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It has nothing to do with stupidity. Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. Th

It has nothing to do with stupidity. Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. This isn't some natural state that's unrecoverable. The people you describe have been given a highly addictive media environment tailor made to engender outrage and drive behavior. It shouldn't be a shock when most people cannot resist it. The first step to changing it is not writing them off or insulting them for being had.

heraldgeezer 1y ago
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- jrflowers 1y ago
  >I recently lost my COVID kilos, 10-15kg. Was easy. It took you five years to do that though. Why did it take that long if it was easy
  - heraldgeezer 1y ago
    I started in like December or January... Was COVID 5 years ago fuck me. Also, COVID weight gain would be during lockdowns, and ALSO my job went fully remote. Being fully remote was an issue for sure. So it's like COVID was extended for me. I never really weighed myself and then felt weird like a big mechelin man and I saw I was 10-12 kg heavier, makes sense why I feel bad I thought, and I did not weigh before and just decided to lose it, was easy when I decided. That's my story. I was always slow on the uptake on things, hygiene, clothes etc. Weight too, I grew up always being skinny, but getting to 30+ I never noticed when I got heavier as it takes a long time, you talk as if everything is obvious, but it is not. But it is easy once you know. So, if you have already identified weight as being the issue, losing weight is easy, in my experience. As I said, fasting feels good, skip meals, skip the beer, drink sugar-free. 10 kg gone fast, I promise you. The issue for me is identifying the problem. Love the downvotes, btw. >It took you five years to do that though. Why did it take that long if it was easy I should specify, I have been BMI 19-20 for 3–4 months now, again, as from teenager to 25-ish thats my range, thats "me", it feels like myself, so. So that's what I mean when “recently”, not yesterday. Time warps when you get old. So fast. ALSO, easy things can still take a long time. You understand the words?
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      > Love the downvotes, btw. I’d wager that you’re getting downvoted for two reasons, first because current science is strongly indicating that “obesity is a moral failing” is factually untrue, so being smug while dead wrong is off putting. And second reason would be the framing of the issue of obesity as being solved by just losing weight. A lot (maybe most? Almost all?) of people that are overweight have at some point lost weight, the bigger challenge is keeping it off long term. So you kind of just Kramer’d into this thread and loudly volunteered unprompted that you don’t understand this stuff on a basic level, aren’t in a position to understand it, and you definitely feel like you’ve accomplished something so enormous that it makes you smarter and better than everybody else. It’s kind of like if you show a kid Google Translate and they start lecturing you about how easy it is to move to Mallorca because Catalan isn’t that hard to pick up
      - heraldgeezer 1y ago
        Yes, there is an issue of easy access to calorie rich foods, but at a certain point it is the individual. I can listen to brain rot gangsta rap all day or baroque classical both on Spotify. It's what I click on that determines it. The hard part is learning what is good.
tw04 1y ago
> It has nothing to do with stupidity. Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. No. Someone refusing to spend 30 seconds understanding how a tariff works is the result of an idiot. My 10 year old figured out how they work in under 5 minutes. There’s literally no excuse for a grown ass adult to refuse to educate themselves on the subject. “This media environment” doesn’t prevent them from typing “how do tariffs work?” in their search engine of choice and reading the first result.
- hx8 1y ago
  I just googled "How do tariffs work?" I got hit with several college level vocabulary words describing tariffs in both the AI summary and my first result. It might be less of a problem, if we had adequately funded schools.
  - slg 1y ago
    The full AI summary from DuckDuckGo for "How do tariffs work?" >Tariffs are taxes imposed by a government on imported goods, making them more expensive to encourage consumers to buy domestic products instead. The costs of these tariffs are typically passed on to consumers, resulting in higher prices for imported items. I don't see any "college level vocabulary words" and it directly says that it makes goods more expensive and the costs are passed on to consumers. Maybe Google's complicated answer is part of the "media environment" being criticized.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      domestic looks pretty challenging. /s Edit for the sarcastically challenged among us.
      - slg 1y ago
        I can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment. Not only is "domestic" a relatively simple word with a straightforward definition, but also the point of the original comment that "consumers will end up paying the tariffs" is still clear from the summary regardless.
mattbillenstein 1y ago
In a way it kinda does though - like definitely the information ecosystem distorts things, but some people do not have (or do not exercise) the critical reasoning skills to decipher what's true from what's not. Or what issues are actually important from those that are meant to just distract - not everyone can tell the difference and see how the incentives actually point to what's going on. reply
- undersuit 1y ago
  The education system failing people is part of the issue. Why would you want people to have critical reasoning skills if you want to control their behavior through outrage.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Looking at the agenda of the party currently in charge, the system isn't failing people. It's performing as intended. When you do not want the masses to be educated, you defund those that are in charge of educating to the point it has no other outcome than to come to a grinding halt. As intended. After all, the numbers stop going up when you stop counting. I'm often reminded of a conversation my arrogant younger self had with an Englishman I was having a bit of back and forth banter about Yanks vs the sun setting on the English empire. I asked if the Empire was so great, why did all of the colonies end up revolting? His answer was simply, "we taught them how to read." Once the masses can read and think for themselves in an educated manner, they tend to no longer put up with being trodden over for much longer. So the answer is clearly simple to stop educating the masses.
gjuggfdd 1y ago
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DiddlyWinks 1y ago
At this point they're not "being had." They are deliberately and belligerently ignorant. It's way past time to stop giving anyone a free pass on supporting this malevolent clown.
- booleandilemma 1y ago
  Democracy's no fun when your guy doesn't win, right?
  - 20after4 1y ago
    What democracy?
    - booleandilemma 1y ago
      People voted for orange man, were you not aware?
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        People voted for Hitler, people voted for Hamas. Being voted for doesn't preclude being malevolent to the voters.
      - 20after4 1y ago
        Some people voted for the orange man. Whether the vote count was fair remains in question. https://electiontruthalliance.org/ https://electiontruthalliance.org/
bsoles 1y ago
Those people may not be innately stupid in the sense of not being able to learn or understand things. But they have been rendered functionally stupid by the media, propaganda, and politics. I actually find that state quite unrecoverable.
roenxi 1y ago
"Stupid" seems like a pretty fair way of describing that. If someone watches media that outrages them, misinforms them then causes them to make stupid decisions then the consequences are very much on their head. It is well know that the people peddling strong outrage are basically scumbags in it for the money and not the sort of people who should be listened too if you want to achieve long term success (which is mostly the domain of trusting optimists). There are a lot of high quality media sources out there that don't promote outrage.
- dfedbeef 1y ago
  It's what they call everyone else (shrug). Why mince words.
Nevermark 1y ago
> It has nothing to do with stupidity. In addition to being rude, its not a particularly clear word. So I coined "idiodidact", to specifically describe people who have personal selectivity with regard to being teachable. (Greek/English usage: "idios"/personal choice + "didact"/taught) Any resemblance, to any other word, would be a coincidence.
- booleandilemma 1y ago
  This guy insults.
- frm88 1y ago
  Brilliant. I'm stealing this.
jrflowers 1y ago
> Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. Two things can be true at once. Being force-fed bullshit doesn’t necessarily make somebody an idiot but it also doesn’t necessarily make them not an idiot.
arbitrary_name 1y ago
While i take your point about playing nice, it has a lot to do with stupidity: specifically ignorance, intellectual laziness, lack of curiosity, bias, anti intellectualism, inability to think abstractly, lack of education, lack of critical thinking, ideology, and a host of other things. Almost all of which correlate in some way to 'stupidity'. I posit that your first line is wildly wrong, but your message is broadly valid.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. I know plenty of people that have different views of mine that are much smarter than I am, and engaging with them leads to interesting conversations. I can still think they are "wrong" at the end of these conversations, but I'd never call them stupid. Hell, the lottery is often described as a tax on poor people. Yet the vast majority of lottery players would never call it a tax. The vast majority of people that I've talked to that don't understand tariffs are not incapable of understanding the concept. They've only ever heard their information from one source that does not discuss tariffs in this manner. Once they hear other viewpoints not from a single source, they typically admit they are taxes and do not argue against it. It does not change their mind that they are still a good idea.
  - UncleOxidant 1y ago
    > Once they hear other viewpoints not from a single source, they typically admit they are taxes and do not argue against it. I think you're being overly optimistic here.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      You're leaving out my qualifier of the people I've talked with.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    > Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. True, but I'm not sure what that proves. Some people who have different points of view than I do have come to those points of view via reasonable means, and some of their PoVs might even be more consistent with reality than some of mine. But some people are actually just stupid. Sometimes it's for understandable reasons, but sometimes it's for reasons that the GP laid out, and that's sad and unfortunate, and makes life difficult for the rest of us. I think there are a lot of people like this, and I'm afraid that public policy is in no small part driven by these people's susceptibility to propaganda, and their inability to think critically.
dylan604 1y ago
> most information hostile environments in human history Is it though? East Germany comes to mind as well as the rest of the Cold War countries behind the Iron Curtain. China seems to be pretty hostile as well. In the US, it is still much easier to find real information that counters the propaganda than it is in any of those other countries. There's no Great Firewall to bypass. You don't even need to do anything anonymously. Yes, the current administration is doing its damnedest to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers, but it's only effective for them. Nobody else is fooled nor stopping their publishing of the opposition to the propaganda.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  I mean, maybe this way is worse. I can see how it could be far more obvious that the propaganda is BS when it's being pushed at you from every outlet and every form of media. Makes it more clear that it's controlled. Yet at the moment where there is still diversity, people can make the mistake of thinking that the propaganda is just a difference of opinion so perhaps trust it more.
  - cgio 1y ago
    To me the propaganda is still blatant and there is only an engineered illusion of diversity, only inasmuch as it keeps people opinionated on the things that don’t matter. There’s also no foundational or universal desire for diversity, so alternative propaganda contexts may induce different focus areas.
- SCUSKU 1y ago
  What you're describing is an Orwellian dystopia, where a boot forces you to think a certain way. We live in a Huxleyan dystopia where there is so much so much to distract you that you become submissive.
  - galangalalgol 1y ago
    The demographic collapse will likely lead to artificial wombs and llm powered vulcan style teaching pits crossed with diamond age primers. Huxley was more prescient than I thought when teading brave new world. I think the nation that has its primers teach the vat-made labor force rhetoric, logic and critical thinking will have lower gdp, but higher stability.
dfxm12 1y ago
Why do you think this was the first step? That these folks have not been engaged with: information, compassion, alternative news sources, pleas to think twice about what they read on Facebook? Why do you think these folks haven't listened to Trump himself over the past 10+ years, or lived through previous elections cycles, including Trump's previous term? There's no way you can claim the wool was pulled over people's eyes this time around. Also, acting self righteous while demanding decorum is rich considering how this admin promised to and followed through on completely dehumanizing huge swathes of people as its base cheers on. Please, display one ounce of good faith.
m-s-y 1y ago
No, they are idiots. Not at media consumption, but idiots at life. There are certain life skills that can be considered “smart” like revisiting your established opinions when presented with new information, or knowing that encountering a new piece of information from a single source doesn’t carry the weight of encountering it in dozens of places, or that making a mistake doesn’t guarantee that your existence is doomed but been presented with a learning experience. The “stupid” folks refuse to take the simplest steps to better themselves. They refuse to self-evaluate honestly. That’s the root cause. This stupidness results in them being duped and misinformed. Therefore, when one encounters an uninformed and duped person, it’s not out of line to consider that person “stupid”. So when people like OP say that people are stupid, it’s not a dig via victim blaming. It’s a judgement that they’re clearly being stupid, that their poor life skills need work because they ended up misinformed.
dvt 1y ago
And, imo key, is the fact that this goes both ways. I've had conversations with both blue-collar types as well as white-collar types where both groups fail to grasp nuances and economonico-historic context. It's TikTok turtles all the way down. Breaking through echo chambers is harder than ever and there are no incentives to do it.
duxup 1y ago
Stupid is as stupid does. I can think something is a good idea for any number of reasons, it can also still be stupid.
ummonk 1y ago
Sure instead of calling them stupid I’ll just tell them they’re addicted to toxic media and we need to regulate the media for their own good because of their inability to resist it.
AlexandrB 1y ago
It's a good thing we, the enlightened of HN, can see through the bullshit clearly though. /s With tariffs, it's entirely possible that the loss of blue collar jobs due to offshoring more than offsets the cheap toys those folks get to import in exchange. Especially when the cost of housing, education, and medical care is rising regardless. It's not uncommon to hear labor leaders rail against NAFTA and be pro-tariff[1] for this reason. [1] https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autoworkers/ https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autowo...
