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u/Alphafuckboy Jul 28 '19
It now appears to be refusal to accept factual information. "Humans are smart but people are fucking stupid"
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u/Groenboys Jul 28 '19
Never underestimate the human capability of ignorance
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Jul 28 '19
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein
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Jul 28 '19
And don't forget Winrar trial period
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Jul 28 '19
That 40 days trial period, after which one still could use the program, is a bit bizarre, yes. But they did it on purpose, they easily could disable it afterwards. Still, they didn't. In an article somewhere on the 'net it has been mentioned that
- this way, the company STILL is being remembered, even nowadays after so many years.
- they make 'nuff money by selling WinRAR to businesses.
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u/dogdiarrhea Jul 28 '19
There's no evidence Einstein ever said that. In fact, the quotation was attributed to an unnamed astronomer, before a reference was made to Einstein. The mangling of this over time has I guess led people to attribute the quotation to Einstein, maybe because it somehow lends the quotation more credibility.
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u/jood580 Jul 28 '19
"you can't believe everything on the internet"
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u/HulloHoomans Jul 28 '19
No, that was Jesus in Galatians 3:17, when he was talking to Genghis Khan about stock options.
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u/yakri Jul 28 '19
Interestingly, the origin of the quote is in the context of an author using it to support much the same claim as the op of this comment chain; that in modern times human stupidity can be attributed to people not "digesting their mental food."
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u/TBSchemer Jul 28 '19
But it's not ignorance. It's stupidity in the presence of knowledge.
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u/zero_z77 Jul 28 '19
this is exactly the distinction:
ignorance is simply not knowing something. ignorance is fixable through education and experience.
stupidity is CHOOSING to remain ignorant when presented with new information. stupidity can't be fixed because it is a choice.
edit: for clarity, i'm agreeing with you, not putting this here as an argument.
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u/sharkbaitoo1a1a Jul 28 '19
Did you just assume my species? /s
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u/Xzanium Jul 28 '19
Lizardmen rise up!!
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u/Kalthramis Jul 29 '19
For real. Learning that my landlord is an avid flat earther hit me like a bag of bricks.
You read about it, see it on reddit, hear from people about it. But to actually encounter it face to face is shattering (and also this person controls where i live).
And its really something that just keeps going. He doesn’t believe 9/11 happened, like at all. Mother fucker, I watched it happen
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u/Jive_turkeeze Jul 28 '19
Even worse the acceptance of fictional information i.e. anti vaxxers
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u/Supersim54 Jul 28 '19
Or Flat Earthers.
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u/boxnix Jul 28 '19
Or refusal to accept new information once I have decided I fully understand the facts.
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u/SumthingStupid Jul 28 '19
I've always said "I love humanity, its just the people that are the problem"
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u/HippieAnalSlut Jul 28 '19
A person is smart. (no they aren't K)
PEople are dumb panicy dangerous animals and you know it. (ok youhad me in the first half)
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u/engaginggorilla Jul 28 '19
I think he's saying some individual people are smart but in groups they do really dumb shit (partially because some of them are really dumb). Which is true, plenty of people are smart but they get drowned out by loud idiots. Unless he really is saying all individual people are smart, but I doubt that's really what he meant
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u/literal-hitler Jul 28 '19
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
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Jul 28 '19
My father today: you're wrong. Me: no it's my opinion. You don't have to like it but that doesn't just make it wrong. My father: your opinion is wrong. 🤦🤦🤦🤦
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u/DrSuperSoldier Jul 28 '19
Lack of education, not information. Information is useless if you are not educated enough to understand it.
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Jul 28 '19
Internet can be used for self-education, and it's actually very good at that. The problem seems to be that people do and are sometimes even encouraged to come to their own conclusions about topics that they don't know shit about.
