I can only assume you didn’t watch the trail or know much about it. In fact I know this.

We're going off-topic. Thank you for the conversation. It was interesting. If you feel that you have anything specific to say regarding the OP do post. If I can I'll try and respond. Keep an eye out for updates from me. — TheMadFool

Are we? If we're going to talk about knowledge then I think mentioning epistemology makes sense, and given my view of its connection to ontology that is also relevant.

'Luck' is just 'entropy' at work. I believe Fortune was one Roman goddess they all praised when something went well for them. When people laugh and say 'luck doesn't exist' they think of it as some mystical item rather than entropy at work.

I've been over morality numerous times before and noticed a reluctance from many to make any serious kind of moral investigation. People prefer to abscond from feeling and resort to logic as a means of shirking responsibility from making a poor choice. This is because they can always say after the matter of the fact that they used logic. Using logic in a given human situation is more correctly framed as 'rational' than 'logical' - things get complicated when the items involved are not discrete (ie. languages such as English).

Ethics is unethical because it is roughly framed as a one size fits all item rather than a more nuanced and personal thing where individuals act in ways they wish to act rather than acting in ways they are told is better to act.

Nietzsche respected the man who killed because wanted to kill but not the man who killed and then said they killed in the act of stealing. Covering up our acts with reasons is more often than not self deceit. Worded thought itself has embedded within it the 'society' so thought holding to speech cannot really escape the ties of society and therefore has to guard against acting out of social coercion rather than purposeful individual intent (which is generally what we all wish as we think of ourselves as acting as we wish to act rather than acting as we're taught to act).

Returning to what you said, mathematically ontology = epistemology, — TheMadFool

I didn't. but clearly I did to you as you're using the term 'mathematically' in a rather specific and rather unusual sense.

If I start throwing out terms like enantidromia (which funnily enough has a red squiggly line under it!) I think that is less tangible than what I may wish to get across.

My vocabulary is above average as I have a love of language and I'm far enough past juvenile years to have naturally amalgamated a quarry of terms and phrases into a broad enough lexicon.

The only problem with your point of view, if it is a problem at all, is that the rationale seems to be, for lack of a better term, fuzzy-logic based. — TheMadFool

Fuzzy logic in lived life not in abstract realms. Given that when we're talking about 'knowledge' and such and talk about it in terms of lived life then I very much side with fuzzy logic as I'm not omnipotent. When it comes to an easily appreciated set of rules and limits I wouldn't waste my time with fuzzy logic as we can easily determine what is or isn't.

It generally boils down to 'what do you mean?' and in situations where we are dealing with absolute universals there is no room for a 'what do you mean?'.

You said JTB was the standard yet you talk about Gettier (which shows problems with JTB.

My 'position' is not crystallised nor do I wish it to be.

I can dumb it down and state some points regarding ontology and epistemology?

It is nothing extraordinary but it may seem pedantic. Ontology deals with what is 'existent' (broadly speaking) and epistemology deals with 'knowledge' (broadly speaking). I am saying these are the same. We declare what is 'existent' through framed as 'knowledge' and what is 'knowledge' by what is framed as 'existent'.

There is use in splitting them to focus on different elements more specifically but if we ignore that they the same then we may miss out on an overarching philosophical view.

If you can understand that and understand the kind of problems it may pose as well as the kind of problems it may resolve then I don't really need to expound my point about 'beliefs' and 'knowledge'.

'Ken' was a common enough verb in English not so long ago. 'Truth attitude' is less tangible and more or less leaning towards something like 'Epoche' in a Husserlian phenomenological sense - meaning not being concerned with some 'truth' but simply observing and regarding in a freeform style rather than 'truth seeking' for the sake of bolstering some given position.

I might help to think about some people having a 'truth attitude' towards 'knowledge' and others having a 'truth attitude' towards 'belief'. The point is they are just 'truth attitudes' and it doesn't matter particularly what it is 'towards' - just like having a focus on ontology rather than epistemology doesn't really matter as they are effectively making the same misstep.

It will always be nebulous because as far as I can tell there isn't a form of communication available to express what I mean (or rather there is a lack of concepts OR I just haven't found them yet OR I'm too far gone to recognise them).