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  It's also possible to be pro-tariff and recognize that Trump's policy is whatever keeps him at the center of attention, downstream consequences be damned. A concept of a plan, a verbal agreement, even just a phone call is better than a binding trade agreement that lasts 20y. Because the former provides what matters most: distraction from the things that will put Trump in jail and a feeling of power and importance.
anon373839 1y ago
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presentation 1y ago
I see things as incentive problems, including this. People are incentivized to be intellectually lazy since there isn’t really any personal reward for making the effort (your vote is on the margins practically meaningless, even if you’re “right,” whatever that means). But there is great reward for staying ignorant (dopamine hits from outrage media and camaraderie with the large plurality of similarly intellectually lazy people). How do we make it so that having well reasoned opinions is actually rewarded commensurately?
LexiMax 1y ago
> The people you describe have been given a highly addictive media environment tailor made to engender outrage and drive behavior. It shouldn't be a shock when most people cannot resist it. Although I also take issue with labeling people "stupid," I also take issue with the blanket assumption that people are victims of the media environment. Both take away people's agency in their own way. Instead, I'll ask this uncomfortable question. What if a good chunk of these people would prefer to believe a convenient lie over an inconvenient truth? If so, what does that say about them and their morals? Is that better or worse than being labeled stupid or a victim?
- cmurf 1y ago
  Absolutely there is a strong component of cognitive dissonance: the truth hurts, lies are soothing. The truth? They do not care about basic right and wrong. They voted for a rapist, a felon, a vile insurrectionist. There’s no morality and we know this based on how they’ve voted. But also the unwillingness by their friends and family to call them out promotes non-accountability. For everyone.
- Mariiyaah 1y ago
  Tough spot when every feed is engineered for outrage, but it also feels too easy to say folks have no choice in what they lean into. You could try Loyally ai to think about it like habits and rewards, small nudges change what we return to. Over time that can shift preferences toward stuff that holds up, not just what feels good in the moment.
King-Aaron 1y ago
> Stop painting people as idiots 1/3 of the voting population elected a known criminal, known sex predator, suspected child rapist, and known economically illiterate imbecile. The information may be hostile but it was widely and easily available. At least 1/3 of the US voting population are idiots. Obviously there is a subset of that voting base that made an intelligent decision knowingly and complicitly elected Trump despite the extremely serious red flags, but I would still consider them to be idiots.
- myvoiceismypass 1y ago
  You forgot insurrectionist too. He literally tried to overturn an election with violence, and tens of millions of Americans just shrugged that off.
ml-anon 1y ago
This is bullshit. It would be partly valid if it were just about "information hostility" but its not. People are making choices not just due to ignorance or misinformation, but based actively on spite, hatred and "fuck you got mine". People are deciding not to necessarily better their own situation but to harm others. It is selfish, myopic and yes, utterly fucking stupid. Normalising this way of behaving means that yes, if you're in the group that benefits from today's decision you're ok, but nothing stops you from being in the out-group tomorrow. And if your goal is inflicting harm, well tomorrow that harm will be inflicted upon you.
pjc50 1y ago
Perhaps, but the problem is that Americans really love their propaganda environment. The anger makes them feel alive. In some ways it's worse than the USSR, where everyone knew the propaganda was dull bullshit and all the interesting artistic work was in trying to subvert that.
arathis 1y ago
I’m not in the US, so I don’t know what it’s like from the inside but from the outside it’s so comically obvious how straight up stupid and brazen trump and his cronies are that it beggars beleif. How can so many be so gullible?
- cmurf 1y ago
  It’s a cult. But also, they’re being misled. Most non-Trumpers coddle, forgive in advance, and invite Trumper friends and family to the usual social functions. This is permission. It’s helping everyone normalize the depravity. In a very real way there’s no conversation happening because one party has removed themselves from rationality and the other party has broadcast they don’t care. There will need to be enormous amounts of pain to get either party to snap out of it.
- rchaud 1y ago
  They're not gullible. They are in full agreement with the leadership's desire to punish the "undesirables" in their society and purge the values they don't agree with. That they too will eventually suffer the consequences eventually is less urgent than knowing that the "others" feel threatened right here and now.
cyanydeez 1y ago
The grift economy loves it when the narks are blamed.
- nosignono 1y ago
  A narc is the person who turns in their peers to the police. Did you mean the "marks"?
nswest23 1y ago
Stop infantilizing them and taking away their agency.

