A note on your last comment

Set your standard for intelligent behaviour high enough, and virtually everyone will fall below it. Set it low enough, and your average chicken qualifies is brainy.

Moreover, the above misrepresents the situation substantially. Effective definitions of intelligence are contextual - different people are smart in different contexts. And different people apply a different context to judging intelligence, leading to different measurements of the abilities of various people.

When the effective definition of intelligence used is, "Can understand and discuss things in my interest areas," then by virtue of the fact that most of us are pretty specialized, most of the world looks like idiots. (This approach sometimes leads to groupthink.)

When the effective definition of intelligence used is, "Agrees with me," then people look like idiots again, and you are very prone to groupthink. Applying this concept of intelligence is why so many programmers are surprised to find out that there are very capable programmers across the entire spectrum of religious belief. (I have met programmers who are amazed that atheists really can be capable of logical thought, and others who are amazed that devout Christians can reason.)

And so on, and so forth. With most people thinking that most people are idiots. (Albeit they come to that judgement differently.) They may disagree on who is an idiot, but they agree that most are.

Whatever definition is chosen, most people of my aquaintance who are intellectually active have a standard for basic intelligence that includes being able to read competently if you had the opportunity to learn. And since over half of adults in the US are functionally illiterate despite theoretically having the opportunity to learn (the same is true for Canada BTW), they tend to agree that those people are idiots. Which means that they can agree on how to classify most Americans - and that classification is "idiot".

It could be argued that they are wrong to use that definition that concludes that. But that doesn't change the fact that they do think that way. And they generally don't think that it is bad to think that way - indeed it is easy to get most of them to admit thinking this way.

So let me sign off in idiocy...

Ben (believed by many to be an idiot)

Post #93,641 by ben_tilly 4/1/03 10:04:07 PM Reply	A note on your last comment It doesn't bother me in the slightest that lots of people around here think that most people are idiots. Indeed that seems to be a pretty basic observation. What bothers me is the associated assumption that IWETHEY manages to escape this trend. This is an open community. It includes people of many different backgrounds and beliefs. In the pool we have a lot of different abilities and a broad range of experience. This is positive. But aside from the fact that we all are comfortable reading English, and most of us have an unusual degree of interest in computers, we also have a pretty broad spectrum of the possible shortcomings that you can see in humanity... Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #93,762 by cwbrenn 4/2/03 12:25:55 PM Reply	The basic assumption bothers me mostly because I don't think it's true. I think the actual condition is something that could be interpreted as "dumbth" (to borrow a phrase from Ashton) but I've never believed anything is that simple. The idea that a group is somehow exempt from its own criticisms isn't really a new phenomenon, though, and I don't really expect people to go around admitting their imperfections... "We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?" - Edward Young
Post #93,867 by ben_tilly 4/2/03 6:47:21 PM Reply	Idiocy is relative Set your standard for intelligent behaviour high enough, and virtually everyone will fall below it. Set it low enough, and your average chicken qualifies is brainy. Moreover, the above misrepresents the situation substantially. Effective definitions of intelligence are contextual - different people are smart in different contexts. And different people apply a different context to judging intelligence, leading to different measurements of the abilities of various people. When the effective definition of intelligence used is, "Can understand and discuss things in my interest areas," then by virtue of the fact that most of us are pretty specialized, most of the world looks like idiots. (This approach sometimes leads to groupthink.) When the effective definition of intelligence used is, "Agrees with me," then people look like idiots again, and you are very prone to groupthink. Applying this concept of intelligence is why so many programmers are surprised to find out that there are very capable programmers across the entire spectrum of religious belief. (I have met programmers who are amazed that atheists really can be capable of logical thought, and others who are amazed that devout Christians can reason.) And so on, and so forth. With most people thinking that most people are idiots. (Albeit they come to that judgement differently.) They may disagree on who is an idiot, but they agree that most are. Whatever definition is chosen, most people of my aquaintance who are intellectually active have a standard for basic intelligence that includes being able to read competently if you had the opportunity to learn. And since over half of adults in the US are functionally illiterate despite theoretically having the opportunity to learn (the same is true for Canada BTW), they tend to agree that those people are idiots. Which means that they can agree on how to classify most Americans - and that classification is "idiot". It could be argued that they are wrong to use that definition that concludes that. But that doesn't change the fact that they do think that way. And they generally don't think that it is bad to think that way - indeed it is easy to get most of them to admit thinking this way. So let me sign off in idiocy... Ben (believed by many to be an idiot) "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]

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