Discussion When was the first time you realized people were stupid en masse??

Indus · May 29, 2025

We've seen a lot of leopard eating faces threads.. but I'm curious as we've all gone through life.. when was the first time we realized that stupid people actually existed? I mean we all know bad people exist (murderers/ rapists/ serial killers/ child abducters/ smugglers)..

But we thought stupid people didn't exist! At least I didn't. Not as a kid anyways.

For me the realization was 1992?? Remember Amy Fischer.. the long island girl who had an affair with an older man named Joey and went to his house and shot his wife?? Then she bragged about it to her friend that she did.. she's enjoying the spotlight and wanted get a Ferrari with all the fame it had brought her. I was very young and thought.. OMG how can someone be that stupid??

My first major time thinking OMG lots of people can be stupid was 2004 election.. how could we elect W. a second time around?? Didn't we learn enough from his first term and he actually got more votes??

How about you all? When did you first realize it??

ivwshane · May 29, 2025

I don’t remember when exactly but it was after I realized that if I was on this earth by myself without humans my chances of survival would be very small, even if the threat of predators was non existent.

Humans have created the world they currently live in not because we’ve grown more intelligent but because communication and the sharing of knowledge has grown from taking generations to pass along knowledge to passing knowledge around nearly instantaneously. The sharing of knowledge has happened quicker because we created/accepted larger and larger groups of people/societies.

We are stupid individually and yet, collectively, we are masters of our universe.

Not even the smartest person in the world could create what we have created (even at a smaller scale) if they had to start from nothing but raw resources and a slave class totally obedient to them.

So it’s not our collective or individual intelligence that you should be concerned about, it’s that there is a seemingly growing population of people that want to distance themselves from society, either by not wanting to contribute to it or by not wanting to participate in it and abide by the rules and norms that have been established, including how to change the rules and norms.

Indus · May 29, 2025

ivwshane said:
I don’t remember when exactly but it was after I realized that if I was on this earth by myself without humans my chances of survival would be very small, even if the threat of predators was non existent.

Humans have created the world they currently live in not because we’ve grown more intelligent but because communication and the sharing of knowledge has grown from taking generations to pass along knowledge to passing knowledge around nearly instantaneously. The sharing of knowledge has happened quicker because we created/accepted larger and larger groups of people/societies.

We are stupid individually and yet, collectively, we are masters of our universe.

Not even the smartest person in the world could create what we have created (even at a smaller scale) if they had to start from nothing but raw resources and a slave class totally obedient to them.

So it’s not our collective or individual intelligence that you should be concerned about, it’s that there is a seemingly growing population of people that want to distance themselves from society, either by not wanting to contribute to it or by not wanting to participate in it and abide by the rules and norms that have been established, including how to change the rules and norms.

That is incredibly true!

And anthropologists discovered humans have always been social society wise till we discovered agriculture and then we started building our own homesteads and wanted to be all alone in individual families rather than part of a pack/ tribe.

Plenty of evidence from unreached tribes.. they exist more harmoniously like a tribe rather than family unit!

That is socialism and idiots hate it!

Muse · May 30, 2025

Not fully grown, I was alone one day, prone, and thinking. I realized that an interventionist God was the creation of the clergy, a concept they invented in an effort to control and milk the general populace.

trenchfoot · May 30, 2025

I was sitting in hole getting shot at thinking to myself I need to have a talk with that bunch of stupid idiots that thought it was a good idea to get me and my buds killed in some ungodly hot humid steaming jungle just so they could fulfill some personal agenda of theirs. And why they required having me to do their job when they could hunker down right next to me and help themselves get their own job done. Or at least have their kids come join in the fun.

pmv · May 30, 2025

I've never really believed stupid people exist. I think stupidity is, in the vast majority of cases, a strategic choice. People are self-serving and believe what it suits them to believe.

I think that Upton Sinclair quote (which, full disclosure, I had to google to get the exact wording) is absolutely spot-on.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

pmv · May 30, 2025

Muse said:
Not fully grown, I was alone one day, prone, and thinking. I realized that an interventionist God was the creation of the clergy, a concept they invented in an effort to control and milk the general populace.

Closely related to that would be my other favourite quote, from George Bernard Shaw. I guess your point is a particular case of the general rule.

