what if smart people get smarter while stupid people get stupider. .
.forever? imagine a society that is designed to function by feeding on
the power differential of intelligence between these two divergent
classes and you will have a pretty realistic idea about how American
society actually works. smart people become smart by paying attention to
the sensory information they receive about their surroundings, learning to connect the causal relations between the past and the present,
and formulating meaningful predictions about possible future conditions
and preparing for these conditions in advance to successfully predict
and adapt to a dynamic reality. The more curious they are, and the more
willing they are to continue collecting information and realizing that
what they know is always incomplete, the higher level of intelligence and
success they will be able to attain. stupid people become stupid by not
paying attention to the input of their senses, not making meaningful
connections between events and observations, not understanding the
principles of causality and abstract reasoning about sensory input. the
less they pay attention and correctly observe events in the world, the
stupider they will become. if a stupid person comes into contact with a
smarter person, that person will easily be able to mislead the stupid
person into either a). forgoing potential benefit and access to valuable
resources and information out of ignorance--an aversion to what is
truly beneficial/attraction to what is truly harmful, or b). actually working for the benefit of the smarter
person at their own expense while believing themselves to be benefited
by this arrangement.
if you can imagine that, now imagine this: a group of 'smarter' people concoct ever more subtle and effective ways of making stupid people stupider by misleading them into believing that they are the 'smart' ones in society by giving them superficial symbols of rank and status which earn them the praise and admiration of stupider people, while more importantly decreasing their incentive to try and become smart because they think they are already smart (which attitude is bolstered by the admiration of all the dumber people who see them as being smart already as well). on top of that, they actually find ways to promote rapid breeding of stupid people while restricting or eliminating the possibility of stupid people becoming smart and joining the ranks of the smart people. finally, they develop methods of making smart people dumb through deception, misdirection, coercion, reward/punishment, and brainwashing. the result of which is eventually that the dumb people end up doing all the work of society while the 'smart' people just sit back and reap all the rewards, but are unwilling, incapable, or at the very least unaccustomed to the tasks that actually allow society to function. when all these variables combine, eventually the number of 'smart' people present in a society declines drastically over time, especially if a.) some of the smart people get really smart and decide 'hey, wouldn't it be way awesomer if we just left all the dumb people behind and just move away and start a world of all smart people somewhere else? or b). the lazy 'smart' people just built robots to do stuff that the dumb people used to do and murder off all the dumb people slowly or quickly. . .
welcome to the future, people
if you can imagine that, now imagine this: a group of 'smarter' people concoct ever more subtle and effective ways of making stupid people stupider by misleading them into believing that they are the 'smart' ones in society by giving them superficial symbols of rank and status which earn them the praise and admiration of stupider people, while more importantly decreasing their incentive to try and become smart because they think they are already smart (which attitude is bolstered by the admiration of all the dumber people who see them as being smart already as well). on top of that, they actually find ways to promote rapid breeding of stupid people while restricting or eliminating the possibility of stupid people becoming smart and joining the ranks of the smart people. finally, they develop methods of making smart people dumb through deception, misdirection, coercion, reward/punishment, and brainwashing. the result of which is eventually that the dumb people end up doing all the work of society while the 'smart' people just sit back and reap all the rewards, but are unwilling, incapable, or at the very least unaccustomed to the tasks that actually allow society to function. when all these variables combine, eventually the number of 'smart' people present in a society declines drastically over time, especially if a.) some of the smart people get really smart and decide 'hey, wouldn't it be way awesomer if we just left all the dumb people behind and just move away and start a world of all smart people somewhere else? or b). the lazy 'smart' people just built robots to do stuff that the dumb people used to do and murder off all the dumb people slowly or quickly. . .
welcome to the future, people
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