Stupidity: an affliction of all at one time or another, for most to a lesser degree, but for some a career. — tim wood

Your manifesto would be more meaningful to me if I thought what you consider stupid and what I do are the same.

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The question, then, is how to fight the war to win it. Not just to fight it - that's a mug's game - but to win it. — tim wood

Vote for rightwingers, obviously.

But what do you hold to be the source of the greater dangers in the world, both to individuals and to society at every scale? — tim wood

Greed and hatred, and believing that greed and hatred are good.

what do you hold to be the source of the greater dangers in the world, both to individuals and to society at every scale? — tim wood

Willingness to treat other people as objects.

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Treating people like objects might seem smart to you, but what if they prove to be alive and objectify you?

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Not to me — tim wood

Pffft. My experience with you informs me otherwise.

Not to me. Maybe to some people. The challenge to educate them that such is against both reason and their own self-interest. — tim wood

Seems like you're just classifying anything you don't like as stupidity. Jamming reality into your stupid shaped boxes.

Brother Wood, don't be daft.

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I get the impression that many peoples’ definition of stupid is “person who thinks enough opposite things to what I think”.

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I suppose one way to start would be to try an identify a situation or a scenario which most people would consider stupid. If we can't agree on that, then there's a problem.

What, then, is universally stupid (most of the time)?

I have criteria for arguing well and I consider someone stupid when they fall far short of it. I think I often overstate the extent to which people do though.

Am I to infer that both of you prefer stupidity to reasonable alternatives, including reason itself, And have settled yourselves down to enjoy your ride to hell-in-a-handbasket, notwithstanding that in the years 2021 and following, perhaps for a thousand years, in taking that trip you take others with you, in short victimize them on your stupidity? — tim wood

There you go, brother Wood.
Good luck with ruling the world!

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Yeah, I don't think people think they are intentionally making the world a worse place by doing what they do - not implying that you said this by the way.

It seems to me that that would then be an issue of what area of concern would be the one you should focus on improving, instead of stupidity, per se.

Your OP _is_ the messenger. You always talk about yourself, you set yourself up as the arbiter of wisdom, truth, whatever it is that you like. You're incapable of presenting and discussing a topic on a socially relevant issue without being an asshole.

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I'm with Baker on this point. Platitudes are not opinions. They are lines in the sand. Or, as Gump would say, Stupid is....

The world we are born into tries to expropriate our identity. But that expropriation serves us as foil to who we rally are. It is only in distinction from that expropriation that we become and know who we are. But all too many of us fail to avail ourselves of this foil to convention and convince ourselves that we are who the world, community, neighborhood, family, etc., made us. And others of a different ilk threaten thaat facile self-knowledge. Stupidity is that failure to let ourselves be discerned from our upbringing. And he and she are smart indeed who use our cultural differences to ratify our distinction from our cultural similarities.

It takes a certain low cunning to realize greed, but not intelligence.

Well, this is going too fast for me.

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Or tell me why you are so concerned with assholes? — tim wood

Because at the end of the day, they get to rule the world. And this makes me think that maybe, this is an evolutionary advantage, or the Truth About The World, and as such, not something to repudiate.

Dismissing stupidity as a mere social issue has been standard practice, and in most cases probably best - to dismiss it. I find the world a place where even that becomes a luxury no longer affordable, except at an unacceptable price. Or are you, where you live, lucky enough to be unaffected by such things, or at least to think you're unaffected by them.

This tells me you have great self-confidence.
I try to never confuse stupidity for what might very well be strategy. I find that people are generally strategic, not stupid. They just play dumb, because this can give them an advantage.

Maybe add the h?

It's hard to know what ignorance is these days, when even the most expert source is largely ignorant of the broader details of his own field. Anyone with a cell-phone knows it all! But what can smarts do that AI can't? I was on hold the other day, and every so often a machine-voice would run through the same delay info, in the same voice. A living voice would make every repetition nuanced. Kierkegaard said repetition was impossible, and that this meant we are incapable of imitating Christ. But the variations we bring to life, even when repetition seems to be required, the avoidance of mechanical repetition, is one way we show what intelligence is, and what we know is so much more worthy of us than repeating the same.

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The OP resonates. Allow me a French tangent.

I used to love François Cavanna, a journalist and writer who spent a lot of time engaged in what he called "la guerre aux cons".

"Con" is a very common French slang for "stupid". Originally it's the same word and meaning as the English "cunt". There is a touch of perversion in the "con" concept: le con is not just stupid by lack of education, but stupid by choice. He rejects knowledge. Also he treats others rudely. E.g.: les Parisiens sont tous des cons.

Cavanna founded the magazines Hara Kiri and its successor Charlie Hebdo. He believed that in the war against stupidity, the media was a front line.

But he also said: Les cons gagnent toujours. Ils sont trop.