I love this article.

The first time I read it I felt like someone finally understood.

This is the tricky nature of “value”, isn’t it?

Something can be both valuable and detrimental to humanity.

If you’d gotten this response to asking the question “How is the game played?” to someone insinuating that they knew how the game was played, would you feel that you’d gotten a satisfactory answer?

How is the game played?

If you’re interested in the methodology used, here’s a link to the full study.

Essentially, they didn’t ask if the person thought they were a psychopath; They asked questions to which the answers reveal underlying character traits. Of course, no method of data collection is perfect. If you want to know what steps were taken to filter out insincere subjects, that information can also be found within the full study.

Wow, folded like a cheap card table the minute they got you on the ropes. Nice.

Lucky for you the linked article explains the acronym!

Wait, you’re not one of those people who only reads headlines, are you?

You’re not being a jerk, you’re being pedantic.

Ignorant is absolutely the better word, and I should have used it.

I think, however, that people are far more capable of gaining intelligence than we give them credit for. I don’t believe that IQ is assigned at birth, and it’s been shown that the entire idea of IQ testing is extremely flawed.

There are people born with learning disabilities, of course, but that’s a whole other conversation.

As much as I love these quotes, I think it’s important to qualify them:

Everyone is born stupid, but people can be educated. If we want an educated populace, we must put in the work to create functional systems of education, and celebrate intelligence as a society. It’ll be hard work, and there are plenty of people out there who would prefer to see the masses remain stupid.

“The way Americans regard sports heroes versus intellectuals speaks volumes” An article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov

Sorry to be a bummer, but that’s the truth.

I hope you do read it! It’s not the most brilliant prose ever written, but it’s a nice bit of techno-optimism (once you get through the first half) that really impacted me, and my beliefs about what the future could be, when I first read it a couple of decades ago.

Marshall Brain’s “Manna” fits this bill, in my opinion. You can read the whole novella on his website, but I don’t know how long it’ll be available, as Marshall killed himself last November.

Rest In Peace, Marshall.

You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!

I should have been more precise.

Absolutely! Thankfully. Just tipping their hand with regards to the ridiculous bullshit they’ll try use to prevent a Trump vs Obama situation.

Unfortunately, the legislative policy that’s being floated in the House is that a president can seek a third term only if their first two terms were non-consecutive. (Source)

It becomes wrong immediately, but wrong is not a binary state.

“Once a cop is responsible for 1 murder he may as well continue to kill because 1 murder is the same as 30,000 murders.”

The whole thing is worth watching, but here’s some timestamped links to a couple of parts of the presser where he discusses this:

https://youtu.be/ZRtXTXJgm3E?t=1130

https://youtu.be/ZRtXTXJgm3E?t=1364

Plenty of the east coast is high CoL. Not as much as in the west, but plenty.

Why?

1 person being held with no due process is as bad as 30000.

Please explain this one to me, because I’m not understanding your math.