The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

[Eilonwy]

it's easy to dismiss people as stupid and sometimes they are, but often times they're not and we're missing the full picture

i also find people who are labeled lazy often have something else going on such as anxiety or depression or other things. but no one wants to deal with that shit, so it's just all like well that person is stupid and lazy.

This is so true.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I dont think they are as prevalent as movies or other media would make out, people seem to have forgotten the whole huge gamut of maladaptive or dysfunctional adaptations such as sadism, masochism, authoritarianism, automation conformity, marketing types etc.

That's before you consider necrophiles as a psychological type, not the sexual perversion but the character structure.

Ok.

I used Joker simply because that is the most obvious example of my though/definition that I could think of in the moment.

 

[SD45T-2]

I didnt see him theorising as to why some people would be more like that than others, not in the linked article.

This is a pretty good definition of stupidity, from a rational utilitarian maximiser stand point, which is the version of the individual in classical economics.

Behavioural economics has changed that a little but by and large that is the definition of "economic man".

The linked article does not explain why there are stupid people, just that people underestimate the number of the stupid and/or the extent of their stupidity, it doesnt even really say much about what people should do about it or whether or not its inevitable that there are stupid people.

It's in the article that's linked in the first paragraph of the article. Sorry if that's convoluted.

 

[Lark]

It's in the article that's linked in the first paragraph of the article. Sorry if that's convoluted.

Yeah, I read it. Its exactly as I said.

 

[uumlau]

Yeah, it's a "homo economicus" model of stupidity, which means there is no analysis of the reasons behind the stupidity, just a classification. It's literally a stupid typology.

For my own part, I learned a long while ago to not assume that people behaving irrationally in my opinion were necessarily behaving stupidly. I need to identify exactly where the stupidity is coming from. It might be ignorance, it might be self-serving, it might be instinctual (the kinds of decisions that can be really great in one environment can be entirely stupid in another one). That lets me map a way around the stupidity, which is much more useful than generally complaining about or trying to avoid the stupidity.

 

[Forever]

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.

Such as stopping a robber from shooting up a bank and being killed? I call them heroes, not stupid people.

Of course you could still think heroes are stupid because they're not self-interested. I'm not a big proponent of psychological egoism myself.

 

[SpankyMcFly]

Such as stopping a robber from shooting up a bank and being killed? I call them heroes, not stupid people.

Of course you could still think heroes are stupid because they're not self-interested. I'm not a big proponent of psychological egoism myself.

Another way to look at such acts that our culture deems 'valuable' behavior, reciprocal altruism.

"In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. The concept was initially developed by Robert Trivers to explain the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the strategy of "tit for tat" used in game theory."

These behaviors happen all throughout nature and have nothing to do with an ego, morality or culture. It reduces to Prime Directive.

Yet another way to look at it is from Terror Managment Theory. Such an act would thereby transfer the individual‟s symbolic self to a collective entity (culture/society) or postself. He will be 'immortalized'.

 

[Lark]

Yeah, it's a "homo economicus" model of stupidity, which means there is no analysis of the reasons behind the stupidity, just a classification. It's literally a stupid typology.

For my own part, I learned a long while ago to not assume that people behaving irrationally in my opinion were necessarily behaving stupidly. I need to identify exactly where the stupidity is coming from. It might be ignorance, it might be self-serving, it might be instinctual (the kinds of decisions that can be really great in one environment can be entirely stupid in another one). That lets me map a way around the stupidity, which is much more useful than generally complaining about or trying to avoid the stupidity.

What does this person feel, need or want and how do I best respond are useful ways of thinking about behaviour, I'd agree that its much more about planning around that challenging head on what appears to be stupid, nothing like a head on challenge, most of the time, to ensure repeat behaviour or escalations or at the very least defensiveness.

Plus, like I said before, its context related and relative too, someone in one group of people will appear stupid in another group, what was interesting in this idea is that it was trying to transcend the traditional relativity by suggesting whatever the differences in innateness or training the capacity remains for stupidity, true, I guess, though why remains the more important factor, most of the time its an over taxing or exhaustion of coping strategies for different sorts of stress.

 

[Lark]

Such as stopping a robber from shooting up a bank and being killed? I call them heroes, not stupid people.

Of course you could still think heroes are stupid because they're not self-interested. I'm not a big proponent of psychological egoism myself.

Nice point, homo economicus is underpinned by a lot of the same rationalisations as objectivism, but I'd say that pscyhological egoism is a hard idea to out fox, even when someone chooses to make an altruistic sacrifice their is some sort of pay off or presumed pay off in the behaviour, even if its just satisfying an internalised belief system.

That's different to selfishness though, I understand the point you're trying to make but there's a balance to be struck.

 

[Lark]

Another way to look at such acts that our culture deems 'valuable' behavior, reciprocal altruism.

"In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. The concept was initially developed by Robert Trivers to explain the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the strategy of "tit for tat" used in game theory."

These behaviors happen all throughout nature and have nothing to do with an ego, morality or culture. It reduces to Prime Directive.

Yet another way to look at it is from Terror Managment Theory. Such an act would thereby transfer the individual‟s symbolic self to a collective entity (culture/society) or postself. He will be 'immortalized'.

The evolutionary psychologists need to honour their own constructed prime directive is a virtual "ghost in the machine", something akin to a life force or God or unconscious, the very things that they are keen, all too keen if you ask me, on eliminating as unscientific precepts.

Part of why I cant accept evolutionary biologists thinking, besides the fact that I think as with Freud's own ideas in Civilisation and Its Discontents or scarcity and psychic energy idea seem to just be economic theories/ideology, writ large, is that it seems to arise from their own need to do with other other ideas which they find difficult.

Before anyone thinks that I'm trying to defend deism or theism, that's got nothing to do with it, its more to do with the implicit attacks upon anything that doesnt agree with behaviourist scientism.