Ignorance vs. truth

How about for examples like those, only correct them if you think they care, or if they're trying to teach it to someone else. You might also consider how you'd react to people correcting you in the way you correct them.

Sometimes people being ignorant ticks me off also, but I usually keep my mouth shut because I don't feel like putting effort in correcting them or having a debate with them. And for the sake of just preserving the peace.

Mostly ignorance that is based on prejudices is what really pisses me off the most. Stuff like
- Saying that American beer tastes bad, without having tried it
or
- Calling entire cultures retarded because of their customs or way of living
or
- Pointing out fat people and making jokes

I mostly ignore remarks like these, I just let them indulge themselves in their short moment of superiority. Putting in effort to make them realize they are wrong is usually wasted effort anyway.

Quote:

Original post by slayemin Examples I've encountered: -"Light bulbs make like because they have a white coat of dust inside of them which lights up."

This one is a very bad example!!!

Sorry to burst your ignorance bubble but if you are going to complain about the ignorance of others you should do some research first. If fluorescent LIGHT BULBS did not have the white powder coating (phosphor) on the inside of them they whould not emit visible light.

That's all. I usually keep my mouth shut when people are talking in untruths that I know to be such, but being that you are the OP I couldn't resist.

- Me: "What do you think of womens suffrage?" Someone Else: "Oh I think it's terrible! We should stop it!"
- Me: "Did you know that 50% of the people in this country have a below-average intelligence?" Someone Else: "Oh how pathetic! We really need to improve our schools!"

Quote:

Original post by slayemin So, I can't decide: Should I stop trying so hard to make sure that everything I see and hear makes sense or should I put up the good fight for maintaining truth in the world?

To be honest, I stopped. Many reasons.

1) People have egos and generally don't like to be corrected, even when they're clearly wrong.
2) In America, there's a heavy trend of anti-intellectualism. If you correct people with the truth, more often than not, they'll end up calling you a nerd for knowing that, and ask why can't you be a normal beer-drinking football-watching person.
3) You can only handle so much. After about the 100th time I had to tell someone that there were no WMD's in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and they still refused to believe me, I decided it wasn't worth my time to educate people for free.
4) People usually believe what they believe because they want to believe it, not because there's any truth to it.


I've learned to see this as a good thing, however sad that is. The more ignorant people there are, the better off I am. That means there are more high-paying jobs available for me to choose from.

Quote:

Original post by Mithrandir - Me: "Did you know that 50% of the people in this country have a below-average intelligence?" Someone Else: "Oh how pathetic! We really need to improve our schools!"

Median.

Dale Carnegie wrote that it's better not to correct someone when they are wrong, because what good will come of it? Sure, you might feel some superiority over them because you were right and they were wrong, but what does that gain the both of you? In the end, nothing is gained and they will only feel resentment towards you.

Instead of correcting someone when they are wrong, perhaps try offering up some new piece of insight related to the topic at hand.

This reminds me of Snapple cap facts -- supposedly only some are actually real, but nobody minds because they have great conversational value.

Tell the truth, you'll lose rating... likability but ultimately you'll be doing them a favor. It may not always be valuable to argue, sometimes you just have to say "I'm telling you the truth." and then leave it at that. Regardless, silence is agreement, and if you disagree you should speak. Try to be polite, but do so anyway unless there are significant repercussions involved.

I remember trying to correct a Drill Sergeant in Army Basic Training because he gave us a stretch that I knew was damaging to the knees. While I did not immediately face repercussions for it, he eventually found an excuse to make me do extra duty. I also had to deal with every other soldier in my training group calling me an idiot and trying to fight me for not shutting up because I "could have gotten everyone in trouble." Still, I lived through it and now I can look back and laugh about it although, not everyone would want to do so.

Quote:

Original post by klajerhgkja Quote: Original post by Mithrandir - Me: "Did you know that 50% of the people in this country have a below-average intelligence?" Someone Else: "Oh how pathetic! We really need to improve our schools!" Median.

Anyone who knows what median is wouldn't fall for it. Stopping and having to explain what 'median' is ruins the joke.

People confused about facts doesn't annoy me as much as the ignorance some people show toward other people, or groups of people. I suppose this is because I've been surrounded all my life by people who think what comes to them in a mass-email is the law. I think that it's sad that most of the time I will let people blab on about whatever, something offensive no doubt, sometimes within earshot of the group of people they are insulting, and not object to it. I could care less whether someone thinks the powder inside light bulbs emits light or not (I might possibly ask them what they make of clear light bulbs :o) but cultural ignorance is a moral dilemma that I'm usually unprepared to act upon. It shouldn't really be that difficult, but I guess I just don't know how to handle the situation besides glare confusedly at the perpetrator ;) Maybe it's just too much effort. I make no effort to hide my apathy. But then there's the guilt. Oh, the horrible guilt.