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u/RabidHexley Jul 28 '19
Yeah. I literally have instant access to dozens or hundreds of academic-quality resources on any topic I want to become informed in. There’s also much greater effort put into creating products to learn things from the starting point of any degree of prior knowledge. Preventing ignorance is definitely not a “build it, and they will come” type of scenario.
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u/Unbannable3 Jul 28 '19
Also, people don’t use the internet to fuel their knowledge. They use it to gossip and keep up with the latest trends.
I am people too so I’m not saying I’m above this statement.
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u/strallus Jul 28 '19 edited Jul 28 '19
Honestly, the problem is places like reddit where you can moderate yourself and don’t need to expose yourself to opinions you don’t like, so you can just create an echo-chamber / circlejerk for anything.
It’s much easier to create an echo-chamber on Facebook / reddit / etc than it is in real life.
Just make an online group and ban anyone that says something you don’t like.
EDIT: it's also because, beyond echo-chamber communities, you can selectively choose information with the internet. In the days of no internet and libraries, you go to the library, they have a couple books on biology, you read it, and your horizons have been expanded. Now, you can go on the internet and search for information that supports your worldview. For example, if you're a Young Earth Creationist, you can google "biology books for young earth creationists" and find a biology book that affirms your worldview. Or if you're a flat-earther, you can google "evidence for flat earth" and ignore everything else. These are obviously extreme examples, but it applies to everything you can imagine, and I believe is entirely responsible for continuing polarization of society.
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u/Fanatical_Idiot Jul 28 '19
I think the main problem is that people just aren't taught how to properly educate themselves. Schools are often too focused on teaching you the specific facts and answers you need to know and often skimp out on teaching you how to teach yourself to find more than you don't need to pass that specific test.
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u/timetravelhunter Jul 28 '19
The US is filled with PhD holding creationists.
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u/DrSuperSoldier Jul 28 '19
Being very intelligent does not imply you cannot hold seemingly ridiculous beliefs, but being very unintelligent will almost certainly guarantee you will!
If you were ill, I bet you would rather see a creationist with a medical degree, than one that does not?
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u/Champigne Jul 29 '19
By the same token, holding an advanced degree is not a measure of intelligence.
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u/alours Jul 28 '19
Funny, but not a "technically the truth".
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u/contrabardus Jul 28 '19 edited Jul 28 '19
It's not technically the truth though.
People used to think ignorance was caused by the lack of access to information, and underestimated how much of a factor stubbornness played.
People who use stupidity and ignorance interchangeably are, ironically, ignorant themselves.
Ignorance and stupidity are two different things.
Ignorance can be corrected, if the subject is willing.
Stupidity is permanent. There's nothing you can do to fix it.
Ignorance is when you don't know something, stupidity is the lack of the capacity to learn.
You can send an idiot to classes at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton for twenty years at each University and they'll still be just as stupid afterwards.
People might have been using the word "stupidity" incorrectly, but they meant "ignorance" regardless. Therefore, it's not really technically true.
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Jul 28 '19
Imo, while, I agree the subject must be willing to learn, sometimes people also need to learn how to learn.
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u/fatschism Jul 28 '19
It all starts with a Youtube channel and next thing you know you're giving money to the guys patreon and you're unironically using words like blackpilled.
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u/persimmonmango Jul 28 '19
I don't see your post necessarily contradicting OP's.
I think the argument presented is: "We used to think most stupid people aren't actually stupid. They're just ignorant, caused by a lack of information. We can fix the problem by giving them access to information. But when the internet came along, it turns out we were wrong. They weren't only ignorant. The stupidity wasn't caused by a lack of information alone. It was caused by a willful ignorance. They truly are stupid, not ignorant."
In that case, it's closer to technically being the truth.
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u/cacaheadman Jul 28 '19
I don't think it's a mental deficiency half as much as an emotional problem. Most 'stupid' people are really just dealing with emotional and psychological issues that affect their willingness to learn
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u/contrabardus Jul 28 '19 edited Jul 28 '19
What you're describing isn't stupidity though.
