Saying whether “something” “is” “stupid” is sort of confused. If I run algorithm X which produces concrete observable Y, and X is good and Y is bad, is Y stupid? When you say that Y is stupid, what are you referring to? Usually we don’t even want to refer to [Y, and Y alone, to the exclusion of anything Y is entangled with / dependent on / productive of / etc.].
I don’t have an exact definition, but approximately it is a behavior that is justified by false beliefs, and if only one person did it, we would laugh at them, and the person would only be hurting themselves… but if many people start doing it, and they add an extra rule that those who don’t do the thing or even argue against doing the thing must be punished, they can create a Nash equilibrium where people doing the thing hurt themselves, but people who refuse to do the thing get hurt more by their neighbors. And where people, if they were allowed to think about it freely, would reflexively not endorse being stuck in such equilibrium. (It’s mention in the article that often when the people learn that others do not live in the same equilibrium, they become deeply ashamed for their previous behavior. Which suggest that an important part of why they were doing it was because they did not realize that an alternative is possible—either it didn’t occur to them at all, or they believed incorrectly that for some reason it wouldn’t work.)
Saying whether “something” “is” “stupid” is sort of confused. If I run algorithm X which produces concrete observable Y, and X is good and Y is bad, is Y stupid? When you say that Y is stupid, what are you referring to? Usually we don’t even want to refer to [Y, and Y alone, to the exclusion of anything Y is entangled with / dependent on / productive of / etc.].
I don’t have an exact definition, but approximately it is a behavior that is justified by false beliefs, and if only one person did it, we would laugh at them, and the person would only be hurting themselves… but if many people start doing it, and they add an extra rule that those who don’t do the thing or even argue against doing the thing must be punished, they can create a Nash equilibrium where people doing the thing hurt themselves, but people who refuse to do the thing get hurt more by their neighbors. And where people, if they were allowed to think about it freely, would reflexively not endorse being stuck in such equilibrium. (It’s mention in the article that often when the people learn that others do not live in the same equilibrium, they become deeply ashamed for their previous behavior. Which suggest that an important part of why they were doing it was because they did not realize that an alternative is possible—either it didn’t occur to them at all, or they believed incorrectly that for some reason it wouldn’t work.)