Human's are too stupid

[Myrkhoos]

On 12/13/2021 at 2:20 AM, Wertbag said:

While I completely agree, I do see a difference between being fooled as a child and learning new rubbish as an adult. Most people aren't actively teaching flat earth, moon landing hoax, lizard people ruling the world or 5g mind control to kids. There are adults who are picking up the new crazy on a daily basis. 

 

It has been said that religion opens our minds to more ridiculous ideas. If you already believe in healing by touch, then healing by crystal is not so out there. Or believing in demons and a shadow world of evil trying to control and destroy you, makes stories of the NWO and their many conspiracies make perfect sense. It's conditioning acceptance of the ridiculous. 

People who join cults as adults are NOT STUPID. That is actually offending and damaging to believe. In fact, many are open and inteligent people. People with PhDs. Daniel Shaw likens this more to bad luck plus a transitional moment( moving, going to college, loss of a loved one, etc). To think you are invulnerable to cults makes you very vulnerable.

     As individual humans, our minds are limited. That is just a fact of life. Like our physical strength is limited. We can be tricked.

       Most of our "knowledge" comes from trusted sources, not our own experience. For flat Earth. Based on personal experience it can be very rational to think the Earth is flat and the Sun rises and sets. And couple that with having a hyper skepticism of authority ( Not that govt deserve too much trust) and voila. - Pls do not comment on how many xps one can do to check the Earth is round, I know that, I was just demonstrating a point. 

     So, it is not a matter of stupidity per se. I mean Michael Shermer, the ultra skeptic even sai that sometimes intelligence makes you more not less susceptible to wacky theories as you can better rationalise them.

    Edit. There are a plethora of books/interviews on cults by Alexandra Stein, Janja Lalich, Steve Hassan, Daniel Shaw, Rachel Bernstein etc describing what I said in great detail. All of the authors have cult background and then training and experience in psychology.

     We , in my opinion, are not " stupid" , we're just limited. It can bring about misanthropy, of course, but I think it's unhealthy and unhelpful to transfom that into a ultra judgemental attitude. My two cents.

 

[Sexton Blake]

A favourite subject of mine is cosmology and what comes across there is that many so called educated people unthinkingly parroting what they have been told.

 

The big bang is wrong for so many reasons, as is expansion.

 

A little use of common sense will tell you that. Expansion proved wrong:

 

We are told everything is moving apart so if you run time backwards in your mind, everything will move closer together.

 

Continue and as things get closer and denser, black holes form till eventually all matter is in black holes.

 

Now run time forwards again and nothing changes because black holes do not expand.

 

Proof two. All large galaxies like our own are said to have grown from collisions of smaller galaxies.

 

A quick check and there are seemingly endless photos of galaxies on their way to a collision (like the Andromeda Galaxy and our galaxy, which have been heading towards each other for ten and more billion years. And there are photos of galaxies in collision. And photos of galaxies that have gone through each other, producing some weird shapes. How does this happen if they are all moving away from each other?

 

And there is more that I won't bore you with.

[Wertbag]

On 12/14/2021 at 8:58 PM, Myrkhoos said:

People who join cults as adults are NOT STUPID. That is actually offending and damaging to believe. In fact, many are open and inteligent people. People with PhDs. Daniel Shaw likens this more to bad luck plus a transitional moment( moving, going to college, loss of a loved one, etc). To think you are invulnerable to cults makes you very vulnerable.

     As individual humans, our minds are limited. That is just a fact of life. Like our physical strength is limited. We can be tricked.

       Most of our "knowledge" comes from trusted sources, not our own experience. For flat Earth. Based on personal experience it can be very rational to think the Earth is flat and the Sun rises and sets. And couple that with having a hyper skepticism of authority ( Not that govt deserve too much trust) and voila. - Pls do not comment on how many xps one can do to check the Earth is round, I know that, I was just demonstrating a point. 

     So, it is not a matter of stupidity per se. I mean Michael Shermer, the ultra skeptic even sai that sometimes intelligence makes you more not less susceptible to wacky theories as you can better rationalise them.

    Edit. There are a plethora of books/interviews on cults by Alexandra Stein, Janja Lalich, Steve Hassan, Daniel Shaw, Rachel Bernstein etc describing what I said in great detail. All of the authors have cult background and then training and experience in psychology.

     We , in my opinion, are not " stupid" , we're just limited. It can bring about misanthropy, of course, but I think it's unhealthy and unhelpful to transfom that into a ultra judgemental attitude. My two cents.

 

I agree, doing stupid things is not mutally exclusive to the person being intelligent.  There are plenty of intelligent people who do stupid things.  I read a story of a professor, some guy with a double degree and high IQ, who jumped the safety railing at Niagra to retrieve a dropped cellphone, slipped on the wet rocks and fell to his death.  A clear case of a stupid activity by an intelligent person.

Of course you will hear plenty of ex-cult, and ex-Christian folks say "I was stupid to believe what I did" and they would look back at their younger selves activities with horror.

So theres a definite split; doing stupid things, being taught stupid ideas and being unintelligent are not the same thing.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On 12/13/2021 at 1:03 AM, Narrator said:

 

Not sure what makes anyone susceptible. It's not just ignorance, or a need to believe in something greater.

 

I belive what made the difference with myself was a grandfather who encouraged curosity and higher education, and although he was christian, he often argued with preachers and elders about doctrine.  He also said everyone had to work out their own salvation, and once told me not to believe everything preachers said.  In a sense he gave me "permission" to think for myself.  He had no idea how far that would take me. 

[walterpthefirst]

On 12/14/2021 at 10:02 AM, Sexton Blake said:

A favourite subject of mine is cosmology and what comes across there is that many so called educated people unthinkingly parroting what they have been told.

 

The big bang is wrong for so many reasons, as is expansion.

 

A little use of common sense will tell you that. Expansion proved wrong:

 

We are told everything is moving apart so if you run time backwards in your mind, everything will move closer together.

 

Continue and as things get closer and denser, black holes form till eventually all matter is in black holes.

 

Now run time forwards again and nothing changes because black holes do not expand.

 

Proof two. All large galaxies like our own are said to have grown from collisions of smaller galaxies.

 

A quick check and there are seemingly endless photos of galaxies on their way to a collision (like the Andromeda Galaxy and our galaxy, which have been heading towards each other for ten and more billion years. And there are photos of galaxies in collision. And photos of galaxies that have gone through each other, producing some weird shapes. How does this happen if they are all moving away from each other?

 

And there is more that I won't bore you with.

 

Sexton,

 

If black holes don't expand, then what happens when two of them spiral in toward each other and collide?

 

 

This graphic is from the LIGO gravitational wave detector.

 

Where the arrows join up shows the resulting larger black hole that forms from the collision of two smaller ones.

 

In every case two small black holes go on to create one with a larger mass.

 

Their masses and the surface areas of their event horizons expand.

 

 

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.