We are exuberant fellows and have long discussed using this blog as a BLOG and not just as a podcast accompaniment, so I'm going to initiate an idea I've been wanting to try out, sort of...
You see, I've wanted to go beyond the bounds of the podcast and tell folks about the philosophy books I've stumbled over of late, largely in trying to figure out things for us to talk about on the podcast, but in most cases I only finish part of the book, and it seems unfair to "review" a book given that. However, let me be frank: I've got a big bookshelf of philosophy books, and how many have I read ALL of? Not many, not many at all. Most courses only assign select chapters, select papers; there's never time to discuss it all. That there Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? Took a semester course just on it, and still didn't finish it. Being and Nothingness? Didn't come close to finishing. Dewey's Experience and Nature? Searle's Intentionality? Bernard Williams's Descartes? No no no. Yet I deign to have opinions on most of this stuff anyway (or at least I did when the bits I had read were fresh in mind). So, you likely deserve my only partially informed ramblings on the books I've lately gotten out of the library, read the first couple chapters of, let sit for 3 months while I renewed them, and then returned. You're welcome!
Now, if that doesn't sound amateurish enough, right now I'm going to give you a review of the first 3/5 of a movie, because after 41 minutes, I've got opinions I can no longer keep in check.
The movie is "Stupidity," a documentary from 2003 that I stumbled over sitting at my computer looking at Netflix's streaming options. I just spent about 10 minutes writing about the format of the documentary just to give you some background but erased it. It's a documentary! ...and not the kind that has to actually follow someone interesting around or go shoot difficult footage, but just lots of talking heads and overlaid graphics.
The film points out that most people have ill-defined notions of stupidity, and hence intelligence, and talks to some people who have written books about the subject and who otherwise seem to have opinions, and of course the point is that America is dumb, rejoices in dumbness, and it's largely the media's fault. I find it ironic that a film that complains about people's short attention spans feels the need to, just like a music video, cut away to a different image every three seconds maximum to avoid audience boredom. And yet, for me, it's not enough. This is basically an informational piece, and there's some real information in it, such as the historical, clinical definitions of "idiot," "imbecile," and "moron," but I find myself wanting to just be reading the damn thing on Wikipedia, such that I could get all this publicly available information in three minutes rather than an 41.
After this sort-of interesting historical stuff is out of the way, then the movie just shows a bunch of people complaining about idiocy without doing anything to really add to my understanding of it. Yes, I understand that media editorial departments enforce an "audience target age" that means that not too many big words can fit in there. Yes, I understand that some TV shows are created simply as escapism, and, if poorly made, do so via a very limited number of tricks, i.e. murders, big guns, jiggling asses, people getting lit on fire, etc., but this all sounds to me like complaints about the 80s, where media were limited.
I have of late myself become addicted to big stories, whether in print or on film or whatever, which means, for instance, that I'll get ahold of a season (or five) of a TV show with a continuous plot (like The Wire, Babylon 5, or Dexter) and watch it compulsively until it's done. This kind of TV is very different from the Diff'rent Strokes and Three's Company of my youth that was created purely to kill time and sell advertising, and yet, for me, it's still passive, vegetating time on the couch, i.e. the putting oneself into a stupor that the film Stupidity objects to.
Likewise, after philosophy grad school, as an adult with some nice pretentious literature behind me, I went through a Stephen King phase... a writer read by many a dumbass who uses violence as titillation and consciously avoids any language (big words and such) that would trip anyone up and so interfere with the storytelling, and I'll tell ya what: it generally works. I get sucked in, and I think I'm deadened enough to described violence that it just seems like some of the flavor of it to me... something that creates the mood but which could just as well be switched to something else to create a different, equally compelling mood.
