To think prejudice against low intelligence is a big problem.

[Bluebirdsflyover]

I just read a thread on here about the tour de France crash and that woman who caused it.

Now, the woman was culpable for sure, regardless of what you think is a proportionate punishment.
But some of the comments (in fact the vast majority of the comments) were along the lines of:

“She deserves what’s coming to her, stupid woman”

“Nobody is THAT thick”

“I’m glad she will be made an example of, bloody idiot”

And so on.

Like it never crossed anybody’s MIND that some people are actually not as quick witted as others? Some people just aren’t that bright. That they don’t deserve to be punished for that?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making any assumptions about the woman’s cognitive ability, hell we ALL make mistakes, even those who have been to flipping Harvard, and often big ones. Mostly we are lucky and they are not broadcast to the whole world.

If was the way people on that post used perceived intelligence (or lack thereof) as a justification for vindictive retribution that really bothered me.

Cruel people and actions - punish them.
Malicious people and actions- punish them.
Spiteful, sadistic, abusive, coercive, etc etc - punish them all!
‘Stupidness’ (for lack of a better word... it’s quite telling we haven’t really got a world for low intelligence or poor judgement that isn’t derogatory)... should it be punished?
I don’t think so.

Our absolute distain for people who are deemed to act in a ‘stupid’ way is testament, I think, to deeply prejudicial attitudes about intelligence.

I don't think it's low intelligence that's abhorred actually, I think it's ignorance. There's a huge difference between people who can't learn or think in a particular way and people who refuse to.

If someone is genuinely mentally incapable of understanding that things like the Tour de France stunt are dangerous and could get someone killed, that person shouldn't be in such situations without proper supervision, for the same reasons young children aren't allowed to be. Restricting their rights that way could be seen as punishing stupidity, and perhaps it is, but the alternative is worse.

In the video I saw there was nothing at all to stop people wandering into the road, so it's actually not the fault of the crowd, but the event organisers. This was an accident waiting to happen because of poor event management

I think you may have provided the counter argument to the OP's point of view with that comment!

I don't think you are unreasonable, but selected YABU because most people subject to discrimination are aware of the discrimination, but in your example, people with low intelligence usually refuse to acknowledge this. That is usually the problem, not the low intelligence itself. People don't/can't know what they don't know.

I don't think being careless and inconsiderate is the same as low intelligence. Many people barrel through life with no care and attention and no regard or consideration for others. They are only capable of thinking about themselves. This often leads to accidents. That is not low intelligence.

My mind was blown when I heard researchers had found a considerable proportion of the population did not think in words in their head. So they are not capable of forming arguments in their own brains, they are purely driven by feelings. I think that accounts for some of it and perhaps should be seen as a disability.

She was quick witted enough to whip her sign out as soon as she thought it would get seen on tv though.

@KrisAkabusi

In the video I saw there was nothing at all to stop people wandering into the road, so it's actually not the fault of the crowd, but the event organisers. This was an accident waiting to happen because of poor event management The stage was 200km long. Are you really suggesting all that should be barriered off?! How? There's two sides of the road so you need 400km of barriers. And you couldn't remove those and have them ready for the next stage overnight, so that's 800km of barriers needed. Do that many even exist in France? Where do you store them for the 11 months of the year they are not needed? It's not practical.

This. That would be so expensive and impractical. This race has been going for years and no one has ever stepped out in front of the cyclists like this woman did.

Yes people are calling her/her actions stupid or idiotic, because what she did was, she was so focused about getting on tv she did something very silly but that doesn’t mean she has a low iq. She may well do, but it’s not a given. Especially since she did a runner immediately so knew the ramifications of what she had caused.

Anyway she got her wish, she was on tv, and in thr media, globally.

@Tal45

She was quick witted enough to whip her sign out as soon as she thought it would get seen on tv though.

Yup and to do a runner right after.

Low intelligence is not the same as lacking in common sense, which the TdF spectator clearly is.