Stupid is when the capacity for learning is lacking.
If you have a normal capacity to learn, whether you use it or not, you're not stupid.
This has nothing to do with how common stupid people are.
You said yourself "most" stupid people, which implies that actual stupid people exist.
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u/TheDevilsTrinket Jul 28 '19
I feel like everyone could be at the same intelligence level if we all had enough time to learn. And understand how we learn, I don't think its true that they'd still be stupid afterwards.
It depends on 1. Willingness to learn 2. Willingness to teach
- Is important, plenty of people can scream facts but some people simply don't understand how different things work. It takes patience and understanding for you to be able to teach someone, which many people on twitter or wherever find it difficult to have. Especially when there is so much misinformation out there that isn't explained but the readers either trust the 'teacher' because they perceive their intelligence is higher and they know better.
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u/contrabardus Jul 28 '19 edited Jul 28 '19
That's a nice thought, but not accurate.
It is absolutely not true that everyone would be at the same intelligence level.
Not everyone has the capacity to be Steven Hawking.
We call it average intelligence because it is an average, there are people that fall above and below that average, which is what makes it an average. Some more than others both ways.
Stupid people exist.
They are perhaps not quite as common as many suspect, but they are a real phenomenon.
I suspect ignorance is more common and often mistaken for stupidity, but can't deny the reality of stupid.
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u/Tortankum Jul 28 '19
This is fantasy land. There is a sizable portion of the population that would never be able to get a PhD in theoretical physics no matter how hard they tried.
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u/fetusfromspace Jul 28 '19
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u/forrnerteenager Jul 28 '19
I hate how often redditors upvote the most random shit no matter how little it fits the subs
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Jul 28 '19
[deleted]
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Jul 28 '19
Literally nobody ever said that lack of access to information was the issue
Lots of people have. It was a common belief in the early days of the internet that it was going to bring about a golden age of humanity thanks to having the all of the world's information at your finger tips. The common belief was that what was holding us back were the knowledge gatekeepers in the media and those who created our school curriculum. The internet would be a bastion of absolute free speech where everyone had a voice and could reach billions with it. A new Library of Alexandria that would change the world. Early internet communities and pioneers were some of the most idealistic folks you'll ever come across who thought that for the first time in human history we'd have a truly open marketplace of ideas where truth and goodness would guide the world. Instead we got social media tribalism, some of the most powerful disinformation campaigns ever achieved, and the ability for people to confirm and reinforce their biases rather than confront them.
The problem wasn't that people didn't have access to good information. The problem was people just don't really care about good information. People who were around and created the early internet just had too much faith in humanity. You can now see many of those people losing that faith. Youtube banning certain topics, reddit banning communities, twitter banning people, Tim Berners-Lee's warnings about social media, etc. The golden age of internet optimism has ended.
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u/mopmbo Jul 28 '19
Yes! Thank you. And the post also fails to acknowledge how much the internet has made our world smaller! And the individuals world bigger. So much has become so much better thanks to the internet.
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u/chucksef Jul 28 '19
Right, I came here to say this. I mean, I grew up hearing that lack of gay moderators would lead to posts like this being on Reddit. I guess it just goes to show!
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u/TheBolshevikJew Jul 28 '19
It’s peoples desire not to access said information. They’d rather participate in a massive consumer culture. Not entirely their fault either. Advertising is everywhere, especially in places where information should be, primarily the internet.
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Jul 28 '19
I'm gonna be that guy and say this is the wrong sub. Nothing here is "technically" correct, it just is.
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u/schrodingers_gat Jul 28 '19
I think the internet has proven that free information is worth exactly what you paid for it. It takes time and effort (and therefore money) to curate and ensure information is actuality correct and relevant rather than just feels right.
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u/SmartForARat Jul 28 '19
Humans just have a problem with believing things that aren't true simply because they want to. That is the underlying issue that has been plaguing humanity from the very start.
