Comment by pbduring on Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses. · 2020-10-19T05:46:19.260Z · LW · GW

Hi David,

I believe stupidity is not expanding, instead we are expanding.

Stupidity is probably a (universal) constant, but, we feel otherwise because the number of humans is increasing planetary-wise, and because of the ease and accessibility of global traveling, we are surrounded by a higher density of humans.

As a thought experiment, imagine you could time travel and randomly sample for stupidity in a circle of 100 meters around yourself: you will certainly find more humans now (and therefore, more stupids) than 40 years ago, and consequently you may think there is more stupidity, in reality its just a consequence of the 45% population increase and massive traveling increase in this timespan.

One way to double-check this is asking ourself, now that there is a pandemic and less people are around, do we still feel that stupidity is expanding? 

I could be wrong of course (and/or coming stupid).

P


PS -- Sadly we haven't invented time travel yet, because either we are too stupid or maybe because stupidity has a built-in self preservation safety measure that prevents us to do so (as we would certainly accelerate our extinction -- of both stupids and non-stupids --  if we actually could time travel).