There’s nuance to it, for sure. In the case of religion, I think it can be either or neither. If someone makes a bad faith-based choice because they’ve been raised in a cult, or they’re a kid who has been fed a lot of religious doctrine but doesn’t have any real world experience, or they live in a super religious community and only know scary lectures about atheists or people of other faiths, that’s ignorance. They don’t know any better and don’t have many avenues to fix that. If it’s something like Steve Jobs doing spiritual juice cleanses instead of getting cancer treatment despite having all the best medical resources and doctors in the world available, that’s stupidity. If it’s somebody who has a religious belief but doesn’t let that affect their decision-making detrimentally (they believe in miracles, but they’ll still go to the doctor for treatment when they’re sick) then they’re not stupid or ignorant. They may not be totally right but that’s some other fallacy - being too optimistic? Rose colored glasses? - that’s less harsh than stupidity or ignorance.
Your question about believing without understanding is a good one. There are a lot of things people believe without total understanding or proof. I believe Canada exists even though I’ve never been there. I suppose the difference there is the possibility of learning and proving it, as well as common consensus - I could go to Canada, I can talk to Canadians, I can see that Canada competes in the Olympics and is labeled on a globe. There are lots of different ways to verify it, and if all of the maps in the world vanished overnight people would find Canada again. But if I believed in a new undiscovered continent named Lemmy then I’d have to insist on believing it’s there despite there being no Lemmy citizens, no flag, no presence on a map, and so on, which makes it a much sketchier thing to ‘believe’ in than Canada.
Per your Steve Jobs example the action is stupid, does that mean Jobs is stupid? Is stupid something that a person is wholly or does a single belief structure that is considered stupid mean that person is stupid? Are we all stupid? I know I’ve been stupid, but I don’t think I am stupid.
Hm, I’d say it’s individual actions that are stupid, and if a person does a lot of stupid actions, then they get called stupid as a person by association. Same for being smart - you can say one smart thing and not be considered smart in general, but if you do a lot of smart things consistently you get called a smart person. (Or any other trait, really - if you sing a song once in the shower that’s just one action, if you sing every day for a living you get called a singer.)
I think that probably all people are smart and stupid in different ways. Steve Jobs was stupid about his health but smart about his business. People can be amazingly intelligent doctors, but horrible at social skills, or incredible artists but terrible at money management. I suppose it depends on how often you act one way or the other and how much impact your actions have. Steve Jobs dying because of his juice cleanse choice makes that action have more weight than if he was wearing an amethyst healing necklace but also getting regular treatment. The consequence of the former was that he died; yhe consequence of the latter would be that he’d look silly but (probably) live.
So it’s wholly dependent on how you’re being observed and the collective understanding and knowledge of your actions?
I feel that makes the entire concept nothing but something that exists in the mind of the observer; which would imply stupidity doesn’t really exist at all
Are we all’ Schrodinger idiot’ and whether we are or aren’t stupid depends entirely on if we’re known to do stupid things?
To the same extent that every trait is relative, I suppose. There’s not a big physical block of stupid somewhere we can point to, so we have to judge it relative to others. If someone is kinder than most people we say that they’re kind, if someone is smarter than most people we say they’re smart, if someone is more beautiful than most people we say they’re beautiful - it’s not something unique to stupidity or to negative traits. It ‘doesn’t exist’ in that it’s not something you can pick up and hold in your hand, but it can be measured as an identifying trait when compared to other people and generally agreed upon.
I could say my dog is brown and my friend’s dog is white. I can’t go touch ‘brown,’ it exists only in my mind and my brain’s perception of wavelengths of light, but the brown dog is still more brown than the white dog. As long as you have 2 objects you can come up with these kinds of differentiated descriptions of them. (I wouldn’t say “my dog exists in 3-dimensional space and breathes air” because all dogs exist in 3-dimensional space and breathe air, therefore it isn’t usefully descriptive the way “brown” is.)
