Comment by PoignardAzur
12 hours ago
It's correct to say something like "the world is dysfunctional as a system for surfacing truth", and that's kind of like saying the rest of the world is crazy.
On the other, you shouldn't assume "the rest of the world is filled exclusively with incompetent people who lack basic truth-finding skills and that's why they don't agree with me" which is what people usually mean when they say the rest of the world is crazy.
Life has taught me that the vast majority of people out there are in fact average at best.
Competence (let alone extreme competence) is kind of rare actually, and accepting that that is “fine” is part.
That’s why you engineer a car to be driven by a dumb and abusive driver; airplanes are designed to be flown by pilots on their worst days; houses are built with large safety factors; code should be written to handle bugs gracefully. It’s not that anyone is being intentionally malicious, it’s that even competent people sometimes make mistakes so the rest of us should expect to screw up.
For awhile in my life, I was highly competent at what I did. It was awesome - but the altered reality this can engender - the idea that “since I am competent everyone else should be too, I’m just average” has it’s own dangers.