So I'm not going to defend my country and my era against stupidity, and the film reminded me of the topic and provided me with some nuggets of information, but my view on the topic is about the same as when I started, which I'll just tell you: Intelligence is a cultural myth, a reduction of a lot of very different capacities and behaviors to a one-dimensional scale that doesn't make much sense. It's not just "book smarts" vs. "street smarts" or "common sense" vs. "intellectualism;" there are just certain sets of things that make a given individual's brain hurt when he or she tries to think about them, and so he or she generally DOESN'T, and philosophy is often one of those things, though not generally for me. I, however, have plenty of experiences of terminal inattentiveness, feeling "too tired to think" about some topic whenever it comes up, just not being able to get my mind around things, poor memory, etc. I'm convinced that these experiences are not fundamentally different than those had by someone pretty unambiguously dumb, and there are a lot of factors that go into how we each individually deal with those feelings. Do we have faith that even though this math stuff or Kant or investment crap or sports statistics or whatever seems so hard that we COULD figure it out with effort? It often depends on how we've dealt with such things in the past; my little nephew who doesn't know his own limitations will ALWAYS volunteer to take a crack at anything you're having trouble with, no matter how obviously inappropriate for a seven-year-old. Self-confidence is a lot of it, and practice is most of the rest. Yes, some people do a lot better on standardized tests, some people think better on their feet, some people can read Nietzsche while driving, but they're all basically the same breed of dumbasses as the rest of us.
I've still got plenty of questions about stupidity: some positive puzzles brought up by some of the Nietzsche I'm reading for Episode #11, like what basic, necessary errors are necessary for us to live, or what crap we've inherited from our culture that we just can't see past, or what can we possibly do to turn this era around and make it less stupid, but "Stupidity" doesn't give me any insight on those questions. (Well, maybe it does at the end, but my prediction says no.)
So, there you go, a half-assed film review that's now made me too tired to bother to see the rest of the film, told you not that much about the movie, and ended with a painfully inadequate account of one of my own half-formed views that you didn't actually ask for. Again, you're welcome!
Mark-nice observations. I have never been much of a TV watcher. My parents didn’t believe in watching television unless it was PBS and only for the news or for an occasional educational program. We had one small 13′ black and white TV with no remote control (except my little brother). We hardly ever watched it. We did sometimes rent a VHS tape from blockbuster. Most of the time we had to read a book or play outside. I grew up in the 80s and 90s.
We would occasionally sneak watch other channels (non-PBS channels) when my parents weren’t home though. We didn’t have computers until I was a teenager. We didn’t have video games. We didn’t have cell phones. So I read books. I loved reading. I probably read too much.
I don’t see anything wrong with reading a Steven King book for entertainment. Those were some of the first books I read. They are full of imagination. Later when I moved away from home I bought a TV and I watched it all the time in my spare time for about a year. Then I realized it was creating a problem because I was watching it a couple hours a day and wasting all my time. So I canceled cable and got rid of the antenna. I would watch movies on the weekends but other than that I haven’t watched TV except at other peoples’ houses when they are watching it, in a bar/restaurant, or at the gym. Then about five years ago my TV broke and I never replaced it. I occasionally watch movies on my computer or at other peoples’ houses, but mostly go to the theater.
When people don’t read stories, they never learn to engage their imagination. I think a lot of people who never read, never fully develop their capacity to imagine. When you read and imagine, you are engaged in the story more and it is usually much more enjoyable than watching the movie. The imagination and creativity are what make stories good to me.
As far as intelligence, like you I am a believer in multiple intelligences theory. I also think it is a very tricky thing to measure. On the one hand you can measure how many digits you can remember or the speed at which you solve a problem, then compare it to the responses of other people. By measuring a wide range of abilities through structured tests, it can give a sort of ball park comparison to other people.
But obviously there are all sorts of problems with it. Some people get very nervous when they are tested for example, and waste a lot of their cognitive resources on anxiety and worry. People often have lots of talents, abilities, and specialized knowledge for things that are not measured. The tests can be culturally biased. There are all sorts of things about the testing situation, the examiner, the mental state of the person being tested, etc. that can make the test invalid and make the whole thing a very nebulous idea to measure. With those IQ tests almost everyone fits into the normal part of the distribution or slightly more or less. Then you are right, a lot of it has to do with how motivated someone is to learn something, how much time they put into it, how much they care about it, the way they learn, the way it is presented, and all sorts of other factors such as past experience, beliefs, attitudes, etc.
Obviously there are countless differences between two people with similar scores. They have even found that how you think you will score, actually affects how well you score (e.g., if you think you will do poorly, you will have a lower score than if you thought you would do better). I tend to think we can always improve.
The other thing most of those tests measure is how fast you do something. What difference does it make whether I wrote this in twenty minutes or two days? Think of any great discovery or work of art, literature, or whatever–why would it have been better to have done it faster? I am not sure why it matters how fast we do something, unless we are in some kind of job where quick thinking is needed. Some people process faster than others, and in some situations this is helpful, but other times it may not make a difference. Often times the pressure to do something quicker can make us better or worse, depending on the person, situation, etc.