heraldgeezer 1y ago

[flagged]

jrflowers 1y ago
>I recently lost my COVID kilos, 10-15kg. Was easy. It took you five years to do that though. Why did it take that long if it was easy
- heraldgeezer 1y ago
  I started in like December or January... Was COVID 5 years ago fuck me. Also, COVID weight gain would be during lockdowns, and ALSO my job went fully remote. Being fully remote was an issue for sure. So it's like COVID was extended for me. I never really weighed myself and then felt weird like a big mechelin man and I saw I was 10-12 kg heavier, makes sense why I feel bad I thought, and I did not weigh before and just decided to lose it, was easy when I decided. That's my story. I was always slow on the uptake on things, hygiene, clothes etc. Weight too, I grew up always being skinny, but getting to 30+ I never noticed when I got heavier as it takes a long time, you talk as if everything is obvious, but it is not. But it is easy once you know. So, if you have already identified weight as being the issue, losing weight is easy, in my experience. As I said, fasting feels good, skip meals, skip the beer, drink sugar-free. 10 kg gone fast, I promise you. The issue for me is identifying the problem. Love the downvotes, btw. >It took you five years to do that though. Why did it take that long if it was easy I should specify, I have been BMI 19-20 for 3–4 months now, again, as from teenager to 25-ish thats my range, thats "me", it feels like myself, so. So that's what I mean when “recently”, not yesterday. Time warps when you get old. So fast. ALSO, easy things can still take a long time. You understand the words?
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    > Love the downvotes, btw. I’d wager that you’re getting downvoted for two reasons, first because current science is strongly indicating that “obesity is a moral failing” is factually untrue, so being smug while dead wrong is off putting. And second reason would be the framing of the issue of obesity as being solved by just losing weight. A lot (maybe most? Almost all?) of people that are overweight have at some point lost weight, the bigger challenge is keeping it off long term. So you kind of just Kramer’d into this thread and loudly volunteered unprompted that you don’t understand this stuff on a basic level, aren’t in a position to understand it, and you definitely feel like you’ve accomplished something so enormous that it makes you smarter and better than everybody else. It’s kind of like if you show a kid Google Translate and they start lecturing you about how easy it is to move to Mallorca because Catalan isn’t that hard to pick up
    - heraldgeezer 1y ago
      Yes, there is an issue of easy access to calorie rich foods, but at a certain point it is the individual. I can listen to brain rot gangsta rap all day or baroque classical both on Spotify. It's what I click on that determines it. The hard part is learning what is good.

tw04 1y ago

> It has nothing to do with stupidity. Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. No. Someone refusing to spend 30 seconds understanding how a tariff works is the result of an idiot. My 10 year old figured out how they work in under 5 minutes. There’s literally no excuse for a grown ass adult to refuse to educate themselves on the subject. “This media environment” doesn’t prevent them from typing “how do tariffs work?” in their search engine of choice and reading the first result.

hx8 1y ago
I just googled "How do tariffs work?" I got hit with several college level vocabulary words describing tariffs in both the AI summary and my first result. It might be less of a problem, if we had adequately funded schools.
- slg 1y ago
  The full AI summary from DuckDuckGo for "How do tariffs work?" >Tariffs are taxes imposed by a government on imported goods, making them more expensive to encourage consumers to buy domestic products instead. The costs of these tariffs are typically passed on to consumers, resulting in higher prices for imported items. I don't see any "college level vocabulary words" and it directly says that it makes goods more expensive and the costs are passed on to consumers. Maybe Google's complicated answer is part of the "media environment" being criticized.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    domestic looks pretty challenging. /s Edit for the sarcastically challenged among us.
    - slg 1y ago
      I can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment. Not only is "domestic" a relatively simple word with a straightforward definition, but also the point of the original comment that "consumers will end up paying the tariffs" is still clear from the summary regardless.

