Aggrad08 said:

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"Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person."

This part I agree with completely

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Facts that contradict a stupid person's prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

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Central to Bonhoeffer's theology is Christ, in whom God and the world are reconciled. Bonhoeffer's God is a suffering God, whose manifestation is found in this-worldliness. Bonhoeffer believed that the Incarnation of God in flesh made it unacceptable to speak of God and the world "in terms of two spheres"an implicit attack upon Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms. Bonhoeffer stressed personal and collective piety and revived the idea of imitation of Christ. He argued that Christians should not retreat from the world but act within it. He believed that two elements were constitutive of faith: the implementation of justice and the acceptance of divine suffering. Bonhoeffer insisted that the church, like the Christians, "had to share in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world" if it were to be a true church of Christ.

In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in a "world come of age," where human beings no longer need a metaphysical God as a stop-gap to human limitations; and mused about the emergence of a "religionless Christianity," where God would be unclouded from metaphysical constructs of the previous 1900 years. Influenced by Barth's distinction between faith and religion, Bonhoeffer had a critical view of the phenomenon of religion and asserted that revelation abolished religion, which he called the "garment" of faith. Having witnessed the complete failure of the German Protestant church as an institution in the face of Nazism, he saw this challenge as an opportunity of renewal for Christianity.

Years after Bonhoeffer's death, some Protestant thinkers developed his critique into a thoroughgoing attack against traditional Christianity in the "Death of God" movement, which briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream culture in the mid-1960s. However, some criticssuch as Jacques Ellul and othershave charged that those radical interpretations of Bonhoeffer's insights amount to a grave distortion, that Bonhoeffer did not mean to say that God no longer had anything to do with humanity and had become a mere cultural artifact. More recent Bonhoeffer interpretation is more cautious in this regard, respecting the parameters of the neo-orthodox school to which he belonged.

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ramblin_ag02 said:

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https://sproutsschools.com/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidity/

I found this fascinating. According to this theory, stupidity is not an intellectual problem but a moral problem. People reject logic, reason and facts in favor of groupthink and confirming their own biases. Also, it seems to be less frequently found with greater amounts of individualism and more frequently associated with collectives. Finally, he considers the stupid more dangerous than the evil, because evil people can be contained. Stupidity can't, and otherwise normal people can commit serious harms without realizing it.

It should be noted that he formulated this in Germany between the two world wars and died opposing the Nazis. So his street cred is pretty good too

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Aggrad08 said:

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I don't think it's as reliant on intelligence as we hope. You can find above average IQs believing some demonstrably stupid stuff. Flat earth, moon landing, YEC, bush did 911, Qanon all have people sucked in that are of at least reasonable intelligence. And these are the extreme stupid groups. What about Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims and Mormons and Jews and atheists….

Stupid group think is its own phenomenon. I also think it's part of the struggle of education teaching people to be told the answer and remember it rather than to rediscover and understand the answer with the help of others who came before. I see this with the PhD and masters engineering grads I have to teach right out of school. I'm sure its worse with the bachelors.

I agree high intelligence can help you divorce yourself from the wrong mindsets. But it isn't required nor is it a safeguard.

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Since both of those are hard, the third is to think in probabilistic terms where the less research I've done the less certain I'm allowed to be. Often I think people get that relationship backwards… it's a lot easier to be certain when you are unaware of the nuances and contradictions.

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Zobel said:

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You should dig into that study sometime. It's pretty bad.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real

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Zobel said:

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Bayesian mindset is super helpful.

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Quad Dog said:

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Maybe the author of that just needs to do more research on it...or I do, but wouldn't that prove it correct?
So by doing a bunch of research and disproving Dunning-Kruger, would you also be proving it true?

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More certainly equals more stupidity

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nortex97 said:

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Good thread.

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Facts that contradict a stupid person's prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

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I'm immediately struck by the epistemic closure discussions/group think we have around policies/beliefs such as 'islam is peaceful' 'global warming is an imminent threat' 'vaccine mandates' 'black lives matter' 'glbtq marriage is good' movements etc. Stupidity was absolutely on display @ SCOTUS just yesterday.

