I'm posting this here in large part because I don't want to lose the link, but also because I think it would be of interest to others on this board. My little brother sent me a link to an article: The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1). I've read part one, but not pursued the other four parts as yet (time constraints, particularly on days when I retrieve my e-mail, because the e-mail usually creates the time constraints). The gist of it is that the same skills you use to decide what to do are the skills you use to determine whether what you've decided is a good decision. That means if you are stupid, you'll never realize it on your own.
It was of particular interest to me, because I have noted that before and expanded it into other areas. I have wondered whether I might be autistic, and whether anyone would tell me if I were--because if you were autistic, how would you know? If you were an idiot savant, would you be able to recognize that about yourself? A recent episode of In Plain Sight had a witness with Asperger's Syndrome; did she understand that she was different from other people, or simply know that she had a talent for remembering and working with numbers?
Someone once asked one of the world's great physicists (I think it was Freeman Dyson, but it may have been Gerard O'Neill) whether when he was growing up he wondered why he was so much smarter than everyone else. He answered "Not exactly--I wondered why everyone else was so stupid." I never wondered why others were stupid, but always assumed that I was the norm and everyone else was like me. It wasn't until I was in college that I had any inkling that I had more than just a knack for taking tests, and it was half a decade later that I discovered I actually was as smart as my mother and my wife always said I was. (Not that being that smart is worth much in the real world; intelligence is a useful tool, but there are quite a few that are far more marketable, including marketing skills.)
The fact is, we measure the world by the yardstick of ourselves. We perceive ourselves as the norm against which everyone else is measured. We are the political moderate; everyone else is to the right or left relative to us. We are the normal intelligence; everyone else is smarter or dumber. We are the social norm; everyone else is gregarious or withdrawn. We are honest citizens; others are either compulsives or criminals.
That is not the reality. Objectivity is elusive, though. If you ask the five most reasonable people you know, they will probably agree with you--because you find them reasonable largely because they agree with you. If you take a general survey, well, half the people in the world have below median intelligence, by definition.
So how do you know whether you're as smart as you think you are, or simply unable to perceive your own ignorance and stupidity?
That is the elusive question.
--M. J. Young
Growing up, I knew there was SOMETHING different about me. I wasn't sure what it was, but it didn't take me long to figure out people thought I was "strange".
In high school, I was frequently asked "Why aren't you normal?" To which I would invariably respond "Define 'Normal'"
Now, when someone asks me "Why aren't you normal?" I can tell them.
So in short, I knew I was different, but not really how or why.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
This goes along with what I was saying about the definition of insanity. Not knowing or not accepting that you have a problem.
Ever watch Pinky and the Brain? Two genetically engineered lab mice. The Brain is intent on taking over the world, and Pinky is his trusted, if dimwitted sidekick.
The opening theme song is "One is a genius, the others insane." It's supposed to be Brain is the genius, and Pinky is insane. However, if you watch the show, I think it's quite obvious that Pinky is an autistic savant, and Brain is just a megalomaniacal madman. Pinky has problems to be certain. He recognizes that he has problems. He also figures things out faster and more simply than Brain does. Brain is intelligent to be certain. However, he sees nothing whatsoever wrong with a mouse wanting to rule the world. Clearly a sign of insanity. Pinky is the genius, and Brain is insane.
(Doing Therapy)
You can understand that you're not a political moderate by how closely you adhere to a fundamental set of principles. As a perceptive man said 'extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.' or something like that. If you, for example, see everything through the lens of whether it allows the maximum freedom for free enterprise then you're a serious Free Marteteer. If your primary concern about the BP oil spill is that BP's stock price not go down to hurt shareholders then you're an extremist of the "Big Business is Good" variety. If on the other hand, you see everything from Shakespeare to Hemingway to the Constitution to Spiderman comics through the lens of historical racist and sexist power sustaining narratives then you're a Leftist Postmodernist.
If on the other hand, you don't think about politics much, and have a vague respect for the Constitution and like free enterprise and the social safety net and are a bit worried about the debt and don't really trust either party....good chance you're a moderate.