mattbillenstein 1y ago

In a way it kinda does though - like definitely the information ecosystem distorts things, but some people do not have (or do not exercise) the critical reasoning skills to decipher what's true from what's not. Or what issues are actually important from those that are meant to just distract - not everyone can tell the difference and see how the incentives actually point to what's going on. reply

undersuit 1y ago
The education system failing people is part of the issue. Why would you want people to have critical reasoning skills if you want to control their behavior through outrage.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Looking at the agenda of the party currently in charge, the system isn't failing people. It's performing as intended. When you do not want the masses to be educated, you defund those that are in charge of educating to the point it has no other outcome than to come to a grinding halt. As intended. After all, the numbers stop going up when you stop counting. I'm often reminded of a conversation my arrogant younger self had with an Englishman I was having a bit of back and forth banter about Yanks vs the sun setting on the English empire. I asked if the Empire was so great, why did all of the colonies end up revolting? His answer was simply, "we taught them how to read." Once the masses can read and think for themselves in an educated manner, they tend to no longer put up with being trodden over for much longer. So the answer is clearly simple to stop educating the masses.

gjuggfdd 1y ago

[dead]

DiddlyWinks 1y ago

At this point they're not "being had." They are deliberately and belligerently ignorant. It's way past time to stop giving anyone a free pass on supporting this malevolent clown.

booleandilemma 1y ago
Democracy's no fun when your guy doesn't win, right?
- 20after4 1y ago
  What democracy?
  - booleandilemma 1y ago
    People voted for orange man, were you not aware?
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      People voted for Hitler, people voted for Hamas. Being voted for doesn't preclude being malevolent to the voters.
    - 20after4 1y ago
      Some people voted for the orange man. Whether the vote count was fair remains in question. https://electiontruthalliance.org/ https://electiontruthalliance.org/

bsoles 1y ago

Those people may not be innately stupid in the sense of not being able to learn or understand things. But they have been rendered functionally stupid by the media, propaganda, and politics. I actually find that state quite unrecoverable.

roenxi 1y ago

"Stupid" seems like a pretty fair way of describing that. If someone watches media that outrages them, misinforms them then causes them to make stupid decisions then the consequences are very much on their head. It is well know that the people peddling strong outrage are basically scumbags in it for the money and not the sort of people who should be listened too if you want to achieve long term success (which is mostly the domain of trusting optimists). There are a lot of high quality media sources out there that don't promote outrage.

dfedbeef 1y ago
It's what they call everyone else (shrug). Why mince words.

Nevermark 1y ago

> It has nothing to do with stupidity. In addition to being rude, its not a particularly clear word. So I coined "idiodidact", to specifically describe people who have personal selectivity with regard to being teachable. (Greek/English usage: "idios"/personal choice + "didact"/taught) Any resemblance, to any other word, would be a coincidence.

booleandilemma 1y ago
This guy insults.
frm88 1y ago
Brilliant. I'm stealing this.

jrflowers 1y ago

> Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history. Two things can be true at once. Being force-fed bullshit doesn’t necessarily make somebody an idiot but it also doesn’t necessarily make them not an idiot.

arbitrary_name 1y ago

While i take your point about playing nice, it has a lot to do with stupidity: specifically ignorance, intellectual laziness, lack of curiosity, bias, anti intellectualism, inability to think abstractly, lack of education, lack of critical thinking, ideology, and a host of other things. Almost all of which correlate in some way to 'stupidity'. I posit that your first line is wildly wrong, but your message is broadly valid.

dylan604 1y ago
Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. I know plenty of people that have different views of mine that are much smarter than I am, and engaging with them leads to interesting conversations. I can still think they are "wrong" at the end of these conversations, but I'd never call them stupid. Hell, the lottery is often described as a tax on poor people. Yet the vast majority of lottery players would never call it a tax. The vast majority of people that I've talked to that don't understand tariffs are not incapable of understanding the concept. They've only ever heard their information from one source that does not discuss tariffs in this manner. Once they hear other viewpoints not from a single source, they typically admit they are taxes and do not argue against it. It does not change their mind that they are still a good idea.
- UncleOxidant 1y ago
  > Once they hear other viewpoints not from a single source, they typically admit they are taxes and do not argue against it. I think you're being overly optimistic here.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    You're leaving out my qualifier of the people I've talked with.
- kelnos 1y ago
  > Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. True, but I'm not sure what that proves. Some people who have different points of view than I do have come to those points of view via reasonable means, and some of their PoVs might even be more consistent with reality than some of mine. But some people are actually just stupid. Sometimes it's for understandable reasons, but sometimes it's for reasons that the GP laid out, and that's sad and unfortunate, and makes life difficult for the rest of us. I think there are a lot of people like this, and I'm afraid that public policy is in no small part driven by these people's susceptibility to propaganda, and their inability to think critically.

