Sets
Keith at the Invisible Library wrote a post, Either Or, about the “game” that Jon Stewart started usually called “Evil or Stupid”. Keith points out that the sets are not exclusive and there are certainly some people who are both evil and stupid.
I favor “ignorant” over “stupid” because “stupid” implies that they are incapable of understanding, while most people to whom the designation would apply are either uninformed or misinformed. Someone who doesn’t apparently know that Medicare is a government program is ignorant without regard to the reason.
Keith mentioned Grey’s Law, “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice“, and that sent me on a search.
You start with Ockham’s razor: “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”
[Isaac Newton’s translation: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.“]
Using that format you travel to Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity“, which is seemingly almost the same as Grey’s Law, but you need one more piece.
Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Most things are derivative, but that’s a slightly different field of math.
14 comments
ohhh! Getting a bit cerebral there Bryan! 😉 😀
I studied William of Ockham (as part of my Logics subjects). There have been many famous logicians, starting with Aristotle. During the time of Ockham, there were 16 or so (it was a busy century for ‘logical’ thinking). 😉 One of my favorite’s is not Occam (and I disagree with some of his conclusions, as do many others), was Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (yes, Lewis Carroll) 😀 I even became somewhat of a collector of the good Reverend’s papers, books and even original manuscripts. Many people don’t know that he was a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University. He played a lot with surds (irrational roots), even using surds in his ‘Alice’ fantasies, though to see them, you had to know he was a mathematician/logican, and what a surd was! 😀 He even made a poem using a surd:
“And what are all such gaieties to me,
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
x2 + 7x + 53
= 11/3”
Ahem. 😉 😀
Anyway, for myself, stupidity equates to evil. Mere ignorance can easily be overcome, if the ignorant wishes to do so. If they do not wish to do so, they are willfully stupid, and therefore evil. It is also possible that the reverse is true, that stupidity is derived, or driven, by evil. Either way, the end results are the same. In this case, Occam’s Razor fails to distinguish one from the other. There is no *simple* way of determining which of the two cases is true, particularly because both *stupid* and *evil* are very subjective term’s and definitive definition’s have been argued for many centuries. Of course, there are exceptions to both! 😉 Some stupid people are merely a nuisance to themselves, and some evil people are quite intelligent. As Cicero said, exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (which has been wrongfully translated many times over the centuries, and misquoted, as (something similar to): “The exception that proves the rule”, which is a nonsense.) Cicero intended it to mean “The fact that an exception is stated serves to establish the existence of a rule that applies to cases not covered by the exception”. But, “Stupid people believe stupid things”tm 😉 😛
I have my own simplified definitions of both, based upon a lifetime of study of, and interaction with, humans. They are constantly being tested, so far… so good! 😆
Ignorance is usually curable, stupidity usually isn’t. Except by death. 😉
When lies grow from merely big to whopping,
Surely Occam’s Razor needs a stropping.
– SB the YSS
Steve, a Razor, even Ockham’s, is too suble. We need to forge the irony into a mace just to get their attention.
OT: Keep an eye on the Bay of Campeche. It probably won’t have time to develop much if the models are right, but if it goes North instead of Northwest you could have a bumpy ride.
Kryten, I was wondering if you could get on based on the spate of wild weather down your way to finish off the winter.
I generally state Billy’s concept as “keep it simple, stupid” and it is useful in team programming. There’s little worse than trying to debug an old program that is littered with orphaned routines and too many branches that serve no real purpose that anyone can remember.
He was a monk in the Middle Ages, so I cut him some slack. He was toiling under the burden of a system enamored with Scholasticism, which still exists among the “conservatives”. They don’t accept that the “Founding Fathers” included a lot of geeks. Both Franklin and Jefferson would have bought Betamax and Laserdiscs, as they were “leading edge” types.
Dodgeson is certainly applicable to understanding conservatives as there is little doubt that the movement has grown from irrational roots. Beck and Limbaugh certainly qualify as surds with an abundance of abs.
Yes, ignorance can be overcome, and if someone is willing to make the effort they can’t be considered evil. It is those that know but refuse to educate themselves or their following that are evil.
Haha… 😀 I figured you’d understand my reference to Rev. Dodgson! And I was trying to be so subtle too! 😆 It’s relevant in many ways to today. I include the fact that today, many consider him to have been a pedophile, simply based upon his child photography, and no other evidence whatsoever exists. They ignore, probably willfully of course, that the Victorian era morality wasn’t as terrifyingly insane as it is today. Anyway, that’s an entire subject of it’s own. *shrug* But I think you get my point. 🙂
And I do like your pun, re: surds! 😆
OT: Yeah… weather is insane… what’s new! 😉 😀 We had floods here, and one of the side fences came down, and a guy wire on the antenna’s snapped… *shrug* People can stop praying now! 😉 😛 😆
Lot’s of regional towns around here are flooded, we got off pretty lightly, all things considered.
