It Will Take More than Willpower to Reverse a Rising Tide of Stupidity

Is the ancient virtue of willpower still relevant in the modern age?

We eat, drink, smoke and gamble too much, max out our credit cards, fall into dangerous liaisons and become addicted to heroin, cocaine and e-mail.

...In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money. _NYT

A more scientific term for willpower is executive function (EF), coordinated in the prefrontal lobes of the brain. Together with intelligence (IQ), levels of EF powerfully determine life success over the years. EF can be improved by training in children, but such training should occur between the ages of 4 and 7 for maximum benefit.

The interaction of willpower and stupidity is more complex than most people understand. First, what do we mean by "stupidity?"

"A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

"Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."

"Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."

"Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid." _Science20

Stupidity arises from multiple causes. Low intelligence, spite, ignorance, laziness (lack of willpower), miscalculation, and unavoidable constraint propagation (bad luck) are just a few of the many causes of stupidity and stupid people.

In the United States, stupidity has become concentrated near seats of power such as Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Government is one obvious host and purveyor of mass stupidity, along with all other institutions which are closely involved with government -- such as labour unions, news media, education, financial and economic institutions, law enforcement, the courts etc. Even the military -- which believe it or not is the most competent branch of government -- has been infiltrated by politically correct stupidity via social promotion of PC-favoured officers and the enforcement of politically correct policies.

Labour unions have become the seat of stupidity in a particular way recently, thanks to the union-friendly Obama regime. A violent storming, vandalism, and assault of a port in Washington state goes unpunished by government officials. While warming up a crowd for President Obama, Jimmy Hoffa Jr. tells Obama to "take out the son of a bitches," referring to Tea Party members and Republicans, and neither Hoffa nor the Obama White House will apologise for this rather blatant lapse of civility in the midst of an official Obama event. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka dictates to Obama what he needs to say in his jobs speech before a joint session of congress -- encouraging the president to "go to the mat" -- and is rewarded for his presumption by being seated next to Michelle Obama for the president's speech.

These are all examples of stupidity by labour union officials and thugs. But many more similar examples occur on a regular basis. If the general public were to become widely aware of this stupidity, the political fortunes of Mr. Obama and those close to him would deteriorate even more quickly than at present. But for now, the news media continues to overlook and cover up the mistakes of Obama and his friends.

Mr. Obama's stupidity is not only in his friends and hangers on, but is engrained in every policy that he has pursued since being inaugurated. His war against the private sector, his war against energy, his promotion of a bankrupting "green jobs agenda," his vilifying of national allies and his cozying up with national antagonists, his diverting of scarce national assets into the purses of political cronies, his irreversible expansion of government mandate and government debt, his unprecedentedly divisive effect on society -- all of these evidences of stupidity and more should be enough to portray Obama's administration as "the stupid regime."

It should be obvious that willpower is not a simple antidote to stupidity. In fact, stupid people often pursue their stupid agendas with the utmost will.

It is true that if the masses had exerted more willpower in their oversight of government and government officials, that this massive clusterfuck could have never grown so bad so quickly. But that was then, and this is now. What do we do now?

Can the example problem -- the rise of stupidity in US government and society -- be solved within the existing political and societal structure, or will entirely new structures and forms of organisation have to be constructed de novo?

This question will be explored in future articles.

Cross-posted to abu al-fin

Germany's Nuclear Phobia is Too Stupid for Words

Dan Yurman has published an excellent review of the German government's decision to close down all of its nuclear power plants by the year 2022. The decision's costs to German society and the German people will be incalculable, and once again call to our attention the fact that ordinary humans have no valid perspective on risk.

The chart below comes from an an article out of the Journal of Physicians and Surgeons, in PDF format. Risks from a wide range of events and phenomena are ranked according to days of lost life expectancy. The risks at top are measured in thousands of days in lost expectancy. As you drop down through the chart, lesser risks are measured in days of lost life expectancy. As you can see, risks from nuclear power occupy the very lowest position -- a small fraction of a single day of lost life expectancy on average -- if calculated by government sources.

Journal of Physicians and Surgeons (US) PDF
And yet, Germany's government and much of the entire nation of Germany has panicked itself into a dangerous and expensive restricting of its own future energy resources. Sometimes government can undo damage that government has done previously -- at least in part. Future German governments will curse what Merkel's government has done, but they will deal with it -- and almost certainly return to nuclear power out of necessity.

But they will be forced to buy massive amounts of power from neighboring countries at much higher rates than would have been necessary if they had preserved their nuclear power resources. And when Germany does choose to go nuclear again, it will have to buy reactors and fuels from other countries -- countries which instead of panicking, chose to develop safer, cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable nuclear reactors.

Cross-posted from Al Fin Energy

We will revisit the issue of risk in the near future, since the abuse and misuse of risk continues to play such a devastating role in governmental, non-governmental, and inter-governmental policymaking in Europe and the Anglosphere.

