Why intelligent people belief stupid things

[RoyalCorgi]

This has come up on other threads, but I found this article on the topic particularly interesting:

gurwinder.substack.com/p/why-smart-people-hold-stupid-beliefs

The writer has come up with the concept of Fashionably Irrational Beliefs - FIBs for short (naturally).

This is a great quote, and is a point I sometimes make (though not as well):

"Labyrinthine sophistry like 'sex is a spectrum' prevails among cognitively sophisticated cultural elites, including those who should know better such as biologists, but it’s rarer among the common people, who lack the capacity for mental gymnastics required to accept such elaborate delusions."

Can’t believe you are are all venting your hate given the recent news.

What hate? What are you blathering on about ?

it’s rarer among the common people, who lack the capacity for mental gymnastics required to accept such elaborate delusions.

I still need to read the article, but this quote jumped out at me. I’m not sure to what extent I agree with this, because I think ‘the common people’ (effectively non-experts in any given subject) tend to believe those they trust. So if the message you’re receiving is that TWAW now and this is accepted by science, big organisations and people high tend to agree with, you’re most likely going to assume that this is based on evidence somewhere along the line.

Much like how I accept concepts like the existence of the ancient Egyptians and don’t believe in anti-Covid vaccine theories. I don’t actually have the expertise to back up my beliefs.

I have read a lot about gender theory and I’m persuaded by everything I’ve learnt so far that it’s not logical, but I think at least until very recently the average person hadn’t. So many accepted it.

I think there is something to his "common people" argument, though it isn't quite right. But certainly it seems like most regular people, living regular lives, are less likely to believe certain things, particularly abstract constructs, that just seem to go against their experience.

This is as meaningless as saying I’m hateful for not believing 2+2=5 or in the belief system of the Aztecs.

I simply can’t make sense of the arguments. I have tried, because I know how strongly people feel about this and I know many are genuinely hurt by people not agreeing with them. But however much I steelman the arguments they just don’t make sense to me.

I wasn't convinced by the middle part woke examples as so very complex. I felt he was comparing bananas to apples in some places and the argument fell apart.

The the mechanism of argument applied to this specific topic whereby it's so bloody obvious you can't change sex and yet whole departments at universities spend time and money going around in circles arguing about bullshit.

It explains how sturgeon et Al have reached a position and have used debate tactics to argue and ideological position till they're blue in the face that men are women.

People and institutions such as universities who are supposed to be adept at discussion and debate, free speech etc, are using a type of 'authoritarian debate' or rhetoric which gives the illusion of reason and rationality.

At least, that's how I understand it.

Re "blame the feminists" He's proved we are never able to be clear of bias though. Our own experiences shape and mould our world views no matter how much we try to learn more.

What, the USA are blasting Chinese balloons and other flying objects out of the sky, so now we can't talk about some journalist's opinion?

The 'common people' comment sounds right to me in that most working class people are too busy with life to sit around theorising and contemplating the meaning of life. But I wonder about algorithms altering this thinking in younger generations who have grown up in the Internet age.

I took that to he those not in academia or institutions that train for and use debate eg parliament

I didn't really get what the article was saying at first as other research has showed things such as poor maths skills linked to conspiracy theories and differences between those who lean to authoritarianism (both right and left) v those who welcome debate.

I may have it wrong but he's saying within those who are skilled at debate are still misunderstanding things or deliberately resisting by using rhetoric so much that they've stopped understanding it's point and have an inability to move from their position.

However you could say that about anyone who doesn't agree with you really. The gender debate is particularly frustrating as there's some very basic science that's still somehow being ignored.

“sex is a spectrum” isn’t simply an ideology though. It’s borne from hard science:

www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

If the writer was looking for examples of sophistry that was a poor choice.

so many things once deemed to be “common sense” by “ordinary people” now seem ridiculous, including:

• women are less capable than men
• women shouldn’t be able to vote
• Homosexual behaviour is wrong
• Children should be beaten when they do wrong

etc etc.

Not this shit again 🙄

For actual undecided lurkers:
twitter.com/claireainsworth/status/888365994577735680?lang=zh

I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish or argue against with that reply

For undecided lurkers:

Sex is not a spectrum. There are two sexes. Mammals cannot change sex.

WarriorNun · Yesterday 16:35

A spade is a spade.

No! It's a long handled excavation implement, you MONSTER!

Lol - the spectrum point and the ability to change sex (or not) are two separate phenomena. Have you actually read the article?

♠️

Maybe the whole article is bs and the true test for intelligence is simply who gets taken in by sexist gender ideology and who doesn't?

LOL.

For undecided lurkers:
Sex is not a spectrum. There are two sexes. Mammals cannot change sex.

But clownfish!

Well, that depends what you mean by sex, doesn't it? And also what you mean by spectrum.

Sex exists so we can make babies, and the word exists to describe the system by which that happens and how it works. In humans, to make a baby, you need one person who can make sperm, and one person who has eggs. People who at any point in their lives will be in category 1 are male, and people who at any point in their lives will be in category 2 are female. Sometimes people's reproductive systems don't work well and they can't make babies, but that doesn't mean they change category.

And a few people, probably about 15,000 in the UK, have developmental differences meaning they're less easy to instantly categorise, but the vast majority have a known developmental or medical condition that's established as existing in one sex or the other, or as having the karyotype of one sex with the phenotype of the other.

To me, that doesn't look like a spectrum. That looks like differentiation into no more and no less than two different and discrete types of person with regards to reproductive role, one of each being both required and sufficient for baby-making, and also a few individuals with rare and specific developmental variants on those two types, each kind of variant development being the result of a particular type of departure from typical development, and having a seriously detrimental effect on the ability of the sex system to function.

If any individual with one of these conditions affecting sex development were to participate in making a baby (genetically), they would still have to do so by taking either the male or the female reproductive role through providing either the sperm or the egg. They couldn't provide a mid-spectrum gamete. These differences in sex development actually demonstrate how binary sex is.

I don't believe that there are more than two sexes. But I also don't think this article is very well written and it's muddled in places. Who writes 'common people'? I honestly don't believe that most intelligent people think that sex is a spectrum.

a few people, probably about 15,000 in the UK, have developmental differences meaning they're less easy to instantly categorise

If 15,000 is the total number with some sort of DSD (which I think it is, but have only done the sum in my head) then the nunbers who are not easy to instantly categorise will be considerably smaller - many DSD conditions result in relatively minor or no differences in external anatomy.

Claire Ainsworth wrote the article you linked to.

The figure I'm familiar with is one in 4500, which comes out at about 15,000 in the UK unless my arithmetic is fucked. That's for "proper" DSD as far as I'm aware, not hypospadias or PCOS or whatever people are trying to gather under "intersex" this week. But yes, many will be readily diagnosed with well-known conditions.