Everybody has opinions.
Some people confuse being strongly and loudly opinionate about many things with intellectual capability.
Personally I think it’s the oposite: you have to be really dumb to believe anybody could possibly trully understand most things and, worse, to think you yourself are such a person.
More accurately…
Who wants to claim to be a superior intellectual?
Who is capable of explaining their opinions beyond repeating the same talking points they’be been fed?
How to tell you’re dealing with #1 and not #2? Once they’ve exhausted their shallow pool of talking points their next steps are…
-
Completely switch topics
-
Attack your character
-
Try to fight you
-
Use the phrases “do your own research” or “I’m just asking questions”
Really hate it when people ask questions, eh? Ngl, kinda ableist to bring “capability” into it, you utter buffoon. Bike racks. Noon.
“Just asking questions” had become the go-to response for people who are being utter dicks about something until they’re proven wrong or someone stands up to em.
It’s like the mild equivalent of someone saying “it’s just a prank bro”
-
Honestly, it’s exhausting on the ego, though, because I constantly question myself and I’m aware of how much I don’t know. From the outside, that does make me seem deficient.
I think that’s partly why the debate bro energy caught on, you don’t actually need to know anything. You just need to project strength.
The irony is that real knowledge feeds more doubt, not less. The more you learn, the more you see the edges of your own ignorance.
I chose my username because when I was young I desperately wanted to be the smartest person in the room. While I did devour knowledge (encyclopedias were bedtime reading; thank you, undiagnosed autism), I was stubborn, overly certain of myself, and far less self-aware than I believed.
Getting older humbled me. I began to see how small and defensive my certainty really was, and I made a conscious effort to grow beyond it. Real knowledge, as you said, breeds doubt rather than arrogance. Learning to be more intellectual is learning to live comfortably beside what we do not know, to accept being wrong as an invitation to learn, and to not take criticism personally.
I am still working on that last one. Criticism is easier to learn from when it is not passive-aggressive, but that seems to be most people’s preferred communication style.
I do think learning to use people’s attacks against you as an opportunity to reflect on any possible real flaws they’ve picked up on is a valuable skill. Someone can be a dick to you while still having a different perspective you can wring learning from given enough effort.
Full agreement. I think another reason the debate bro caught on was that it makes for better content, even before the modern content economy.
Back in the day when the archetypal internet debates were atheists and science educators vs creationists, you could see it just as effectively. Nobody wanted to watch someone on their side go in with an open mind, open to being convinced and for both sides to come to a position entirely based on the evidence. Hell, I still don’t like that because one side has reproducible evidence and the other failed to indoctrinate me as a teenager.
A lot of modern bad faith debate tactics come back to creationists, with the infamous Gish gallop named after a creationist. And from there the opposition had to learn to play the game. Debate, not as a neutral shared pursuit of truth, the clash of thesis, antithesis, and evidence to distill an agreeable and defensible synthesis, but rather as a verbal gladiatorial contest.
The pro evolution side split with the death of new atheism, they’re on all sides now. A lot of the more committed debaters went right for varied reasons, and we wound up in a position where we needed stuff like the alt right playbook to teach how to argue against the dishonest.
And on the other side of the equation you have the internet rationalist movement, who are infamously bad at the “this sounds like bullshit” test among other flaws. They strive to accept any debate with an open mind, and find themselves a good example of why you need to keep some biases that while you’re open to changing, you’re gonna need strong evidence for.
Congratulations on passing the summit of the Dunning-Krueger arc! Now everything comes with a fun little shadow of doubt! Say goodbye to absolute certainty!
Pane two is why an ml mod banned me for 14 days yesterday lmao
Edit: and hexbear today. Those guys are the most sensitive little snowflakes in the world.
I changed my mind on something a month ago that I would get lynched for on here if I shared it.
AI-related?
😶
So mysterious.
Please share so we can lynch you. Was it linux related?