Now it is certainly true that Leftists have a greater problem with this than Conservatives. Leftists are much more likely to think 'all reasonable, mainstream people think like me'. This is because the culture is profoundly left of center even as the majority of people are right of center or center-right (about 40% self-identify as conservative). So as a Conservative you run into the other pov on a regular basis, but as a Leftists you don't have too unless you seek it out.
Now I self-identify as Right of Center. I was surprised by the last political test I took which made me out to be Economically Conservative and Socially Moderate. I will say that I think of myself as stereotypically conservative which tends to support this theory of MJ's.
One instance when I argued with my professor at a Christian college, he told me later that a number of my fellow students thought I should be president. So I know from that that I had a viewpoint that was in synch to some degree with a large number of other conservatives.
You can understand that you're not a political moderate by how closely you adhere to a fundamental set of principles.
The big problem with this is that "moderate" is a moving target.
My brother made an interesting philosophical observation years back, concerning the belief that the majority opinion is the best course. The way to determine the majority opinion is to take a survey and ask everyone his individual opinion. If, though, your individual opinion is that the best answer is that which is supported by the majority, your answer to that survey should be, "I do not yet know; when you have finished the survey please come back and tell me what the substance of my opinion is."
That is where "moderate" lives: it is the position that falls in the middle between the extremes. But the extremes, too, are in motion. The world has shifted sharply to the left in the past two plus centuries. What leftist Democrats like Thomas Jefferson fought to gain is now the ground defended by rightist Republicans. We have an Electoral College, in which Americans do not vote for President but rather for men who will vote for the President, because the majority of Americans in the late eighteenth century did not believe that the majority of voters could make sound, informed, intelligent decisions on that subject, even when "voters" was in large part limited to free white property-owning college-educated males at least twenty-one years of age. Today even those conservatives who understand the system favor eliminating it as an anachronism.
Because of this moving target aspect of the center, very few people truly regard themselves as being to the left or to the right, particularly those who are not strongly ideological about it. We all know people who stand to our left and to our right, and objectivity in the matter is not easy to obtain. Give yourself half a century and some of your young leftist ideals will become rightist strongholds without changing content at all.
But the political example is only one. Your answer underscores that there are ways to get answers to some of these questions--if you know (and care) to ask the questions. I can tell you that I got a 48 (out of 48) on the LSAT, a perfect score on the intelligence portions of the ASVAB, an 800 Analytical on the GRE, a National Merit Scholarship Letter of Commendation, 99th percentile on both Mensa Qualifying tests, and graduated with a Juris Doctore with honors; I can from that deduce that I am smarter than the average person. I cannot deduce from that whether I have normal social skills; I don't know a measure for that, although I imagine that there are psychologists who could determine whether or not I was autistic to any degree.
More telling, I did not even suspect that I might be intelligent until I was a quarter of a century old; I thought I was of average intelligence with a knack for taking tests. Because of that it would never have occurred to me to take the Mensa test or to attempt to go into law school but for the encouragement of others who recognized my intelligence by comparison against others. It never occurred to me to wonder whether I might be autistic or have socialization problems until I was half a century old. It's a matter of not knowing to ask the right question, and thus not knowing that you don't know the answer. (As to my political position, I'm not really concerned with putting a label to it.)
--M. J. Young
What? Do we have no fans of Pinky and the Brain? (Laughing)
(Doing Therapy)
Well, I have always agreed that it's not at all clear which one is insane. But really, you have not appreciated the potential of these two characters until you've seen Twisted Headswap Theatre presents Star Trek K'Pinky and the Brain.
It runs several pages, but is worth reading to the end.
--M. J. Young
Yes, this is why I don't support going moderate in politics, or at least part of it. You bring the moderate to you, not the other way around. An enthusiastic base mobilizes the moderates who are by nature in a centre-right country tilted toward the conservatives anyways.
Um, leftist Democrats...like Thomas Jefferson...I think my head just spun around. Granted, TJ was a liberal, but a classical liberal (limited government, rule of law, republicanism, endowed by our Creator with rights). And granted classical liberal is pretty much a conservative in large part (although TJ would have less sympathy for corporations than we do as he favored a more yeomanry or small business approach.)
I think John Ringo might have the right of it. Modern liberals are aristocrats and peasants is what he alleged in The Last Centurion (The King or the Government will fix our problems, the enemy is those undesirables such as Jews or Capitalists or Republicans or Southerners, street mob revolts or peasant's revolutions, expansive government, its better to be connected than skillful, the rule of law is for the little people...see Tim Geithner Chief Treasury Guy and Tax Cheat.)
