When I am inclined to call someone childish, it’s because I want to express an opinion about their maturity, not their intelligence. Smart people can be immature and mature people can be pretty dim.
Some people really seem to be able to self-deceive without obviously weakening the belief they’re deceiving themselves about. It’s not a skill I have, but I shouldn’t assume that no one has it. I don’t think it’s obvious at all that these people are necessarily dumb.
Strongly believing X, whilst at the same time believing that you are deceiving yourself into believing X and ignoring the evidence, with the background assumption that randomly formed beliefs are not likely to be true, is a logical contradiction.
When I am inclined to call someone childish, it’s because I want to express an opinion about their maturity, not their intelligence. Smart people can be immature and mature people can be pretty dim.
Some people really seem to be able to self-deceive without obviously weakening the belief they’re deceiving themselves about. It’s not a skill I have, but I shouldn’t assume that no one has it. I don’t think it’s obvious at all that these people are necessarily dumb.
Well it depends what you mean by “dumb”.
Strongly believing X, whilst at the same time believing that you are deceiving yourself into believing X and ignoring the evidence, with the background assumption that randomly formed beliefs are not likely to be true, is a logical contradiction.