Human Stupidity As The Result of Unnecessary Clutter

in #politics6 years ago




As humanity moves onto more and more advanced and automated processes we see less and less effort from the masses to learn about how and why everything works. More and more toys are introduced in our lives and this results to having less time spend in understanding them. This overall results in skin deep comprehension about how the world works.

If we took a human from the Stone Age and introduced them in our society, they would have the same chances in understanding how everything works as we do. The human brain has not evolved almost at all since then. Human intelligence evolves over long periods of time and no significant development has been made since the dawn of human civilisation which started just 8000 years ago.

The human brain works much like a series of backups. The current generation builds up on the previous generation and through this incremental advancement we are able to build new ideas upon previous ones without starting all over again. This is also how we are able to watch television without having a clue how it works. Most things and concepts around us are mere toys/concepts ready to be consumed rather than understood. "We" have not gone to the moon or discovered fire. "We" mainly use things other have shown us.

This mentality of abundance and exploitation reflects on our relationships as well. Most people prefer large circles, prefering to know as many people as possible. Eventfully this results to less understanding of each individual. Much like the technological toys we only end up knowing how to use people superficially without bothering in understanding them.

Those who chose to lead a minimalist life eventually start investigating the few things around them. Less objects and/or people lead to more understanding in how they operate. Our focus becomes sharper and our relationship with the world enriched. This is what people also confuse as intelligence. Most people are considered intelligent because they focus on one thing and one thing only. They become experts in understanding how it works and this deep knowledge reflects as intelligence. The opposite is also evident. Most people are lost in the clutter of social media, friends and gadgets and so their understanding seems basic or in plain words, stupid. This is also how many autistics and social recluses appear smart. They just keep focusing on one thing almost obsessively and thus they become really good at it.

Perhaps the most obvious example of future stupidity is the development of blockchain technologies. Cryptocurrencies are all about decentralisation and ensuring one's security by empowering self independence. Yet, most people today choose Coinbase and other centralised entities to hold the keys for them. Decentralisation is more like a path for the very few, almost an idealistic political movement rather than technological innovation. Most people still want centralised control and minimal responsibility because they can't trust themselves and rather prefer to accuse others for their shortcomings. This is how and why we are still stuck with the same political system for centuries now. This is how and why tribalism prevails.

As civilisation progresses less and less effort will be required from the masses since the thinking will be done by the technological innovations around us. Intelligence is nothing more than training ones synapses to fire efficiently when introduced to stimuli. The more the random stimuli in ones environment, the less the accurate response. The movie Idiocracy might have actually got it right. The future of humanity will be more technologically advanced but the majority of people would require others to do the thinking for them.













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That is how mother nature works at all levels. Because I've visited Micropia in Amsterdam yesterday the handier analogy is with life at cellular level - at some point life was unicellular - a bit like humans trying extreme individualism. Then multicellular forms of life appeared like the Volvox - where cell specialisation was minimal . With increased specialisation the whole became more and more performant while looking at individual cells they appeared more and more "stupid" or "autistic". If you ask one of your gut cells to "fire a synapse" or send a nervous sigbal it would be utterly unable to do so but

  1. It has the same DNA as your neurons
  2. It is happily "using" and benefitting from the nervous signals by its neuronic brethren.

17ee7fa66a9542908789ff548906f708.jpgimage from tiqets.com

As onthogeny repeats phylogeny the fractal nature is at work in the human society as well.
We are gradually evolving into the "specialised cells" of the most powerful social supra organism yet allowed by a short-lived "blip" in the overall march toward ever-greater entropy .

A social supra organism whose cells ( us individuals) would not know how things actually work but will be able to use them in order to "do their part " and produce something deemed useful by somebody else.

Just like your gut cells do now. They are not more "stupid" than your neurons - they have simply got a different role in a play that is far bigger than any of them.

Very good analogy

Thank you. I've written the answer on the phone; thinking it further it would have probably been even better to replace the neuron with one of the multipotent cells of the, say, 32-cells morula stage - in order to contrast the specialised gut cell with a more versatile one :-)

That's a really interesting point, we don't all need to know everything.

Just a few thoughts:

This also shows in the devices we use. There are many more consumers than creators, and increasingly many people use tablets and wide-screen displays. Tablets are mainly consuming devices as they lack a proper keyboard and other input devices, and wide-screen displays may be great for consuming content, but they suck for engineering and photography.

I also noticed that many young people think I am decidedly un-hip for not using many gadgets and apps, and when I tell them I have actually co-engineered quite a few of them, they don't change their mind, on the contrary, I'm even more of a nerd for knowing how things work.

Many so-called intellectuals, especially in the art-and-literature scene, actually pride themselves on not understanding math and physics at all, as if it is somehow ennobling when you don't understand how much of your surroundings work.

All this never ceases to amaze me. Humans are weird.

I concur. Never before in human history ignorance has been celebrated so much. The worst part is that ignorance and knowledge have become one. Every "opinion" is valued the same.

For example, there's an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons - John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up (1972)


'Twas ever thus.

It'll be interesting to see how AI evolves ...

@kyriacos it seems we are on a similar mental wave length. Would love for you to read this article as I think it supplements your thinking quite nicely.

https://steemit.com/culture/@maven360/the-cultivation-of-convenience-musing-crypto-investing

Absolutely true. Having an deep interest/passion in a narrow subject list has made me appreciate the knowledge I acquired from learning and understanding about such topics.

Also, your Coinbase example reminded me about the reason my uncle was not interested in cryptocurrencies. He said he does not want to go through the hassle of backing up passwords/keys/seeds.

Exact description of minimal responsibility.

It was always my goal to know a bit about a lot of things. Lately, I've found more focus, and it's based on things that I don't understand. I don't understand automation, so I'm taking steps towards understanding it.

I like your equivalence to the blockchain. Decentralization is being employed in many ways from the obvious value transfer (crypto currency), to leadership roles in combat, to knowledge sharing. It has increased efficiency at every level.

This post earned you a follower.

I am ashamed! I've never read instructions from gadgets. Or does the apple not have instructions? :(

That's right.
It is a pity that we can not use what today's reality gives us.
Someone once used a nice comparison. "Being connected to the Internet, we have the whole world within reach and we instead write the whole day on Facebook what we ate for breakfast.
It's like having a time travel device and using it to go shopping. "

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

upvote and resteemit done dear...
keep it on..

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