Theory of Stupidity

[Count Chocula]

1 hour ago, RandomKhajiit said:

gluttony is a higher tier of greed really, but I'd imagine ego which leads to ignorance leads to stupidity given ego blinds you to thought and truth. just my 2 cents on it.

Let's rate the seven deadly sins. Which one is the deadliest and which one is the sinniest?

Edited April 26, 2025 by chocula

[Darkpig]

2 minutes ago, RandomKhajiit said:

that would be a debate between pride and wrath both are dangerous in a range of they own vs the other 5 to both the person giving themselves over to them and everything around them. however once greed is pushed into gluttony the only thing stopping it is death or a miracle which is something impossible that happens anyway. lust though that one doesn't really have an extreme, so I'd say it's the most dangerous and the sinniest. just as love works in both directions of the vice and virtue spectrum its the strongest of all emotions but the most unstable. put love and lust together for a sec......

I have heard that pride is the king of sins. Based on the recent doubling down on all things stupid I'd say there is merit to that statement. Then again saying you have pride has been considered a good thing ever since the song God Bless the U.S.A. came out. Maybe even earlier. I have a feeling that Psychology might provide the answer we need.

[Darkpig]

22 hours ago, RandomKhajiit said:

true enough pride is a double edge sword also, it can make you unstoppable against something or a complete monster. all the 7 sins have the same edge to them none of them are truly good or evil, it's the person themselves deciding that with intentions. in the end it's the persons intentions that decide the fate of themselves. keep your ego in check when it comes to your intentions it can and will blind you to truth and knowledge.

The smartest people check their findings before talking about it and the stupidest people without checking their facts spout stupid shit to make other people as stupid as them. We need smart people with enough pride in their work to keep stupid people in check but not so much pride as to end up sounding stupid themselves. Basically check your facts.

 

[Jyratx]

I try to be objective and keep an open mind on plenty of things. I... don't know how successful I am or am not in that regard. What can first appear as someone else's stupidity can easily be one's own stupidity projected on to that someone else. Ego also plays a big part in it; a person can very intelligent but have an oversized ego that leads them into situations in which they end up looking like an idiot because they refuse to admit that they were wrong among other things. In that regard, I believe being humbled is an invaluable learning tool... as much for any outside observer as for the egotistical one. Why learn only from your mistakes when you can learn from the mistakes of others?

Emotion is yet another problematic part of it. People who are overly emotional won't likely see logic until their emotions wear off (assuming they do), and overly logical people likely won't understand why the overly emotional people are so emotional. I think the key is to be both without fully being either... if that makes sense. 

I live my life with the belief that I control very little, I know very little, am of little significance therefore am of little consequence. There's no shame in being of little significance; it's how most of us are. 

[Count Chocula]

On 4/27/2025 at 12:32 PM, Jyratx said:

People who are overly emotional won't likely see logic until their emotions wear off (assuming they do), and overly logical people likely won't understand why the overly emotional people are so emotional.

On that tangent, I don't see how it's possible to be "overly logical." And from my perspective, the vast, overwhelming majority of people are overly emotional. Which raises the notion that that's the "normal" state of people.

[Darkpig]

On 3/14/2025 at 8:05 PM, DrunkenCow said:

You don't want facts, you want to be told what to think in an agreeable manner.  If you wanted facts you'd watch CSPAN, follow  blacklisted journalists on X, read the UPI's feed, and demand it be made illegal for news organizations to propagandize again.

 

Maybe people want to be stupid and that is why they listen to people that are obviously lying to them and have no idea what they are talking about (the vast majority of Journalists).

How does one respond to such an accusation by somebody on the internet you don't know? I know it has been almost 2 months but I'm bored so let me clear some things up. I didn't say anything about making a thing illegal. There has definitely been a large wave of stupidity as of late or else this thread wouldn't exist. If you got any ideas I'm all ears.

[Count Chocula]

48 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

How does one respond to such an accusation by somebody on the internet you don't know? I know it has been almost 2 months but I'm bored so let me clear some things up. I didn't say anything about making a thing illegal. There has definitely been a large wave of stupidity as of late or else this thread wouldn't exist. If you got any ideas I'm all ears.

To address something in the post you were replying to, not to you, the problem with making it illegal for "journalists" to "propagandize" is one of definition.  What is a  "journalist" and what is "propaganda?" Kind of like why there're no laws in U.S. against desecrating the U.S. flag (no enforceable laws, anyway).

[Darkpig]

2 hours ago, chocula said:

To address something in the post you were replying to, not to you, the problem with making it illegal for "journalists" to "propagandize" is one of definition.  What is a  "journalist" and what is "propaganda?" Kind of like why there're no laws in U.S. against desecrating the U.S. flag (no enforceable laws, anyway).

I am interested but a little confused. Were you talking about how different government branches or dare I say political parties have certain sway over news media outlets without delving into legal territory? Or was it something else?

[Count Chocula]

1 hour ago, Darkpig said:

I am interested but a little confused. Were you talking about how different government branches or dare I say political parties have certain sway over news media outlets without delving into legal territory? Or was it something else?

I'm talking about the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of making laws addressing something when it's not even possible to define what the thing is. Is there an objective definition of "journalist?" Of "propaganda?" The answer is "no" to both. So a law making it illegal for "journalists" to engage in "propaganda" would have to go into lengthy listings of what a journalist is and what propaganda is. The lists would either be impossibly huge or full of holes.

[FauxFurry]

On 3/30/2025 at 10:41 PM, chocula said:

Not everything is controversial. Gravity isn't controversial (although theories about it might be; I'm not a physicist, though).

 

Greed is one reason smart people do dumb things, I'd say. But as usual, it's not as simple as just saying "greed," since we are talking about a smart person. A greedy dumb person doing a dumb thing for money has probably not thought things out. Let's say a smart person doing a dumb thing for money has made a plan and in their opinion a good plan and has weighed the risks and judges them to be worth the potential reward. In my hypothetical, they are wrong. It was a bad plan.

 

Any of what we might call the "base" emotions are reasons smart people do dumb things. But again I don't think it's as simple as saying "He did it because he was angry."

What about boredom and/or curiosity? A lot of what people consider to be inspired by divine inspiration may have instead been motivated by someone with a lot of time and equal amounts of determination and aptitude for the task on their hands and until they succeed in their aims, a lot of it looks stupid from the outside looking in.

That certainly holds true for much of art, at the very least.

[Darkpig]

28 minutes ago, chocula said:

I'm talking about the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of making laws addressing something when it's not even possible to define what the thing is. Is there an objective definition of "journalist?" Of "propaganda?" The answer is "no" to both. So a law making it illegal for "journalists" to engage in "propaganda" would have to go into lengthy listings of what a journalist is and what propaganda is. The lists would either be impossibly huge or full of holes.

Oh okay. Maybe I was overthinking it.

[Count Chocula]

1 hour ago, Darkpig said:

Oh okay. Maybe I was overthinking it.w

I should have said "when it's not even possible to objectively define what the thing is." We can come up with a definition of "propaganda," but we can't necessarily agree on whether or not something is propaganda.

 

Back in the early 2000s, I got in an argument with someone over how to define "activist judge." One attempt at an objective definition was a judge who to overrule laws, rules, regulations and decisions made by the legislature or the executive. By that definition, at the time the most activist judge on the U.S. Supreme Court was Clarence Thomas. The person I was arguing with, who made it clear he thought Thomas was a good judge, said that was not a good definition. I challenged him to come up with a better objective definition and he did not. So I said something like "Your definition is what, then? 'An activist judge is a judge whose rulings I disagree with?'"

[Darkpig]

2 hours ago, chocula said:

I should have said "when it's not even possible to objectively define what the thing is." We can come up with a definition of "propaganda," but we can't necessarily agree on whether or not something is propaganda.

 

Back in the early 2000s, I got in an argument with someone over how to define "activist judge." One attempt at an objective definition was a judge who to overrule laws, rules, regulations and decisions made by the legislature or the executive. By that definition, at the time the most activist judge on the U.S. Supreme Court was Clarence Thomas. The person I was arguing with, who made it clear he thought Thomas was a good judge, said that was not a good definition. I challenged him to come up with a better objective definition and he did not. So I said something like "Your definition is what, then? 'An activist judge is a judge whose rulings I disagree with?'"

Maybe it is something a lawyer could answer but then again they charge by the hour because lawyers be lawyering.

[Count Chocula]

11 hours ago, Darkpig said:

Maybe it is something a lawyer could answer but then again they charge by the hour because lawyers be lawyering.

A lawyer can't give any better answer than what I gave. When Jerry Springer was alive he hosted a radio talk show in addition to his exploitative TV show (Springer was a lawyer). One of the discussions he had on the radio show was about the difficulty of an anti-flag burning amendment to the U.S. Constitution. One of the difficulties. as I mentioned before, is one of definition. How do you define "the flag?" Is a photo of the U.S. flag "the flag?" If it's a flag with 51 stars (the U.S. flag has 50 stars, for those who might not know), is that "the flag?" You get the idea. The same problems of definition apply just as much to "journalist" and "propaganda." Again, I know you are not the person who mentioned making laws to prevent journalists from propagandizing, so I am not arguing against you. But I think you can see that such a law would be impossible to craft. You could make a law that says simply "It is illegal for a journalist to propagandize." Then the shit hits the fan when the arguing starts about whether or not Person X is a journalist and whether or not what they said was propaganda.

[Darkpig]

17 hours ago, chocula said:

Again, I know you are not the person who mentioned making laws to prevent journalists from propagandizing, so I am not arguing against you.

I know. I was just curious.

[Count Chocula]

2 hours ago, Darkpig said:

I know. I was just curious.

But you weren't just stupid.

[legendarytoyou]

Uh here you want more proof that some people are to stupid for certain tasks.  Here you go.  Hope this guy sued the ever living hell out of them for gross negligence.

😲😒

[AKM]

2 hours ago, legendarytoyou said:

Uh here you want more proof that some people are to stupid for certain tasks.  Here you go.  Hope this guy sued the ever living hell out of them for gross negligence.

😲😒

 

Nothing new from the people who are above the law.  Doesn't mean they're smart.

What the ARE is used to being able to order people around, legal or not, and have people kowtow to their every whim.  Filthy, lowly, citizens!  Don't they KNOW who they are dealing with?
 

 

Edited May 14, 2025 by AKM

[Count Chocula]

8 hours ago, legendarytoyou said:

Uh here you want more proof that some people are to stupid for certain tasks.  Here you go.  Hope this guy sued the ever living hell out of them for gross negligence.

😲😒

I do not know anything about this incident (if indeed it's real and not staged bullshit). But is the implication of the vid maker that a person in a wheelchair absolutely cannot knock down a door and then flee? If that's how it went down, what would the lawsuit be over, bad semantics?

[竹柏影]

I don't know about other countries, but I can tell you for sure that the IQ of Americans has plummeted since Obama came to power. Go check out "its" "reform" of American education.

[Darkpig]

10 hours ago, chocula said:

But you weren't just stupid.

*shrug*

 

I might as well start at the beginning. I made a post about possibly making newspapers the news source. I guess some less than sober cow thought I was just another Kim Jong Un or (ironically)Elon Musk. At least make me a JoJo villain.

 

After your reply I was interested in whether it can be done not whether it should be done. Since I just remembered dictators(See above) exist I'll say sort of but they are assholes who will eventually get what they deserve maybe. I don't trust karma especially nowadays.

[Count Chocula]

54 minutes ago, 竹柏影 said:

I don't know about other countries, but I can tell you for sure that the IQ of Americans has plummeted since Obama came to power. Go check out "its" "reform" of American education.

What is your conclusion based on?

[legendarytoyou]

On 5/14/2025 at 10:42 PM, chocula said:

I do not know anything about this incident (if indeed it's real and not staged bullshit). But is the implication of the vid maker that a person in a wheelchair absolutely cannot knock down a door and then flee? If that's how it went down, what would the lawsuit be over, bad semantics?

Well one would think just gross negligence or just plain ignorance.  She stated the guy, "kicked in her door."  Guy can't even stand on his feet.  She also said he fled on foot.  If anything SHE'S more ignorant than even the cops.

Edited May 16, 2025 by legendarytoyou

[Count Chocula]

Just now, legendarytoyou said:

Well one would think just gross negligence or just plain ignorance.  She stated the guy, "kicked in her door."  Guy can't even stand on his feet.  She also said he fled on foot.  If anything SHE'S more ignorant than even the cops.

Again, if he managed to knock down (or push in or whatever) her door, whether he did it by kicking it or ramming into it with his wheelchair is not relevant. And if he fled, it doesn't matter if he ran or if he wheeled himself away. But no doubt it calls into question the witness's ability to accurately recall and relate the details.

[woodsman30]

On 5/15/2025 at 12:42 AM, chocula said:

(if indeed it's real and not staged bullshit). But is the implication of the vid maker that a person in a wheelchair absolutely cannot knock down a door and then flee? If that's how it went down, what would the lawsuit be over, bad semantics?

Did you watch the video at all? If you did you would not have wrote this.

 

On 5/15/2025 at 1:03 AM, 竹柏影 said:

I don't know about other countries, but I can tell you for sure that the IQ of Americans has plummeted since Obama came to power. Go check out "its" "reform" of American education.

Hate to burst your bubble but it was long before that well over 100 years ago sad to say read and research learn the progression nothing happens overnight.