Too Stupid to Know That Someone Is Trying to Kill You

Just like the Carr brothers in the Wichita massacre, the May 4 2009 home invaders of College Park near Atlanta planned to kill everyone in the apartment at the birthday party -- after raping the women.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey. _WSBTV

All ten of the party-goers would likely be dead now, and police would have few leads to the killings which might never have been solved. Instead, a citizen took his own self-defense seriously, and acted for himself and his friends.

More here

More on the Wichita Massacre and a similar Knoxville Horror

Too Stupid to Know . . . . .

.....when someone is trying to kill you.

Remember what Islamic Sharia law would mean for you and everyone you know.

"A secularist represents a danger to society and the nation that must be eliminated. It is the duty of the government to kill him."

....just this week in the United States ... a Johnstown (western Pennsylvania) area imam Fouad El Bayly openly sanctioned the punishment by death of former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali-born and raised a Muslim in Somalia-for her open avowal of secularism.

"Liberal democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom and attaches all possible value to each man or woman." ... Individualism is not a recognizable feature of Islam; instead the collective will of the Muslim people is constantly emphasized. There is certainly no notion of individual rights, which developed in the West, especially during the eighteenth century.

Source

....large majorities [of muslims] agree with goals that involve expanding the role of Islam in their society. On average, about three out of four agree with seeking to “require Islamic countries to impose a strict application of sharia,” and to “keep Western values out of Islamic countries.” Two-thirds would even like to “unify all Islamic counties into a single Islamic state or caliphate.” [Ed: Spain is considered a muslim country under the rule: once muslim, always muslim]

Source

the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a "fringe minority"-desired this outcome (i.e., "To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate"), including 49% of "moderate" Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition "To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country."

Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim "advocacy" groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari'a as promulgators of "a peaceful and just society" , the findings from the University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org poll are ominous.

Source

Too Stupid To Know When Someone Is Trying To Kill You--Reprise

I could not let the month of April go by without returning to the April 2006 message from award-winning SF/Horror writer Dan Simmons.

Analogous to the neurologic phenomenon of "face blindness" or "emotion blindness," is the broader social pathology of civilisation danger blindness. While the sufferer of emotion blindness is unable to read the emotions of others around her--so she cannot anticipate when someone is likely to cause her harm--the sufferer of civilisation danger blindness is unable to recognise people and groups of people who represent a mortal danger to their freedoms and civilisation.

With that fashionable sociopathology in mind, I offer once again Dan Simmons' April 2006 message.


Science fiction authors have the ability to place themselves out of the context of current reality, into possible realities that could occur. "Constraint propagation" is a concept useful in certain types of computer programming. It is also useful in predicting future events.

Some science fiction authors are better than others at this. In my humble opinion, Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card are two of the best at projecting the future based upon current events. They have suffered untold flak from their fans and others, but have taken the honourable course of risking a loss of readership to tell what they believe to be the true danger we face.

Contrast that courage with the cowardice of hip hop artists who state that even if they knowingly lived next door to a mass murderer, they would never inform authorities of a killer's whereabouts--not even to save lives. The explanation they give, is that it would be bad for business!

Too Stupid to Know . . .

. . . when people are trying to kill you.

I recently watched A History of Violence, a film starring Viggo Mortensen, from LOTR. After an apparently unconnected short violent opening, the film begins to portray the peaceful family life of Tom and Edie Stall, living the american dream in small town Millbrook, Indiana. Tom is a devoted family man, peaceable and loyal to his home and hometown. Nothing seems to foreshadow what is going to happen next.

Late one night, two men walk into Tom's diner just as it is closing. Tom asks them to leave, explaining that the diner was closed. The two men had other plans. One of the men held everyone in the diner at gunpoint, while the other brutalised a female diner employee. Then the older of the two gunmen orders the younger one to kill the woman. What happens next is abrupt, brutal, and decisive.

If Tom had not really believed the younger gunman would kill his employee, he would not have acted as he did. And everyone in the diner would have been killed by the two murdering strangers. If Tom had been too stupid to know that they were planning to kill them all, they would have all died.

Before I saw the film, I read several reviews at rottentomatoes.com. Most of the reviews were simply garbage, of course. I knew that after I had seen the film for myself. You may wish to make the comparison yourself, read the reviews and see the movie.

But I digress. What happens to people who are too stupid to know that other people intend to kill them? They usually die. Often horribly. Primitive people in Rwanda massacred almost a million other people with machetes. Primitive people in Iraq and other places decapitate other people with dull knives, while screaming "allahu akbar!" Primitive people in Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, NYC, Madrid, London, Washington DC, blow themselves up in crowds and buildings to kill as many innocent people as possible.

Do you want to die? There are people who want to kill you, for certain. Are you stupid? Will you passively allow the dull knives to slit your throats, denying to the end that this could really be happening to you?

We are all different, and we all take different messages home from the cinema, and from a news story or a book. There are many things about the world that we see differently from each other, without paying a cost. The one thing we have to see clearly, and understand with certainty, is when someone wants to kill us. None of us can afford the stupidity of denial in such a situation.