Not falling for that again /s
So you finally admit it? I fucking knew you were lying.
No to the first, yes to the following three.
The biggest offenders are pseudo-intellectuals ie objectivists and other conservatives who simultaneously villainize academia and claim an unfounded monopoly on rationalism and logic.
I freaking love being wrong, mostly because most of the things I predict are bad/stupid things and heyyy look at that, everything is going to shit just like I thought it would. I would LOVE for something to surprise me.
Being a pessimist is great because you’re either right or pleasantly surprised.
Being wrong is always interesting to me because I get to learn the actual truth next.
I have predicted pretty everything that has happened since 9/11
I hate being right about things that are so fucked
I’ve been right about the good things too, but unfortunately they’re less frequent than the shitty stuff at the moment
And by “moment”, I mean last 25 bloody years…
I was surprised three times about a political thing in the last months, all of them positive:
- The Trump administration hasn’t cracked down on leftists (yet).
- AfD is starting to lose more in eastern Germany.
- My city (Munich) elected a young Green promising to lower rent instead of some older Social Democrat literally promising nothing new.
I’m pessimistic about a lot of things, but compared to many people I know, I’m tentatively optimistic about the US. It looks to me like they’re still “only” doing voter suppression at a scale that isn’t close to “Nazi Brownshirts standing in the booths”.
There’s a socialist sweep happening but the Trump admin is likely starting to crack down, they’ve expanded their definition of terrorist again
I’ve been told for years I’m overreacting about international politics, Fascism spreading in USA, Climate change, and lately, Fascism spreading in Europe.
I am so fucking sick of being right all the time, but I just can’t stop. Everything keeps getting worse. It’s like we’ve all adopted Russia’s political roadmap: “Everything fucking sucked, and then it got worse”.
“The further onwards, the scarier”
~ Russian Proverb
you would call it Cassandra syndrome, but some Cunt stole that term already
Its the worst the best is to just be silly enough that nobody takes you seriously and yells at you for being right most of the time so you don’t feel so bitter when they always agreed with you later and also you get yo be silly being silly is better than being correct
I’m ok with being wrong and revising my knowledge. I’m not ok with trying to talk to someone that refuses to admit when they’re wrong even when they’re presented with clear evidence of the fact.
TIL: Taking mushrooms and experiencing ego death makes you a superior intellectual. Well I have those qualities, and I assure you, I’m not an intellectual
you’re more of an intellectual than a “140iq superior intellect” person who is blinded by their own ability to solve puzzles and thinks they’re better than everyone else and never wrong about anything
The Ben Shapiro types. Okay, yeah yeah, you’re smart on paper, but you’re dumb as shit.
I’m tired of people who are clever with regard to one thing thinking that they’re right about everything
You’re not a genius, you’re autistic, and your one niche subject of interest isn’t actually making the world a better place
This made sense until the insinuation that intelligence and autism are mutually exclusive
specialization =/= autism
intelligence ~/~ (does not have a definite relationship to) autism
This meme kind of sums up a lot of my Reddit experience and why I left.
Not because people shouldn’t question themselves or accept they might be wrong. That is healthy. The problem is how often that idea gets turned into a performance.
A lot of Reddit now feels less like people having a conversation and more like people trying to prove they are the only enlightened person in the room. Every joke gets dissected. Every casual comment becomes a debate. Every disagreement gets reframed as “you just didn’t understand,” “you’re emotional,” or “you need to question your beliefs.”
It stops being curiosity and becomes status-seeking and ultimatly boring as fuck. Been so nice to have actual convosations where if I have my view challenged and changed it’s not a huge reaction.
1st Reddit ban: saying Putin should be dealt with after he took Crimea.
2nd Reddit ban: arguing that the countryclub feature on subs was racist back when they required photos of skin color.
3rd Reddit “ban”: recently tried again, immediately shadow banned for saying that ill-behaved Israeli settlers in Thailand should be dealt with harshly by the military. Post instantly moderated by AI. Deleted my account.
