From: Kim Jones <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: Idiot Test
Idiocy only ever applies to other people, yes. It's like sexual perversion and
corruption; these things are done only by others, never by me! Why I speak of
the need for some fabled 'test' - a bit like Alice drinking from the bottle
marked 'drink me'. Alice was no idiot. She had the fundamental human curiosity
to "suck it and see" rather than fall back on some safer, less interactive
approach. Perhaps idiots lack the curiosity to undergo some experience that
will doubtlesly undermine their chosen weltanshauung.
You can call me an idiot if you want but you would be using some other
attribution criteria to the ones I am putting forward. Trouble is, if we ever
really decided what constituted an idiot, there would soon be no more idiots
because then we would have it nailed and could genuinely do something about it.
Idiots, however, abound in society. It is more, as Bruno says, some willful act
of denying something absurdly; a kind of mendacity. Furthermore, I do not
consider someone an idiot who does not agree with me. That's where you have
failed to take in the message, Chris. There are always alternatives, and the
inability to take stock of them is where idiots reveal themselves. Actually, I
don't go in search of agreement or disagreement. I prefer exploration and
suspension of judgement. Explorers don't judge the terrain they explore; they
create a map. I have changed my views several times over regarding core
matters. Actually I find it rather easy to drop one set of ideas for another.
For that reason, no one will ever catch me in the act of being certain about
anything. Even about who the idiots are.
Sure... there are always alternatives (or most of the time anyways) and idiocy
is the mode of mind that becomes stuck in one explanation excluding all other
possibility. My point is that we are all of susceptible to that idiotic mode
and that it is vital therefore to always keep this in mind. We ourselves may be
idiots at times (even if we think we are being brilliant). I am not saying
anything one way or another about you or anybody else in particular, merely
cautioning everyone (including most of all myself) that idiocy is an insidious
trap, which can creep up from within unnoticed and will often masquerade itself
as being something entirely more intelligent.We must remain constantly vigilant
about our own innate potential for slipping into idiotic mental frames; and
only by recognizing this as a real and ever present potential existing within
ourselves can we in fact remain vigilant.
-Chris
K
On 15 Aug 2015, at 5:39 am, spudboy100 via Everything List
<[email protected]> wrote:
Chris, when you can think of politicians and actors of your political
preference, who behave "idiotically:" then you'd really be making a succinct
point. The rationale being, "if you agree with my position, thus, you are
wonderful, but if you disagree, you are a moron." On this mailing list however,
it ain't politics that drive the passion, but disagreeing with an equation, a
precis,' a hypothesis. It's like on the show Big Bang, where blood in nearly,
drawn, over whether String or Loop Quantum Gravity have the best explanation
for reality, when as all right thinking people know, it's all explained by
Chaotic Inflation. Easy peasy.
-----Original Message-----
From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <[email protected]>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, Aug 14, 2015 1:42 pm
Subject: Re: Idiot Test
I am curious.... you seem to speak of "idiots" exclusively in terms of "them"
of some "other" group of individuals. Do you consider yourself to be
potentially an "idiot" or have you managed to achieve existential certainty
that idiocy is something that only ever applies to other people? If you have
achieved this certainty -- e.g. that in no possible way could you ever be an
idiot; that is an amazing feat.... or could it be incontrovertible proof of
your own idiocy?
Any definition of idiocy that does't -- at least potentially -- include the
"self" within the scope of its embrace is idotic - -IMO!
P.S. -- I am suspecting that if you respond at all, you'll probably roast me
with scorn, for having had the temerity to suggest that idiocy is something we
are all capable of achieving; and that no one is immune from idiotic mind
modes.
-chris
> On 14 Aug 2015, at 8:21 am, chris peck < [email protected]> wrote:
>
> So, to cut to the chase, when a thread appears claiming the benefit of a
> psychedelic is to work out who the idiots are, when it is suggested that the
> substance be used in such a miserly way, I can't help but feel the people
> suggesting that are the ones who have missed the message....
I think Strassman was right. You need a certain substance in your system to be
even able to conceive of thinking without some limiting effect of consensus.
The human mind has a 'native' behaviour and we might refer to this as 'baseline
consciousness'. It is merely a starting point in the enterprise of exploring
the terrain of consciousness.
The Idiot Test is a cynical exercise, you seemed to have missed that. It's a
cartoon in words designed to focus on something sinister; either a lie or a
form of stupidity. A thought bubble as we say nowadays. Just one grade better
than a silly poster on Facebook. The term 'idiot' is a pejorative, so we do
need another word to cover the concept "the lack of imagination to envisage
alternatives to the one currently held under any scenario" which to my mind at
least, does sound rather mentally deficient.
But I learnt a lot from Bruno's breakdown of it. Idiocy and Intelligence are
not polar opposites. They walk hand in hand.
Anyway - at a certain point in the presumably not too distant future, somebody
WILL decide who all the idiots are - using whatever rationale - and they will
all be eliminated. Probably by an AI who worked it out all by itself.
So
2. Idiots usually end up designing technology that eventually destroys them and
everyone else.
So, it may be that such people also receive a Darwin Award for performing the
inestimable service to the human race of removing their DNA from the gene pool.
K
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