this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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To clarify here, I don't feel like I'm significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying "facts."

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[–] FlickOfTheBean 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

There's an old proverb I like about this: a person is smart but people are dumb.

People en masse tend to be dumber than they are apart. I think you're comparing yourself to the faceless masses. It's much more humbling to try comparing yourself to someone you respect (but don't do it as a "I'm not as good as them" thing, only do it as a "goals to maybe achieve one day" thing to avoid accidentally trashing your self esteem)

Side note: old proverb here means I think my dad said it once but I have no idea where it actually came from

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tommy Lee Jones says this in Men in Black, no idea if it was coined before that though.

[–] gerbler 3 points 11 months ago

I choose to believe Agent K came up with it.

[–] JanEckhoff 6 points 11 months ago

"The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters." (attributed to Terry Pratchett)

[–] jj4211 2 points 11 months ago

None of us is as dumb as all of us.

[–] masquenox -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

a person is smart but people are dumb.

Whoever says that pretty much qualifies as dumb in my book.

Collective deision-making is superior.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It depends. Group psychology like mass delusion is well known. Collective decision making works in specific circumstances where the majority have some idea about what the problem is.

[–] masquenox 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Collective decision making works in specific circumstances where the majority have some idea about what the problem is.

So you're saying that the only obstacle to effective collective decision-making is the withholdiing of relevant information?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think you meant "the ability to learn" because you're not getting better answers from groups of non-physicists about the geometries of black holes than from individual experts regardless of how much information you give them

[–] masquenox -1 points 11 months ago

individual experts

Sooooo... are you suggesting that individual physicists would be better off working in isolation? That must be what you are suggesting... since nothing that I have said suggested anything about groups of people making collective decisions about matters that are completely arbitrary.

[–] piecat 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just linking to an article about collective decision making isn't really that helpful without quoting the article for your points.

So that article you posted talks about animal behavior, and that an economic view on collective decision making is a good approach for animal behavior.

As motivated in the Introduction, our review has focused primarily on an economic view on collective decision-making. The economic view is a staple of behavioural ecology, and motivates the tools of optimal decision theory for the study of animal behaviour.

Nowhere did they make the conclusion that collecting decision making is superior, especially in the context of humans.

[–] masquenox -1 points 11 months ago

especially in the context of humans.

Were you not aware that humans are animals?