Anyway, he, and Barth, are fascinating figures alike. While I don't respect pacifism in general, I do think some exceptions are in fact quite brave figures. From wikipedia;

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Central to Bonhoeffer's theology is Christ, in whom God and the world are reconciled. Bonhoeffer's God is a suffering God, whose manifestation is found in this-worldliness. Bonhoeffer believed that the Incarnation of God in flesh made it unacceptable to speak of God and the world "in terms of two spheres"an implicit attack upon Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms. Bonhoeffer stressed personal and collective piety and revived the idea of imitation of Christ. He argued that Christians should not retreat from the world but act within it. He believed that two elements were constitutive of faith: the implementation of justice and the acceptance of divine suffering. Bonhoeffer insisted that the church, like the Christians, "had to share in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world" if it were to be a true church of Christ.

In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in a "world come of age," where human beings no longer need a metaphysical God as a stop-gap to human limitations; and mused about the emergence of a "religionless Christianity," where God would be unclouded from metaphysical constructs of the previous 1900 years. Influenced by Barth's distinction between faith and religion, Bonhoeffer had a critical view of the phenomenon of religion and asserted that revelation abolished religion, which he called the "garment" of faith. Having witnessed the complete failure of the German Protestant church as an institution in the face of Nazism, he saw this challenge as an opportunity of renewal for Christianity.

Years after Bonhoeffer's death, some Protestant thinkers developed his critique into a thoroughgoing attack against traditional Christianity in the "Death of God" movement, which briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream culture in the mid-1960s. However, some criticssuch as Jacques Ellul and othershave charged that those radical interpretations of Bonhoeffer's insights amount to a grave distortion, that Bonhoeffer did not mean to say that God no longer had anything to do with humanity and had become a mere cultural artifact. More recent Bonhoeffer interpretation is more cautious in this regard, respecting the parameters of the neo-orthodox school to which he belonged.

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Zobel said:

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Consensus and groupthink aren't the same thing.

What's interesting is that you have a wide range of people here - politically and religiously - who seem to agree on the subject of F16. It's actually probably the only topic on this forum where there is broad consensus.

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The term gained attention after it was floated by Dr. Robert Malone on "The Joe Rogan Experience" Dec. 31 podcast. Malone is a scientist who once researched mRNA technology but is now a vocal skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccines that use it.

But psychology experts say the concept described by Malone is not supported by evidence, and is similar to theories that have long been discredited. Here's a look at the facts…
…Psychology experts say there is no support for the "psychosis" theory described by Malone.

"To my knowledge, there's no evidence whatsoever for this concept," said Jay Van Bavel, an assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University who recently co-authored a book on group identities. Van Bavel said he had never encountered the phrase "mass formation psychosis" in his years of research, nor could he find it in any peer-reviewed literature.

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The AP couldn't be missing the point harder if they tried. The idea behind mass formation psychosis is not that people are literally hypnotized, i.e., as you'd see in the movies where someone crows like a rooster and stops smoking. Rather, it's a way to express the collective irrationality being shown by millions of people who will literally do anything to try to "stop the spread," no matter how ineffective the measures being promoted are.

For example, despite all the data showing that the vaccines don't work to stop the spread of COVID-19, people still push policies like vaccine passports and vaccine mandates as not only physically necessary but morally necessary as well. Those who hang on Dr. Anthony Fauci's every word do so under the delusion that whatever the "experts" say must be abided by in order to avoid catastrophe. That's how you end up with a Houston area teacher locking a child in the trunk of a car because he supposedly needed to be "quarantined."

Those types of irrationalities are what drive the idea of a widespread psychosis formulated by the largely baseless fear-mongering of the expert class and that's what makes the AP's "fact-check" so ironic.
They are claiming that there aren't millions of Americans blindly accepting the dictates of a tiny class of over-credentialed figures, yet they try to prove that case by demanding you be dictated to by a tiny class of over-credentialed figures they cite. I couldn't think of a better way to not prove their point than that.

In short, people can quibble over the semantics of clinical diagnoses. Yet, there is no doubt that a huge number of Americans (and people all over the world) are no longer able to make rational risk assessments because their leaders have refused to be honest with them. Instead, the thirst for power and a desire to avoid political responsibility for failure has overtaken all. So the AP can call that phenomenon whatever they'd like, but it's absolutely a real problem, and it's one that a nation like the United States is going to have to figure out a way to solve before our society dives off the cliff.

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Zobel said:

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Oh and there is I think an ongoing high degree of involvement of MfBarnes on f16 - and occasionally on this forum. Doesn't help.

Also wanted to add. It's gotten much much much worse since Q and COVID.

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