There’s nuance to it, for sure. In the case of religion, I think it can be either or neither. If someone makes a bad faith-based choice because they’ve been raised in a cult, or they’re a kid who has been fed a lot of religious doctrine but doesn’t have any real world experience, or they live in a super religious community and only know scary lectures about atheists or people of other faiths, that’s ignorance. They don’t know any better and don’t have many avenues to fix that. If it’s something like Steve Jobs doing spiritual juice cleanses instead of getting cancer treatment despite having all the best medical resources and doctors in the world available, that’s stupidity. If it’s somebody who has a religious belief but doesn’t let that affect their decision-making detrimentally (they believe in miracles, but they’ll still go to the doctor for treatment when they’re sick) then they’re not stupid or ignorant. They may not be totally right but that’s some other fallacy - being too optimistic? Rose colored glasses? - that’s less harsh than stupidity or ignorance.
Your question about believing without understanding is a good one. There are a lot of things people believe without total understanding or proof. I believe Canada exists even though I’ve never been there. I suppose the difference there is the possibility of learning and proving it, as well as common consensus - I could go to Canada, I can talk to Canadians, I can see that Canada competes in the Olympics and is labeled on a globe. There are lots of different ways to verify it, and if all of the maps in the world vanished overnight people would find Canada again. But if I believed in a new undiscovered continent named Lemmy then I’d have to insist on believing it’s there despite there being no Lemmy citizens, no flag, no presence on a map, and so on, which makes it a much sketchier thing to ‘believe’ in than Canada.
Per your Steve Jobs example the action is stupid, does that mean Jobs is stupid? Is stupid something that a person is wholly or does a single belief structure that is considered stupid mean that person is stupid? Are we all stupid? I know I’ve been stupid, but I don’t think I am stupid.
Hm, I’d say it’s individual actions that are stupid, and if a person does a lot of stupid actions, then they get called stupid as a person by association. Same for being smart - you can say one smart thing and not be considered smart in general, but if you do a lot of smart things consistently you get called a smart person. (Or any other trait, really - if you sing a song once in the shower that’s just one action, if you sing every day for a living you get called a singer.)
I think that probably all people are smart and stupid in different ways. Steve Jobs was stupid about his health but smart about his business. People can be amazingly intelligent doctors, but horrible at social skills, or incredible artists but terrible at money management. I suppose it depends on how often you act one way or the other and how much impact your actions have. Steve Jobs dying because of his juice cleanse choice makes that action have more weight than if he was wearing an amethyst healing necklace but also getting regular treatment. The consequence of the former was that he died; yhe consequence of the latter would be that he’d look silly but (probably) live.
So it’s wholly dependent on how you’re being observed and the collective understanding and knowledge of your actions?
I feel that makes the entire concept nothing but something that exists in the mind of the observer; which would imply stupidity doesn’t really exist at all
Are we all’ Schrodinger idiot’ and whether we are or aren’t stupid depends entirely on if we’re known to do stupid things?
To the same extent that every trait is relative, I suppose. There’s not a big physical block of stupid somewhere we can point to, so we have to judge it relative to others. If someone is kinder than most people we say that they’re kind, if someone is smarter than most people we say they’re smart, if someone is more beautiful than most people we say they’re beautiful - it’s not something unique to stupidity or to negative traits. It ‘doesn’t exist’ in that it’s not something you can pick up and hold in your hand, but it can be measured as an identifying trait when compared to other people and generally agreed upon.
I could say my dog is brown and my friend’s dog is white. I can’t go touch ‘brown,’ it exists only in my mind and my brain’s perception of wavelengths of light, but the brown dog is still more brown than the white dog. As long as you have 2 objects you can come up with these kinds of differentiated descriptions of them. (I wouldn’t say “my dog exists in 3-dimensional space and breathes air” because all dogs exist in 3-dimensional space and breathe air, therefore it isn’t usefully descriptive the way “brown” is.)