Being proud of not knowing things, and having no desire to change that.
Bigotry and prejudice. Not necessarily uneducated, but certainly poorly educated.
Coping mechanism for the poor, they can’t admit they’re at the bottom and so it feels good to put other people down for nonsense reasons
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People who litter. Throw their rubbish out the window of the car. Or who throw rubbish in public, like into drains or sidewalks.
It’s in the mentality, and I say the lack of education is the reason for it.
It’s sad to see the people of my country do this, and to see it with your own eyes.
“Let’s go Brandon!” Bumper stickers.
“Whataboutism”, or if you are unfamiliar with the term:
“The act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse”
People that use this mechanism are “poorly educated” and unable to hold a conversation and they should just be mocked by whatabouting even harder, so they can maybe understand that they’re dumb and that’s not how you should debate.
Example of the last argument I had recently with my dumb c*nt father:
- Me: You shouldn’t idolize that politician, he evaded literally billions in taxes and that befalls on citizens like you
- Dumb c*nt father: Yeah? And what about that other politician?
- Me: What about the disappearing middle class?!
- D.C.F.: What…?
- Me: WHAT ABOUT THE BEES!?!
Being poor or lower middle class and voting for right wing/conservatives. You essentially give away your hard earned money and give it to ultra rich and worsen the quality of your life… usually because the right wing scares people to be afraid of other people and new phenomena.
Being a republican. Sure there are some educated grifters who decide to label themselves as republican, but your average republican voter is a mouth-breathing fucking idiot.
Listening to loud music without giving a shit about the neighbours.
religion and the belief in the supernatural/paranormal. also the belief in conspiracy theories.
conspiracy theories i agree with, but religion? organized religion, definitely. joining a religion with a hierarchy signals that you want someone else to give you all the answers, which is very much a mark of poor education. but religious beliefs are not an automatic marker of poor education, as long as they’re sincerely held, don’t supersede science, and are frequently revisited and revised based on personal experience and knowledge. even basic, broad frameworks like animism or some parts of Buddhism can help you make sense of the world when science can’t help you
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Not being able to entertain ideas. “What would the world be like with 100% renewable energy?” “Would basic healthcare for every person help our country?”
I tried to explain the 4 day work week to someone that gets paid by the hour. You make the same money but work 4 days a week instead of 5. Insisted he got paid less. Had to explain like a Bingo card with a Free Space, 1 day he is paid even if he stays home.
Associating with arbitrary groups, such as football fans, nationalists, wearing certain clothing brands
Reckless driving, speeding, having a loud car, having a lifted pickup truck.
MAGA Hats. Those people are dumb by choice. And that’s less forgivable than people who just don’t know any better.
Not learning from history.
taking Ayn Rand’s work seriously. five seconds of critical thought and her entire philosophy comes crashing down
One thing that few people seem to accept when saying that they believe in Ayn Rand’s philosophy is that you are supposed to pay people what they are worth, not what you can negotiate with them.
For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, it is made explicit that Rearden pays his mill workers far above typical salaries because it is worth it to him to have the best staff working in his mills. Rearden is also the kind of person who isn’t going to make racist or sexist jokes because he wants the best person regardless of sex or color.
What Objectivist is that moral?
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That’s actually the root of all social philosophies: they require decent people.
No matter which system you take, capitalism, communism, anarchism, monarchy, democracy, etc. they all would work perfectly fine, if people wouldn’t be stupid, selfish and about 1% downright psychopaths. And I’m not even talking about real crimes. In your example it would be perfectly legal, to pay the workers the absolute minimum possible, but it would be a dick move.
At the end of the day, a system always has to answer the question: How do you reign in assholes? That’s it. Designing a system based on Jesuses is trivial.
It’s not enough to reign in assholes, the system has to be designed in such a way that carriers of “dark triad” traits (i.e. the usual bad faith actors in a system) are still incentivized to contribute to or improve society without gradually dismantling it to increase their wealth/power/status. That’s a hard problem to solve.
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