Opinions which really do prove stupidity

[Forum Troll]

To use the example of believing the universe is a few thousand years old, how bad that is depends on whether the individual was given nearly no scientific and historical knowledge, like an illiterate tribesman, or whether the individual is in a modern country and constantly exposed to contradictory information.

Practical intelligence is largely determined by capability and willingness to learn. Few common beliefs are such that an ignorant young child couldn't be excused for believing in them, yet the real test of intelligence is whether they still believe them if exposed to relevant knowledge. If they can't learn better, then I'm most likely to view them as stupid.

Can or will they read a multiple-page article fully and comprehend it, or does information have to be fed to them in the most simplistic form, no more than several sentences or a brief soundbite at a time? Some views suggest such ignorance that I suspect much of the population not only learned little in school but also rarely even read news stories with more comprehension than skimming them.

Often when people hold stupid opinions (or make stupid decisions), it is particularly because they spend few if any minutes truly thinking about a matter. People need both intelligence, some general intellectual curiosity encouraging learning, a decent attention span, objectivity, and a willingness to take the time to be introspective.

All of those are strongly associated with intelligence but not always the same, much like how the quality of an individual's decision-making may improve if he frequently reminds himself to think before acting, even if such mental discipline in daily life wouldn't directly raise his IQ score itself.

[CarsonPalmer]

Any layman who thinks their opinion about a certain subject is at least as valid as an expert in this subject

Good Lord, yes! I remember reading a blog post once on the American Civil War that said, verbatim:

Why do academics and teachers need to have these conference, when they can just hang out with reenactors for a day?

[Civil War Man]

Good Lord, yes! I remember reading a blog post once on the American Civil War that said, verbatim:

Why do academics and teachers need to have these conference, when they can just hang out with reenactors for a day?

Oh yes, the things you can learn by hanging out with reenactors for a day.

I never really understood the hardcore reenactors. And looking back after some time away from the hobby, their actions seem even more bizarre.

For those unfamiliar with the various breeds of reenactor, there are two main branches: the hardcores and the farbs (a farb is a reenactor that plays fast and loose with historical authenticity. no one really knows where the term came from).

Obviously there is a lot of variation among these branches. The milder hardcores will sleep in the brush under a lean-to, while the insane dedicated ones will not wash their uniforms for years at a time to give their clothes that authentic grubby look and stench (ah, the smell of gunpowder, tobacco, mud, wood smoke, and wearing-wool-in-the-middle-of-July sweat). Then there are the batshit insane roleplaying reenactors, who will go to an event and act like an employee at Colonial Williamsburg or Plymouth Plantations. That last type was thankfully extremely rare where I reenacted, and the roleplaying was only really enforced in living history scenarios (like the two medical scenarios I participated in. Those were fun).

Then there are the farbs. The really mild ones (I was this type) will use modern things to make reenacting a little more comfortable, but in such a way that the modern things are not readily apparent. For example, I scotchguarded my tent to keep the rain out. I would sometimes grab a burger from a vendor for lunch, but I would eat it before returning to the camp. And the food I brought was taken out of its modern packaging and stored in more period-appropriate containers. Then there are the really major farbs who really don't give a shit. Those guys will smoke filtered Camels and drink Coors from the can at the encampments.

So yeah, the main educational value of a reenactment is seeing how crazy people can be without actually being violently crazy.

[Elfdart]

Any layman who thinks their opinion about a certain subject is at least as valid as an expert in this subject

Good Lord, yes! I remember reading a blog post once on the American Civil War that said, verbatim:

Why do academics and teachers need to have these conference, when they can just hang out with reenactors for a day?

You can learn that soldiers in the 1800s were mostly middle-aged fatties.

[Ford Prefect]

For example, while conspiracy theories tend to be stupid, I suspect that a lot of people who are poorly versed in logic and science might get taken in by this "moon landing hoax" or "9/11 truth" arguments. They're certainly stupid by my standards as a university-educated technical professional, but those are relatively high standards. By the standards of an ordinary average person, they're not stupid.

To be frank, I find the notion that anyone, even the average layperson, could believe int he moon landing hoax to be completely preposterous. I thought the idea that they were faked to be completely ridiculous when I was eight years old. Admittedly this is probably not because of logical deduction but rather just 'gut instinct', but I know I thought it would have been a waste of time to put all that work into not going to the moon. I can't even begin to fathom how people could be convinced that the moon landings never happened. It literally doesn't compute for me.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Even when I was a child, I knew that the Soviets would've made a serious stink about the Western attempt to reach the moon being entirely faked if they couldn't detect a successful launch. I didn't need to know the science; I just knew the geopolitics well enough.

