The contents of this post seem unnecessary ableist to me.
We’re building a society for all people and thus statements like these carry a rather bad taste:
This could backfire horribly. We could see affirmative action for stupid people. Harvard would boast about how many stupid people it admitted.
This statement shames people which the article previously stamped as “stupid”.
People with disabilities have the same right to prosper just live everyone else. It seems to me that your post carries with it the assumption that “having less ‘stupid’ people” somehow translates to a better human condition. It’s hard to see how shaming people who suffer from “disability” or “being stupid” translates to a better society. Perhaps it’s exactly the opposite which helps society to prosper: accepting people with disabilities, giving them the resources they need, helping them to create policys and rules which help other people with the same disability etc.
Would you take a pill which alters your thinking patterns in a way some other person considers better? I’d argue that a lot of people don’t suffer from “being stupid”. Impairing normal functioning and being a source of suffering is necessary for something to be labelled desease[1], something which you did not showed.
Stupid people controlling technology and civilizations developed by smart people are an existential threat.
David Freedman is right. Believing in meritocracy also leads to believing that “smart people” should excert control over civilization and technology. This is in harsh contrast to democracy, where civilization should be directed and altered by the civilization itself (populus).
When some part of the civilization is “stupid” then they should be equally represented in the governing system instead of favoring people deemed of correct “intelligence” or “age” or “religion”.
people will argue that stupidity isn’t any worse than being smart (much as some deaf activists claim that deafness is a culture, not a disability)
The linked article does not state that deafness is a culture but instead that deafness can be used as cultural identification. A very valid assumption given that deaf people have it far easier interacting with other deaf people and their media instead of non-deaf people.
The contents of this post seem unnecessary ableist to me. We’re building a society for all people and thus statements like these carry a rather bad taste:
This statement shames people which the article previously stamped as “stupid”. People with disabilities have the same right to prosper just live everyone else. It seems to me that your post carries with it the assumption that “having less ‘stupid’ people” somehow translates to a better human condition. It’s hard to see how shaming people who suffer from “disability” or “being stupid” translates to a better society. Perhaps it’s exactly the opposite which helps society to prosper: accepting people with disabilities, giving them the resources they need, helping them to create policys and rules which help other people with the same disability etc.
Would you take a pill which alters your thinking patterns in a way some other person considers better? I’d argue that a lot of people don’t suffer from “being stupid”. Impairing normal functioning and being a source of suffering is necessary for something to be labelled desease[1], something which you did not showed.
David Freedman is right. Believing in meritocracy also leads to believing that “smart people” should excert control over civilization and technology. This is in harsh contrast to democracy, where civilization should be directed and altered by the civilization itself (populus). When some part of the civilization is “stupid” then they should be equally represented in the governing system instead of favoring people deemed of correct “intelligence” or “age” or “religion”.
The linked article does not state that deafness is a culture but instead that deafness can be used as cultural identification. A very valid assumption given that deaf people have it far easier interacting with other deaf people and their media instead of non-deaf people.