Socialism is effectively a system of using envy to use governmental power to rebuild a nomenklatura or privileged class (aristocracy). It looks like egalitarianism taken to a mad extreme, but its anything but egalitarian. So while a liberal might think of himself as the heir to TJ, he's not.
Second Post.
Why do I suspect that MJ was trying to yank my chain with that TJ is a leftist Dem bit? /smile.
Pinky and the Brain was related because it shows what I was talking about. It isn't whether you ARE a genius, it's whether you can convince someone else that you are. Brain is crazy, Pinky isn't of a strong enough will to see that Brain isn't all he's cracked up to be. When Pinky figures things out, he figures them out in a way that no one else could possibly understand, but to him, it made perfect sense. Brain says things that only make sense to him. And that's because it's all bogus. He's convinced the weak-willed Pinky that he's a genius, (part of his insanity) and Pinky, clearly the intellect of the two, goes along with it.
It isn't whether you act crazy, it's whether you realize you are acting crazy that determines insanity. Pinky realizes it about himself. Brain doesn't. Again, not whether you're crazy, but whether you can convince someone else that you are. Pinky's behavior convinces people that he's insane, but the fact that he realizes it proves he isn't. Considering that it's a kid's show, they can't get too technical, however, I could see this almost immediately when I started watching it again.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
That was pretty funny MJ. You have to read it in their voices for the full effect, but I was impressed.
(Doing Therapy)
"Brain, look what we have here, a sleeping human just appeared in our lab."
"Not just any sleeping human, Pinky. A cross-dimensional visitor."
"Wow, Brain. How do you know."
"I can see his shoes, they are clearly more advanced than Nikes of our time. So one would think time traveller. And yet his clothing is subtly different than anything we wear in this timeline, and could not have developed from what directions the fashion industry is going in. Thus, ipso facto he must be a time crosser."
"An alternate universe traveller. Universe. Multiverse. A verser. Neato, Brain."
"Yes, neato, Pinky. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yes, he might have new recipes for BBQ and I'm pretty hungry."
"Probably, but what I'm thinking is we have a new mission for tonight."
"Oh, and what's that."
"Nearly the same thing we do every night. We try to take over the Multiverse!"
JohnA1 sits up. Moans.
"Note to self. Hooked spears hurt. A lot. Do not get involved."
John gets up. Looks at arm. Realizes he is a cartoon.
"Oh great."
Looks up at squeak noise.
"Do it, Brain. Do it now."
"Yes, Pinky, my subsonic brain controller which I just made in the last five seconds will allow me to control this overgrown human's mind."
"Aaaghh. NO." John says throwing up an arm.
"Yes, master." John says as he holds out an arm for Pinky and the Brain to climb on.
"Tell me about the Multiverse." Brain says.
"Yes, do. I want to hear about the BBQ." Pinky says enthusiastically.
"Yes, masters."
First chance I get, I'm dropping Brain in a trap, and taking Pinky out to Chuck E Cheeses for pizza.
Eric, I wasn't really yanking your chain. In fact, Jefferson was one of the key leaders in the party called the Democrats in that time, and they were the leftists, in agreement with those who sat on the left in the French parliament (from which the "Left" and "Right" designations originated). They were the liberals of their day. The Conservatives were the Federalists. The Federalists believed in strong central government, a strong executive, and a powerful judiciary. The liberal Democrats believed in State's rights, limited central government, and power focused in the legislature. Jefferson was opposed to the concept of an independently elected President, favoring an executive committee of five men who were chosen by the legislature from among their own members. He also attempted to cripple the judiciary; it was his firm belief that the legislative branch simply never would pass a law that was unconstitutional, and therefore that there was no need for anyone else to have oversight over them. John Marshal managed to get around that and invest the Supreme Court with the ultimate authority over the question of constitutionality, citing Original Intent of the Framers as his basis (it's not actually in the Constitution, but was decided by the Marshal Court during the tenure of Jefferson in Marbury v. Madison; Jefferson made every possible effort to prevent the court from deciding that case).