Ignorance is bliss. By denying people ignorance, you're damning them to eternal unhappiness. You should be ashamed of yourself.

When I'm in a group and someone says something like that to sound smarter than the rest of us, I'll usually correct them. Once, it was about to rain and I said something about loving the smell before the rain and "that feeling" in the air. A friend of mine made a very distinct happy noise and said, "Ah, the leaves turning over..." as if she wanted us to hear her basking in this phenomenon. The wind wasn't such that the leaves were turning over so, when pressed, she was unable to show this actually happening (which ruined the show of basking) and seemed to believe it was a biological process. (I actually wasn't familiar with leaves turning over at the time, so it was welcome information, but a quick google search showed that it was the wind causing them to turn.) Another time, a different friend was talking about some experiment he'd done in chemistry class where they separated water from alcohol to demonstrate the idea of fugacity. That's all fine, but after mentioning the term fugacity, he said, "but you probably don't know anything about that". I pointed out that I'd just taken statistical mechanics and was quite familiar with the term. I've actually not had any practical experience with fugacity (all text book), so I wanted to talk with him about the experiment. He muttered something about not knowing much more about fugacity and changed the subject.

When someone is honestly trying to be helpful by providing the information or trying to sound as knowledgeable as someone else in the group about a topic, I'll correct them or not depending on how far off they are and how gently I can do it.

Quote:

Original post by slayemin I find that I have a hard time letting people say ignorant things.

That's what makes you a nerd.

Nerd-ness as a social construct has become incredibly fascinating for me. Not until my recent relationship with an American did I realize how pervasive it is in stratifying people here, or how little it matters back home in Nigeria. Worse, I was really offended to be called a nerd, and yet I can see a number of nerdy things about myself. And I'm going to change them.

Nerds are preoccupied with things that don't really matter. Their obsession is with being smart - or sometimes merely with seeming smart. But in the grand scheme of things, "smartness" buys you nothing. For example, the "ignorant things" that wind you up, like the dust in light bulbs, have no consequence on people's lives. If someone doesn't know how a light bulb works, so what? They still know that flipping a switch turns it on, causing illumination to fill the immediate area. Are the precise mechanics important? Must people know how everything works? No. Because they have more important things to deal with, like social ingratiation, networking, getting jobs and advancing, finding mates, having families...

Nerd information is only vital in extremely narrow domains that serve merely to provide infrastructure for the rest of society. Like light bulb engineers. Further, nerds fail to see the more important social network consequences of their obsessions - the resentment, the ostracism, the missed opportunities due to lack of informal information spread.

And then there's the perception issue. For some reason, oddity is associated with nerd-type intelligence, so many nerds explicitly cultivate oddity. Sometimes its just a spillover you can't help, even though that implies a lack of social awareness (which is a defect!), but in many cases it is a deliberate exaltation of insular habits. Like LARPing. Or my co-worker's favorite card game, Flux, which is a self-modifying game that begins with no victory condition (and which caused my girlfriend's eyes to glaze over slightly as he described it to her at the last company party).

Well, what's wrong with being a nerd? I'm glad you asked. Nerds, put simply, are wrong. Their value metrics are mis-calibrated, and the consequence is that the majority of nerds essentially languish in obscurity. Oh, sure, in this "technology era" nerds have value to corporations, and sometimes are compensated quite handsomely, but their remuneration consistently pales in comparison to the value they generate for their employers - they are undervalued and underpaid - and very few of them start their own enterprises, with even fewer succeeding.

Most importantly, the things that nerds create, the correct answers they find, have to be used by regular people, and since most nerds don't share values with regular people, their creations are inaccessible, awkward and/or suboptimal until one of those "bridgers" - guys who are kinda nerdy, but also popular and jock-ish - helps translate their work for the populace. (This is why Linux continues to fail on the desktop for the general public; too few bridgers.)

So why would you willingly commit yourself to the adolescent torment, adult ridicule and ostracism, and personal dissatisfaction (being aggravated by "ignorant things," for example) of being a nerd? What great value do you derive that compensates for it? In fact, I put it to you that most nerds would be much unhappier if they weren't so afflicted with tunnel vision and unaware of how pathetic their existences are compared to what they could be, because they certainly have the potential.

But that's just my opinion. Maybe it's because I have a liberal arts degree or something... [smile]

Quote:

Original post by klajerhgkja Quote: Original post by Mithrandir - Me: "Did you know that 50% of the people in this country have a below-average intelligence?" Someone Else: "Oh how pathetic! We really need to improve our schools!" Median.

Intelligence is a broadly a bell curve, so the two are the same.

Quote:

Original post by Mithrandir 2) In America, there's a heavy trend of anti-intellectualism. If you correct people with the truth, more often than not, they'll end up calling you a nerd for knowing that, and ask why can't you be a normal beer-drinking football-watching person.