You seemed to be open so I threw some stuff out. If nothing sticks nothing sticks. Was fun making a vague attempt anyhoos :)

I mean, there really isn't anything being sold here in Buddhism apart for a way of living... — Shawn

I way of living by denying what many consider to be life - ie. no sex, no pain, no desire. It's just a warped nihilism.

virtue signalling — Tom Storm

To accuse someone (or groups) of virtue signaling must make said person a virtue signaler.

I am aware that this is virtue signaling too. I don't have an issue with putting myself on a moral pedestal though. I'm not apologetic about it.

As for epistemology and ontology it is just a convenient distinction not an actual one. We have to use words and define knowledge in order to talk about origins and being, as the terms 'origins' and 'being' must sit somewhere in terms of 'knowledge'. As knowledge only exists within set bounds (rules and limits) the ontological questions don't appear to have a way in yet we can only talk about ontological questions via epistemic understanding (as there is no other 'understanding').

All of these things axiological, yet we have to ask about what value means so we are required to think about the beginning of value and the meaning of value. The ontological and epistemic approaches are just a means of cutting up the problem into manageable pieces, but by doing so it creates the illusion of difference between what something is and what some thing does.

In short too many people fall into believing 'knowledge' is an absolute even when they keep saying they don't do this. I wittingly and willingly believe certain things and frame knowledge as something 'existing' (back to the ontological split from epistemic) as absolute only in abstract boundaries (with clearly defined rules in clear defined limits - a black box). The mistake is to think that the world we live in is a black box.

We are humans trying to be more. We can and will be more because enough of us are Stupid and enough of us are Intelligent.

Like I tried to outline, what we 'know' is not knowledge. We ken the world but we don't know it. We know only via abstraction but we don't 'ken' abstractions.

It should be the other way round, right? — TheMadFool

It depends what we're calling 'knowledge'. In the real world most certainly. In the abstract world most definitely not.

Care to share the details of your theory as regards "how we define evidence"? — TheMadFool

I never talked about a theory. It should be clear enough to you and everyone else that 'evidence' is not a rigidly defined thing. Evidence is often used in 'truth attitudes' too.

In logic we don't look for evidence we provide proofs. the real world plays with evidence whilst the abstract world works with proofs.

A man is wrongly accused at work of stealing. He is sacked and goes home early in an angry state. He walks into his house to find his wife having sex on the counter top with his best friend and neighbour. There happens to be knife readily to hand laying o the counter. In a rage the man picks up the knife and stabs his friend once in the neck cutting his artery. In horror he drops the knife and breaks down in tears whilst his wife screams. They then try and help him but he bleeds to death despite their frantic attempts.

Why did the man’s friend die?

It depends on your beliefs how you express your answer. The answer could be ‘he died because he was born, he died because his friend was wrongly accused of stealing at work, he died because not enough oxygen was getting to his brain, he died because he betrayed his friend, etc.,.

‘Knowledge’ (outside known sets of rules and limits) is always driven by ‘belief’ which is in turn framed by ‘truth attitudes’ (how we actively appeal to evidence and how we define evidence).

It probably helps to employ the Germanic term ‘ken’ rather than confuse it with ‘know’. We ‘ken’ the reason for something but we do not ‘know’ it unless we’re dealing with absolutes (abstract items).

An abstraction would be 1+1=2. We cannot ‘disagree’ that 1+1=2 within the rules and limits of basic arithmetic. Being human we can, and do, make mistakes but in the realm of abstracted functions we’re able to spot and prove our answers. Such answers are ‘knowledge’.

If someone shows their working to be:

1+1 = 1+1 Therefore 1+2 = 2-2 so 1+1= 2

They may not have knowledge, or they may have knowledge, of basic arithmetic. Their unconventional approach may actually be a requirement for them getting to the correct answer even though it may look nonsensical to us.

Abstractions are much easier to verify as such a person using the technique above (whatever it may be) would fail if their approach was faulty. The true benefit of abstractions is that we deal with universal terms not variables. We cannot say that it is ‘knowledge’ when we declare that ‘the Sun rises in the East’ even though we understand this to be evident from most perspectives. Just for clarification we’re not dealing with abstract universals when we talk about the Sun, rising and east. We can ask ‘east relative to what?’ or ‘Rising fro which perspective?’ Whereas we cannot ask ‘which number 1?’ in the same manner as we can ask about items experienced in reality.

A very common problem is applying logic as a means of making knowledge concrete and undeniable. That is nonsense. Knowledge is always an abstraction and even in that realm still requires verification.