I just got a new Router/modem (Asus RT-N16 & a Billion BiPAC 5210S RC) a few days ago, I was offline a couple days playing with them. 😆 I got a super bargain! Both for $200! Anyway, It supports 3rd party firmware (Linux based), so I’m playing with DD-WRT, Tomato, & Oleg’s (and I much prefer Oleg’s so far! The Router has 2 USB ports with internal .torrent/FTP & print server, and Oleg’s supports them much better.)
The Victorians were weird when it came to the human body. Showing the lower leg was scandalous unless it was in a Classical context, and then total nudity was fine. There would be nothing shocking to Victorian England to showing a nude child if the picture were labeled as “Innocence”, or given the name of someone from Greek or Roman mythology. You would be hard-pressed to find a yard of cloth in the majority of the paintings and statuary produced at the time and displayed in “all the best” homes. They were weird.
Children were also viewed very differently during the 19th century. Childhood death was so common, that mourning the death of child was the exception, rather than the rule. In the upper classes they were given to others to be raised almost immediately, and in the lower classes they started working in factories at 9 years of age.
The Victorians knew how to create pornographic photos, and did, but such things were never openly displayed… well, unless the photographer could find a suitable Classical or Biblical title, and then they were art.
Gardens and galleries often had full-nude life-size statues, male & female, and not a fig-leaf in sight. And these were in full view of children, and nobody was worried. *shrug*
The moralist morons also always neglect to mention that the photo’s were hand colored! How else do they think some of his photo’s (and many other photographers of the day, some of whose works would be considered extreme today) were in color? Dodgson used Anne Lydia Bond to color some of his child photo’s, and she apparently had no problems with it. *shrug*
It really pisses me off that the moral retards try to impose their insane *morality* on me, and even more that they have the nerve to do it on an era long gone that they have no idea about! and these morons are not simply *Putitans*. For the most part, they are simply foul-minded, chicken-shit, hypocritical morons. If they truly want to know why everything is so f*cked up now, they should all go look in a mirror!
“Stupid people do stupid things”tm
[Part 2 – I had to post a holiday thing at midnight]
The weather sounds terrible, but hardware specs out to a great reason to mess around with your system.
It looks like my next change will be to shift to satellite to see if I can get some reliability. The damn DSL keeps dropping out. It would be comforting to think it is because they are upgrading their system after the latest merger, but that’s not how things are done in the US. Here reduced competition through mergers always results in higher prices and lower levels of service.
Stay dry.
You must have posted at the same time I was finishing part 2.
I have long held that you have to judge people in history by their own times and customs. It wasn’t that long ago that torturer and executioner were civil service jobs in most countries, and the penalty for most crimes was death. The whole concept of prisons is actually fairly modern as far as crime goes. Most dungeons were used for political prisoners, and the term was until confession so the execution could take place.
In the conquest of the Americas it is useful to remember that the Europeans treated Native Americans no worse than they treated their own peasant class. The basic qualification for the upper classes for centuries was skill at armed robbery, yet if you read the histories many of these people were portrayed as enlightened and just. Richard “the lion-hearted” spent a total of 6 months in England his entire life and didn’t speak enough English to order a beer, but he is portrayed as a heroic figure. He died trying to steal more land from a small neighboring estate.
Public relations and agitprop have ancient roots.
I think the Victorians were weird, but it was their society and their choices. I didn’t have to put up with them.
LOL it happens! 😉 😀
I consider most past era’s *weird*, for one reason or another. *shrug* All it means is that I’m a *Child of my own time*. I am certain most sane people of past era’s would consider this era pretty *weird*! (Then again, so do I! Maybe I have *no time* of my own!) 😉 😆
Morality is pretty simple for me. I know right from wrong and prefer to do right, and I have common sense. Without either of those, any type of imposed morality is worthless. Most of today’s *morality* is from the wealthy, many of whom make lot’s of money from complex legal and moral systems. 😉 That in and of itself is more than enough proof to me that their morals are simply for their own selfishness. None of the *morals* of today or yesterday are worth anything because they fail to address the underlying problems of society. People who are dirt-poor and have no options are forced to have zero consideration of any moral, legal, or ethical codes, no matter what the penalties. And the Lawyers know it. But, it keeps them in the money, and they obviously don’t give a damn about the poor. If they did, they would try to make things much more equitable and simple. The more complex things are, the more the Lawyers and the wealthy, win. It’s as simple as that. 🙂 Basically, today is no different than yesterday. The self-created *elites* will always try to control all others, and the others will allow it… for a time. And at that time, that era ends, and another era, with new *elites* begins, and the cycle repeats. 😉
As John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (Lord Acton) opined in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
(and yet another quotation oft taken out of context, and wrongfully attributed – in this case, to William Pitt, The Earl of Chatham). He is actually on record for stating (in the House of Lords in 1770 whilst he was Prime Minister):
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”.
