Let me start out by agreeing with the spirit of your post, the kind of attitude you’re recommending seems healthy to me.
I believe that I have some game-changing ideas among my stupid ideas, but like a lot of other people, I’m not conscientious enough to test them out unless they’re relevant enough in my life. Telling other people our weird theories is less justifiable than testing them our ourselves, and for every genius there seems to be around 10 mentally ill people. Sometimes there’s an overlap, and it’s hard to tell since the idea will have to be successfully communicated, read, and understood by somebody skilled enough to evaluate it.
We should be skeptical of people who don’t have a high level of formal education, and that includes myself. If I theoretize something around on quantum mechanics without having a solid foundation in the topic, the possibility that I’m right is roughly zero. The formal education is already based on years of dedicated work by the worlds brightest people, so even if I was an actual genius who spend months thinking about a theory, I probably wouldn’t have a success-rate above 1%.
I also want to express my disproval of moral outrage. I don’t think there’s much of a relation to evil like you claim, but you should probably disagree with me here for the sake of your public image. I don’t believe that facts can be evil, they’re necessarily neutral. I also don’t think that opinions are worth much, even if they’re said by geniuses, since they’re just a reflection of some issue, from some perspective, according to some set of values. Nietzsche wanted overmen because he couldn’t bear to see society decline. He also said that lower men were absolutely necessary, which supports my belief that most outrage is based on misunderstanding, a sort of triggered fear that somebody is promoting a value which would degrade the fitness of the listener.
Finally, I believe that the core issue is that society is too harsh. Nobody is perfect, and even the best commit mistakes. If somebody acts in good faith, it wouldn’t be fair to punish them for being wrong. Saying something wrong publicly has almost become taboo, and the mentality of those who look for imperfection in orders in order to loudly “expose” it really offend me. I sense something like revenge, insecurity or cruelty in such behaviour, and the sort of atmosphere which results from it is bad. The wrath of public opinion can really break the spirit and self-expression of the loveliest of people.
I can necro-post, right? This article was recommended to me, so I thought it was new. Now I can see that it’s 4 years old, but I’ve already written my comment.
Let me start out by agreeing with the spirit of your post, the kind of attitude you’re recommending seems healthy to me.
I believe that I have some game-changing ideas among my stupid ideas, but like a lot of other people, I’m not conscientious enough to test them out unless they’re relevant enough in my life. Telling other people our weird theories is less justifiable than testing them our ourselves, and for every genius there seems to be around 10 mentally ill people. Sometimes there’s an overlap, and it’s hard to tell since the idea will have to be successfully communicated, read, and understood by somebody skilled enough to evaluate it.
We should be skeptical of people who don’t have a high level of formal education, and that includes myself. If I theoretize something around on quantum mechanics without having a solid foundation in the topic, the possibility that I’m right is roughly zero. The formal education is already based on years of dedicated work by the worlds brightest people, so even if I was an actual genius who spend months thinking about a theory, I probably wouldn’t have a success-rate above 1%.
I also want to express my disproval of moral outrage. I don’t think there’s much of a relation to evil like you claim, but you should probably disagree with me here for the sake of your public image.
I don’t believe that facts can be evil, they’re necessarily neutral. I also don’t think that opinions are worth much, even if they’re said by geniuses, since they’re just a reflection of some issue, from some perspective, according to some set of values. Nietzsche wanted overmen because he couldn’t bear to see society decline. He also said that lower men were absolutely necessary, which supports my belief that most outrage is based on misunderstanding, a sort of triggered fear that somebody is promoting a value which would degrade the fitness of the listener.
Finally, I believe that the core issue is that society is too harsh. Nobody is perfect, and even the best commit mistakes. If somebody acts in good faith, it wouldn’t be fair to punish them for being wrong. Saying something wrong publicly has almost become taboo, and the mentality of those who look for imperfection in orders in order to loudly “expose” it really offend me. I sense something like revenge, insecurity or cruelty in such behaviour, and the sort of atmosphere which results from it is bad. The wrath of public opinion can really break the spirit and self-expression of the loveliest of people.
I can necro-post, right? This article was recommended to me, so I thought it was new. Now I can see that it’s 4 years old, but I’ve already written my comment.