In the lived world what is ‘known’ is that to which we are not directly conscious of. When we tend to anything consciously we must necessarily bring it into question. If we cannot tend to it we cannot cognise it - ‘it’ isn’t as ‘it’ for us.

If I refer to the chair I am sitting on it is not because I ‘know it’ it is because I am attending to it. As the chair is a concept I don’t fully understand it as an abstraction or as a specific item (because I cannot be aware of what I ‘know’), and the real functionality of a chair (being a non-universal) does not live in an abstracted realm where there is some ‘absolute chair’ - reference to ‘a chair’ as in ‘specifically this or that chair’ unlike in basic arithmetic where there is no ‘this or that’ number 1 in the abstract realm.

One thing we know about humans. They will adjust their view more if new facts favour them, yet they will not adjust as much for facts that don’t favour them. We are ‘hard-wired’ like this.

‘Stupidity’ is the genius of humanity - as in it is an ‘ethical’ way to do ‘unethical’ human experimentation.

I should probably confound even more by stating that ontology is just the same thing as epistemology and the ‘ethics’ is just some term made up for no apparent reason other than to justify ‘reason’. Mostly ‘ethics’ is ‘unethical’ as it looks to inhibit as any cost all in the name of ‘reducing pain and suffering’ (which I find to be Stupid so I just observe the Stupid and make notes from my ‘ethical palace in the sky’ with no apologetics). All too often people are more hell-bent on ripping down others beliefs than attending to their own. Then there are those that clamour over ‘knowledge’ and dismiss ‘belief’ outright … which is a bizarre ‘belief’ to hold for someone claiming to logical and rational.

You can probably get more of my view on this topic by looking at my first post on the first page.

A justified, true, belief is the current definition of knowledge. — TheMadFool

Not for me.

If you can't expand and elaborate your position nobody can and will take you seriously, right? — TheMadFool

Maybe not nobody, but very few. Because.

Try Camus. Absurdism is probably the best path out of nihilism :)

But you leave out the specifics, the details and the devil, they say, is in the details. Last I checked, negotiations involved justifications/argumentations and when that failed, punches/kicks/bullets/bombs...you get the idea ("aggressive" negotiations). I hope you don't mean that by "negoitiations" — TheMadFool

I was insisting that JTB must leave out the specifics to work flawlessly (see below) because it is only fully effective in an abstract realm.

I did mean all of the above in terms of 'negotiations'. In the real world claim of what is believed to be 'the truth' or 'justified' is often why violence can ensue. This is because each party thinks they own 'knowledge' rather than viewing knowledge as a tool used to lever individual beliefs that suit them. We're not robots.

The more important (the greater the value attached to the disagreement) the 'negotiation' the more likely the belief will bypass reasonable argumentation by sheer will.

So, the JTB is an abstract rule? I fail to see how that diminishes its value when it comes to knowledge and, possibly, other matters. — TheMadFool

Because with set abstract rules and limits we can differentiate between 'true' and 'false'. Outside of such set rules and limits (ie. real world situations where 'rules' and 'limits' are unknown) we cannot differentiate between 'true' and 'false' as we're not able to know anything for certain unlike in abstracted realms. Nature has a habit of showing us that what we took as a 'truth' here and there and in another place makes another 'truth' a mistake - too many variables/perspectives.

More simply put applying mathematical formula to the stock market will not guarantee profits only act as a tool to aid profits - that is diminished value. How diminished? Another layer of the problem cake.

Yep. JTB is JTB, as defined but it does have, like all things, limitations; I don't deny that. These limitations need to be known of course but there are situations in which the JTB is perfectly applicable/acceptable. — TheMadFool

Sure. But I have a feeling we might disagree what and where these limitations are due to our different beliefs.

Flesh that out for me, will ya? — TheMadFool

Nothing to flesh out. You will belief some things irrespective of any facts thrown your way, as we all will, because we're not robots.

There are little smudges in this area as Wittgenstein threw out. With the example of a game of chess two people playing what they believe to be the correct game of chess with the correct rules may not actually be playing the correct rules. Believing they are playing the game correctly is all that matters for them irrespective of whether they are or not. If they ever found out they had made a mistake they would still have been 'playing chess' but just not in absolutely the correct manner.

To relate more to what I said this needn't happen after the event. There could be one person arguing about a rule (and be correct) yet everyone else disagrees. People will follow their belief and they will still be 'playing chess' because they believe they are playing chess.