Similar, but not the same. People are so easily confused! 😆 😛
BTW, here is yet another perfect example of the above:
GOP Establishment Derides Delaware Tea Party Candidate As ‘Reckless,’ ‘Hypocritical,’ And ‘Dishonest’
Pot, meet kettle! 😆 (See, I once posted, some time ago, the comment that the GOP eat their young!) 😀
(And yet another GOP female lunatic to add to my growing list)! 😛 😆
I suffer from being a trained analyst. As was once taught to journalists, you are not supposed to become part of the “story”, but to observe and record it. It inhibits what I feel like doing, which is not a bad thing when what I really feel like doing is generally considered illegal in most of the world, so instead of taking effective direct action to hopefully resolve issues I’m left to nibble around the edges.
At some point the system changed and instead of the “cream” rising to the surface, all we get is the “scum”. If you look at the current crop of “world leaders” there isn’t a leader or states(wo)man among them. It would appear that “voters” are more interested in celebrities that people who can get things done. One of the biggest stories in the US this week was the redecoration of the Oval Office.
Both of the US political parties are functionally worthless. They are brands without meaning and no longer serve a purpose. What they have become is precisely why the people who wrote the Constitution opposed their creation.
I agree with all that. You can add Australia to your last paragraph, it’s not much different here.
It’s a conundrum. I understand the ethos of certain groups given such labels as *terrorist* etc. As part of my duties many years ago, i was required to study various groups, some that had published manifesto’s, and believed in them. Many felt that whilst what they did was considered illegal, they felt a moral obligation to their people to pursue those goals. Of course it’s usually far from that simple, and there are some groups who are simply are evil and seek only destruction and control. In any case, it’s generally something that most of the Western World willfully ignores. Much simpler to consider them in purely black/white terms. They are evil. So they deserve to die. End of story. Now I can sleep. 🙂 Far easier than considering that they may actually have a legitimate reason (in their view), and to address the problem. Groups like the IRA for example. They did terrible things, and killed many innocents. But they (for the most part) truly believed they were justified. I don’t personally agree with their methods at all. *shrug*
In Cambodia, many of us *on the side of Justice and Right* were forced to become Judge, Jury and Executioner’s. After I saw my first couple of destroyed villages full of the dead, all I wanted to do was hunt and kill as many KR as possible. As time wore on, and after many interrogations, we began to realize it wasn’t as simple and B/W as we had come to believe. Some of these KR fighters had no clear choice either. Many came from these villages, and whilst they did what they were ordered, their villages, and families would be spared. If a single fighter from a village surrendered or defected, their entire village and everyone in it was burned to the ground. In the end, we decided to hunt the Warlords, but it was difficult because every time a Warlord was executed, Pol Pot’s rage increased as did his demands. So, the UN negotiators and politicians forced us to back off and just do nothing.
People don’t want to *think*. People don’t want to *understand*. People don’t want to *consider*. It’s all to hard. Much easier to believe the simplistic garbage spewed by the likes of FOX. “Who cares? It’s not my problem!”
Until that changes, nothing else will. I’m just biding my time. One day, I’ll be dead. Then it won’t be my problem either. 😀
OT: BTW, the election is finally over (essentially anyway). 😉
Labor clings to power
It’s all pretty much as I said it would be. *shrug* 🙂
Now the fun (sic) begins! 😐
Real Life™ keeps interfering with blogging, so I was late with the election results. At the latest tropical storm will bring some rain to an area that needs it, as well as several that don’t.
I live in a country where a guy trying to build a gym is a terrorist, but people running around with guns are “exercising their Constitutional Rights”. The whackos are definitely in charge.
Apparently “new atheists” are pushing their views on people, which is wrong. This is a claim by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are definitely irony deficient [there should be a pill for that]. Personally, I don’t think that atheism can be a serious movement until they have monuments, relics, and silly hats.