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>personally believe that most people are smarter than this Every single time someone's uttered those words they were eventually proven wrong Not that I think

>personally believe that most people are smarter than this Every single time someone's uttered those words they were eventually proven wrong Not that I think we should be banning speech, mind you. Just figured a reminder on that tiny bit was warranted. Assuming people aren't morons is the doom of many endeavours

sneak 4y ago
Assuming that you are smart enough to decide what other adults aren't clever enough to be allowed to read is the same kind of error.
- trgn 4y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but it's not an error. It's your civic duty to make that distinction. By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average. The world is truly held up by the inertia of the achievements of our betters spanning generations. I praise myself lucky every day to live in a stable western country with a heritage of centuries of liberality and thousands of models of civic courage and leadership. If the edifice we're standing on is stable, and let's hope so, it's despite the frothing masses of idiots and vengeful iconoclasts. Yes, always a good chance I myself am one of these idiots, but nonetheless, it doesn't make the overall assessment any less true. The inability or unwillingness to point out right from wrong is either due to a lack of courage or an absence of hubris. Both sides of the same coin. That judgement, who to entrust with the levers of society, needs to happen.
  - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
    > By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average. It's worse than that when you're trying to make decisions on behalf of everyone. It's perfectly possible for the decision that's right for you to be wrong for well more than half of the population for diverse individual reasons that they each understand and you don't. Which is why in cases like that you defer to the individual to make their own decision, and if you think your choice is better, convince them rather than force them.
    - trgn 4y ago
      That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island. Individual choices always have some blast radius. Some small (what movie I'll watch), some large (what chemical to kill my weeds with), some of unknown magnitude (whether to lock up my gun in a safe or not). That's where the trap comes in. Somebody needs to meddle at some point. Who's going to define what that point is? Who's going to define the course of action that's both virtuous for the community and for the individual. I certainly hope it's not going to be the crazies.
      - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
        > That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island. No, it's true in the real world. That's the issue. Nobody is smarter than everybody. The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do. Where you need some kind of government action is for externalities. Dumping industrial waste in the river might be rational from the perspective of the factory, because they don't live down river, so you need a law to protect the people who do from the factory acting in their own self-interest. You can't convince them to stop doing it with argument because safely handling the waste is more expensive for them in actual fact. You have to change the math by prohibiting the bad act. That's still subject to the same problem. You can enact highly inefficient and ineffective environmental regulations by being lazy or uninformed or corrupt. But for that we don't have any alternative than to do the best we can. For getting people to make better choices or hold better ideas, we do. We try to convince them. If we fail, it's more likely to be because we're wrong than they are. Forcing them should not even be attempted.
        Dudeman112 4y ago
        >The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do Say that to all the OSHA regulations that were written in blood with a straight face
  - negidius 4y ago
    It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over. I disagree. I don't think there is a positive correlation between a person's ability to impose their preferences on others and the quality of their preferences. If anything, I would guess there may be a negative correlation, considering the kind of person who is likely to become a successful politician. Thoughtfulness and intellectual rigor is not exactly reward in politics. I would also bet that those who are the most interested in imposing their preferences on others probably are way less likely to listen to or attempt to understand different perspectives, leading to not even understand the views and practices they seek to ban.
    - trgn 4y ago
      > It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over. It's not what I said at all. It's inevitable that the levers of power are held by some. We've been lucky in the west, all things considered. So going forward, who's it going to be? The crazies? Hope not!
      - negidius 4y ago
        Sorry for misunderstanding you. I'm not sure if it's really inevitable, but if it is, I think tolerance should be their most important virtue. I think that's also what sets western rulers apart as generally higher quality. They are usually more tolerant of dissent and individual differences, compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world.
