So my friend thinks that Tower 7 fell because of explosives. No matter what I say, no matter how many illustrations I show him, the Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in this one. I wouldn’t care so much if HE DIDN’T care… But he wants me to believe.
…that aside, I’m a little fed up with idiots as a whole.
I’m not that smart, myself. I often find myself appealing to authority because I’m not really an expert in anything, however I tend to have an eye for people who seem to know what they’re talking about.
I hate having to contend with the ignorant. All the time. How do you? It’s everywhere and it’s exhausting to contend with each and every day.
Perhaps I should find more friends who fancy themselves as ‘skeptics’.
My backyard neighbor has a shitty looking lawn and mine (although not perfect) looks much better. For the 10 years she has lived by me she keeps asking what she can do to make her lawn look better. For 10 years I have told her not to mow it so short. Once or sometimes twice a week she is out there mowing the yard on the lowest setting on her mower. Need to keep the grass short for her little “fur baby” (I hate that term!!) she says. Every year she is out spreading grass seed in the spring and wonders why it doesn’t turn all green and pretty. 2 years ago she was gone for 3 weeks and her husband didn’t mow until right before she came home and on a medium setting on the mower. Lawn looked much better, but day after she got home was out mowing on the lowest setting.
I put up with stupidity(clueless or ignorance might be better words) at work all day. I get paid well to deal with it. When not on the clock I generally keep to myself and tell morons to fuck off.
I suffer fools only when I’m paid to do so. So I don’t make friends with stupid people. And I don’t I maintain friendships with someone once I realize they are stupid.
Ignorant is just a natural state of being; we’re all ignorant about everything until we’re educated on a specific topic. That doesn’t bother me at all; that’s just “normal”. Willful ignorance is another matter entirely.
How people deal with their ignorance is what I believe counts:
Person is willfully ignorant, has no desire to fight his own ignorance, and does not express his views = The person does not value the specific information and simply has no interest in the discussing the topic. That’s fine by me; we all value different things differently, said person doesn’t value information on the topic under discussion, so we can both just stop talking about the topic.
Person is ignorant, expresses his views, but demonstrates an ability to change viewpoints and acknowledge shortcomings in his own understanding on a matter = That’s fine; we probably all have things in our heads that we believe to be true, but actually aren’t.
Person is ignorant, continues to express his views after I have specifically stated that I have no interest in discussing the matter further (the OP): That’s disrespectful, and sort of the mirror opposite of #1 is a certain way. You’ve said your piece, and I disagree. Either you’re more correct or I am, but we’re not getting anywhere so please don’t waste my time by endlessly debating; let’s just agree to both shut up about it.
Firstly, have compassion for them. Realize how fortunate you are not to be them! That you were gifted brains and an environment that encouraged you to use them.
Second, remind yourself you don’t have To care about this person’s stupidity. It’s a big world, lots of worthy things demand your caring, recognize you can CHOOSE not to care about this one!
Thirdly, learn to apply engaging phrases such as, ‘Indeed!’, ‘Is that so?’, ‘You don’t say!’, and ‘Uh Huh.’ Said only brightly and happily. Never stray from this level of engagement. You’ll gradually pick up more such phrases, but never go beyond this level.
Enjoy your happy life and no longer annoying stupid friends in perpetuity!
It’s a big, complicated world. One single person isn’t going to make a lick of difference in the course humanity takes. Alright, it happens occasionally, but very rarely is that single world-changing person … daft. So from the get go if I reckon someone is dumb, there’s no stress because it’s not like they can do much to make the world at large measurably dumber, and I don’t have much interest in upsetting people unless it’s necessary. If they annoy me and are clearly filled to the gills on some flavor of Flav-R-Aid, I avoid them. I don’t go to work to meet nice people, and I don’t go there to educate them about anything that is not work related.
And I’m cool with the people living under my roof–even the adopted redneck once he agreed to strike his confederate battle flag from his bedroom wall. He’s painfully talk-radio-educated, but he has also learned that my Socratic questioning isn’t an attack, but a tool to help him at least tell the difference between absolute BS and misrepresented truths. We have an uneasy political truce. We get along, we disagree, he proves me wrong sometimes (the guy has an innate understanding of a lot of different kinds of paint and how they react with each other, with different foundations, and under various climate conditions, and his artwork suggests he’s not a total jellybrain). He’s not great with numbers, reads at a 2nd grade level on a good day, and I’ve never seen anyone under 30 move so slow in my life–to all outward and conversational appearances he’s, well, I mean the guy can weld like a pro and … I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a left hemisphere.
Are you trying to change his mind or fix his opinion? Because you can’t, so stop.
Are you trying to get him to stop talking to you about it? If not, you should be. Tell him that you are both at an impasse as to the facts of this matter and you would prefer never to speak to him about it again. If he values your friendship he’ll avoid the topic, and you can continue to talk about other things. If he brings it up again, respond the same way again. Brings it up a second time tell him your friendship is over.
It’s ok to have stupid friends. It’s not ok to have tactless and disrespectful friends.
I mostly don’t care what stupid opinions other people have. Largely I only bother trying to correct people if I think it may be a danger to them or others if they maintain the position, or if I think they have said something out of simple ignorance and will continue to look stupid by repeating it. But, if they are really invested in spouting some shit like the OP’s friend, I just listen along with sounds of apparent interest.
I don’t really mind if they choose to ignore me, I have been wrong about stuff before.
This, pretty much. I used to work with a guy who firmly believed the moon landings were a hoax. Early on in our relationship we had a few discussions about it, and there was a point at which he started to feel like I was insulting his intelligence. And this was hard to avoid: I had an engineering Ph.D., and he had a high-school education, and he was espousing strong (and wrong) views about technical matters. I finally had to tell him that it would be best if we simply avoided the subject. I did this because I wanted to preserve the relationship: outside of a few wacky conspiracy theories, this guy was the nicest, friendliest, most helpful fellow you could hope to meet, and these were desirable traits to have in a friend.