Comment by thomassmith65
7 months ago
This is different than the question "Are you presuming most people are more stupid than you?"
It makes my skin crawl to say this*, but the answer for most people on HN is probably "yes, they are."
* both because people in tech are prone to Paul Graham style 'nerd martyr' arrogance, and because I often read views that disappoint me here and I do not like to admit that an intelligent person can hold them
You're falling for the is ought fallacy. Moral views are completely orthogonal to intelligence.
I'm really not that sentimental. I don't expect everyone to have the same set of values that I do.
What gnaws at me is when someone has a system of beliefs that, to my mind, seems based on nonsense.
>"Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it." -Descartes
The phrase "common sense" actually is a pet peeve of mine.
In politics, it's a red flag because it is often used to defend bad policies that only appear good when one doesn't have the fortitude to understand the better policy.
And the rejection of common sense is often used to defend ideas so bad that one has to put serious intellectual effort to create arguments for them.
A lot more "intellectuals" defended Pol Pot and Milosevic compared to ordinary chums. The denial of the Cambodian genocide was known as the "Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia".
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Why is such a rare thing called common sense? - myself
Why does it make your skin crawl?
By a mathematical necessity, half the people can say “Yes, most people are stupider than me." without lying.
It bothers me for a few reasons.
Journalists have spilt a lot of ink recently about arrogance in the tech community. They point out tech figures who mistakenly think their aptitude in one knowledge domain means they know better than experts in other domains.
That's one reason.
That's even worse. Journalists are infamous for writing articles and having opinions on things they know nothing about.
To produce plausible sounding statements on a complex topics without regard to their actual truth is almost a necessity for the opinion journalist (the predominant type of journalist of the modern era).
To be criticized for intellectual hubris by that class should be meaningless.
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I would argue that "most" implies more than a bare majority. Say, 75%?
majority != most