[uxcolumbo]

> Are you actually interested in being right or do you just take pleasure from feeling right?

Yes great point. I have experienced this myself in the past and it takes effort not to do this.

> Since we make the effort to communicate, we clearly decided on cooperation instead of conflict.

Yes - I think our first exchange seemed to veer slightly towards conflict (for me anyway), but then it took a turn to a more shared understanding.

> So it's down to everyone to have a honest conversation about how stupid they are on individual questions

Yes agree. Stupidity is dangerous [0] and we need to be better equipped to detect our own stupidity and then self-correct.

That's why I think 2 key things for avoiding spiraling into tyrannical systems are a) fight poverty b) better education systems that teaches more about critical thinking and to recognise the tactics self-serving people use to gain power. Easier said than done of course.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts, which were insightful for my ongoing journey to study this topic. Two resources next on my list are:

1) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_...

2) https://www.greecepodcast.com/plato-republic-civil-war/

[0] https://sproutsschools.com/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidity/

[cf141q5325]

Thanks for the resources, especially the Bonhoeffer theory and the nice feedback. I do appreciate it. I can also only return the favor, being able to come to an agreement on such points is really good news and i found this quite beneficial as well. The difficulty of it (conflict in speech is just so much more easy and fun) is why i have so high hopes for technology. Because you wont just help with understanding but being more easy to understand. Which means getting more control about how you frame stuff without just trying to influence your conversation partner. I am not so optimistic about education beyond a base level though, getting a grip of framing stuff, and not just reacting immediately, is just very difficult no matter how much you meditate, at least for idiots like myself. Schmachtenberger [0] is proposing that same approach with the stuff around "rule omega", but as you can take from the close to 10 hours of videos and not making much visible progress since, you are kind of trying to build a new non-stupid human. (Not tryint to downplay that approach would be great if it worked and its a really nice idea. I might be overly cynical here).

When it comes to possible solutions, cooperative minimum is key imho. Which likely means the solution cant be aimed at gaining political influence or monetary benefits. Because people react to such attempts of influence as well. And as with every tool, there will be attempts of weaponization. Which gets us to conflict again, which makes the experience everywhere more shit. So keeping Goethe Zauberlehrling in mind is rather important.

In case anyone is wondering about the poverty point, its so people get the option to not have to react under dire pressure for once. Because thinking about stuff like this is quite simply a luxury if you have to worry about where the next meal for you and your family is going to come from. Less anxious people are more willing to cooperate.

[0] Sensemaking and its problems https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