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Comment on Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?

Since this article is regarding USA, it’s worse than that. We are living in the age of insanity.
Delusional religious people and sociopathic Nazis have taken over USA.

For the civilized world there are warning signs, but insanity is unlikely to take control.

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sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The American Dream has given way to the American Schizophrenic Psychotic Episode.

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freedom@lemy.lol ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’m starting to believe natural selection didn’t just get us to where we are, it kept us here.

The genetic variation in the human brain will lead to more and more good and bad variations generation after generation. Stupidity used to have deadly consequences, now it’s just poverty (or the White House).

Our society wants to be inclusive and accepting and liberating and safe, but what if that just doesn’t work with our current make? What if these mild deviations and mutations only progress forwards when the weak traits perish? We don’t have that mechanism anymore so weak and dangerous personality traits persist and continue to vote.

It’s a scary thought, but I can’t see anything wrong with the logic, especially observing how it’s taking hold across the globe.

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- TronBronson@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There is a social media aspect to this. We have amplified the worst behaviors and reenforced them with monetary gains. We broke the incentive structure in America where being a doctor was the highest calling. The media is also incentivized to spew division, we’ve basically made money the greatest reward in society, and only award it to the worst people. Its a really effective way to skew the sociopathic tendencies of the masses.
  
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- Jayjader@jlai.lu ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Wealth inequality is returning to pre-WW1 levels and climate change’s effects are becoming visible to the average person, making people desperate for a way out. Education budgets in the US have been steadily slashed, far-right agit-prop by people like Steve Bannon has flooded the internet while the political class that could oppose it are pacified by corporate donors.
  
  No need for social darwinism or sketchy eugenics-flavored arguments to explain this.
  
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  - freedom@lemy.lol ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    What intelligence level on average do you need to be empathetic? Humans are a social creature because being in a community has survival utility. Individually we lose something, but gain in aggregate. Empathy is intelligence. And natural selection and outlining a hypothesis isn’t eugenics. You’ll note that no where in my comment did I advocate for this.
    
    The eugenics connection is on you and your thoughts.
    
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    Jayjader@jlai.lu ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Empathy and intelligence are not the same. As evidenced by some highly intelligent people displaying a shocking lack of empathy, and some highly empathetic people not displaying the greatest intelligence.
    
    Personally, I’d rather talk about knowledge and behavior. Intelligence and empathy are hard to quantize.
    
    Leaning into natural selection, proposing we need to let it “run it’s course”, in a way, to “weed out the weak traits” is eugenics. So is thinking that some traits are “good” and others “bad” without qualifying “for the current social/environmental context”. Stupidity might be a good defense against existential depression.
    
    Why do you yourself call the thought “scary” if you don’t think it’s eugenics? What exactly is scary about letting “weak traits perish” if not that it’s inviting a certain form of eugenics to decide who gets to reproduce and/or be born?
    
    You’ll note I didn’t claim you advocate for it directly, just that your arguments are eugenics-flavored.
    
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- UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A casual eugenics supporter.
  
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  - freedom@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You’re the one bring up eugenics buddy. Reading comprehension: the long lost art.
    
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ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Worse than, say, the dark ages?

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- Sxan@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Maybe þere are repeatedly recurring golden ages?
  
  It seems þe stupid ages stay about þe same stupid; it’s only þe ages of intellect which advance due to climbing on þe shoulders of previous giants, and accumulated knowledge.
  
  Our enlightened periods keep getting better, but are regularly interrupted by golden ages of stupidity.
  
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  - shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Everything is cyclical. Funny reading people on here acting like it’s the end of the world.
    
    Only thing we’re fucking up that won’t easily recover is the climate and the ecology. (Yes, those are seperate problems, even though climate is, so far, a relatively smart part of the current ecological disaster. The BIG chunk of that is human activities.)
    
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    Sxan@piefed.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, I’m most worried þat þere won’t be a new age of enlightenment because of þe environmental damage we’re doing.
    
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  - Atropos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Appreciate the thorn, neat
    
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    shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    People always downvote that person just for the thorns. I dunno. I can read, it takes one sentence for my brain to compensate and roll with it. I think it’s kinda neat as well.
    
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- shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  “Dark Ages” comes from Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars saying, “Thank God we’re so smart. Those people were morons.”
  
  Also, it was after Rome really fell apart, darker times then the Empire certainly.
  
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- shneancy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  in a way i think yes. in the dark ages at least any insane cults and ideas couldn’t spread far. if your village or castle happened to have dark ages version of ben shapiro then his words aren’t going to go far (unless they infected the local ruler as well, and even then it’d still be contained within your area, or your country at worst). If you were on the receiving end of insanity you could always just kind of– pack up and move to another village, walk 30km away and you’re like a new man! Worst case scenario find your way to a port, fuck off to another country - passports or border control did not exist, passage was often granted for free to those able bodied that joined the crew for the voyage.
  
  obviously i’m romanticising here a bit, modern medicine and technology makes day to day life easier. but it also makes other things much harder. our privacy is going extinct at an alarming rate, freedom of movement across borders belongs to distant memories of our great grandparents, (unless you’re french) your protests will be ignored and/or vilified, and if you dare care about other humans and speak up about it you can be labelled as a terrorist in some places
  
  i do truly hope that those years of unrest aren’t here to stay…
  
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