6 ms·

"Stupid" is not a useful way to generally describe the people vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I have met people who are relatively intelligent who fall into

"Stupid" is not a useful way to generally describe the people vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I have met people who are relatively intelligent who fall into these. See also: religion, politics.

emteycz 6y ago
I have met stupid intelligent people. Sometimes knowledge just doesn't seem to translate to actual behavior and decisions (it's mostly about the lack of decisions, IMHO).
- Hoasi 6y ago
  > I have met stupid intelligent people. The irony happens when it is education itself that compromises the critical faculties of someone, as the article mentions. Intelligent people are sometimes loyal to an ideology built during their upbringing and belong to their circle. Sometimes the exact opposite happens and drives them to a complete rejection of said ideas. Religion, culture, and politics are prone to create blind spots, where otherwise critical, highly educated, and intelligent individuals don't question specific biases because they are too closely related to their identity.
katmannthree 6y ago
What's a better term for people with a lack of critical thinking skills and/or a lot of unexamined closely held beliefs?
- kstenerud 6y ago
  I've met a number of religious people who were quite good at their technical jobs that required critical thinking skills. So long as the knowledge, skills and behaviors required of them don't clash with their identity beliefs, there's no problem in terms of performance.
  - katmannthree 6y ago
    Sure, but most of those fields don't require a carefully examined set of beliefs about the world itself in order to succeed. A logically inconsistent but functional worldview is usually enough. As an extreme example it's entirely possible to be an award-winning pediatric neurosurgeon while simultaneously believing that the Egyptian pyramids were grain storage silos. Fields that require carefully examined beliefs about almost everything (physics for example) are a lot harder to pull that off in.
dstick 6y ago
With religion ymmv. A lot of people do not believe in some super-being, but do believe in belief and the benefits it brings them. A feeling of happiness, a social group to belong to, and a way of coping with the bigger philosophical questions around death and the meaning of life. Religion is too broad a term to sweep everyone under. It’s very diverse. Now creationists, who believe the world is 5.000 years old - yeah, that’s a whole other bag-of-fish.
- Covzire 6y ago
  To your first point, even creationists believe in empirical science and I doubt you'll find any meaningful disagreement between a die hard creationist and an evolutionary biologist on the empirical data. The line between empirical and circumstantial or interpretive evidence is often very blurry, however.
  - mcculley 6y ago
    My 3rd though 6th grade education was at a private Christian school. We were explicitly taught that the Earth is ~6,000 years old and that fossils are a test of faith in that belief. Fundamentalist creationists exist. https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-school/ https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-s...
    - Covzire 6y ago
      I don't doubt you, but neither of those ideas are empirical in nature and not what I was referring to.
      - mcculley 6y ago
        Maybe I am misunderstanding you. What good is empiricism if you will reject evidence that conflicts with your beliefs?
        Covzire 6y ago
dawnerd 6y ago
It’s amazing how many intelligent people believe 5G will give you <whatever condition is trending>.
mellow2020 6y ago
It's easy to explain -- just not to people whose salary whose salary depends on not understanding it, who keep shaking their heads as the predictable results of the boat they won't rock roll in. > people want some understanding of what's happening, but they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government [..] > it's happening all over and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effect of neo-liberalism. It had a goal remember: the goal of neo-liberalism was to transfer decisions away from the public to the hands of private power and to atomize the population. -- Noam Chomsky, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s > the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm, https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll90/id/64 https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll...
toss1 6y ago
Sure, if "Stupid" is limited to the inability to form a sequence of connected thoughts, it is probably the wrong word. If it encompasses the inability to reliably connect thoughts to reality, inability to trust anything other than naive constructs and actively distrusting others (which will certainly limit the problem space in which they can work), then it serves as a good shorthand. Do you have any better suggestions (that aren't full sentences or paragraphs)?

"Stupid" is not a useful way to generally describe the people vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I have met people who are relatively intelligent who fall into these. See also: religion, politics.

emteycz 6y ago

I have met stupid intelligent people. Sometimes knowledge just doesn't seem to translate to actual behavior and decisions (it's mostly about the lack of decisions, IMHO).

Hoasi 6y ago
> I have met stupid intelligent people. The irony happens when it is education itself that compromises the critical faculties of someone, as the article mentions. Intelligent people are sometimes loyal to an ideology built during their upbringing and belong to their circle. Sometimes the exact opposite happens and drives them to a complete rejection of said ideas. Religion, culture, and politics are prone to create blind spots, where otherwise critical, highly educated, and intelligent individuals don't question specific biases because they are too closely related to their identity.

katmannthree 6y ago

What's a better term for people with a lack of critical thinking skills and/or a lot of unexamined closely held beliefs?

kstenerud 6y ago
I've met a number of religious people who were quite good at their technical jobs that required critical thinking skills. So long as the knowledge, skills and behaviors required of them don't clash with their identity beliefs, there's no problem in terms of performance.
- katmannthree 6y ago
  Sure, but most of those fields don't require a carefully examined set of beliefs about the world itself in order to succeed. A logically inconsistent but functional worldview is usually enough. As an extreme example it's entirely possible to be an award-winning pediatric neurosurgeon while simultaneously believing that the Egyptian pyramids were grain storage silos. Fields that require carefully examined beliefs about almost everything (physics for example) are a lot harder to pull that off in.

dstick 6y ago

With religion ymmv. A lot of people do not believe in some super-being, but do believe in belief and the benefits it brings them. A feeling of happiness, a social group to belong to, and a way of coping with the bigger philosophical questions around death and the meaning of life. Religion is too broad a term to sweep everyone under. It’s very diverse. Now creationists, who believe the world is 5.000 years old - yeah, that’s a whole other bag-of-fish.

Covzire 6y ago
To your first point, even creationists believe in empirical science and I doubt you'll find any meaningful disagreement between a die hard creationist and an evolutionary biologist on the empirical data. The line between empirical and circumstantial or interpretive evidence is often very blurry, however.
- mcculley 6y ago
  My 3rd though 6th grade education was at a private Christian school. We were explicitly taught that the Earth is ~6,000 years old and that fossils are a test of faith in that belief. Fundamentalist creationists exist. https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-school/ https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-s...
  - Covzire 6y ago
    I don't doubt you, but neither of those ideas are empirical in nature and not what I was referring to.
    - mcculley 6y ago
      Maybe I am misunderstanding you. What good is empiricism if you will reject evidence that conflicts with your beliefs?
      - Covzire 6y ago

dawnerd 6y ago

It’s amazing how many intelligent people believe 5G will give you <whatever condition is trending>.

mellow2020 6y ago

It's easy to explain -- just not to people whose salary whose salary depends on not understanding it, who keep shaking their heads as the predictable results of the boat they won't rock roll in. > people want some understanding of what's happening, but they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government [..] > it's happening all over and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effect of neo-liberalism. It had a goal remember: the goal of neo-liberalism was to transfer decisions away from the public to the hands of private power and to atomize the population. -- Noam Chomsky, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCeqySVhCE&t=20m55s > the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm, https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll90/id/64 https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll...

toss1 6y ago

Sure, if "Stupid" is limited to the inability to form a sequence of connected thoughts, it is probably the wrong word. If it encompasses the inability to reliably connect thoughts to reality, inability to trust anything other than naive constructs and actively distrusting others (which will certainly limit the problem space in which they can work), then it serves as a good shorthand. Do you have any better suggestions (that aren't full sentences or paragraphs)?