One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
“In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.
Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”
https://qz.com/967554/the-five-universal-laws-of-human-stupidity
Some may argue the internet has allowed them to coordinate. Providing each other with new and more novel ideas.
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I try my best to keep in check my stupidity thus offloading some of the work of the smart people. Unfortunately, I fail most of the time
This is why I am 100% in favor of normalizing regularly having things like computer/internet literacy tests msybe every half decade to ensure you are actually smart enough to use the internet in a responsible manner. Don’t pass? No internet access for you outside of things educational material, cooking recipes, or sending messages to people. No access to your social media or conspiracy theory groups or anything else that’ll harm your brain.
It’ll either encourage people to get better at cheating, give up on using the internet entirely, or they might actually try to learn something and better their lives.
Some will definitely complain that they’re having their rights violated (USA), but if it keeps the Internet safe from stupidity even by a small margin, I’ll gladly take it.
Here we have a person who has never considered the important question: Who among us is intelligent enough to decide where the line lies between good enough and not good enough?
When do we consider someone too stupid to use the Internet? Bottom 50%? Bottom 10%? If bottom 10%, what do we do about the people who score exactly with 10.1%? They’re nearly indistinguishable from the bottom 10% in terms of performance, yet they still get to go online?
Who decides which sites and services are ok? The government? The ISP? The site creators? You? What happens when your approved messaging service adds short form videos? Adds group chats?
The ultimate problem: There are no good answers to any of these questions, and if you think you have one, you are almost certain to have missed something significant in your evaluation of the options.
You’re basically proposing a “social IQ” test that would effectively make people social pariahs (good luck making your taxes, finding a job, etc, without the internet, nowadays) over not being educated enough.
Do you realize there’s literally one step between this and advocating for eugenics? Do you measure the potential for abuse? Who gets to decide what’s “smart” enough for the internet?