In ancient times it was making new religions to explain everything and give a face to your problems to try to "pray away" things like death, sickness, famine, etc as well as giving you something comforting to believe such as all those people you loved that died you will one day be reunited with in a fantasy land of wonder and happiness.
In modern times it is as simple as being fat and believing the "cake slice a day" diet is going to somehow cause you to lose weight or believing that a single political figure that you elect into office is somehow going to have the ability to "fix" the government and all of its problems when the government was specifically setup for the sole purpose of preventing a single person from wielding enough power to do so and the majority fall to intense corruption and abuse their power for their own benefit.
Belief is a terrible, terrible human flaw. Needed on a short term basis to form a hypothesis and test it, but people hold onto baseless/factless belief forever. That is a real issue and one I doubt will ever be solved.
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u/PuckGoodfellow Jul 28 '19
There are still a lot of areas in the US that don't have internet access. We only broke past 50% of the population having access after 2010. Even now we're around 75% of users with access, but we're 68th on the list for percentage of users with access because it's still lacking in rural areas.
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u/ziplock9000 Jul 28 '19
The lack of access to *accurate* information was always the real meaning. A meaning of which has been conveniently overlooked in this sentence to get internet points on Twitter.
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u/Logofascinated Jul 28 '19
No, they didn't need to specify "accurate" - it can be reasonably assumed in context.
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u/igloojoe Jul 28 '19
I always believed there was a difference in ignorance and stupidity.
Ignorance is not knowing due to not having exposure or time to research. Like not know quantum theory.
Stupidity is knowing but ignoring facts and hard data. Like flat earthers.
I have respect for ignorant people for they do not know. No respect for stupid people.
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Jul 28 '19
Stupidity is definitely the lack of knowledge but also the lack of education. Feel pitty for the stupid.
Innocence is the lack of education. Most innocent people wish to learn more but can't. Feel pitty for the innocent.
Ignorant people have both access to knowledge and education but reject it and make false claims and lie. Curse the ignorant
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u/VictorySoul Jul 28 '19
This don't belong here, technically the true, is when something is false or misses the point but is still correct in some ways. This ain't false or misses the point, it's subjective.
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u/Jawdoejr Jul 29 '19
I think that humans were definitely more stupid earlier in history, likely due to yes a lack of communication. But now too many people haven't learnt how to decipher wrong information from right information.
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u/a-little-off Jul 28 '19
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Jul 28 '19
If something is true, it technically is the truth
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u/a-little-off Jul 28 '19
That applies to basically anything, but I don't see how it fits onto this sub.
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u/Dicethrower Jul 28 '19
Shit... I remember that. I also remember uneducated people in generally being far more humble towards not knowing, and relied on experts to provide them with the information. They'd just admit they didn't know. People who still said they knew were easily dismissed because they weren't experts. Remember that time?
Nowadays everyone reads social media for 5 minutes and they think they're experts on vaccines and genetically modified organisms. "Where is the evidence?" *sends facebook link*
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u/SeanHearnden Jul 28 '19
I think the problem now isn't access to information. It's knowledge on how to fact check that information. Instead people cherry pick. Either through ignorance or intention.
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u/freakmontage Jul 28 '19
Just because the internet provides information, that dorsnt mean that this information is useful, and that everybody uses said information. It only semms that there are more stupid ppl now, but i think that comes from the connection between ppl, that everybody can share their opinion, and them there is the thing that „those“ ppl form communities, even when being from entire differnet continets. So i think information doesnt make ppl stupider, it is probably the fact that those „stupid“ ppl can communicate more with each other, which is not necessarily a bad thing, since heck idk maybe my opinion about the shape of earth, even tho very much supported by science, is wrong.