Another things that are not measured which seem important are depth of reflection, imagination, creativity, and character. There seems to be greater cognitive development in someone who is insightful and reflective rather than superficial and shallow. Then there is character, which is important. Then there is the ability to imagine, like what I was talking about above.
It seems like there is some ambiguity in the way they were using the word “stupidity.” The meaning seems to be used like a kind of laziness, rather than a limitation in mental capacity. The point may be just sort of like a complaint that people are lazier than they used to be. Did they present any scientific evidence of this or was it just something they perceived? It may be that all of these technological advances have given us more opportunity to be lazy, so we are.
The complaint is primarily about willful ignorance: though there are more ways than ever before to be educated about things, people choose not to use them. Personally, that’s not been my experience, but it’s always easy to accuse an anonymous “they” (e.g. Palin-worshipers, or on the other side kneejerk Obama worshipers) of being willfully uninformed.
I think you’ve given a good breakdown of the ambiguities involved in the term. Intelligence, like “goodness” as far as I’m concerned, is only useful as an operational concept, e.g. if I’m trying to hire someone to fix my computer or teach me about Kant or babysit my kids, there are certain qualities that I’d use to estimate how well that’d go, so insofar as we have these demands on each other, we’re warranted to make these operational/tentative/provisional judgments about each other. Of course, there’s a gray area here surrounding how we “use” each other, like who I’m going to bother to talk to (using them for my own conversational enjoyment) just want to spend time around, that pretty quickly can turn into a kind of global judgment for all practical purposes I may have regarding the person, so if someone is a non-reading racist loudmouth with poor impulse control, though I don’t quite “condemn” such a person, I more or less act as though I do.
Mark–sure, we all make those kinds of judgments about competence and trustworthiness, all the time. If we have to or we would soon find ourselves in big trouble. I think IQ tests are really just useful to find out if there is some kind of major disability or disfunction, or some abnormally gifted abilities. Often people who have extraordinary abilities in one area, are lacking in other areas, such as social intelligence. It is common with people with Aspirers syndrome, who make up a large part of the people on the very high end of the IQ scale. I think it is a mistake to judge the overall worth of a person based on how we happen to perceive their intelligence. Some of the best people I have ever met have been people with cognitive disabilities. Then you meet people who are supposed to be intelligent who are vein, selfish, pricks full of self importance who think they know everything, who are actually foolish. Intellectual abilities aren’t everything. Our capacity to feel and care about others is more important in my opinion.
As far as the movie I think willful ignorance is a problem, but I don’t think it is new. And from what I understand, people are actually smarter and better informed than they used to be. People are also better connected with each other and there is more information available. It is easy to get the negative impression of the world by watching the media, but it is only a limited persecutive, not reality, which is all the more reason not to waste your time watching it. The media just puts the stupidity on display because it a lot of people find it titillating and interesting to watch for some reason. I don’t have much time for a racist loudmouth with poor impulse control either. Who does? It is unfortunate that they exist, but what can you do? Ignore them and go on with life unless they are causing some sort of a problem.
There are also few different versions of the many-worlds interpretation, including the branching version you guys talked about. I have heard of other ones that describe the universe like a sheet of paper in a book. Of course most people find the many-worlds pill a difficult one to swallow. When I first heard of it I thought it was probably a waste of time to even consider. However, it does have some strengths. These aren’t all of them but for one it avoids the need for observers to collapse the world into a particular state, which seems odd. That seems to put us in the center of the universe again. For me it also seems to address the problem of this world existing and seeming to be perfectly suited for us. I believe in evolution, but the universe has to be a particular way for evolution to take place–for the atoms and molecules to form. There are many other ways the universe could have been. If one of the constants in physics were even a tiny fraction different, life could not exist in this universe. If the universe could so easily have been different, and there is only one universe, why did it happen to be one that was suited for life? I am sure you have heard of an argument like this from theists. It seems very improbable that we would get so lucky if there were only one shot at it. However, if every possible universe existed, or at least an extremely high number of universes existed, then this universe would not be as improbable. Then there would be lots of universes like this and we would not be so amazing after all. I am not saying I buy it, but there is something to be said for it. It is a good one to put away in your toolbox. It defeats the need for a creator.