People can believe anything up to the point where they cannot deny it. I may believe that it isn't going to rain within the next 5 mins due to spotless blue skies yet if it did start to rain (by some freak occurrence) I would not question my initial belief but I would be intrigued as to why I was wrong and what freak occurrence caused the rain. This instance is completely different to chess though as we do not know the 'rules' or 'limits' of weather with absolute precision in the manner that I can know the rules and limits of chess.

That's new. Sounds interesting but I'll stick with JTB if it's all the same to you. — TheMadFool

Stick to the old ways then. It is an abstract theory set in an abstract realm that has some parallels to human life. the problem is if you apply it to language as if it is a mathematical model you're working within an unlimited world where the rules are unknown. So it doesn't hold up in real life as anything other than a simple belief like any other belief. It cannot justify itself in a true or believed way in the real world because we're oblivious to the limits and rules of the world.

I don't have to justify my beliefs to you and you would be perfectly ok with that, right? — TheMadFool

Yes. If they interfere with mine/others though we may have to negotiate. That is basically how the world works so no biggie.

If people hold rigidly to an abstract rule as a way of living in the world and it works for them so be it. Generally I'm more inclined to disbelief when it comes to bringing the abstract into the realm of lived lives.

JTB isn't a JTB if the limits and rules are unknown. Within known bounds (necessarily abstract) I'm ok with the theory of JTB.

TO repeat. 'Truth' is an attitude more than anything else ... that is my belief.

That said, I'm open to new ideas but they have to make sense at some level I suppose. Just sayin! — TheMadFool

Doesn't really matter. At the end of the day a 'belief' will overrule anything claimed by others to be 'known'. Nature will do as nature does regardless of what we call knowledge or belief. On top of that we're always going to lean towards justifying what we belief the most regardless of knowledge or we'd stagnate.

1. a−b=ca−b=c
2. a=c+ba=c+b
3. a+(−b)=c+b+(−b)a+(−b)=c+b+(−b)
4. a+(−b)=c+0a+(−b)=c+0
5. a+(−b)=ca+(−b)=c
6. a−b=a+(−b)a−b=a+(−b)
QED — TheMadFool

The above has nothing to do with JTB Mathematics is an abstraction and within an abstracted set limit knowledge is discernible.

In justified true belief the 'truth' is just an attitude/emotion and this is clear in the need to justify it. It is just a belief and the more 'truth' people have towards it the more they'll justify it even if it costs them to do so.

True things can be known ONLY within a set limit with set rules (abstracted not real).

Belief in the context of the theory is more easily described as 'strong conviction'.

Justified is just to say not by luck.

The obvious argument against this theory is that it could all be a combination of luck and belief. The knowledge only comes through abstraction, but again this means we can be hoodwinked by belief into thinking we've got the method just because we have the desired outcome. Abstractions thankfully can be checked to a decent degree though due to set rules and limits.

Abstractions are not reality though so in day-to-day life we don't operate by way of knowledge we operate by way of beliefs and often bolster our beliefs by any justification that suits our beliefs. Rationality and reason are more or less a soft balm to sooth a first degree burn ... doesn't do a lot for us at the base human experience.

I don't much care for the JTB view.

Epistemic responsibility has to do with attempting to gain knowledge i.e. it's, at the end of the day, a way of sorting one's beliefs into knowledge and non-knowledge. — TheMadFool

I'd rather not pretend my beliefs are anything but beliefs. Knowledge is for set discernable limits only (ie. abstract).

Beliefs don't require justifications because we've no idea what justification for any given myriad of beliefs there is.

Justification is really just a psychological analysis of what has happened and the degree to which one wishes to claim authorship over the actions that led to the result.

If a belief is fully justified in our minds then is it really a 'belief'? If it is then how does it differ from beliefs that possess little to no rational foundation?

If you don't know from reading I cannot help. Sorry.

We can take a person's actions and assess them in terms of gain and loss and judge those actions but people don't usually act as a result of such calculations. — Judaka

I think you missed something. He was saying that Stupid people are unpredictable whereas everyone else you can figure out roughly what their motivations are.

It is not, as many here seem to take it, some rule of life to live by that explains everything there is to know about every facet of human behavior. It is an interesting take on what people call Stupid and Intelligent.