By the mid/late nineteenth century the Republicans were the liberal group, because they were the abolitionists, strongly favoring human rights over property rights. The Democrats became stronger in the south largely by opposing abolition in support of large property owners. (These property owners got something of a disproportionate share of the House of Representatives, because the population of the state counted slaves as fractions of people but the states didn't let them vote, which meant that the states got representatives based on a larger population count than the number of voters.) But when a Republican won in the Electoral College (largely by promising not to make any laws concerning slavery in his first term) southern states started seceding, claiming the old Democrat ground of State's rights, and the Republicans were forced to seize the Federalist position on strong central government, putting the left-wing position on abolition together with the right-wing position on governmental authority, and thus when the North won the war it established both the left-wing position on human rights and the right-wing position on strong central government, mostly at the expense of the middle-ground position of strong states rights and the right-wing slavery position.
Slavery having been knocked out of the picture, by the mid twentieth century the Democrats were looking for votes and awkwardly transitioned from states rights to human rights to seize the burgeoning Black vote; the Republicans had by this point become extremely establishment, as the liberal nineteenth century northerners who founded it had given birth to conservative descendants. But the Communist scare kept the left fenced toward the center, where they discovered most of the voters were, so since then both parties have been fighting over the center while trying to keep their particular extremists aboard--move too far center, and you loose people to third-party extremist groups; move too far off-center and you lose the center to the other party.
So yes, Jefferson was an extreme liberal in his day, opposed to everything the conservatives held; but the shift over two centuries means that nearly everything the liberals held then are the bastions defended by the conservatives now.
Where did I read it, that the liberals want to push blindly into new mistakes, and the conservatives want to prevent us from correcting the ones we've already made? I'm sorry I don't remember, because I thought that a particularly good description.
--M. J. Young
Thanks for defending my boy TJ's political views. He held that the government which governs least governs best and that newspapers were filth not worth reading; probably the closest thing to a chaotic good president we've ever had. His views on government or the lack thereof might even be considered liberal by todays standards.
If strength attribute is defined objectively according to the weight that the person can carry and not relative to others, then replace that attribute with intellect, animal magnetism or other attributes that is compared relative to other people.
Lets say Abe is the strongest being in universe A so Abe are actually 3@10 in that universe.
When Abe verse out to universe B, he find out that all the being in that universe is stronger than him.
Would the strength rating have to be reconfigured in that universe relative to the indig or does the strength rating stay the same because it is relative to the multiverse?
If it is relative to the multiverse, how do I know the average rating?
What if this universe actually have the lowest or highest strength rating?
Ky,
Um liberal?? TJ is a classical liberal which is essentially the same thing as a conservative. Modern liberals are one suspects either proto-totalitarians or proto-aristocrats.
Let's see...
Which group favors an originalist usage of the Constitution? Which group wants to get rid of the Department of Education and the Deptartment of Energy? Which group wants to lower taxes? Which group had a president who said that gov't was not the solution but the problem? Which group cheers for Limited Government? Which group is against hate crime legistlation (an infringement of the 1st Amendment or a ridiculous redundancy)? Which group supports a correct reading of the 2nd Amendment allowing more freedom?
If you said Conservatives, you win a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Edited.
Ooo I know this one. Do you want to know the average strength for a bacteria, a worm, an ant, a bird, a cat, a human, a horse, a dragon, a god... I think you get the picture. What we refer to as average strength is usually average human strength, generally somewhere between 1@5 and 1@8. 3@10 is literally the strongest that a god of strength could possibly be; the strength to move planets.
Ky
Tadeusz, MJ is saying that in his day, Thomas Jefferson was an extreme liberal, trying to change long-held traditions. The things he fought for are what Conservatives today try to maintain. Therefore, by today's standards, you are right, but by TJ's standards at the time, MJ is right. See?
I think he did see that. His response was intended for me, I believe, because my feeling will always be the conservatives want the world to stay as it has been and liberals want it to change.
Ky
Lets say Abe is the strongest being in universe A so Abe are actually 3@10 in that universe.
The latter does not follow from the former. If universe A only contained one indigenous creature - an ordinary ant - that ant would not have 3@10 strength. He would have the same strength that an ordinary ant would have in our own universe.