        trgn 4y ago
        > tolerance should be their most important virtue. Certainly. Hard to put in practice too.
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Education education education. The silver bullet. I know silver bullets don't exist, but educating just doesn't seem to get the societal positive attention it so thoroughly needs and deserves. Where the silver bullet fails is the "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it realise its thirsty" analogy. School and education have been conflated in a detrimental way, and the reputation of schooling needs urgent repair. During Covid it seemed as if teaching was on the brink of earning more respect, but it was very quickly forgotten and probably only got the attention for reasons of childcare as opposed to education. All implications of the above are a sad indictment of where society has found itself. Additionally, if we follow the path of assuming everyone is a moron, we very quickly reach The Nanny State. This is the current pendulum swing.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  As a child, you spend 8 hours a day in class and then you potentially have 16 hours a day of indoctrination time with family. We are taught to respect our parents, and so to a good child who respects his parents, it goes without saying that the child would also respect his parents' beliefs. Your teacher is ephemeral. They are your teacher for a year and then you will almost always move on and have no more of a relationship with them. Parents are forever. There are plenty of stupid and abusive parents.
  - doubleg72 4y ago
    This is pretty much it.. you can't make parents be parents unfortunately.
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    Totally aware, as I have a number of teachers that are part of my close and extended family. The caveat, somewhat, is that good teachers (true scotsmen) can be closer to a parental and positive influence on a child than a stupid or abusive parent almost exclusively because the (good) teacher is not stupid and abusive. There's a glaring "no true scotsman" fallacy in my logic above, but my point is that stupid and abusive creates its own opportunity for improvement. My vicarious and anecdotal experience seems to bear this out (but having said that, my vicarious and anecdotal experience comes through teachers who are dedicated, experienced, and committed to the outcomes of the children, which is rarer than it should be). There's no escaping the trauma of bad parents, but the ability to present the opportunity for a brighter future can help immeasurably. Hope. It can be better than it is.
harry8 4y ago
>Every single time someone's uttered those words they were eventually proven wrong [citation needed]
heavyset_go 4y ago
A corollary to this is that it doesn't matter how "dumb" people are or aren't, being affording democracy, free speech, etc. is better than other options. At the end of the day, autonomy to be dumb morons, and the autonomy to not be, is what people deserve.
sundvor 4y ago
Tangentially, what's truly the difference between banning speech and cancellation culture, I wonder? If you can lose your job and thus your ability to provide food and shelter for yourself and your family for daring to speak up against the prevailing group think, is that much different from being sent to jail for saying the same? Political correctnes people and "minority" interest groups have turned into the biggest bullies, it's so darned scary - I for one fear this slippery slope to a very totalitarian society.
- gwm83 4y ago
  Wrong.
- axqpzzv 4y ago
  What sort of things do you fear being bullied for saying? I can honestly say I'm not afraid of being "cancelled" for going against some sort of group think. So I'm curious what kinds of things that people that hold your opinion are afraid of being punished for saying, could you give some examples?
  - noptd 4y ago
    Considering the topic at hand, this comes across as flame-baiting. Use your imagination.
    - sundvor 4y ago
      Yeah there's a wide range of currently contentious topics - pick either one of them. It really is about whether people can tolerate hearing things - or even knowing they speak about them - that they don't agree with, without turning into (in the worst cases) a savage frenzy of bullies. The ability to discern nuance seems to be getting lost.
- nottathrowaway3 4y ago
  The difference is that the government can't (yet) legally reverse your identity from your IP address and throw you in jail for having an anonymous discussion online. But if you publicly said "my name is Joe and XYZ racist thing", people have the right to cancel you. Historically this public/private distinction has been violated lots of times in the U.S., e.g., WWI, McCarthy. I don't think it's totalitarian; it's usually relatively limited. Most of the time, for most topics, the government leaves you alone and you can say what you damn well please.
jdbernard 4y ago
The problem is that inevitably "but they're morons" becomes the excuse to deny them agency and freedom. And then it's just a matter of who gets to decide who is "smart" enough to deserve freedom. Every single time we've gone down that path it's led to oppression and abuse.
jimbokun 4y ago
I suspect currently most people still aren't morons, but the morons have been given algorithmically amplified megaphones that are drowning out all the other voices.