Policing/condemning 'stupid' decisions/poor judgement is a way of keeping members of our society safe.
She could have killed someone. The societal reaction to her means that others (and her) are learning her particular judgement call is not acceptable. The negativity means it is less likely it will happen again.
Harmless mistakes don't tend to get bad reactions, but stupidity that could really fuck things up for other people is shamed so members of society don't get fucked over/hurt/their plans damaged/killed etc.
Expectations are different for those who lack capacity and that's why in society we usually 'assign' someone who has capacity to make sure they don't hurt themselves or others and allow them and others to lead as successful a life as possible.
But if you have capacity and you did something stupid of course you get a negative reaction, it's how we set/maintain ground rules in society.
There's an argument for compassion and reflection rather than blame and condemnation in some cases but it's a perfectly valid and useful human impulse to call out stupidity when it is appropriate. Stupidity puts people at risk.

But people with learning disabilities are legally protected from discrimination, though perhaps not from prejudice.

But you seem to want to excuse harmful acts when they’re done through ignorance rather than malicious intent. I don’t think that’s any excuse, we all have a responsibility in society to consider the impact of what we’re doing on others. You don’t need to be a genius to stop and consider what you’re doing.

If the woman was found to genuinely have a lower mental capacity, the word stupid wouldn’t be used to describe her. She did a stupid thing, which is completely different to the point you’re trying to make OP. She made sure she put the board out at exactly the time the first cyclist was passing, which shows she had the mental capacity to get the timings she wanted right. Probably a case of self entitlement rather than low mental capacity.

I think the words stupid (and all the variants thereof) and intelligence are used in a very broad manner in everyday life. Now if the woman in question lacked the ability to foresee standing in the road with her back towards a lot of very fast moving bikes could end in disaster, she is probably unaware that walking down the fast lane of a motorway is dangerous. On that basis she would probably have had someone with capacity to look after her to prevent her putting herself in danger.

However, people do stupid things, why? It’s usually not a lack of capacity to think things through it’s the lack of willingness to do so. This was obviously a silly thing to do, if anyone over the age of 5 thought about it they would be able to see possible outcomes. So why go ahead? It’s pure selfishness, that lady wanted something (the selfie) so was concentrated on that goal without bothering to think out the potential implications. Selfishness and intellectual laziness is increasingly just seen as the norm.

On the flip side many things are mistaken for intelligence, memory, wealth, vocabulary etc, even being well read and knowledge to some extent. True intelligence though, now that is the thing that is undervalued.

@Taliskerskye

There are so many stupid people in the world What are you going to do.

People who have low IQs are needed as much as the people who have high IQs, if they weren’t natural selection would have done it’s thing thousands of years ago.

Maybe to work the fields and farms but not anymore

Also just to clarify that was a facetious comment.

Very few people are intellectually retarded. A low IQ doesn’t mean someone doesn’t have common sense it just means they’re not good at tests.

You’re seriously overthinking the use of a word and as someone neurodiverse from a neurodiverse family (DP is autistic, his mother is also and has slow processing) the majority of people who do dumb things usually have a character failing (e.g selfishness)

Whatever way you want to dress it up, this was an atttention seeking woman who wanted to be on the cameras and to hell with the safety of anyone else. Hopefully they find her and punish her appropriately. Would you be so quick to defend her if your young people were doing say a charity bike ride and she has basically stood right in front of them with a sign, wanting to get on the tv, knowing that she was putting their safety in danger. Resulting in a crash, causing injury and meaning that at least one of them had to drop out of a competition for a sport that they had spent most of their lives dedicating themselves to?

If it was Formula One that she had done this in, causing a crash and killing a driver, would you be so quick to play it down?

I agree entirely with your central premise OP, but this woman just doesn't fall under that umbrella from what we've seen. She doesn't appear to lack real capacity in any way.

I just think we should be tolerant of mistakes where these are plainly obvious and without malice (eg tour de france)

The weight we put on intent versus impact is such an interesting one. I often think people (especially on MN) actually put too much weight on intent (‘well I’m sure they didn’t mean to say something so obviously upsetting / didn’t mean to poison your garden / wheel out a racist/sexist trope’) over the impact of a person’s actions.

I wonder if there’s a link between the degree to which a society is individualistic and the weight it puts on the intent behind actions rather than the impact of them.