Reddit has strayed far from its original vision and purpose
That’s what’s refreshing on Lemmy people will contradict you or call you out for ranting, but almost always in a respectful way. Unless you mention libidos, some people get really upset about that, lol.
It’s not Reddit. I know quite a few people who seem to think anyone will agree with them if they just explain it properly.
Because it is entirely impossible for someone to disagree with them, so if you don’t hold the same opinion, it’s because you don’t understand things well enough.
I stopped thinking this way when I realized why the tortoise wins the race and not the hare. People often just… don’t do things they should do, even when they’re aware of their responsibilities, and understand how easy it would be. Like reassessing your beliefs when confronted with a fact you can’t argue with - it’s easy to do, but people just… don’t. This just didn’t click for me. For decades I thought everyone would naturally have the motivation to do something simple, maybe not right away, but eventually.
Slow and steady wins the race not because it’s better than being quick and nimble, but because the person who can do it effortlessly knows how easy it would be, and puts it off to the point where it never gets done. So the person who gets off their ass and gets things done will win even if they’re slow. The motivation to do things is more important than the skill to do them easily.
In my experience people stop thinking because it would put them in conflict with the people and institutions they’re attached to or relybon for patronage there is no morality or laziness involved its just politics the motivation to not do things is most important of all
I think that’s a reason why they might choose not to change their minds, but often it seems that they don’t even think about it enough to get to that point. It’s not so much “I may be wrong, but I still want to get along with my friends who agree with me” as it is “I don’t know why you’re wrong… but I’ve decided that you still are.” The difference is that, even if they don’t have any groups anchoring them to it, people still hold tightly to their opinion.
Groups and other perceived interests the shit people think is important to their lives gets crazy like anti communism as a whole thing how many people who were staunch anti communists would have been any worse under it really but they were convinced so they fpild never think about it again
This is intrinsic to idealist thinking. Liberals literally think history is a struggle of ideas and the most correct ones will win if everyone just sits down and thinks about it.
They would! Unfortunately, that’s not how humans work. Why sit down and think about it when you can just take the other guy’s stuff?
And if you’re not good at thinking, how are you supposed to know when the guy you’re sitting down with isn’t just bullshitting you?
Why sit down and think about it when you can just take the other guy’s stuff?
The liberal would probably say something like “the social contract prevents this kind of behavior, enlightenment thinking, etc.” The materialist would point out that behavior is exactly what society is organized around, because we have mutually exclusive class interests with the people doing the taking.
What do you think idealism and materialism mean when you use them?
Yeah, sometimes you just gotta kill those who disagree.
Wait until you hear how the philosophy of the ruling class achieves and maintains dominance.
Hint: It’s not by calm, measured debate with the people whose oppression it justifies.
You’re clearly baiting something.
Haven’t you ever heard the saying that it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it?
This alone should tell you that you sometimes need more than just ideas. Like, sometimes you need to cut their salary.
We all hate reddit +4 status to you you can have some of mine
You’re emotional
Rheeeeeee🤣
Who wants ORAL SEX?
Who wants TO GO SECOND?
oh no, someone put yummy sauce on this yummy snack, what will I do???
Yeah sure, that’s the preferred order. I need get turned on as well and giving one is better than receiving one anyway.
I’ll take seconds!
Ok, who wants to go third?
I’m in!
Don’t let this man know the power of the 69
The last part is not an intellectual, the last part is just depression nowadays.
Yeah sure, i like it. Opens up new possibilities and thinking patterns. That has been kinda useful over the years.
One of the main reasons i use forum or whatever type of social media lemmy and reddit are is to have my thinking patterns questioned and tested and to read other peoples thought patterns as well.
I really don’t care whatever it says about my intellect, it’s just useful and can make my life easier and as an added benefit due to understanding others better, hopefully make their lives a little easier as well.