dylan604 1y ago

> most information hostile environments in human history Is it though? East Germany comes to mind as well as the rest of the Cold War countries behind the Iron Curtain. China seems to be pretty hostile as well. In the US, it is still much easier to find real information that counters the propaganda than it is in any of those other countries. There's no Great Firewall to bypass. You don't even need to do anything anonymously. Yes, the current administration is doing its damnedest to pull the wool over the eyes of their followers, but it's only effective for them. Nobody else is fooled nor stopping their publishing of the opposition to the propaganda.

stephen_g 1y ago
I mean, maybe this way is worse. I can see how it could be far more obvious that the propaganda is BS when it's being pushed at you from every outlet and every form of media. Makes it more clear that it's controlled. Yet at the moment where there is still diversity, people can make the mistake of thinking that the propaganda is just a difference of opinion so perhaps trust it more.
- cgio 1y ago
  To me the propaganda is still blatant and there is only an engineered illusion of diversity, only inasmuch as it keeps people opinionated on the things that don’t matter. There’s also no foundational or universal desire for diversity, so alternative propaganda contexts may induce different focus areas.
SCUSKU 1y ago
What you're describing is an Orwellian dystopia, where a boot forces you to think a certain way. We live in a Huxleyan dystopia where there is so much so much to distract you that you become submissive.
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  The demographic collapse will likely lead to artificial wombs and llm powered vulcan style teaching pits crossed with diamond age primers. Huxley was more prescient than I thought when teading brave new world. I think the nation that has its primers teach the vat-made labor force rhetoric, logic and critical thinking will have lower gdp, but higher stability.

dfxm12 1y ago

Why do you think this was the first step? That these folks have not been engaged with: information, compassion, alternative news sources, pleas to think twice about what they read on Facebook? Why do you think these folks haven't listened to Trump himself over the past 10+ years, or lived through previous elections cycles, including Trump's previous term? There's no way you can claim the wool was pulled over people's eyes this time around. Also, acting self righteous while demanding decorum is rich considering how this admin promised to and followed through on completely dehumanizing huge swathes of people as its base cheers on. Please, display one ounce of good faith.

m-s-y 1y ago

No, they are idiots. Not at media consumption, but idiots at life. There are certain life skills that can be considered “smart” like revisiting your established opinions when presented with new information, or knowing that encountering a new piece of information from a single source doesn’t carry the weight of encountering it in dozens of places, or that making a mistake doesn’t guarantee that your existence is doomed but been presented with a learning experience. The “stupid” folks refuse to take the simplest steps to better themselves. They refuse to self-evaluate honestly. That’s the root cause. This stupidness results in them being duped and misinformed. Therefore, when one encounters an uninformed and duped person, it’s not out of line to consider that person “stupid”. So when people like OP say that people are stupid, it’s not a dig via victim blaming. It’s a judgement that they’re clearly being stupid, that their poor life skills need work because they ended up misinformed.

dvt 1y ago

And, imo key, is the fact that this goes both ways. I've had conversations with both blue-collar types as well as white-collar types where both groups fail to grasp nuances and economonico-historic context. It's TikTok turtles all the way down. Breaking through echo chambers is harder than ever and there are no incentives to do it.

duxup 1y ago

Stupid is as stupid does. I can think something is a good idea for any number of reasons, it can also still be stupid.

ummonk 1y ago

Sure instead of calling them stupid I’ll just tell them they’re addicted to toxic media and we need to regulate the media for their own good because of their inability to resist it.

