As a counter argument to the recent "George Bush is smarter than you" article we had a few days ago.
I was old enough during that time period, and all we got to see "unfold" was what the media and pundits wanted us to see. Is Bush smart or dumb? I have no idea and don't care. I've never met him myself, so it's silly to base everything I know about the guy on the media that was dedicated to bashing him, with the one exception of Fox News.
I'm the smartest person in my family; I'm actually probably the smartest person in my group of friends. They're all doing much better in life than I am. George Bush was not a good President. He fucked up a lot of stuff, stuff that I'm going to have to be fixing in the nest two or three decades. He could've been the smartest man in the world but he still created a society of incredible debt, prolonged wars, environmental mess, an educational system now compiling the issue of decades of already misguided policy. I'd rather have an idiot that had stumbled in to the right choices.
Now off to my steadily more expensive college class that will get me a job almost no where. I can go on to spend years in debt up to my ears struggling to make a living, watching a government that I can't trust expand upon everything Bush did. Shit, my really big developmental years, the time I spent in school, was basically spent with the country in a constant state of war. Awesome. Well, at least he was smart. The point of me quoting myself is that this is an irrelevant debate about nothing significant. Intelligence is not a virtue, and once you treat it as such then it can be manipulated exactly like it is right now.Who cares?
Virture, while it can mean a desirable quality, has a moral connotation. Intelligent people fall on the same spectrum of assholes as every other human being on the planet, they just happen to be smart about it. Intelligence does not preclude morality nor good judgmnet.
#askhubski? I'm not so sure about that. #uspolitics or #politics, maybe?
This is such a worthless, contentless comment -- something I'd expect to see on reddit. If you don't have anything other to say than "yup", why comment at all?
hehe :) actually on further thoughtful reflection maybe we can use this for a teaching moment. I read Emily Post as a child. (I have always had a hard time understanding the customs and habits of my fellowman and etiquette books gave me guidelines to pretend to be normal) Well anyway Ms Post said something that has stuck with me to this day (I still can't remember which side the salad fork goes) She said when catching someone in a breach of etiquette is impolite to point it out. I think her example was someone eating chicken with their fingers. Her suggestion to a gracious hostess was not to call them out or even to take them aside and correct them but instead to eat the chicken with their own fingers as not embarrass them. Simply put it is ruder to point out the rudeness in others than to accidentally make a faux pas
Yeah, except Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism.
I don't know if less-wrong is the place to go to learn to be polite. I don't think that Yudkowsky plea to enlightened fascism is the best strategy. Anyhow there is a ban hammer here and it is egalitarian unfollow, ignore and don't share.
I think also don't engage if someone sez something dumb let it slide it invariably ends up on the bottom of the comments.
Oh, I don't know. I avoid politics on reddit. How about Bruce Lee? Because he was a badass and a philosopher. Or, at least he was a philosophy student. Edit: I am not implying that you are a fool.“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”