{"id":81443,"date":"2022-04-06T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81443"},"modified":"2022-04-06T05:05:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T10:05:34","slug":"variations-on-the-two-latest-pop-psych-affectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81443","title":{"rendered":"Variations On The Two Latest Pop-Psych Affectations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

If there’s one thing people love, it’s feeling better <\/em>than others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as America has undergone its “Great Sort”, pop psychology has provided a dysfunctional society boundless opportunities to do just that. Those opportunities are scientifically dubious, but just plain feel good, <\/em>because they satisfy that primal need to dunk on other people. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These opportunities came in successive waves of theories: “Conservative\/liberals have better sex lives than liberals\/conservatives”, self-adulatory navel gazing about Boomers\/Xers\/Millenials\/GenZs, the brief fixation on the joys and superiority of introversion, endless diagnoses (during the Trump years, “narcissistic personality disorder” was in vogue)…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and, I suspect, this latest one: pathologizing “stupidity”.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained<\/a>, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take a look<\/a> at Cipolla\u2019s five basic laws of human stupidity:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The “five laws” are there, and make sense, more or less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’m wondering – does nobody think this sort of affectation through? Ever? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because if combine this (I predict) fad-to-be with the fad that is currently ebbing – the “Dunning Kruger Effect<\/a> – people doing the diagnosing will realize that they are, largely…

…well, subject to which <\/em>facile, self-adulatory cultural trope? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again – don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing people love, it’s feeling better than others. And as America has undergone its “Great Sort”, pop psychology has provided a dysfunctional society boundless opportunities to do just that. Those opportunities are scientifically dubious, but just plain feel good, because they satisfy that primal need to dunk on other people. These opportunities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81443"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81447,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81443\/revisions\/81447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}