sneak 4y ago

Assuming that you are smart enough to decide what other adults aren't clever enough to be allowed to read is the same kind of error.

trgn 4y ago
I get where you're coming from, but it's not an error. It's your civic duty to make that distinction. By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average. The world is truly held up by the inertia of the achievements of our betters spanning generations. I praise myself lucky every day to live in a stable western country with a heritage of centuries of liberality and thousands of models of civic courage and leadership. If the edifice we're standing on is stable, and let's hope so, it's despite the frothing masses of idiots and vengeful iconoclasts. Yes, always a good chance I myself am one of these idiots, but nonetheless, it doesn't make the overall assessment any less true. The inability or unwillingness to point out right from wrong is either due to a lack of courage or an absence of hubris. Both sides of the same coin. That judgement, who to entrust with the levers of society, needs to happen.
- AnthonyMouse 4y ago
  > By definition, half of people are worse (however you define worse) than average. It's worse than that when you're trying to make decisions on behalf of everyone. It's perfectly possible for the decision that's right for you to be wrong for well more than half of the population for diverse individual reasons that they each understand and you don't. Which is why in cases like that you defer to the individual to make their own decision, and if you think your choice is better, convince them rather than force them.
  - trgn 4y ago
    That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island. Individual choices always have some blast radius. Some small (what movie I'll watch), some large (what chemical to kill my weeds with), some of unknown magnitude (whether to lock up my gun in a safe or not). That's where the trap comes in. Somebody needs to meddle at some point. Who's going to define what that point is? Who's going to define the course of action that's both virtuous for the community and for the individual. I certainly hope it's not going to be the crazies.
    - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
      > That's true in the ideal, and I 100% agree. But not in the actual real world, because, very tritely put, nobody is an island. No, it's true in the real world. That's the issue. Nobody is smarter than everybody. The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do. Where you need some kind of government action is for externalities. Dumping industrial waste in the river might be rational from the perspective of the factory, because they don't live down river, so you need a law to protect the people who do from the factory acting in their own self-interest. You can't convince them to stop doing it with argument because safely handling the waste is more expensive for them in actual fact. You have to change the math by prohibiting the bad act. That's still subject to the same problem. You can enact highly inefficient and ineffective environmental regulations by being lazy or uninformed or corrupt. But for that we don't have any alternative than to do the best we can. For getting people to make better choices or hold better ideas, we do. We try to convince them. If we fail, it's more likely to be because we're wrong than they are. Forcing them should not even be attempted.
      - Dudeman112 4y ago
        >The consequence is that you should never prohibit someone from making a choice "for their own good" because the chances are better that they understand and act in their own best interest than you do Say that to all the OSHA regulations that were written in blood with a straight face
- negidius 4y ago
  It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over. I disagree. I don't think there is a positive correlation between a person's ability to impose their preferences on others and the quality of their preferences. If anything, I would guess there may be a negative correlation, considering the kind of person who is likely to become a successful politician. Thoughtfulness and intellectual rigor is not exactly reward in politics. I would also bet that those who are the most interested in imposing their preferences on others probably are way less likely to listen to or attempt to understand different perspectives, leading to not even understand the views and practices they seek to ban.
  - trgn 4y ago
    > It sounds like you believe those in power are more astute or intelligent than those they exercise power over. It's not what I said at all. It's inevitable that the levers of power are held by some. We've been lucky in the west, all things considered. So going forward, who's it going to be? The crazies? Hope not!
    - negidius 4y ago
      Sorry for misunderstanding you. I'm not sure if it's really inevitable, but if it is, I think tolerance should be their most important virtue. I think that's also what sets western rulers apart as generally higher quality. They are usually more tolerant of dissent and individual differences, compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world.
      - trgn 4y ago
        > tolerance should be their most important virtue. Certainly. Hard to put in practice too.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago

Education education education. The silver bullet. I know silver bullets don't exist, but educating just doesn't seem to get the societal positive attention it so thoroughly needs and deserves. Where the silver bullet fails is the "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it realise its thirsty" analogy. School and education have been conflated in a detrimental way, and the reputation of schooling needs urgent repair. During Covid it seemed as if teaching was on the brink of earning more respect, but it was very quickly forgotten and probably only got the attention for reasons of childcare as opposed to education. All implications of the above are a sad indictment of where society has found itself. Additionally, if we follow the path of assuming everyone is a moron, we very quickly reach The Nanny State. This is the current pendulum swing.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago
As a child, you spend 8 hours a day in class and then you potentially have 16 hours a day of indoctrination time with family. We are taught to respect our parents, and so to a good child who respects his parents, it goes without saying that the child would also respect his parents' beliefs. Your teacher is ephemeral. They are your teacher for a year and then you will almost always move on and have no more of a relationship with them. Parents are forever. There are plenty of stupid and abusive parents.
- doubleg72 4y ago
  This is pretty much it.. you can't make parents be parents unfortunately.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Totally aware, as I have a number of teachers that are part of my close and extended family. The caveat, somewhat, is that good teachers (true scotsmen) can be closer to a parental and positive influence on a child than a stupid or abusive parent almost exclusively because the (good) teacher is not stupid and abusive. There's a glaring "no true scotsman" fallacy in my logic above, but my point is that stupid and abusive creates its own opportunity for improvement. My vicarious and anecdotal experience seems to bear this out (but having said that, my vicarious and anecdotal experience comes through teachers who are dedicated, experienced, and committed to the outcomes of the children, which is rarer than it should be). There's no escaping the trauma of bad parents, but the ability to present the opportunity for a brighter future can help immeasurably. Hope. It can be better than it is.

harry8 4y ago

>Every single time someone's uttered those words they were eventually proven wrong [citation needed]

heavyset_go 4y ago

A corollary to this is that it doesn't matter how "dumb" people are or aren't, being affording democracy, free speech, etc. is better than other options. At the end of the day, autonomy to be dumb morons, and the autonomy to not be, is what people deserve.

sundvor 4y ago

Tangentially, what's truly the difference between banning speech and cancellation culture, I wonder? If you can lose your job and thus your ability to provide food and shelter for yourself and your family for daring to speak up against the prevailing group think, is that much different from being sent to jail for saying the same? Political correctnes people and "minority" interest groups have turned into the biggest bullies, it's so darned scary - I for one fear this slippery slope to a very totalitarian society.

gwm83 4y ago
Wrong.
axqpzzv 4y ago
What sort of things do you fear being bullied for saying? I can honestly say I'm not afraid of being "cancelled" for going against some sort of group think. So I'm curious what kinds of things that people that hold your opinion are afraid of being punished for saying, could you give some examples?
- noptd 4y ago
  Considering the topic at hand, this comes across as flame-baiting. Use your imagination.
  - sundvor 4y ago
    Yeah there's a wide range of currently contentious topics - pick either one of them. It really is about whether people can tolerate hearing things - or even knowing they speak about them - that they don't agree with, without turning into (in the worst cases) a savage frenzy of bullies. The ability to discern nuance seems to be getting lost.
nottathrowaway3 4y ago
The difference is that the government can't (yet) legally reverse your identity from your IP address and throw you in jail for having an anonymous discussion online. But if you publicly said "my name is Joe and XYZ racist thing", people have the right to cancel you. Historically this public/private distinction has been violated lots of times in the U.S., e.g., WWI, McCarthy. I don't think it's totalitarian; it's usually relatively limited. Most of the time, for most topics, the government leaves you alone and you can say what you damn well please.

jdbernard 4y ago

The problem is that inevitably "but they're morons" becomes the excuse to deny them agency and freedom. And then it's just a matter of who gets to decide who is "smart" enough to deserve freedom. Every single time we've gone down that path it's led to oppression and abuse.

jimbokun 4y ago

I suspect currently most people still aren't morons, but the morons have been given algorithmically amplified megaphones that are drowning out all the other voices.