Attributes are not relative to anything. Sometimes their values are described to players in a relative way, to give the player a better sense of how strong a certain value really is in a way that he can relate to, but such relative descriptions like "stronger than 98% of the general population" (or whatever) are not in any way part of the definitions of those values.
3@10 is the strongest anything can be in any universe. I'm sure there are plenty of universes in which nothing is that strong.
how do I know the average rating?
A strength of 1@5 is very approximately equal to the strength of the average human adult on Earth today. This is coincidence, not part of the definition of the value.
(Of course it's not coincidental from the perspective of game design, but that's not the kind of question you were asking.)
Brock,
And yet if you had asked TJ, he would have claimed to be conservative. He was defending the natural born rights of Englishmen against the usurpations of a tyrannical king, exactly as conservatives nowadays are defending the inalienable rights granted us by our Creator and specified in our Constitution against the tyranny of statists.
Who is more more open to change? That fellow who wants to keep all of the New Deal, and Do More of the Same Only More So, or that fellow who wishes to Repeal Most of It?
If conservative is defined as reactionary, Which It is Not despite MJ's definition, even then it fails for liberals are the truly reactionary force in today's culture.
The thing is that the natural tendency of human culture is toward tyranny and immorality, and so standing for the ancient principles of liberty and virtue is the truly radical stance.
The proper ancestors of today's liberals are the Copperheads of Civil War days, and the Southern Fireeaters of pre-civil War days, and the Tories who supported King George.
I've heard MJ's definition of 'conservatives are those who want to preserve the mistakse of the past, and liberals are those who want to make new ones.' However amusing, it runs upon the shoals of facts. Reactionaries are those who don't want any change. Conservative does not equal Reactionary. And of those who want to say 'but real Communism hasn't been tried, and we need to do it one more time' they are all liberal or leftists. And eleven revolutions of horror later and possibly 200 million dead and still they want to 'get it right this time' sounds like the sort of people eager to keep on making the same old mistakes.
Now, I will say that Classical Liberal does equal out roughly to Conservative. Its because the CL was right then, and the Conservative is right now. An open-minded, tolerant approach to people that minimizes politics in favor of personal life; stands firmly for public morality, and excellence, and distrusts governmental power, and prefers most arrangements between people to be based on contract rather than diktat is a better way of doing things.
It sounds like you're pretty much just arguing semantics. Conservative, liberal, a rose is a rose, by any name. The name of the party doesn't matter, it's what they stand for and believe in that makes them who they are.
(Doing Therapy)
Second Post.
Perhaps I'm wrong in the theory of the past I've presented, but ask yourself this: If the liberals get their way would it be FUNCTIONALLY different than if we brought back the Kings, Queens, and Nobility out of history's dusty closet?
Seems Eric and I cross-posted.
(Doing Therapy)
Yup. But it was helpful John for me to puzzle this out a bit further.
John, you're right to a large degree, but it goes beyond that.
Essentially MJ is saying that the TYPE of person that would be a Conservative today is the same type of person that would be a Tory in TJ's time. Thus he is arguing that the proper approach to social problems changes from Conserve to Change at varying times.
I'm arguing that the Type of person that is a Liberal today is the same type of person that is a Tory in TJ's day. This arguement says that there has been a continuing war between Liberty/Morality on one side and Unearned Privilege and Immorality on the other side.
I think he did see that. His response was intended for me, I believe, because my feeling will always be the conservatives want the world to stay as it has been and liberals want it to change.
I probably already said this here somewhere, and I'm quoting from a forgotten source, but I love the line that liberals want us to rush forward and make lots of new mistakes and conservatives want to keep us from fixing the ones we've already made.
And yet if you had asked TJ, he would have claimed to be conservative.
I don't think so. Jefferson was a Lockean liberal, pushing the world forward out of the conservative monarchialism and its feudalist residue toward a new progressive democratic form of government. He viewed the conservatives as those who wished to retain strong central government that mimicked monarchy and feudalism; he distinguished himself from them. He was allied with those who sat on the left in the French parliament, who pressed for greater democratic process and a change to the new ways, as against those who sat on the right there, who supported the monarchy and wanted to retain the old ways.