[Aratech]

3. That Christianity has no external influence. I remember getting into an argument w/ my mother a few years back that eggs and bunnies at easter were hold-overs from pagan fertility festivals while she exclaimed that they were symbols of "rebirth" and "the empty tomb!" and such.

Wow, first time I've actually ever heard this argument. Seriously, I've talked with YEC's that readily acknowledge that the RCC and other early churches modified dates and incorporated symbols from other religions and cultures in order to make conversion to Christianity less jarring.


On topic, not really sure if it qualifies, but people who believe that all Nuclear reactors are ticking time bombs waiting to go off like the next Hiroshima or Nagasaki if someone so much as looks at the reactor core funny. I say that I'm not sure because I had the benefit of living a 'reasonable' distance from a nuke plant that my old man actually spent nearly two decades working at (and took a 4th grade class field trip too, no less) and my general understanding of how they operate was likely much better than most other kids my age.

[Cairber]

One I ran into today: Not believing in germ theory.

oh yeah, and the same conversation had some discussion of HIV/AIDS being man made or some other crap conspiracy theory.

[Aratech]

One I ran into today: Not believing in germ theory.

Was this person claiming what I think they're claiming?

[Cairber]

You can take a look at the evidence they provided for me:

try not to laugh too hard

I was told to read: The Persecution and Trial of Gaston Naessens by Christopher Bird

And this guy was praised: link


We could also say that anyone who would trust a website like link #1 is ignorant at best.

[Skgoa]

People who insist that communism really was a good idea but was just done wrong.

OK, I'm gonna swallow the bait: how is communism (in itself) a stupid idea? please note that I'm not talking about stalinist dictatorship and their claim that "if you just believe in the system without questionig why those in power get the best of everything, communism will come by itself."

[The Spartan]

You can take a look at the evidence they provided for me:

try not to laugh too hard

I'm certainly not laughing. In fact, I can't stop saying, "WHAT!?" over and over.

How the hell can someone think that a microbe becomes a bacteria becomes a fungus becomes a virus? And that because of that germ theory is wrong?

For fuck's sake we have microscopes that let us see the damn things and watch their development and so forth. Hell for a fungus to become a virus it would have to regress, substantially, over many, many generations and become something that is much, much more primitive.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Yeah, but that falls into the same category as Noah's Ark: part of a general package of YEC beliefs. Can anyone think of anything outside YEC which is similarly so stupid that even a child can see through it?

PS. Mind you, a lot of children don't know why inbreeding is bad. Even a child should think to ask himself how the fuck Noah acquired and kept penguins and polar bears in the Middle East.

Erm pro wrestling?


actually besdies the whole middle east thing, the whole more incest thing, and things being too small. Basically fundamentalism has the flaw of taking a set of ALAGORIES and VERSE handed down by oral tradition and thinking that it's the whole of the truth.

My comment that once got me in trouble at work:
fundy boss: What you believe in Evolution?
Me: And there are people who have had more then one cold in their lives who don't?

[Junghalli]

You can take a look at the evidence they provided for me:

try not to laugh too hard

Let me guess. I have to pay them money to get a book on what I should eat to keep my acid levels down?

I wonder how many of the people who write things like this actually believe their own bullshit, and how many are just skimming money from brainless credulous fools.

[Aratech]

You can take a look at the evidence they provided for me:

try not to laugh too hard

Let me guess. I have to pay them money to get a book on what I should eat to keep my acid levels down?

I wonder how many of the people who write things like this actually believe their own bullshit, and how many are just skimming money from brainless credulous fools.

I think that article killed some of my brain cells, and I hope he's just scamming people... and by all that's holy, I can't believe I just said that.

It's a sad day when I reach the point where I'm desperately holding onto hope that an individual is trying to con someone out of their money rather than being that 'how in the hell have you survived this long?!' level stupid.

[JediToren]

The hard-core anti-vaccination people are really stupid. These guys go beyond the standard anti-MMR idiocy and declare that vaccination itself is a massive fraud.

