 11y ago
  > it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed... I think you're being overly harsh, nobody mentioned "dismiss[ing]" "everyone else"; yet I agree with the parent that conversations with such broad participation seem to be less interesting/'more dumb'/however-you-prefer-to-phrase-it. You even hinted at some of the reasons this might be the case; i.e. that different people have knowledge of different things (i.e. 'there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do'). The more people are included in a conversation, the less common ground there is to work from. People certainly can make accurate, fact-checked, carefully-worded contributions; yet they may be less likely to spread for a few reasons, e.g. - Being more difficult to understand for members who aren't as well-versed in the subject, compared to slogans, soundbites and memes. - Being more difficult to produce, compared to off-the-cuff remarks and guestimates. - Being realistic can be less attention-catching and thought-provoking for those who don't already know a subject, compared to baseless hyperbole - Those who don't already know about a subject, and try to contribute with e.g. anecdotes or quotes from others, may be unable to tell accurate information from inaccurate. It's unlikely that such contibutions will spread very far, so the content which does reach any particular individual will tend to be less useful bu good at spreading (e.g. "viral" videos of cats). These sorts of factors can lower the usefulness of a discussion. At a certain point, the quality or depth becomes low enough that those with a vested interest will often split off to a more focused/dedicated area for discussion. This leaves the original "mass market" conversation even more impoverished. As an analogy, let's say you're considering which of two datastructures to use in some project; imagine trying to debate their relative merits and solicit opinions on their complexity tradeoffs by posting to a generic "Computer Users" group on Facebook, amid the background noise of questions about what's the best MP3 player, how to change the colour of the Windows taskbar, and where to get a keygen for Photoshop.
• angersock 11y ago
  It's condescending, but, well, it's correct. At this point in human history with the analytics we all have available it's pretty easy to see that the vast majority of people favor bite-size disposable content over longwinded discourse. Look at the success of businesses that pander to the ever-more-frivolous. The Cheezburger network probably has more money spent on/in it than the New Yorker. We don't have to hate the proles, but let's never delude ourselves in to thinking they don't exist.
• wpietri 11y ago
  I despise it as well. It's the very stupidest way to celebrate smartness. Everybody's got strengths. From the perspective of that strength, everybody else can be seen as hopelessly weak. The politically strong may think everybody else is naive. The socially strong could everybody else is maladroit. The physically strong think everybody else is puny and inconsequential. The artistically strong think everybody else are embarrassingly lowbrow. And so on. It's irritating regardless, but I find this easier to forgive in people who are not crowing about how smart they are. It somebody is actually smart, they can recognize the limitations of pure IQ, and how embarrassingly self-limiting it is to think you have nothing to learn from anybody else. It's not like smart people don't also believe wrong things, make mistakes, and generally fuck up. Isaac Newton thought all sorts of things we now recognize as idiocies. America's founders were somehow unable to see the glaring contradiction between practicing chattel slavery and congratulating themselves on how devoted they were to liberty and the equality of man. On a cosmic scale, we are all morons. It's just that, limited by time and our meat-based brains, we are terrible at noticing how little we notice. Strength, be it physical, intellectual, or any other kind, doesn't justify being arrogant. Smart people should know that.