L'Affaire Dogboner: A Case Study in Cognitive Dumb

I am posting this because, as you all know, I Love Science.

This is a scientific post.

There were beakers.

@dogboner -- I don't know if that's his given Christian name -- has twitter account. He says stuff like this:

While his handle is "@dogboner," the name that comes on the screen for his tweets is "im literally 12" (I'm literally 12 (years old)).

Also, his twitter account identifies him as a "dipshit."

These are all what we in the trade call "Context Clues" that this man might be running a humor account, and that things he says might be jokes.

So he was riding on the subway and saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He took a picture and posted about it:

Well.

Let me tell you something, Chief: You do not blaspheme the name of the Prophet Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Everyone who Loves Science can tell you that Heresy is a sin!

So, for the last few days, people -- chiefly the self-styled Lovers of Science -- have tweeted nonstop nastiness at "@dogboner" (yes, they're having a serious argument with "dogboner") about how stupid he is for not knowing that that was Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and on and on and on and on.

Check his account -- he retweets the most aggressively hostile tweets.

Most tweets asserted something like "LOL that's NDT didn't you know that you moron."

I won't post those, as they are dumb and repetitive, like imbeciles clanging on pans, just because.

Here are some of the other sorts of tweets from the Lovers of Science and Reason.

I call this one, "The Best Religion is the Science Religion."

I call this one "In Science, There Is No Hate:"

I call this one "Believe In Science And Let Your Bigotries and Hatreds be Redeemed in Tyson:"

And on and on and on.

At some point, because he could not believe the response he was getting, he tried this:

Yet this only served to weaken, not strengthen, his position amongst the Lovers of Science:

Finally, the Lovers of Science convinced him:

"@dogboner" has written an article about his experiences in serving as the Collective Hate Object of a Shrieking Hate Cult, at Gawker. You can find it yourself, if you like.

I have not much to add here, but I will note this:

Intelligent people tend not to assume other people are stupid.

Now, intelligent people are egotistical, and do assume that most other people are not as smart as they are; but they don't assume that other people are stupid. They just assume most people are a little bit less intelligent than themselves, which, because they're assuming down from the "intelligent" level, still means they assume most other people are pretty smart.

Just not as smart.

Okay? Got that so far?

Now, I am an egotistical person who thinks himself intelligent. I'm sure this is not news to you. And, while I egotistically assume that I'm smarter than many, I don't need to think other people are dumb to think I am smart.

I may be wrong in my starting assumption -- I may not be as smart as most people -- but even going wrong in my assumption, I'm not lowballing people too much.

To satisfy my ego, I just need people to be a few IQ points lower than I am. Not dummies -- I just want to conceive myself of having a nice 5-point edge on someone.

So when I read someone like "@dogboner" apparently "not realizing" that Neil DeGrasse Tyson (a world-famous "nerd") is in fact Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I think like this:

1. This person is probably not so dumb as to not realize this is Tyson.
1. a. In fact, he certainly suggests he knows it's Tyson, as he calls him a "nerd," which Tyson proudly calls himself.

2. Ergo, when this person says he doesn't know who this "nerd" is, he is playing dumb, as a joke, not actually being dumb, in reality.

So, because I don't need to think @dogboner is stupid to conceive of myself as smart, I am perfectly willing to assume that he himself is an intelligent person, merely play-acting the fool as a joke.

With me so far?

Okay, now here's my point:

If you're fucking moron yourself, can you afford to assume other people are reasonably intelligent in order to conceive yourself as smarter than they are? Or, to get them below your sub-mornoic level, do you have to assume, wrongly, that they're actually mentally retarded?

This is my point; this is my take-away.

The people who are most eager to stupidly read things in the stupidest way possible do so because they are in fact profoundly stupid themselves, and thus, in order to have the egotistical joy of mocking someone stupider than they, they are compelled to engage in the stupidest fucking assumptions possible to stupidly accuse other people (those who clearly have average or above-average intellects) of being so stupid that only a stupid person could think they were that stupid.

In chess, it's a rule: If you wish to get better at the game, you assume your opponent will make the best possible move, and then you plot your counter-move assuming he will make the best move.

You do not assume he'll make a stupid or catastrophic move. What if he doesn't? He probably won't. Are you really going to bet your game plan on him walking into that bullshit four-move checkmate that hasn't worked since second grade?

People who want to get better at chess assume a competent opponent at least as intelligent at themselves.

People who don't care about getting better at chess, or for whom thinking is just sort of painful, continue thinking their opponents will make the stupidest possible moves, and then are surprised when they don't.

I think the same thing goes on in rhetoric, argument, and life itself.

Smart people conceive of their fellows as fairly smart customers and plan accordingly.

Extremely dumb people cannot conceive of their fellows as smart -- they don't even know what "smart' would actually look like -- and so just think about everyone else in the world as stupider than they are, by which I mean diagnosably brain damaged.

Except for the Prophet Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course.

Did you all follow this?

Do you even science, brahs?

Update: Some constructive criticism, finally!

Yeah that's great joke. Well played, Dummy.

posted by Ace at 05:07 PM

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