Sudenak said:
Okay. Let's put it this way. They're either too lazy or too "honorable" to use Google. They didn't assume that a simple looking math question would be posed to trip them up. They didn't double check it. They wanted to get the right answer, but didn't want to put any effort into it. So, what, being lazy is better than being stupid? I'd still call them stupid just for wanting to get a math problem right without putting in any sort of thought or effort to do so.
I believe this is rather redundant to talk about personally - considering my views on using the facebook questions as evidence. If you want to find out how a person performs intellectually when they
do put the effort in, then look at their grades, because that's what they're there for. A person's grades are where you find the more reliable evidence because it has long-term effects which the participant is aware of, and they've been putting years of work into preparation, so they take it very seriously. That's the kind of evidence I would bother with, and not some facebook question which is deliberately constructed to have information that is overlooked.
You rehashing what you believe isn't going to convince me. I get it. You think one act is not enough to call someone stupid. I think it is. Because when someone calls someone stupid, they're not saying "your entire life is invalid, for I have judged you based on this one act and you are clearly too stupid to accomplish anything". They are literally saying that the act was stupid.
I've seen this point made before, and I actually agree with it: if the act itself is stupid, then you can say to them that they messed up. Where I draw the line is where people use that to berate everything about that person's intelligence - while some people may not use the term to say 'your entire life is invalid', I've seen people - like the OP of the thread concerning the facebook question - who
do say that about them, and
that's what I disagree with: They think the people are inherently stupid, not simply the act.
And I seriously doubt that you are objective. Again, it is physically impossible to research and study every human you come in contact with so that you can gather enough statistical data to determine their idiocy. There's no goddamned point to doing that. Let me give an example.
Think about all of those people who believed the rapture was May 21st. Think of all of those people who still follow that guy who said the rapture was May 21st and who don't want to press charges even after spending all of their money in belief they would not need it. That's just one aspect of their life. One insignificant act. You're seriously telling me that you look at that and go "I cannot call them stupid, for surely I need more data". Bull-freaking-shit. We have the word "stupid" for a reason. You judge people based on what you know.
These judgements can be wrong. Whether they are wrong or right depends on the evidence you have. In your example, I would say that it may be stupidity - since I didn't see the guy bring up any evidence that the world was ending, and past experience has taught me people do this quite often - to follow him, or it may be ignorance. In the latter, you can have a person who had grown up in a very religious or superstitious household, but still gets good grades. If you knew the guy, you would typically think he was intelligent, because his beliefs have not conflicted with his education. However, when he overreacts to this news, you wouldn't immediately call him inherently stupid - the act itself may be stupid, but you know that the person is typically an intelligent person, it's just that his beliefs have conflicted with his reasoning. There are other possibilities and jumping to only one when the evidence is vague is not professional.
Sure, it's impossible to check the details around every single human being in the world, but anyone conducting a professional survey or study will tell you that you need to consider all possibilities with reliable evidence and
then come to a reasoned conclusion. For reasons already mentioned, I don't think that facebook question is up to scratch.
Besides. All of the knowledge in the world can still make you an idiot. If someone answers the math question wrong, but it turns out they donate to the children's hospital, got straight A's, and teach a math class, guess what? They still answered the question wrong. It won't make the answer less wrong if they have a balance of good and intelligent deeds to offset it.
Okay, I'm not so sure this was phrased properly. You said that when people call someone stupid, they're not saying "your entire life is invalid, for I have judged you based on this one act and you are clearly too stupid to accomplish anything" - yet you've basically done that to this hypothetical person, saying they're still an idiot becasue of that one act. I may be reading something different into that, but it just doesn't sit well with what I've seen you write before.
This boils down to critical thinking. If they're just hammering out a quick answer in hopes of being right, then they're an idiot. If they answered it fully believing their answer to be right, then they're an idiot. If they're answering a question posted on facebook that looks deceptively simple and don't bother giving it thought, then they're an idiot. It's just that simple.
That's the thing; they're designed to have overlooked details. '1+1+1+1+1+1-1+1+1+1+1+1x1+1x0' or a question along those lines is designed to be so long that people 'fill in the blanks' unconciously - replacing the '-' with '+' because that's what they're expecting. It follows the same logic as optical illusions in that it's tricking your brain into interpreting something as something else ie: with the 'same length lines with inward or outward facing arrows'. Again, however, you're judging someone for what is simply one act, which I thought you said is not what people mean when they say 'stupid'. I don't think it is that simple, because the lives and thought of others is never simple, otherwise we'd be very predictable.
That facebook thing was a quick jab at the fact that most people suck at math. You took such offense at calling people stupid for forgetting basic Elementary school math that you made an entire topic defending Stupid. I already consider the majority of humanity to be stupid. One topic defending laziness that causes stupidity won't change my mind on the matter.
I'm not defending stupid. I'm arguing the point that judging people on one doubtable bit of evidence is not the way forward. That is what I've been arguing all this time, and I'm not moving from that maxim. If our justice systems began judging people on one ambiguous bit of evidence from a crime scene, then a lot more innocent people would be wrongly punished because of our inability to push further, look between the lines and find more to matters than was once immediately thought.
This, I don't think, will persuade you, but that's just how I'm defending my points. I don't expect you to change your view, and I'll tell you now that I'm not abandoning what I think is right. With that said, I don't think there's much else to say.