Of course, anyone stupid enough to reject vaccination in its entirity must explain the successful eradication of smallpox from the natural world. Their answers range from standard conspiracy bs, claiming that smallpox is still around but diagnosed as other diseases to cover up the failure of the vaccine to the eradication being due to water sanitation or similar nonsense.

[Cairber]

I feel like people who constantly appeal to tradition in their arguments and in their daily decisions should be included here. I think it is especially ignorant because you don't have to do any thinking for yourself: you simply glide along doing what has been done before you and use that as your excuse. Phrased as an opinion, I think it would be having the belief that "X is good if people have been doing it for a long time" and, obviously, you get a lot of religious arguments that are made from this standpoint.

[Mayabird]

One conspiracy nut's site I read said that smallpox eradication was due to washing machines. I shit thee not. Supposedly it was spread by parasites in people's bedsheets. So naturally, when people washed their sheets...because they didn't before washing machines...and there are washing machines all over the world including middle of nowhere shitholes in Ethiopia...damnit, I can't continue. There are almost as many things wrong with that as there is with that "germ theory is a fraud!" site, though the latter has multiple layers of idiocy.

[Singular Intellect]

Nothing confirms someone's stupidity for me more than them beginning or including their argument/assertion with "I believe...".

[Knife]

I feel like people who constantly appeal to tradition in their arguments and in their daily decisions should be included here. I think it is especially ignorant because you don't have to do any thinking for yourself: you simply glide along doing what has been done before you and use that as your excuse. Phrased as an opinion, I think it would be having the belief that "X is good if people have been doing it for a long time" and, obviously, you get a lot of religious arguments that are made from this standpoint.

Indeed, there are quite a few things I find that need caution and long term approach to, ie: conservative thought to. However, when that turns to appeals to tradition I seriously chaffe at the collar. It reminds me of those groups who wish to live life as their ancient ancestor's do. Fish in the same shitty bay with col 'd/hot weather or adverse weather, yet they all want TV and modern medicine.

When all is good they cling to the 'old ways' yet when the old ways would have gotten the village killed, they scream for help. I would prefer if most people tried their damnedest to live in this fucking century.

[Spyder]

The opinion that corporations acting in their own best interests are acting in everyone's best interests. Tells me everything I need to know about them right then and there.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

How about people who honestly think that there is no life in the entire universe except what is on Earth? Even if a child has no idea how big the universe actually is (it still boggles my mind on occasion) they know that there are huge numbers of stars and planets out there and things can no doubt live on some of them.

[Samuel]

People who insist that communism really was a good idea but was just done wrong.

OK, I'm gonna swallow the bait: how is communism (in itself) a stupid idea? please note that I'm not talking about stalinist dictatorship and their claim that "if you just believe in the system without questionig why those in power get the best of everything, communism will come by itself."

It requires realizing that some people are lazy and that unless you have some method of countering that, people will freeload. That and the fact there is no clear line between exploitive investment and non-exploitive and the dictotomy of the prolitariet and burgoise is a false dilemma.... Darth Wong took it apart on his sit- look under essays.

It just requires and individual think about it for a moment. Remember, the problem now is that people are selfish and greedy- how will changing governments change that?

[Patrick Degan]

People who insist that communism really was a good idea but was just done wrong.

OK, I'm gonna swallow the bait: how is communism (in itself) a stupid idea? please note that I'm not talking about stalinist dictatorship and their claim that "if you just believe in the system without questionig why those in power get the best of everything, communism will come by itself."

The problem with communism is that it works dandy on paper, but unfortunately is pinned on the same fundamentally broken assumption as libertarianism: of perfect people in a perfect world all behaving perfectly. The former is one-up on the latter insofar, as Stas Bush pointed out in another thread, that it at least recognises the problem of human selfishness and that a radical change to eliminate it is required. It's from that point, unfortunately, that all the other problems trying to make a communist system work come into the picture.

[Darth Wong]

To be more precise, communism doesn't require people to be perfect, but it does require them to make no distinction between collective self-interest and individual self-interest. To which the obvious rebuttal is that if people were really like that, you wouldn't need to set up any particular socio-economic system in order to improve society.

Libertarianism has a similar conceit: it assumes that the banker would not do anything shady or dishonest in order to generate huge short-term profit for himself, because it would be bad for the company and for society. As if the banker will necessarily think that way. The really sad thing is that we have had such a truly profound disproof of this theory in the last six months, and the libertarians still cling doggedly to it.