4 ms·

No definition of stupidity is given, no criteria for identifying stupid behaviour, no evidence for any of these ramblings. I checked out a few other article. Mo

by simonh 4y ago

No definition of stupidity is given, no criteria for identifying stupid behaviour, no evidence for any of these ramblings. I checked out a few other article. More flat statements with little or no reasoned or evidentiary support, and what references are given if you actually read them, in the cases I found are being mis-interpreted. They often don't actually support the position taken. The whole thing is stupid. Having said that, I think we do sometimes overestimate how clever we are, as a species. If you think about it, we literally just right now, in evolutionary terms, put together a technological society. The last 10k years of advances since agriculture and cities are 3% of the last 300k years since our last common ancestor. That means we only just barely have enough intelligence to develop a civilization, the bare minimum required. Otherwise we'd have done it sooner. We're jumped up plains apes. Still, this article contains no such discussion, no analysis, no examination of evidence or reasons why any of what is asserted might be true or if it is true. It doesn't even properly explain what it's talking about. Nothing you could even hang a discussion on. Pure rubbish.

lobstrosity420 4y ago
It's a satirical piece, you are allowed to not like it but you don't have to peer review it.
- simonh 4y ago
  Why do you think it's satirical? Read the other articles on the blog, they're all like that. Dull, plodding blobs of boorishness. Check out the screed on gay marriage.
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    This wasn't written by the same author as the rest of the site. It was written by Carlo M. Cipolla [0]. Though, to your point, it doesn't seem like it was intended as satirical. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
  - elihu 4y ago
    > Why do you think it's satirical? I'm not the person you were replying to, but I think it's satirical because it's kind of funny, it's written in a style of exaggerated confidence, it's worded in an unnecessarily inflammatory way, and it has amusing diagrams. That doesn't mean I think it's just meaningless nonsense; a lot of satire does have something interesting to say about people or society. But I also don't think it was meant to be taken 100% seriously either. And maybe satire isn't quite the right word, because it's not really satirizing or parodying anything in particular other than overly pretentious essays. > Check out the screed on gay marriage. That wasn't written by Cipolla, they just happen to be hosted on the same site. The argument seems to be that government shouldn't be involved in defining marriage in the first place, for anyone. I agree with that. But since there are practical reasons why a society should want something like a legal notion of marriage recognized by the government, the part I would add back in (which wasn't part of the "screed") is that consenting adults should be able to mutually agree to formally recognize each other as belonging to the same family, and that should be recognized by the state. We can get rid of the unnecessary notion of applying a special legal status to the person you're sleeping with and allow people to form families for any reason, without necessarily any implication that they're sleeping together, and we can apply certain legal rights to members of the same family, like the right to jointly file taxes or to be on each other's health insurance plans. Obviously there would be a lot of weird side-effects, corner cases, and implementation details you'd have to work out for that to be a workable thing. I suppose this topic is guaranteed to stir up controversy: https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/
    - simonh 4y ago
      Should do this, and could do that are fine. Wonderful, that’s society solved. Meanwhile in the real world every human society if any scale ever has had a concept of marriage, and there is no chance whatsoever of that actually changing. Given that reality, accusing gay people who want that right as well as being hypocritical, a right I have enjoyed as a heterosexual for 20 years next week, in order to get some level of parity is vile victim blaming. The homosexuals get derided and belittled for daring to ask, while heterosexuals that comfortably enjoy all the benefits get a pass. Yes he criticises the institution, but the only group that gets criticised are LGBT. Utterly despicable.
laserlight 4y ago
> No definition of stupidity is given From the article: “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”
- simonh 4y ago
  What kind of losses? Loss of what? If a majority of people incurred more losses than gains in their lives, we'd all have starved to death tens of thousands of years ago. OK, fair enough its a sort of definition or has the superficial form of one, but it's not actually saying anything.

by simonh 4y ago

lobstrosity420 4y ago

It's a satirical piece, you are allowed to not like it but you don't have to peer review it.

simonh 4y ago
Why do you think it's satirical? Read the other articles on the blog, they're all like that. Dull, plodding blobs of boorishness. Check out the screed on gay marriage.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  This wasn't written by the same author as the rest of the site. It was written by Carlo M. Cipolla [0]. Though, to your point, it doesn't seem like it was intended as satirical. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
- elihu 4y ago
  > Why do you think it's satirical? I'm not the person you were replying to, but I think it's satirical because it's kind of funny, it's written in a style of exaggerated confidence, it's worded in an unnecessarily inflammatory way, and it has amusing diagrams. That doesn't mean I think it's just meaningless nonsense; a lot of satire does have something interesting to say about people or society. But I also don't think it was meant to be taken 100% seriously either. And maybe satire isn't quite the right word, because it's not really satirizing or parodying anything in particular other than overly pretentious essays. > Check out the screed on gay marriage. That wasn't written by Cipolla, they just happen to be hosted on the same site. The argument seems to be that government shouldn't be involved in defining marriage in the first place, for anyone. I agree with that. But since there are practical reasons why a society should want something like a legal notion of marriage recognized by the government, the part I would add back in (which wasn't part of the "screed") is that consenting adults should be able to mutually agree to formally recognize each other as belonging to the same family, and that should be recognized by the state. We can get rid of the unnecessary notion of applying a special legal status to the person you're sleeping with and allow people to form families for any reason, without necessarily any implication that they're sleeping together, and we can apply certain legal rights to members of the same family, like the right to jointly file taxes or to be on each other's health insurance plans. Obviously there would be a lot of weird side-effects, corner cases, and implementation details you'd have to work out for that to be a workable thing. I suppose this topic is guaranteed to stir up controversy: https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/
  - simonh 4y ago
    Should do this, and could do that are fine. Wonderful, that’s society solved. Meanwhile in the real world every human society if any scale ever has had a concept of marriage, and there is no chance whatsoever of that actually changing. Given that reality, accusing gay people who want that right as well as being hypocritical, a right I have enjoyed as a heterosexual for 20 years next week, in order to get some level of parity is vile victim blaming. The homosexuals get derided and belittled for daring to ask, while heterosexuals that comfortably enjoy all the benefits get a pass. Yes he criticises the institution, but the only group that gets criticised are LGBT. Utterly despicable.

laserlight 4y ago

> No definition of stupidity is given From the article: “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”

simonh 4y ago
What kind of losses? Loss of what? If a majority of people incurred more losses than gains in their lives, we'd all have starved to death tens of thousands of years ago. OK, fair enough its a sort of definition or has the superficial form of one, but it's not actually saying anything.