6 ms·

We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones

58 points by axiologist 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 3y ago
The damage from either category pales to comparison to the damage made by smart people - especially smart powerful people with good intentions.
- LargeTomato 3y ago
  Smart people contribute in all sorts of ways. Some great, some not so great. Stupid people destroy democracies. They are a plague.
- chii 3y ago
  > especially smart powerful people with good intentions. do they have good intentions? or do they just tell you they have good intentions?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Both cases are very damaging...
- philwelch 3y ago
  I would argue that these people are not as smart as they think they are. They may be smart but in proportion to their ambitions they are stupid.
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    Hubris basically. That's the typical downfall in Greek mythology. Even being a demi-god won't save you from hubris.
- hasbot 3y ago
  To you what are some concrete examples of smart people with good intentions creating extreme damage?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Eugenics (Galton, and then advocated by almost every "smart" person back in the day in well respected circles). Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler by giving him what he wants and wasting time. Robert McNamara setting up the disastrous Vietnam War. Malthus's population control scare and their influence on policy. Larry Summers/Alan Greenspan and other luminaries deregulating the financial sector (including mortgages). All the way to modern day tech moguls and thinkers, with examples ranging from the Californian Ideology and Effective Altruism, to stuff like "let's bomb countries with advanced AI" from Eliezer and co.
oriettaxx 3y ago
Everybody says this, including stupid ones. and yes: everybody think the stupids are the others.
- mistermann 3y ago
  A better way to look at it is not who is stupid and who is not, but to what degree and in what ways is each given individual stupid. No one is exempt.
  - challenger-derp 3y ago
    Similar to how people are intelligent in different ways, we too may be less-smart-than-the-average in different ways.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      This perspective is still looking through a relative lens though, a form of stupidity (no offense intended, all people are a product of the flawed culture they are raised in). How to make ALL people less stupid on an absolute scale is what humanity should set its sights on. Science was a good attempt, but that ideology too is stuck in a relativist framework.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Right. But the really smart (or perhaps more accurately, the really wise) know the areas in which they are stupid.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Tautologies can be useful, but are not always (say, when used in a reductive, low-dimensional manner) - they're a bit like a double edged sword.
kermatt 3y ago
The stupid keep the evil in power.
- bgun 3y ago
  Right in principle but wrong attribution of agency. The evil use the stupid to stay in power.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
The inertia of processes and social systems. Any trajectory change is going to upend lives and be costly, which makes those with something to lost hesitant, and only really appeals to those without anything to lose, or who believe they will lose even more if the status quo continues. But yes, partisan dynamics can lead to follow-the-leader and simon-says behavior.
addicted 3y ago
> Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that stupidity is worse than evil because stupidity can be manipulated and used by evil This pretty much refutes the headline . It’s a false dichotomy to begin with, but if stupidity’s biggest issue is that evil can manipulate it, clearly it’s the preeence of evil that’s a bigger threat than the presence of stupidity.
- LargeTomato 3y ago
  Evil is rational. You can negotiate with rational. Stupid is irrational.
- philwelch 3y ago
  That's a bad argument but there is a better argument. An evil person will hurt other people for his own benefit, but a stupid person will hurt other people even at his own detriment, which makes stupidity even more pointlessly destructive. I'm cribbing from Carlo Cipolla's "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" here, and for him this is a definitional feature of stupidity: "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."
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > An evil person will hurt other people for his own benefit, but a stupid person will hurt other people even at his own detriment, which makes stupidity even more pointlessly destructive This could probably be refined a bit; you're on the right track but the logic doesn't work. I think we can all agree school shooters are Evil. They almost always commit suicide to avoid arrest. Damage to others is extensive, damage to self is mortal, and yet they go through with both planning and execution. Mitigating all risk of collateral damage in the commission of an evil act is not a requisite for Evil. If anything, acceptance of harm to self makes it more evil. > "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. Your boy Carlo has clearly never been through an acrimonious divorce.
    - 3y ago
giraffe_lady 3y ago
This is maybe the least interesting idea I've come across in bonhoeffer's works? I'm not an expert on him but I was surprised to hear it since, as expressed, it doesn't match how I think of his worldview. I'm definitely curious enough to go read the original though. I wonder when he wrote this. Later on he was famously involved in an attempted assassination of hitler and I doubt it's because he thought big H was a dumbass.