The harrowing point behind what he is saying is that there is no cure for this kind of Stupidity as some people are simply born this way. Whether it is true or not doesn't make it uninteresting. If it is true then avoiding Stupid people seems to make the most sense. I then added that reducing the influence/status/power of Stupid people at the high end of the influence/status/power spectrum would make sense, but they'd also be hard to move as they're Stupid and so unpredictable.

we ask vague questions about things we kinda already understand because some of what we understand or could understand is hidden, and that's part of what we investigate too. — Srap Tasmaner

That is Husserl. Good summation here:

Intentional content can be thought of along the lines of a description or set of information that the subject takes to characterize or be applicable to the intentional objects of her thought. Thus, in thinking that there is a red apple in the kitchen the subject entertains a certain presentation of her kitchen and of the apple that she takes to be in it and it is in virtue of this that she succeeds in directing her thought towards these things rather than something else or nothing at all. It is important to note, however, that for Husserl intentional content is not essentially linguistic. While intentional content always involves presenting an object in one way rather than another, Husserl maintained that the most basic kinds of intentionality, including perceptual intentionality, are not essentially linguistic. Indeed, for Husserl, meaningful use of language is itself to be analyzed in terms of more fundamental underlying intentional states (this can be seen, for example, throughout LI, I). For this reason characterizations of intentional content in terms of “descriptive content” have their limits in the context of Husserl’s thought.

https://iep.utm.edu/huss-int/#H1

I assume you're buddhist too and don't like it when people say things that are true? Seems strange though.

You can wiki it if you want. Buddhism is theistic but it is not theistic in the same way that most judeo christian practices are (for the majority of buddhist practices).

Wayfarer is just sticking to one narrow definition of theism and seemingly refusing to accept that there are broader meanings beyond belief in 'a creator' or 'deity'.

When it comes to ideas you wouldn't be thinking about "slapping sense into them" if you respected them. — Janus

I just said I don't 'respect' them though.

I get that you don't respect Heidegger — Janus

Respect? If I had to use that word I would say actively don't respect ANY philosopher!

Ideas are not for respecting though. They are for slapping sense into if possible.

Memories are plastic so I wouldn't worry about 'losing' them if they cannot be retained.

Do you see the relation to the Private Language argument? — Banno

Wittgenstein defined a language as that which cannot be Private. It is really an argument more of a definition of 'language' put in place and made clear in meaning as NOT being private.

If we can think without words and language can come into being without words existing in the first place then language need not be worded/signed but worded/signed language is revealing something about language as a whole.

And linguists are quite happy to view language as apparent in species other than humans. We are certainly able to express in more broad terms it seems and the instances of deaf people with NO language (as we general frame language) show that knowledge of language in the sense of words/signs is not at all important for living in a human society that uses language daily.

IN split brain patients the hemispheres communicate in the world not through words/symbols. They act out and interact according to cognitive aims. They actually fight against each other and collaborate and interfere with each other constantly.

You are 'others' too. There is you now and you tomorrow. They are not identical and you, as we all do, have to negotiate with ourselves as a future/past projection.

I have been thinking lately that what we want for ourselves is often projected onto others and that this is due the above. We wish our ideas acted out by others so we can observe the difference from our projection to the reality of what will happen. I think this is why we're always trying to control the world to some degree or another.

When it comes to ethics I think too many just assume there is an easy way to bridge meaning with action so they tend to side with reason over emotion, yet when the item of 'meaning' is regarded as some purity they find nothing and in breaking from that ghost nihilism takes hold. In this light ethics is more or less an amalgam of societal inputs and this gives some the impression of emptiness as they've removed from reason any space upon which guidance was written. They don't see the guiding principles as mere reflections/shadows of other forms and so feel disillusioned and hollow.

No action taken is genuine to oneself as oneself is not one self. The horde of who you are does come into view more or less at certain points. From there action has more force, from points where the individual is thin on the ground error rules.

Clarity is not always the aim; sometimes we can expand our more or less fuzzy 'feels' or intuitions, which themselves can constitute kinds of understanding; understandings which may be expressed more aptly in metaphor than in proposition. — Janus

But when the entire work of Heidegger hinges on the term then it is a problem. That was my point and has remained my point about Being and Time.