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

Muse · May 30, 2025

pmv said:
I've never really believed stupid people exist. I think stupidity is, in the vast majority of cases, a strategic choice. People are self-serving and believe what it suits them to believe.

I think that Upton Sinclair quote (which, full disclosure, I had to google to get the exact wording) is absolutely spot-on.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Uh, yes, I have reached for that quotation a few times in the P&N Forum. I've had it tucked away in my private stash of quotes, witticisms, for some time.

Now, I think that there are a lot of people who do not have beliefs at all. They do not function on the level requiring it.

PowerEngineer · May 30, 2025

My suspicions were first raised as a teenager when I had an adult try to explain to me how Noah built his arc. My suspicions grew as I continued to encounter people with absurd beliefs. But I always held out hope that these were just rare unfortunates lost in a far smarter society.

And then Trump was elected president for the first time...

Muse · May 30, 2025

PowerEngineer said:
My suspicions were first raised as a teenager when I had an adult try to explain to me how Noah built his arc. My suspicions grew as I continued to encounter people with absurd beliefs. But I always held out hope that these were just rare unfortunates lost in a far smarter society.

And then Trump was elected president for the first time...

Oh, the 2nd time was much worse.

Drach · May 31, 2025

I was probably 5 and couldn't understand why people were pissed because a black family moved into our neighborhood.
One ended up my best friend to this day.

53 years later. His middle finger doesn't work so deal with it.

Indus · May 31, 2025

Oh man.. you can take woman out of the neighborhood but you can't take the neighborhood out of the woman...

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/05/28/secret-service-fight-obama-home-agents-suspended/

[DHT]Osiris · May 31, 2025

Individually? As a child. Groups? In the military, for a few reasons.

cytg111 · May 31, 2025

Probably traffic.

The amount of people that will sacrifice a 100 second lag on the system for a 10 second personal gain still astounds me to this day. Dumb. Mother. Fuckers.

igor_kavinski · May 31, 2025

I personally would rather deal with a harmless stupid than a malicious stupid.

nOOky · May 31, 2025

Probably when I joined the Army in 1986. I was expecting everyone to be a hero, and smart, strong, and upstanding. I realized there were a lot of stupid, lazy, and otherwise incompetent folks that joined just because they couldn't perform any other real function in life. I met stupid people that had rank simply because of time in service, and they lorded over you because they could. I was somehow selected for West Point by my senator when I was 19, but it required a total 10 year commitment of my young life and I passed on it.

coldmeat · May 31, 2025

When I started working at an aerospace plant. The number of people in there that just don't learn from their mistakes or can't follow basic instructions was eye opening.

soulcougher73 · May 31, 2025

internet forums such as this lol, but more with social media apps

IronWing · May 31, 2025

First time I read about WWI, even as a child, I thought that people were flippin’ morons.

hal2kilo · May 31, 2025

The rank hypocrisy of most people entered into my thoughts at about 12.

PowerEngineer · May 31, 2025

Muse said:
Oh, the 2nd time was much worse.

Well, the question was what was the first time I realized that people were stupid en masse. Not the last time... 🙄

nickqt · May 31, 2025

My parents sat me down at 6 years old to tell me that Santa Claus wasn't real and that I shouldn't tell my friends and the kids at school because they believed in Santa Claus as a tradition. It started my path down critical thinking as a mindset and not as a buzzword conservatives use to scare people who cling to arbitrary traditions as a safespace.

Indus · May 31, 2025

nickqt said:
My parents sat me down at 6 years old to tell me that Santa Claus wasn't real and that I shouldn't tell my friends and the kids at school because they believed in Santa Claus as a tradition. It started my path down critical thinking as a mindset and not as a buzzword conservatives use to scare people who cling to arbitrary traditions as a safespace.

Can I just say.. your parents are hella cool and you turned out like them!!

Muse · May 31, 2025

PowerEngineer said:
Well, the question was what was the first time I realized that people were stupid en masse. Not the last time... 🙄

Yes, you are pardoned. Good work. Um, my bad.

VRAMdemon · May 31, 2025

When was what was the first time I realized that people were stupid en masse?.

November 8, 2016

Discussion When was the first time you realized people were stupid en masse??

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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”​

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“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”​

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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”​

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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”