So in this case - the woman did an actively stupid thing. We don’t know anything about her mental capacity or motive, but is ‘lack of malice’ enough to absolve the (clearly foreseeable if thought about) many injuries, the thousands of pounds worth of damage, the guy who’s had to pull out of the race altogether? Does her ‘I didn’t mean it’ remove the sponsorships he may have lost, the wasted months of training, the pain?

I think we’re rather quick to take away personal responsibility, to tell the truth.

@JassyRadlett

I just think we should be tolerant of mistakes where these are plainly obvious and without malice (eg tour de france)

The weight we put on intent versus impact is such an interesting one. I often think people (especially on MN) actually put too much weight on intent (‘well I’m sure they didn’t mean to say something so obviously upsetting / didn’t mean to poison your garden / wheel out a racist/sexist trope’) over the impact of a person’s actions.

I wonder if there’s a link between the degree to which a society is individualistic and the weight it puts on the intent behind actions rather than the impact of them.

So in this case - the woman did an actively stupid thing. We don’t know anything about her mental capacity or motive, but is ‘lack of malice’ enough to absolve the (clearly foreseeable if thought about) many injuries, the thousands of pounds worth of damage, the guy who’s had to pull out of the race altogether? Does her ‘I didn’t mean it’ remove the sponsorships he may have lost, the wasted months of training, the pain?

I think we’re rather quick to take away personal responsibility, to tell the truth.

We are - and it’s a slap in the face to those of us who are actually disabled. You see it all the time in here - someone comes in complaining about their DP who has ASD /ADHD and refuses to do such and such. It’s not their condition, they’re just twats. Just as how the advise is to LTB for someone with mental illness who doesn’t do anything about it - it’s similar for the neurodiverse.

*advice

@Bluebirdsflyover - as a matter of interest, do you think any of the young people you work with would actually have been likely to have done something that silly and do you think they should have been exempt from culpability if they had done? Should they be considered less culpable than someone of higher intelligence, even though a tendency to make such silly judgements has absolutely nothing to do with IQ (although is possibly linked to ADHD and seriously impaired visual perception!)? Do you think they should be allowed at such events unchaperoned if they are prone to such spectacularly foolish acts? Do you think, the vast majority of the time, anyone has the slightest intention to judge a person’s actual intelligence when they call them stupid?
It seems to me, calling someone stupid is almost always intended to mean the exact opposite - that what they did was so ridiculous, it would only be forgiveable if they were of phenomenally low intelligence, not that they are actually believed to be of low intelligence. Yes, it is normally an inaccurate judgement imvho, and so unfair to talk about it as though this is something a person of low IQ actually would do, because the sort of acts usually complained of are generally linked to recklessness and selfishness rather than directly to low intelligence.

What was stupid was not to put enough distance between the cyclists and the onlookers. Barriers also.

I think in general we could do with a lot more compassion, understanding and forgiveness and less cruelty and judgement.

I don't know the latest on this. Has the woman been identified and found? She was silly to have put herself in the way of the cyclists and she caused a 'crash', it's the sort of thing a child might think of doing without understanding the implications. However nobody died and she didn't mean to cause harm, she won't do it again.

Let her be is what I say.

IQ is bullshit anyway. Intelligence is relative. There's also common sense, which would also dictate that walking out of the crowd with a sign sticking out IN THE MIDDLE OF A RACE WITH CYCLISTS RIDING PAST is a very, very bad idea, and I have no sympathy for her because her actions injured people. So she wanted to get on TV, so what? Why couldn't she just stand at the side and wave like other people?

OP this is really not to do with lack of capacity or IQ - I suspect she will be held to have acted negligently and to be responsible for the harm she caused - no idea what the consequences (or "punishment") will be.

I cannot stand the word "stupid" and have taught dc not to use it at all but I don't think that that is what is going on here, I don't think this is "stupid bashing" - people are genuinely angry and pretty disgusted. She was holding a massive sign out, when cyclists were literally seconds away and the cyclists could not swerve. The damage you see on the video is horrendous.

Most of the time when people say stupid they mean either lack of education or "you think differently to me" but I don't think that is happening here, it is people genuinely appalled at the lack of thought.