You can actually also learn to be less stupid in school and it would still be called “education.”
I know that some of my teachers occasionally tried to teach us how to think critically. How to solve problems. They made me write arguments. There were debate classes that I didn’t take. They taught some philosophy in my English classes. Math had word problems.
I’d like it if all that stuff was part of the official curriculum and they had a required critical thinking course or something. But it wasn’t nothing.
Are you suggesting that one’s stupidity is determined at birth and then their stupidity can never decrease? But even with a strange definition like that, I would argue that a good education plan would keep your brain from atrophying, and so the net result would be the same as if education decreased stupidity.
I would say that everybody starts out with a genetic baseline of stupidity that can never decrease, but it can increase due to environmental factors.
It’s not like there’s a hard and set rule, but everyone has some stupidity. Remember that stupidity is not ignorance. Stupidity by definition is “a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit, an inability to learn. It may be innate, assumed or reactive.”
If you are cured of your stupidity, then either something has happened to you physically to increase your intelligence, like perchance you had a blocked artery in your brain that was freed, and therefore the new blood flow has unlocked increased mental faculty, or your stupidity was based in ignorance, which is not stupidity in and of itself despite being a stupid thing.
No, just because you’re stupid doesn’t mean you can’t learn.
You just tend to learn more slowly than other people.
Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean that you are always correct. It means that you can learn the wrong information faster.
The difference between a bad stupid person or a bad smart person and a good stupid person and a good smart person is what information they have absorbed and processed and what they do with it.
That’s aside from the entire point that stupidity is a spectrum, like you might be the world’s greatest theoretical physicist, but be completely incapable of wearing matching socks without somebody putting them on you for you.
Agreed… however, I find it hard to believe that a person with an education (i.e. a solid base of knowledge) would be as susceptible to stupid ideas as ignorant people are. Maybe this is where the message got muddled for me.
For example, a person with a normal knowledge of science (let’s say European highschool level), should be immune to the notion the Earth is flat… maybe it takes them longer to convince themselves (if they are stupid and as you say, slower to “get there”)
No, you are correct. That’s why I’m not saying that stupidity is the cause of evil actions in society.
I’m just saying that stupid people are less likely to learn good information because they only have so much energy they can put into learning.
And stupid thoughts and stupid conclusions can just as easily crowd out good thoughts and good conclusions as good thoughts and conclusions can crowd out stupid ones.
But stupid thoughts and stupid conclusions are a lot easier than good ones.
For instance, people are still mocking the Dakota pipeline protests. They are saying that it’s stupid because the gas and fuel has to get across those destinations, and you will burn more gas and fuel moving the gas and fuel to those locations without using a pipeline, while they’re overlooking the fact that the objections to the Dakota pipeline was due to not wanting environmental contamination and religious site disruption across native lands.
They are also overlooking that the pipeline protests could have been ended by the oil and fuel companies spending more money to route around native lands that the protesters wanted to protect, and the reason why the protests were violently shut down is that the oil companies did not want to spend the money to meet their requirements or to even do an effective environmental assessment before deploying the pipeline.
They believe themselves to be smart by pointing out the logistical flaw in the objections to the pipeline while overlooking the actual flaw, and so therefore their entire objection is stupid and based off of stupidity.
Education is only a cure for ignorance.
There are many stupid people that are very highly educated.
You can actually also learn to be less stupid in school and it would still be called “education.”
I know that some of my teachers occasionally tried to teach us how to think critically. How to solve problems. They made me write arguments. There were debate classes that I didn’t take. They taught some philosophy in my English classes. Math had word problems.
I’d like it if all that stuff was part of the official curriculum and they had a required critical thinking course or something. But it wasn’t nothing.
I would argue in those cases that you didn’t learn to be less stupid, you learned smarter things.
Your brain is still clocked at the same speed, you’re just performing more efficient processes.
Are you suggesting that one’s stupidity is determined at birth and then their stupidity can never decrease? But even with a strange definition like that, I would argue that a good education plan would keep your brain from atrophying, and so the net result would be the same as if education decreased stupidity.
I would say that everybody starts out with a genetic baseline of stupidity that can never decrease, but it can increase due to environmental factors.
It’s not like there’s a hard and set rule, but everyone has some stupidity. Remember that stupidity is not ignorance. Stupidity by definition is “a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit, an inability to learn. It may be innate, assumed or reactive.”
If you are cured of your stupidity, then either something has happened to you physically to increase your intelligence, like perchance you had a blocked artery in your brain that was freed, and therefore the new blood flow has unlocked increased mental faculty, or your stupidity was based in ignorance, which is not stupidity in and of itself despite being a stupid thing.
I think you are confusing those who can buy a degree vs those who actually earn one.
No, just because you’re stupid doesn’t mean you can’t learn.
You just tend to learn more slowly than other people.
Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean that you are always correct. It means that you can learn the wrong information faster.
The difference between a bad stupid person or a bad smart person and a good stupid person and a good smart person is what information they have absorbed and processed and what they do with it.
That’s aside from the entire point that stupidity is a spectrum, like you might be the world’s greatest theoretical physicist, but be completely incapable of wearing matching socks without somebody putting them on you for you.
Agreed… however, I find it hard to believe that a person with an education (i.e. a solid base of knowledge) would be as susceptible to stupid ideas as ignorant people are. Maybe this is where the message got muddled for me.
For example, a person with a normal knowledge of science (let’s say European highschool level), should be immune to the notion the Earth is flat… maybe it takes them longer to convince themselves (if they are stupid and as you say, slower to “get there”)
No, you are correct. That’s why I’m not saying that stupidity is the cause of evil actions in society.
I’m just saying that stupid people are less likely to learn good information because they only have so much energy they can put into learning.
And stupid thoughts and stupid conclusions can just as easily crowd out good thoughts and good conclusions as good thoughts and conclusions can crowd out stupid ones.
But stupid thoughts and stupid conclusions are a lot easier than good ones.
For instance, people are still mocking the Dakota pipeline protests. They are saying that it’s stupid because the gas and fuel has to get across those destinations, and you will burn more gas and fuel moving the gas and fuel to those locations without using a pipeline, while they’re overlooking the fact that the objections to the Dakota pipeline was due to not wanting environmental contamination and religious site disruption across native lands.
They are also overlooking that the pipeline protests could have been ended by the oil and fuel companies spending more money to route around native lands that the protesters wanted to protect, and the reason why the protests were violently shut down is that the oil companies did not want to spend the money to meet their requirements or to even do an effective environmental assessment before deploying the pipeline.
They believe themselves to be smart by pointing out the logistical flaw in the objections to the pipeline while overlooking the actual flaw, and so therefore their entire objection is stupid and based off of stupidity.
Mark Rober is Mormon.
He helped build the Mars rover but he’s Mormon. I was so shocked to find that out recently, like what?
How are you that smart and dumb at the same time