oarla 3y ago
Is this even a fair comparison? Cognitive abilities and emotional proclivity seem to be unrelated.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Those two are not mutually exclusive.
dh2022 3y ago
Then maybe we should decrease stupidity as much as we can? With things like good education for everyone?
- hurrdurr56 3y ago
  Education won't improve IQ scores. You would just have stupid people that have memorized more things.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I used to think so, but the end result is that both are a threat, so you really don't want either in your bunker during the zombie apocalypse. Evil is at least more predictable than Stupid and can be negotiated with; choosing only one I'd kick the idiots out. Education doesn't confer Intellect, it confers knowledge. That's like giving an idiot a power tool. Now they can make messier mistakes at higher RPMs.
throwbadubadu 3y ago
Wow, says someone executed by the evil in the end. RIP
Stranger43 3y ago
I think we’re making a mistake in conflating stupidity with irrationality as it’s the latter that's truly dangerous. And irrationality doesn’t correlate with stupid in any meaningful way as people can be intelligent up to the point where some dogmatic instinctive belief means that their raw unfiltered emotions suddenly guides their decision process. And lets be honest most actual genocides are committed by smart(often very moral) people acting on irrational fears or dreams of an utopian future that can only happen after the world is purified of some specific evil. Selfish bastards aren't nearly as dangerous and fanatical zealots chasing some utopian dream but being fanatical don't mean your ignorant just that at one point your emotions take over from logical reasoning.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  > And lets be honest most actual genocides are committed by smart(often very moral) people acting on irrational fears or dreams of an utopian future that can only happen after the world is purified of some specific evil. People who commit genocide to try to establish a utopia are not moral. They may be "moral" - that is, they may claim adherence to a moral standard, and be able to articulate it and defend it - but they aren't moral. In D&D terms, they're lawful evil. But they think they're lawful good, because they are following their moral code. They never stop to think that, if their moral code calls for killing all these people, maybe they should be questioning their moral code.
  - hurrdurr56 3y ago
    >They never stop to think that, if their moral code calls for killing all these people, maybe they should be questioning their moral code. They certainly do think about it. The logic is invariably: 1. These are people who are holding back progress towards a future in which (according to my ideology) everybody is happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 2. Therefore they must not want people to be happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 3. Only an evil person would not want people to be happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 4. Therefore they are evil 5. Therefore I am morally obligated to annihilate them 6. I am a Good Person because I am so devoted to ensuring that everybody becomes happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here)
7174n6 3y ago
There is a fine line between stupidity and enlightenment. The problem with this theory is determining who is the stupid, who is the enlightened, and who are the evil. Trump voters think Biden supporters are stupid and being manipulated by evil. Biden voters think the same about Trump supporters! Arguments can be made for both sides and backed by data, both scientific and anecdotal. Only time and history reveal the truth. It's really hard to determine in real time. Those that felt the earth was round were viewed and stupid and guided by evil at one point in histotry.
anonzzzies 3y ago
I would say in practice this indeed is often true (and thus a reminder for Hanlon's razor);some people I know are not evil but so stupid that their actions actually seem pure evil. Usually (because I know this mostly from work) they stumble head first into something that makes someone else look bad/fail/get fired, but if they were evil and had to plan out that even upfront, they wouldn't have been able to come up with it, at all.
- ganzuul 3y ago
  My observation is similar but differs in a substantial way: it seems to actually take a lot of intelligence to accomplish the more shocking kinds of stupidity. Somehow there is an intelligent process but it gets perverted and turned into evil as a reaction rather than an intentional outcome. Somehow these persons have lost control of their own intelligence and have become victims of the same. Lots of the effects seem to be summed up as "ego", but that is far from a coherent explanation. It's fear, pride, impatience... Those words seems to guard the gates of hell.
- 404mm 3y ago
  Proof: certain political party in the US.
  - whythre 3y ago
    Replace ‘certain’ with ‘either’ and you are on the right track.
    - CaptWillard 3y ago
      Replace 'party' with 'partisan voters' and you're even closer. The Uniparty is evil, but the folks who still buy into their schtick are mostly ignorant or naive.
polishdude20 3y ago
It's dangerous to label people as stupid because you take on the mindset of the manipulator. Either they are manipulated by evil people or manipulated by non evil people like you.

58 points by axiologist 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

The damage from either category pales to comparison to the damage made by smart people - especially smart powerful people with good intentions.

LargeTomato 3y ago
Smart people contribute in all sorts of ways. Some great, some not so great. Stupid people destroy democracies. They are a plague.
chii 3y ago
> especially smart powerful people with good intentions. do they have good intentions? or do they just tell you they have good intentions?
- coldtea 3y ago
  Both cases are very damaging...
philwelch 3y ago
I would argue that these people are not as smart as they think they are. They may be smart but in proportion to their ambitions they are stupid.
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  Hubris basically. That's the typical downfall in Greek mythology. Even being a demi-god won't save you from hubris.
hasbot 3y ago
To you what are some concrete examples of smart people with good intentions creating extreme damage?
- coldtea 3y ago
  Eugenics (Galton, and then advocated by almost every "smart" person back in the day in well respected circles). Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler by giving him what he wants and wasting time. Robert McNamara setting up the disastrous Vietnam War. Malthus's population control scare and their influence on policy. Larry Summers/Alan Greenspan and other luminaries deregulating the financial sector (including mortgages). All the way to modern day tech moguls and thinkers, with examples ranging from the Californian Ideology and Effective Altruism, to stuff like "let's bomb countries with advanced AI" from Eliezer and co.

oriettaxx 3y ago

Everybody says this, including stupid ones. and yes: everybody think the stupids are the others.

mistermann 3y ago
A better way to look at it is not who is stupid and who is not, but to what degree and in what ways is each given individual stupid. No one is exempt.
- challenger-derp 3y ago
  Similar to how people are intelligent in different ways, we too may be less-smart-than-the-average in different ways.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    This perspective is still looking through a relative lens though, a form of stupidity (no offense intended, all people are a product of the flawed culture they are raised in). How to make ALL people less stupid on an absolute scale is what humanity should set its sights on. Science was a good attempt, but that ideology too is stuck in a relativist framework.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Right. But the really smart (or perhaps more accurately, the really wise) know the areas in which they are stupid.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Tautologies can be useful, but are not always (say, when used in a reductive, low-dimensional manner) - they're a bit like a double edged sword.

kermatt 3y ago

The stupid keep the evil in power.

bgun 3y ago
Right in principle but wrong attribution of agency. The evil use the stupid to stay in power.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

The inertia of processes and social systems. Any trajectory change is going to upend lives and be costly, which makes those with something to lost hesitant, and only really appeals to those without anything to lose, or who believe they will lose even more if the status quo continues. But yes, partisan dynamics can lead to follow-the-leader and simon-says behavior.

addicted 3y ago

> Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that stupidity is worse than evil because stupidity can be manipulated and used by evil This pretty much refutes the headline . It’s a false dichotomy to begin with, but if stupidity’s biggest issue is that evil can manipulate it, clearly it’s the preeence of evil that’s a bigger threat than the presence of stupidity.

LargeTomato 3y ago
Evil is rational. You can negotiate with rational. Stupid is irrational.
philwelch 3y ago
That's a bad argument but there is a better argument. An evil person will hurt other people for his own benefit, but a stupid person will hurt other people even at his own detriment, which makes stupidity even more pointlessly destructive. I'm cribbing from Carlo Cipolla's "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" here, and for him this is a definitional feature of stupidity: "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."
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > An evil person will hurt other people for his own benefit, but a stupid person will hurt other people even at his own detriment, which makes stupidity even more pointlessly destructive This could probably be refined a bit; you're on the right track but the logic doesn't work. I think we can all agree school shooters are Evil. They almost always commit suicide to avoid arrest. Damage to others is extensive, damage to self is mortal, and yet they go through with both planning and execution. Mitigating all risk of collateral damage in the commission of an evil act is not a requisite for Evil. If anything, acceptance of harm to self makes it more evil. > "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. Your boy Carlo has clearly never been through an acrimonious divorce.
  - 3y ago

giraffe_lady 3y ago

This is maybe the least interesting idea I've come across in bonhoeffer's works? I'm not an expert on him but I was surprised to hear it since, as expressed, it doesn't match how I think of his worldview. I'm definitely curious enough to go read the original though. I wonder when he wrote this. Later on he was famously involved in an attempted assassination of hitler and I doubt it's because he thought big H was a dumbass.

oarla 3y ago

Is this even a fair comparison? Cognitive abilities and emotional proclivity seem to be unrelated.