Having just gone through high school, where stereotypes are the most defined, I don't think this is true.

If you go out and correct someone out of the blue, then they're going to think you're an asshole and are going to take it as an attack on their ego. They will ego-attack 'back,' and it so happens that insults that revolve around stereotypes are the easiest to use on the fly.

So anti-intellectualism is actually people hating having their thunder stolen.

You can be smart without being marked as uncool, etc., like anyone else, you have to be friendly and tactful to be liked.

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by slayemin I find that I have a hard time letting people say ignorant things. That's what makes you a nerd. Nerd-ness as a social construct has become incredibly fascinating for me. Not until my recent relationship with an American did I realize how pervasive it is in stratifying people here, or how little it matters back home in Nigeria. Worse, I was really offended to be called a nerd, and yet I can see a number of nerdy things about myself. And I'm going to change them. Nerds are preoccupied with things that don't really matter. Their obsession is with being smart - or sometimes merely with seeming smart. But in the grand scheme of things, "smartness" buys you nothing. For example, the "ignorant things" that wind you up, like the dust in light bulbs, have no consequence on people's lives. If someone doesn't know how a light bulb works, so what? They still know that flipping a switch turns it on, causing illumination to fill the immediate area. Are the precise mechanics important? Must people know how everything works? No. Because they have more important things to deal with, like social ingratiation, networking, getting jobs and advancing, finding mates, having families... Nerd information is only vital in extremely narrow domains that serve merely to provide infrastructure for the rest of society. Like light bulb engineers. Further, nerds fail to see the more important social network consequences of their obsessions - the resentment, the ostracism, the missed opportunities due to lack of informal information spread. And then there's the perception issue. For some reason, oddity is associated with nerd-type intelligence, so many nerds explicitly cultivate oddity. Sometimes its just a spillover you can't help, even though that implies a lack of social awareness (which is a defect!), but in many cases it is a deliberate exaltation of insular habits. Like LARPing. Or my co-worker's favorite card game, Flux, which is a self-modifying game that begins with no victory condition (and which caused my girlfriend's eyes to glaze over slightly as he described it to her at the last company party). Well, what's wrong with being a nerd? I'm glad you asked. Nerds, put simply, are wrong. Their value metrics are mis-calibrated, and the consequence is that the majority of nerds essentially languish in obscurity. Oh, sure, in this "technology era" nerds have value to corporations, and sometimes are compensated quite handsomely, but their remuneration consistently pales in comparison to the value they generate for their employers - they are undervalued and underpaid - and very few of them start their own enterprises, with even fewer succeeding. Most importantly, the things that nerds create, the correct answers they find, have to be used by regular people, and since most nerds don't share values with regular people, their creations are inaccessible, awkward and/or suboptimal until one of those "bridgers" - guys who are kinda nerdy, but also popular and jock-ish - helps translate their work for the populace. (This is why Linux continues to fail on the desktop for the general public; too few bridgers.) So why would you willingly commit yourself to the adolescent torment, adult ridicule and ostracism, and personal dissatisfaction (being aggravated by "ignorant things," for example) of being a nerd? What great value do you derive that compensates for it? In fact, I put it to you that most nerds would be much unhappier if they weren't so afflicted with tunnel vision and unaware of how pathetic their existences are compared to what they could be, because they certainly have the potential. But that's just my opinion. Maybe it's because I have a liberal arts degree or something... [smile]

You're a staff member of a game development website.

If you don't think you're a nerd, guess again.

Also, congratulations on insulting 90% of the members of this site. Shit like this is exactly why I canceled my GDNet+ subscription.

I think Oluseyi is working on a pretty arbitrary and tight definition of 'nerd' to justify his opinion that he is not a nerd, and in fact a pretty cool guy(because you can't be cool and nerdy, silly!).

That being said, let the games begin!

Quote:

Original post by Oluseyi Nerds are preoccupied with things that don't really matter.

Although I broadly agree with you, I think that you could also apply much of your argument to "normal" people and their petty social concerns. For example, consider the slavish devotion to sports and "pop culture" both of which have about as much relevance in the grand scheme of life as knowing how a lightbulb works (and arguably, less.) These things are often more socially acceptable despite being equally unnecessary.

What it comes down to is curiosity about the world around us. What separates the above average from the merely average is their intellectual curiosity. Hence the lightbulb example. An intellectually curious person will wonder about how it works; after all, they use it everyday and realize that it is a relatively new invention that has transformed the way we live. Nerds and geeks are obsessed with particular things (usually technology-related) and lack the broader perspective that would make them more socially compelling. Although there is some degree of anti-intellectualism in our culture, simply being an intellectual is not viewed negatively. Being narrow-minded, obsessive, annoying, unsympathetic, and displaying an obstinate resistance to getting along with people one perceives as less intelligent/interesting is bad, and is often associated with being a nerd.