No one can really point out where Heidegger articulates what he means with any real precision. the fact that he goes to such ends to explain some more obvious points tells me he merely covered up his ignorance with the pretense of some deeper understanding. He is a hack, but not a useless hack ;)

It's this very move that is contended: treating existence as a state. As if there were things that do not exist, waiting to change their condition into one of existence. That is, treating existence as a first order predicate. — Banno

This is where I find Kant to be very useful in how he frames Noumenon. When we speak of Noumenon we are necessarily talking about phenomenon, yet the idea of Noumenon - which is not anything - is 'existing' only as a negation NOT as an item of experience or potential experience. Phenomenon, and any other term, creates a mental space into which humans tend to shoehorn some antithesis.

Yet who’s noticing that— and how? What is it that recognizes thought as thought? — Xtrix

I assume your answer is 'being'. This is just a trick of language (that is Heidegger's concern not Husserl's).

Even so, if this is your view then what exactly do you mean by 'being'? Many people state 'being' as if they know what it is because it is a common colloquial term of reference. In hermeneutical sense there is an investigation, but in terms of consciousness it is an overlay.

When, in whatever language used, the term 'being' is uttered they is an automatic assumption that meaning is possessed in the term, and that the term is directed towards something (Intentionality). The 'being' is not Intentional, the 'being' is an example of Intentionality.

I'm with Banno in regards to words. If Heidegger cannot make clear what 'dasein' means then the reader should have serious concerns about everything that follows.

Note: I'm fairly charitable when it comes to using terms loosely and for multiple purposes, but when such a term is used so often and ubiquitously the author should take better care. It is also clear that Heidegger wasn't exactly shy of stating he obvious with verbosity yet he shied away from doing the same for 'dasein'. Alarm bells should ring there for anyone looking critically at his work.

But the question of being is the first in rank — as the broadest, deepest, and most originary. Here I agree with Heidegger. That’s not to say it is the only question, or that it’s the first one we ask in philosophy or in life. — Xtrix

I am assuming you are thinking with 'language' here? Can you think without 'language'? As in this worded stuff I'm using here? If your answer is no you probably won't be able to understand that the answer isn't no for everyone.

How does having a higher IQ alter or modify one's behavior? — Shawn

It depends. For most people probably not at all as most people don't vary that much in terms of IQ and a bigger influence on how it would modify someone's behavior would likely be due to their knowledge of having an IQ at whatever mark. If you value IQ and found out what your IQ was it would mean more to how you act in the future than to someone who simply didn't give a toss about what others said or didn't say their IQ was.

Attention to anything modifies your behavior towards it to some degree. Modifying our behavior is necessary. Why you ask in relation to IQ specifically rather than something else is for you to reveal to us if you wish to.

If he does something for you he does something for you. I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't find any value in his writing beyond a few instances of expressing Intentionality in a more manageable way than Husserl. Other than that he's a damn good punching bag ;)

The problem I see is that he deep dives into language whilst losing sight of the phenomenological act - hence Hermeneutical Phenomenology.

I still recommend Heidegger to people who seem to be more attuned to his lingo.

Then dasein is defined by dasein. That is okay because he already made ‘clear’ :D how what he says isn’t ‘circular’ though right.

So Division Two should read ‘Da-sein and Da-sein’ rather than ‘Da-sein and Temporality’?

Other garbled language like this:

Being "here" (da-sein) is being the present moment, but only if we don't define the present exclusively as a present-at-hand now-point (that is, thought abstractly) -- but instead as the experience from which all time tenses arise. — Xtrix

Why not just say Time isn’t something we can readily atomise? The ‘Now’ is merely a way of framing time appreciation just like a second is a measure of physical time a ‘moment’ is merely a human reference to unregulated and vague demarcation of felt time.

Ok bye :)

Anyway, what about better education? Wouldn't that be the best way to stop people from being stupid? — DingoJones

It appears you haven't bothered to read the OP either. The premise is you CANNOT change how many people are Stupid.

I was actually trying to sneak in that what he is really talking about (underneath) is more or less about plain bad luck framed as Stupidity.

Either way I find the overarching idea to be a nice leveller as usually the pompous fools of the world act like they are ‘superior’ due to positioning (IQ/status/religion) and this kind of view would hit them the hardest of all as they’d have to question their own ‘Stupidity’/‘Intelligence’.

There is no test to take. You just have to look at what you’ve done and the effects they’ve had on you and those around you. I think that is a healthy thought to have overall (whether or not you like what you see!) :)