5 ms·

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 inte

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.
- wat10000 1y ago
  It’s not “a different point of view” to think that tariffs get paid by the other country. It’s not “a different point of view” to loathe Obamacare and like the ACA. It’s just ignorance. When the information is easily available, it’s willful ignorance. When they won’t obtain the information and they still hold strong opinions and vote accordingly, it’s at best stupidity.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    How is it not a different point of view to think that healthcare should be tied to one's employment as opposed to all people should have access to affordable healthcare? We can discuss if Obamacare achieved what it wanted to do as I believe it was not very successful, but it at its core is a different view point. Yes, people believing other countries pay the tariffs are clearly not understanding of how tariffs work. But then you went made some clearly erroneous comment that ruined everything else just to get back to stupidity. Which by your standards means you must be stupid too for continuing to put forth a clearly wrong point.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      That’s not what I was saying. Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing. The ACA is the official name and Obamacare is an attempt at a derogatory nickname which became common. Hating one and liking the other is an inherently contradictory position. And yet it’s one a lot of people hold. That’s not a different point of view, that’s not having even the most basic understanding of the thing you have an opinion about.
      - presentation 1y ago
        That’s democracy though, everyone gets a vote, even if you’re a doofus.
        mikepurvis 1y ago
        Right, but it puts rational people who seek to govern in a very uncomfortable position when they're up against an adversary who is happy to seize power at all costs, including weaponizing ignorance, ideology, polarization, conspiracy theories, and a complicit media apparatus, and then engages in blatantly un-democratic tactics like gerrymandering and the filibuster, and all the rest of it. Basically when all or most of the facts are on your side, how do you balance the need to indulge stupid talking points and perspectives so that you can "reach" people, while also not inadvertently conceding ground in an attempt to meet a person where they are?
- xeromal 1y ago
  I appreciate you trying to "remember the human" which is one of the top rules of hackernews and every single comment replying to you isn't bothered that they call a whole swath of people stupid. How can we heal, change, and recover from this without reaching out and understanding their POV.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Even after observing and understanding, healing and recovery may be impossible. Change is still inevitable of course.
  - sillyfluke 1y ago
    As Orwell has stated ages ago, there is a group of people who will only accept the truth when it confronts them on the battlefield. The unshakeable belief in previous priors leads many people to only face certain truths when forced to through lived experience. There is la video circulating of a business owner making fun of the Amazon concept of showing thd amount tariffs add to the final price to the consumer. This guy in this video says that number is going to be 0 on his website because his product and the stuff used to make it is "Made in America". The next video is literally him bitching about how some of the Made in America stuff he needs to make his product increased by a grand in just one month. And he like, "why in the fuck are these Made in America affected? Something's messed up here." At the end of the day, this is a business owner who was aware that the biggest online retailer in America said tariffs are going to affect the price of products the American consumer buys. If this guy can't be bothered to dig a little deeper to save his business, it's hard to expect other people that are a couple degrees removed from the action to do so as well.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  > Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. He never suggested that. You defended these voters by saying they gladly accept the propaganda information diet, not that they have well-reasoned differences of opinion.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    No, that's not my defense. You're putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that because they voted for someone that you disagree with for whatever reasons does not automatically make them stupid. They could have voted for someone for a totally different reason than tariffs. Now their guy is doing something they don't know anything about and now they are personally getting attacked. Whether they know anything about that topic or not does not make them stupid. If they attempt to argue without being fully versed by quoting what the face on TV tells them, again, that doesn't make them stupid. It just makes them very bad at debating. Look at all of the "man on the street" comedy interviews that are out there. Most of these people have no clue about what they are talking about, but just want to argue against the other side. A lot of the people are definitely not "very smart" but that's because they are cherry picked for that purpose. There are a lot of people that voted for this guy because the last guy was just unable to articulate much of anything and did not put forth a lot of confidence in pretty much anything. Knee jerk reactions usually have some pretty negative consequences. Just looking at current polling suggests there are a lot of people that voted for this administration yet are not happy with what is going on. Yet you are saying they are stupid. If these people were really onboard with "other countries pay the tariffs" there would not be negative polling numbers. All I'm saying is stop painting with a broad brush in that anyone voting for a party is stupid. I'll defend people voting for who they want or even voting against someone they don't want. To call them stupid is just stupid.
    - cosmicgadget 1y ago
      Ugh I did put words in your mouth because I was reading nosignono's comment. Apologies. Still, arbitrary_name seems consistent about not judging people for ideological differences but rather for choosing not to be accurately informed. I.e. he is not saying "they're dumb because I don't agree with tariffs" he's saying "they're dumb because after Trump promised to make us rich with tariffs, they didn't bother to check how duties are collected." You seem to agree with this to an extent. > All I'm saying is stop painting with a broad brush in that anyone voting for a party is stupid. I mean, it's four broad brushes right? The dupes, the single-issue voters, the identity voters, and the ones who believe in whatever his policy happens to be. I don't think it's fair to say they fall into a single bin but they're not all snowflakes who cannot be characterized en masse. > I'll defend people voting for who they want or even voting against someone they don't want. Okay but what about the ones who vote for what they don't want. The ones who voted Trump to release the Epstein files. Or to balance the budget. Or to end the Ukraine war day one? They took a look at his first term, listened to his campaign promises, and decided, "surely he will deliver!"

