You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Pfft comments on Open thread, August 4 - 10, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: polymathwannabe 04 August 2014 12:20PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (307)
Tags: open_thread

Comments (307)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 August 2014 08:11:44PM 1 point [-]

That blog post assumes that actual stupidity is never the "real" problem. I beg to disagree.

Comment author: Pfft 11 August 2014 08:18:47PM *  2 points [-]

Or does it?

They may have raw intelligence, but poor thinking habits—patterns of absorbing, processing, and filing information. Cognitively, they aren’t set up to get to the heart of a matter, to distinguish between essential and accidental details, to form and apply valid generalizations. This too may require patience. It isn’t good, but it isn’t willful, irrational, or stupid. Concentrate on what other virtues and talents they bring to the table, such as creativity, diligence, or relationship-building.

This seems to mean exactly "maybe they are stupid after all", but expressed using a different set of words.

(I would guess that the author at some point adopted "never think that someone is stupid" as a deontological rule, and then unintentionally evolved a different set of words to be able to think about stupidity without triggering the filter...)

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit