Why Are People Dumb?

[Midpack]

No, that's not the conclusion of this article by a known ER.org contributor, from his own interesting site. I thought it was a good article and I agree with him. People aren't dumb at all, but they are apathetic (or ignorant by their own actions). The question is why?

It's often very apparent when people talk politics and personal finance for examples. There certainly aren't simple "right answers" in these areas, but the positions some people take show how little command of the facts/data they have.

I actually believe that people act fairly intelligently on what they know.
The problem as I see it know is that “most people actually don’t know that much”.

» Musings on postmodernism, ignorance, and my answer to “Do you really believe people are dumb?” Early Retirement Extreme: — written by Jacob Lund Fisker, Freelancer

 

[easysurfer]

I think that generally people can be bright in one area, but "dumb" (or just inexperienced) in others. Such as Forrest Gump. The movie was fiction, of course, yet there are great examples in the movie.

 

[haha]

No, that's not the conclusion of this article by a known ER.org contributor, from his own interesting site. I thought it was a good article and I agree with him. People aren't dumb at all, but they are apathetic (or ignorant by their own actions). The question is why?

It's often very apparent when people talk politics and personal finance for examples. There certainly aren't simple "right answers" in these areas, but the positions some people take show how little command of the facts/data they have.

» Musings on postmodernism, ignorance, and my answer to “Do you really believe people are dumb?” Early Retirement Extreme: — written by Jacob Lund Fisker, Freelancer

Of course and obviously, people are ignorant of so many things that their only hope is to be good boys and girls and hope that someone will take care of them, which is generally reasonable hope in the same sense that the cow hopes the farmer will take care of her, and he will until her milk production falls off.

One thing Mr. Fisker does not address is that ignorance is related to intelligence. Social and technological complexity increases while at the same time human mental horsepower (taken collectively) decreases due to modern dysgenic breeding incentives, "the people" get not only more ignorant but also more stupid.

This is why democracy and what we call somewhat naively call freedom is a failing experiment.

Postmodernist thought was only a harmless ploy to help professors get laid by their more attractive students, until it became enshrined (as "PC") into political and man in the street thinking. There it gets added to the other socially poisonous poorly thought out trends making our politics and social governance hopeless.

Stay tuned folks!

Ha

 

[ziggy29]

I like stupid people. They make me look good.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Yeah, because we're so smart. All in the eye of the beholder.

I think a lot of "dumb" is inertia and also that people don't always value the same things.

 

[73ss454]

There has to be some dumb people otherwise we wouldn't have anyone to be jurors.

 

[rescueme]

There has to be some dumb people otherwise we wouldn't have anyone to be jurors.

Good one (considering the current news)...

 

[GregLee]

I didn't find Jacob's remarks on postmodernism especially coherent, perhaps because I don't understand postmodernism at all. I decided I needed more background and tried to read the Wikipedia article on postmodernism. But no, it still seems to be gibberish (except I was able to make sense of some parts claiming that postmodernism made no sense).

 

[jacob]

You might find this interesting

No Mo Po Mo

 

[GregLee]

You might find this interesting

No Mo Po Mo

I'll take a look. In reading over my post above, I see that I need to clarify that the "still gibberish" was intended to refer my own previous efforts to understand postmodernism, not to what you wrote.

 

[eytonxav]

There has to be some dumb people otherwise we wouldn't have anyone to be jurors.

And there is some pretty smart screening criteria/specialists for figuring out which dumb ones to put on a jury.

 

[FinanceDude]

If all the dumb people got smart and did LBYM, who would be left to help pay for all the social entitlements?

 

[jacob]

If all the dumb people got smart and did LBYM, who would be left to help pay for all the social entitlements?

Who would need them?

 

[FinanceDude]

Who would need them?

The clueless people...........

 

[Danmar]

I like stupid people. They make me look good.

You may be joking but to some degree this is my thinking. Especially as it relates to financial matters. If everyone was as informed and as intelligent as those on this forum, good investing ideas would be harder to come up with. Also, the stuff we like would be more expensive and the places we go would be more crowded, etc.

 

[Hamlet]

I think one big issue is that people use some pretty dubious "shortcuts" in their thinking to avoid expending a lot of time and energy on thinking things through.

My father is a good example. He's plenty smart, but his thought process in choosing who to vote for in the last election was about as lazy as it gets. He basically said that since he's not happy with the way things are being run, he should just vote for whoever isn't currently in office.