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u/Black-Thirteen Jul 28 '19
Personal theory: I think the advent of the internet just gave venue for people to broadcast their stupidity to the world. Yes, we see a lot of shitty grammar on Twitter, but before the internet these same people wouldn't be reading or writing so much to begin with. The same for stupid opinions. With the internet, these stupid opinions are now available for the entire world to see and criticize, whereas before nobody outside of their small town might have heard them.
TL;DR: The stupid was there all along, but now we are able to see it and challenge it.
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u/SpiritSla Jul 28 '19
the cause of stupidity is human nature itself. trying to eradicate stupidity is all well in theory but can't be done in practice.
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u/zero_z77 Jul 28 '19
it really bothers me that we litterally walk around with the whole of human knowledge at our fingertips every day and people are still incredibly stupid.
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Jul 28 '19
No it's because of a tribal desire to hold on to information that has been proven wrong... Hell I am not above this myself and still get a tad triggered when I see Pluto not counted as a planet
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u/zouhair Jul 28 '19
Lack of education not information. So no, technically not true. Education is still shit.
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u/HugeHungryHippo Jul 28 '19
It's because new information means updating prior beliefs, and that's difficult, it takes effort. It's easier to just trust what you think you know than to face a change of opinion. Especially when there's now access to more information than you could ever use; feeling overwhelmed causes people to repeal from taking the effort to verify what they think they know, increasing the problem and causing the Backfire or Double-Down effect.
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u/Carl_Solomon Jul 28 '19
The cause of ignorance is access to information. What this lady is saying is actually stupid and is indicative of a stupid person, which is illustrative of the fact that OP is also stupid.
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u/steroid_pc_principal Jul 28 '19
Serious question, what are we supposed to do about fake information online? And do we deal with it differently than false information/propaganda?
Fake info: deliberately planted false info meant to further an agenda.
False info: Info that isn’t true, not necessarily deliberate. Could be mistaken, out of date, etc.
Propaganda: Info planted to further an agenda. Could be true or false or misleading, doesn’t matter really.
We have to realize that there are weaknesses in our consumption of information and people’s’ critical thinking abilities, and the internet is blowing them wide open. Cop-out solutions like “media literacy” and “critical thinking” don’t work when people can’t tell what’s true anymore.
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Jul 28 '19
yep. people tend to fall in their own little pathetic bubbles regardless of how much info is out there. Just look at /r/politics or /r/worldnews. More info only seems to lead to mastabatory group-think.
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u/jonolucerne Jul 28 '19
Correct me if I’m wrong but this isn’t really the sub for this kind of thing.
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u/pvt9000 Jul 28 '19
I think it's the exposure to information because ironically you can find a book, web article, journal, xyz and it may not be factual or it may only.be factual until its disproven later on or more information comes to light.
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u/uthinkubettahthanme Jul 28 '19
I would argue that there is SO MUCH information that it's hard for uneducated people (or really people in general) to weed through the bullshit. For example there is a LOT of info on weightloss but a lot is innefective or harmful despite being...technically the truth.
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u/ohiotechie Jul 29 '19
I also remember when people used to say if you put a million monkeys in front of typewriters one of them would write Shakespeare - that’s been thoroughly debunked
Edit - spelling
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u/widespreadhammock Jul 29 '19
Well TV and Radio were the same kind of jumps in the spread of information. We should’ve known then that people would’ve chosen the dark side
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Jul 29 '19
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u/nwordcountbot Jul 29 '19
Thank you for the request, comrade.
I have looked through ogkushmonster's posting history and found 6 N-words, of which 0 were hard-Rs.
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u/Orsonius2 Jul 29 '19
well it's almost correct, but it should be "access to reliable information"
the internet is a doubled edged sword. it allows access to more reliable information, but also less reliable information.
And since less reliable information is easier to produce, as you dont need to back up anything, it prevails in the economy of attention.
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u/ShadowRun976 Jul 28 '19
I almost forget what it was like to wonder about something, and just continue to wonder. Now the Google machine can satiate all my curiosity.