Honest question, despite what will undoubtedly come across as snark:
Have we always been so stupid, or is this a recent development?
ben_w · 7h ago
Always.
We're the stupidest and least capable that it's possible to be to develop all this tech in the first place, because if we weren't, we'd have done it sooner.
IIRC it took us until Blaise Pascal or Fermat to realise the probability distribution of flipping two coins isn't 1/3 HH, 1/3 TT, and 1/3 a heads and a tails.
Witch hunts on spectral evidence was a thing.
I've heard 12th century european sailors sometimes thought that compasses were devilish.
valbaca · 7h ago
> because if we weren't, we'd have done it sooner.
This assumes a linear and only-forward progression of technology, which just isn't true.
That said, it's an interesting way to look at things.
soraminazuki · 6h ago
To be fair the science behind compasses aren't trivial discoveries.
pfraze · 7h ago
A better question is probably: have we ever treated so many random people’s thoughts as Monetizable Content?
alphabettsy · 7h ago
I think so. Now we have the internet and social media to connect people. It means we get to find like-minded individuals. It also means you’re exposed to the thoughts and opinions of people whom you might not have been otherwise.
the_snooze · 7h ago
It used to be the town idiot's reach would be limited to just his town, or maybe the regional sports radio call-in show. Social media certainly solved that problem.
EA-3167 · 6h ago
Always. In fact people in the first world now are much MUCH more jaded and less credulous than even city-dwellers in ancient times were. You wouldn't believe what people in isolated villages would have fallen for a few thousand years ago.
> When the people gathered in the marketplace of Abonutichus at noon, when the incarnation was supposed to occur, Alexander produced a goose egg and sliced it open, revealing the god within. Within a week, it grew to the size of a man with the features of a man on its face, including long blond hair. At this point, the figure resembling this description was apparently a puppet that appeared in the temple. In some references, Glycon was a trained snake with a puppet head.
cratermoon · 7h ago
There's been a streak of anti-intellectualism in the US since the first European colonists. Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in American Life covers it pretty well. Wikipedia has a nice quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#17th_cent...
jleyank · 5h ago
Hmm... Take down Doppler radar and disband FEMA, pushing reconstruction onto the states. Going to suck living where there, umm, interesting weather.
Bender · 7h ago
I doubt they would have an effect on the weather but they are great for cooking birds. The break area at one base had a bench about 500 feet away from a test radar and that was just far enough for the birds to fall out of the sky. It was interesting for us to see the reaction of new people as birds fell into their food or their lap. Test radar systems used to also be great for destroying police radar guns long ago. That sadly doesn't work any more.
On the topic of conspiracies I thought that was often around the HAARP weather monitoring program vs radar transmitters. Another set of conspiracy theories are cloud seeding programs and those indeed cause lawsuits due to flooding, mismanagement or alterations of water supplies and concerns of silver iodide and potassium iodide getting into farm animal food supplies. The only concern that makes sense to me is modification of where it rains and that is not much different than altering river flow with dams to steal water from a county or city or state.
A game I like to play is to place a bet on what percentage of a conspiracy theory will turn out to be true and if for the right or wrong reasons. It is especially interesting for me to see how different crowds respond to them before and after any semblance of validation.
Have we always been so stupid, or is this a recent development?
We're the stupidest and least capable that it's possible to be to develop all this tech in the first place, because if we weren't, we'd have done it sooner.
IIRC it took us until Blaise Pascal or Fermat to realise the probability distribution of flipping two coins isn't 1/3 HH, 1/3 TT, and 1/3 a heads and a tails.
Witch hunts on spectral evidence was a thing.
I've heard 12th century european sailors sometimes thought that compasses were devilish.
This assumes a linear and only-forward progression of technology, which just isn't true.
That said, it's an interesting way to look at things.
Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycon
> When the people gathered in the marketplace of Abonutichus at noon, when the incarnation was supposed to occur, Alexander produced a goose egg and sliced it open, revealing the god within. Within a week, it grew to the size of a man with the features of a man on its face, including long blond hair. At this point, the figure resembling this description was apparently a puppet that appeared in the temple. In some references, Glycon was a trained snake with a puppet head.
On the topic of conspiracies I thought that was often around the HAARP weather monitoring program vs radar transmitters. Another set of conspiracy theories are cloud seeding programs and those indeed cause lawsuits due to flooding, mismanagement or alterations of water supplies and concerns of silver iodide and potassium iodide getting into farm animal food supplies. The only concern that makes sense to me is modification of where it rains and that is not much different than altering river flow with dams to steal water from a county or city or state.
A game I like to play is to place a bet on what percentage of a conspiracy theory will turn out to be true and if for the right or wrong reasons. It is especially interesting for me to see how different crowds respond to them before and after any semblance of validation.