AlexandrB 1y ago

It's a good thing we, the enlightened of HN, can see through the bullshit clearly though. /s With tariffs, it's entirely possible that the loss of blue collar jobs due to offshoring more than offsets the cheap toys those folks get to import in exchange. Especially when the cost of housing, education, and medical care is rising regardless. It's not uncommon to hear labor leaders rail against NAFTA and be pro-tariff[1] for this reason. [1] https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autoworkers/ https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autowo...

paulryanrogers 1y ago
It's also possible to be pro-tariff and recognize that Trump's policy is whatever keeps him at the center of attention, downstream consequences be damned. A concept of a plan, a verbal agreement, even just a phone call is better than a binding trade agreement that lasts 20y. Because the former provides what matters most: distraction from the things that will put Trump in jail and a feeling of power and importance.

anon373839 1y ago

[flagged]

presentation 1y ago

I see things as incentive problems, including this. People are incentivized to be intellectually lazy since there isn’t really any personal reward for making the effort (your vote is on the margins practically meaningless, even if you’re “right,” whatever that means). But there is great reward for staying ignorant (dopamine hits from outrage media and camaraderie with the large plurality of similarly intellectually lazy people). How do we make it so that having well reasoned opinions is actually rewarded commensurately?

LexiMax 1y ago

> The people you describe have been given a highly addictive media environment tailor made to engender outrage and drive behavior. It shouldn't be a shock when most people cannot resist it. Although I also take issue with labeling people "stupid," I also take issue with the blanket assumption that people are victims of the media environment. Both take away people's agency in their own way. Instead, I'll ask this uncomfortable question. What if a good chunk of these people would prefer to believe a convenient lie over an inconvenient truth? If so, what does that say about them and their morals? Is that better or worse than being labeled stupid or a victim?

cmurf 1y ago
Absolutely there is a strong component of cognitive dissonance: the truth hurts, lies are soothing. The truth? They do not care about basic right and wrong. They voted for a rapist, a felon, a vile insurrectionist. There’s no morality and we know this based on how they’ve voted. But also the unwillingness by their friends and family to call them out promotes non-accountability. For everyone.
Mariiyaah 1y ago
Tough spot when every feed is engineered for outrage, but it also feels too easy to say folks have no choice in what they lean into. You could try Loyally ai to think about it like habits and rewards, small nudges change what we return to. Over time that can shift preferences toward stuff that holds up, not just what feels good in the moment.

King-Aaron 1y ago

> Stop painting people as idiots 1/3 of the voting population elected a known criminal, known sex predator, suspected child rapist, and known economically illiterate imbecile. The information may be hostile but it was widely and easily available. At least 1/3 of the US voting population are idiots. Obviously there is a subset of that voting base that made an intelligent decision knowingly and complicitly elected Trump despite the extremely serious red flags, but I would still consider them to be idiots.

myvoiceismypass 1y ago
You forgot insurrectionist too. He literally tried to overturn an election with violence, and tens of millions of Americans just shrugged that off.

ml-anon 1y ago

This is bullshit. It would be partly valid if it were just about "information hostility" but its not. People are making choices not just due to ignorance or misinformation, but based actively on spite, hatred and "fuck you got mine". People are deciding not to necessarily better their own situation but to harm others. It is selfish, myopic and yes, utterly fucking stupid. Normalising this way of behaving means that yes, if you're in the group that benefits from today's decision you're ok, but nothing stops you from being in the out-group tomorrow. And if your goal is inflicting harm, well tomorrow that harm will be inflicted upon you.

pjc50 1y ago

Perhaps, but the problem is that Americans really love their propaganda environment. The anger makes them feel alive. In some ways it's worse than the USSR, where everyone knew the propaganda was dull bullshit and all the interesting artistic work was in trying to subvert that.

arathis 1y ago

I’m not in the US, so I don’t know what it’s like from the inside but from the outside it’s so comically obvious how straight up stupid and brazen trump and his cronies are that it beggars beleif. How can so many be so gullible?

cmurf 1y ago
It’s a cult. But also, they’re being misled. Most non-Trumpers coddle, forgive in advance, and invite Trumper friends and family to the usual social functions. This is permission. It’s helping everyone normalize the depravity. In a very real way there’s no conversation happening because one party has removed themselves from rationality and the other party has broadcast they don’t care. There will need to be enormous amounts of pain to get either party to snap out of it.
rchaud 1y ago
They're not gullible. They are in full agreement with the leadership's desire to punish the "undesirables" in their society and purge the values they don't agree with. That they too will eventually suffer the consequences eventually is less urgent than knowing that the "others" feel threatened right here and now.

cyanydeez 1y ago

The grift economy loves it when the narks are blamed.

nosignono 1y ago
A narc is the person who turns in their peers to the police. Did you mean the "marks"?

nswest23 1y ago

Stop infantilizing them and taking away their agency.