PeterStuer 3y ago

Those two are not mutually exclusive.

dh2022 3y ago

Then maybe we should decrease stupidity as much as we can? With things like good education for everyone?

hurrdurr56 3y ago
Education won't improve IQ scores. You would just have stupid people that have memorized more things.
jstarfish 3y ago
I used to think so, but the end result is that both are a threat, so you really don't want either in your bunker during the zombie apocalypse. Evil is at least more predictable than Stupid and can be negotiated with; choosing only one I'd kick the idiots out. Education doesn't confer Intellect, it confers knowledge. That's like giving an idiot a power tool. Now they can make messier mistakes at higher RPMs.

throwbadubadu 3y ago

Wow, says someone executed by the evil in the end. RIP

Stranger43 3y ago

I think we’re making a mistake in conflating stupidity with irrationality as it’s the latter that's truly dangerous. And irrationality doesn’t correlate with stupid in any meaningful way as people can be intelligent up to the point where some dogmatic instinctive belief means that their raw unfiltered emotions suddenly guides their decision process. And lets be honest most actual genocides are committed by smart(often very moral) people acting on irrational fears or dreams of an utopian future that can only happen after the world is purified of some specific evil. Selfish bastards aren't nearly as dangerous and fanatical zealots chasing some utopian dream but being fanatical don't mean your ignorant just that at one point your emotions take over from logical reasoning.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
> And lets be honest most actual genocides are committed by smart(often very moral) people acting on irrational fears or dreams of an utopian future that can only happen after the world is purified of some specific evil. People who commit genocide to try to establish a utopia are not moral. They may be "moral" - that is, they may claim adherence to a moral standard, and be able to articulate it and defend it - but they aren't moral. In D&D terms, they're lawful evil. But they think they're lawful good, because they are following their moral code. They never stop to think that, if their moral code calls for killing all these people, maybe they should be questioning their moral code.
- hurrdurr56 3y ago
  >They never stop to think that, if their moral code calls for killing all these people, maybe they should be questioning their moral code. They certainly do think about it. The logic is invariably: 1. These are people who are holding back progress towards a future in which (according to my ideology) everybody is happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 2. Therefore they must not want people to be happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 3. Only an evil person would not want people to be happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here) 4. Therefore they are evil 5. Therefore I am morally obligated to annihilate them 6. I am a Good Person because I am so devoted to ensuring that everybody becomes happy / equal / free / (insert vaguely defined ideal state here)

7174n6 3y ago

There is a fine line between stupidity and enlightenment. The problem with this theory is determining who is the stupid, who is the enlightened, and who are the evil. Trump voters think Biden supporters are stupid and being manipulated by evil. Biden voters think the same about Trump supporters! Arguments can be made for both sides and backed by data, both scientific and anecdotal. Only time and history reveal the truth. It's really hard to determine in real time. Those that felt the earth was round were viewed and stupid and guided by evil at one point in histotry.

anonzzzies 3y ago

I would say in practice this indeed is often true (and thus a reminder for Hanlon's razor);some people I know are not evil but so stupid that their actions actually seem pure evil. Usually (because I know this mostly from work) they stumble head first into something that makes someone else look bad/fail/get fired, but if they were evil and had to plan out that even upfront, they wouldn't have been able to come up with it, at all.

ganzuul 3y ago
My observation is similar but differs in a substantial way: it seems to actually take a lot of intelligence to accomplish the more shocking kinds of stupidity. Somehow there is an intelligent process but it gets perverted and turned into evil as a reaction rather than an intentional outcome. Somehow these persons have lost control of their own intelligence and have become victims of the same. Lots of the effects seem to be summed up as "ego", but that is far from a coherent explanation. It's fear, pride, impatience... Those words seems to guard the gates of hell.
404mm 3y ago
Proof: certain political party in the US.
- whythre 3y ago
  Replace ‘certain’ with ‘either’ and you are on the right track.
  - CaptWillard 3y ago
    Replace 'party' with 'partisan voters' and you're even closer. The Uniparty is evil, but the folks who still buy into their schtick are mostly ignorant or naive.

polishdude20 3y ago

It's dangerous to label people as stupid because you take on the mindset of the manipulator. Either they are manipulated by evil people or manipulated by non evil people like you.