The problem with this line of thinking is that if you look at what he actually wants from government, he should be voting a straight Democratic ticket almost all of the time. Note that I am actually more conservative than him on these issues (although still to the left of the current Republicans)

For example--

He thinks that capital gains and dividend taxes should be the same as any other income
He thinks that CEOs pay should be capped in some way, and that they are robbing the country blind
He thinks that corporations and the wealthy should pay higher taxes than they do (mostly by removing their deductions)

That is not the thinking of someone who should be voting Republican. But if the incumbent was a Democrat, he would have been voting for someone who completely disagreed with his own views.

Likewise, I assume that there is probably a very conservative person out there using the same logic to vote a Democrat into office.

Thinking things through takes time, and so everyone ends up using shortcuts to save time.

Sometimes those shortcuts make people do very dumb things.

 

[GregLee]

Thinking things through takes time, and so everyone ends up using shortcuts to save time.

Sounds like your father is a pragmatist and you're an ideologue. "Throw the bastards out" means, if the current regime is not getting good results, it's time for a change, regardless of whether they're doing things (what you think is) the right way.

 

[arebelspy]

Sounds like your father is a pragmatist and you're an ideologue. "Throw the bastards out" means, if the current regime is not getting good results, it's time for a change, regardless of whether they're doing things (what you think is) the right way.

Basically, yes.

I'd venture to say he believes that after a few times of throw the incumbent out, the politicians will realize they need to follow up on their campaign promises. At that point he could vote straight party ticket and get what he wanted.

Of course believing that to actually work may make him more of an idealist than you'd think.

 

[TromboneAl]

I like stupid people. They make me look good.

Yes, and they make early retirement possible for us. Take comfort in this thought whenever annoyed at someone's stupidity.

 

[Tadpole]

People aren't dumb. They just seem that way when I compare my own mind with theirs.

 

[obgyn65]

+1

Yeah, because we're so smart. All in the eye of the beholder.

 

[easysurfer]

I wouldn't say most people are dumb. But I would say that for some common sense is very very difficult to grasp.

 

[devans0]

Even the brightest will have areas that they are ignorant. I believe that people are getting "smarter", as in more educated, though. My grandfather's generation were lucky to get a grade school education. My father's generation were doing well to graduate high school. They did the best that they were able, given their opportunities, and did well. People today have more opportunities than ever.

From Wikipedia:
The increasing rates of school attendance have been reflected in rising proportions of adults completing high school and college. Progressively fewer adults have limited their education to completion of the 8th grade which was typical in the early part of the century. In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education. Only 6 percent of males and 4 percent of females had completed 4 years of college. The median years of school attained by the adult population, 25 years old and over, had registered only a scant rise from 8.1 to 8.6 years over a 30 year period from 1910 to 1940.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the more highly educated younger cohorts began to make their mark on the average for the entire adult population. More than half of the young adults of the 1940s and 1950s completed high school and the median educational attainment of 25- to 29-years-olds rose to 12 years. By 1960, 42 percent of males, 25 years old and over, still had completed no more than the eighth grade, but 40 percent had completed high school and 10 percent had completed 4 years of college. The corresponding proportion for women completing high school was about the same, but the proportion completing college was somewhat lower.

As bad as we think people are doing, we are doing better than ever.

 

[Hamlet]

You're assuming that everyone currently in office act as one regime, regardless of party.

If you're mad because government is not regulating the banks enough, and that the wealthy are not paying their share , it does not make much sense to vote Republican against your incumbent Democratic congressman.

The Republican is almost guarrenteed to do exactly the opposite of what my father is looking for from a politician.

It's not that he is pragmatic. It's that he isn't paying attention.

Sounds like your father is a pragmatist and you're an ideologue. "Throw the bastards out" means, if the current regime is not getting good results, it's time for a change, regardless of whether they're doing things (what you think is) the right way.

 

[youbet]

If you're mad because government is not regulating the banks enough, and that the wealthy are not paying their share , it does not make much sense to vote Republican against your incumbent Democratic congressman..

The opposite of the "throw the bum out" approach seems just as silly. Here in Chicago, buddies who are loyal Dems bitch about the well known graft, corruption, patronage, ballot box stuffing, etc., of the local Dem Machine. Yet they've never voted anything but straight Dem all their lives and will continue to do so.

Automatically voting against the incumbent is no worse than always voting a straight ticket.