I certainly agree that functionally every effort at a socialist or communist system has devolved to a dictatorial or oligarchical regime. I can't argue whether that was the intent--that goes to the hidden motives of those involved. That is, we know that Castro sought aid from Russia and got it based on his stated intention of establishing a communist state, and we know that the end result is that Castro became dictator of Cuba. What we don't know is whether at some early point he had the vision of a country without a strong central government, in which the people owned all the property in common, selected some from among themselves to handle the management of it all, and lived in peace and prosperity as each eagerly contributed his best for the mutual benefit of all; whether at some point he lost that vision or determined that it could only be obtained by an intervening period in which he, in his benevolent oversight, took absolute power to force the country into that mold; of whether having done that he then became complacent and failed to pursue the original dream.
I think that dream is impossible--no, that's overstating it. I think, in fact, that your household, Eric, is a communist state. You and Ladyfaire manage the commonly-owned possessions for the benefit of everyone involved, and you listen to their opinions and make decisions accordingly. You hold the position of management because you are most qualified and most capable--the boys just could not manage the household, lacking the skills and knowledge to do so. Yet each member of the family is expected to contribute to the best of his ability, and each receives according to his need, and it works in the family because you all care about each other and you care about being a family. And if a nation could be a family like that, then communism would work. But you can't have a family larger than a couple dozen people before it starts breaking down (indeed, sometimes it breaks down seriously with much smaller numbers). You always run the risk that some will perceive themselves as carrying an unfair share of the burden or others as receiving an unfair share of the benefits, and the corresponding risk that it is true. I mind less, though, if the elderly invalid who gets benefits and contributes nothing is my mother-in-law than if it is your mother-in-law, or the mother in law of someone I already don't like (which amplifies the distinction--I could persuade myself that the elderly relative of a friend deserves an unfair share, but it's harder to feel the same about the elderly relative of someone I don't like and think has himself cheated the system and should be doing more to care for his own invalids). Unless we can actually all know and love each other, we can't the kind of system that runs our families to run our nations. That seems to me to be what communism is trying to do and why it will always fail. But it's wrong to say that communism is trying to create a dictatorial government. It's trying to create a government-free society by encouraging everyone to be inhumanely loving toward everyone else. It devolves into dictatorship because the people who are trying to create this world don't understand why everyone else in the world isn't so much better than they themselves are.
--M. J. Young
Perhaps not TJ, but I've heard that in general the Colonials viewed the Revolution as a defense of their Englishman's rights. Thus 'no taxation without representation'...that is, if you are taxed, you have the right to be represented in the Parliameant. Now the English argued that Parliameant did represent them in a symbolic sorta sense, but the Colonists wanted actual Representatives in the Parliameant.
Its a much larger case of the District of Columbia, but worse. Imagine the Fifty States got together, and decided to put a huge chunk of the taxes they had to pay on the District of Columbia alone. DC residents would be rightfully annoyed.
In fact, for some time, the Colonists said they were loyal subjects of King George.
You had two revolutions about this time. One, Conservative, a restorationist cause, and the other Liberal in the modern sense, seeking a utopia, and more truly revolutionary....the French Revolution. One led to prosperity, peace, liberty, justice, and freedom and the other led to the Terror.
I know you like that line, but I'm thinking it does not fit reality terribly well, although I see some point to it.
I am a benevolent dictator in my house, but I do get frequent complaints that I'm not doing enough and I am too hard on my subjects from my eldest son. I sometimes say that my house is a democracy...kid no. 1 gets one vote, kid no. 2 gets one vote, Dad gets 10,000 votes.
Or I could do if my kids understood it the idea from Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' series about the largest city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork. A-M is ruled by the Tyrant, Lord Vetinarii, who strongly believes in the principle of One Man, One Vote. He is the Man, and he's got the Vote.
Getting back to the original topic, I can most certainly attest that you can be too stupid to know you're stupid.
When I was in the 6th grade, they gave a test to the entire school. I got the highest score, and had the highest IQ rating in the entire school!!!! You've just told the biggest loser in the school that he's also the smartest kid in the school. My head swelled up to the size of a hot air balloon. I thought I was some kind of a super genius, and was WAAAY too stupid to realize how stupid I was. I don't think I recovered from that until I was a senior in high school. And really, I never recovered from it.
(Doing Therapy)
Mistake
(Doing Therapy)