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.
wat10000 1y ago
It’s not “a different point of view” to think that tariffs get paid by the other country. It’s not “a different point of view” to loathe Obamacare and like the ACA. It’s just ignorance. When the information is easily available, it’s willful ignorance. When they won’t obtain the information and they still hold strong opinions and vote accordingly, it’s at best stupidity.
- dylan604 1y ago
  How is it not a different point of view to think that healthcare should be tied to one's employment as opposed to all people should have access to affordable healthcare? We can discuss if Obamacare achieved what it wanted to do as I believe it was not very successful, but it at its core is a different view point. Yes, people believing other countries pay the tariffs are clearly not understanding of how tariffs work. But then you went made some clearly erroneous comment that ruined everything else just to get back to stupidity. Which by your standards means you must be stupid too for continuing to put forth a clearly wrong point.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    That’s not what I was saying. Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing. The ACA is the official name and Obamacare is an attempt at a derogatory nickname which became common. Hating one and liking the other is an inherently contradictory position. And yet it’s one a lot of people hold. That’s not a different point of view, that’s not having even the most basic understanding of the thing you have an opinion about.
    - presentation 1y ago
      That’s democracy though, everyone gets a vote, even if you’re a doofus.
      - mikepurvis 1y ago
        Right, but it puts rational people who seek to govern in a very uncomfortable position when they're up against an adversary who is happy to seize power at all costs, including weaponizing ignorance, ideology, polarization, conspiracy theories, and a complicit media apparatus, and then engages in blatantly un-democratic tactics like gerrymandering and the filibuster, and all the rest of it. Basically when all or most of the facts are on your side, how do you balance the need to indulge stupid talking points and perspectives so that you can "reach" people, while also not inadvertently conceding ground in an attempt to meet a person where they are?
xeromal 1y ago
I appreciate you trying to "remember the human" which is one of the top rules of hackernews and every single comment replying to you isn't bothered that they call a whole swath of people stupid. How can we heal, change, and recover from this without reaching out and understanding their POV.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Even after observing and understanding, healing and recovery may be impossible. Change is still inevitable of course.
- sillyfluke 1y ago
  As Orwell has stated ages ago, there is a group of people who will only accept the truth when it confronts them on the battlefield. The unshakeable belief in previous priors leads many people to only face certain truths when forced to through lived experience. There is la video circulating of a business owner making fun of the Amazon concept of showing thd amount tariffs add to the final price to the consumer. This guy in this video says that number is going to be 0 on his website because his product and the stuff used to make it is "Made in America". The next video is literally him bitching about how some of the Made in America stuff he needs to make his product increased by a grand in just one month. And he like, "why in the fuck are these Made in America affected? Something's messed up here." At the end of the day, this is a business owner who was aware that the biggest online retailer in America said tariffs are going to affect the price of products the American consumer buys. If this guy can't be bothered to dig a little deeper to save his business, it's hard to expect other people that are a couple degrees removed from the action to do so as well.
cosmicgadget 1y ago
> Just because someone has a different point of view than yours does not make them stupid. He never suggested that. You defended these voters by saying they gladly accept the propaganda information diet, not that they have well-reasoned differences of opinion.
- dylan604 1y ago
  No, that's not my defense. You're putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that because they voted for someone that you disagree with for whatever reasons does not automatically make them stupid. They could have voted for someone for a totally different reason than tariffs. Now their guy is doing something they don't know anything about and now they are personally getting attacked. Whether they know anything about that topic or not does not make them stupid. If they attempt to argue without being fully versed by quoting what the face on TV tells them, again, that doesn't make them stupid. It just makes them very bad at debating. Look at all of the "man on the street" comedy interviews that are out there. Most of these people have no clue about what they are talking about, but just want to argue against the other side. A lot of the people are definitely not "very smart" but that's because they are cherry picked for that purpose. There are a lot of people that voted for this guy because the last guy was just unable to articulate much of anything and did not put forth a lot of confidence in pretty much anything. Knee jerk reactions usually have some pretty negative consequences. Just looking at current polling suggests there are a lot of people that voted for this administration yet are not happy with what is going on. Yet you are saying they are stupid. If these people were really onboard with "other countries pay the tariffs" there would not be negative polling numbers. All I'm saying is stop painting with a broad brush in that anyone voting for a party is stupid. I'll defend people voting for who they want or even voting against someone they don't want. To call them stupid is just stupid.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    Ugh I did put words in your mouth because I was reading nosignono's comment. Apologies. Still, arbitrary_name seems consistent about not judging people for ideological differences but rather for choosing not to be accurately informed. I.e. he is not saying "they're dumb because I don't agree with tariffs" he's saying "they're dumb because after Trump promised to make us rich with tariffs, they didn't bother to check how duties are collected." You seem to agree with this to an extent. > All I'm saying is stop painting with a broad brush in that anyone voting for a party is stupid. I mean, it's four broad brushes right? The dupes, the single-issue voters, the identity voters, and the ones who believe in whatever his policy happens to be. I don't think it's fair to say they fall into a single bin but they're not all snowflakes who cannot be characterized en masse. > I'll defend people voting for who they want or even voting against someone they don't want. Okay but what about the ones who vote for what they don't want. The ones who voted Trump to release the Epstein files. Or to balance the budget. Or to end the Ukraine war day one? They took a look at his first term, listened to his campaign promises, and decided, "surely he will deliver!"