Midwits can form consensus reality bubbles that last for years. This is how politics online 2016-2022 has functioned, with so much airtime given to denialism about whether or not a boomer reality tv star was in fact the figurehead of a fascistic movement.
I think the pi meme is actually correct. In physics we usually approximate it as 3. (Although I've seen quantum/particle physics professors approximate it as 1 LOL)
Ok, that's interesting! Now that you point it out, I can see how it would make sense to approximate it in some contexts, I just don't know anything about physics :)
I was thinking about a practical context like calculating the volume of a container in an industrial plant, but even there it might be ok to approximate? I'm not sure. It was just the first idea that popped into my head while I was writing this.
If the container is a cylinder, the error would be a little under 5% if we use 3 as an approximation for pi. But an approximation of 3.14 is something like 99.99% accurate and is no closer to being a transcendental number than 3!
In theory, no circle in the real world is a "perfect circle" because it's it's always drawn using 3.1 or 3.14 or 3.145 etc, and not all the infinite digits of pi, so it's a teeny tiny bit off.
In practice, 10 or so digits of pi would give you a circle that was perfect down to the degree that could possibly be measured in this universe, and the rest of pi is, for any possible practical purposes, an amusing mathematical quirk.
Middling folks are into social status. Seeming to be smart is important to them. Ivy League schools with this group are not about how smart you are to get in but how rich you are. If there was a pill that could actually make these people smart but unpopular they would not swallow it. Perfect example of this is in The Wizard of Oz. When the con man wizard hands out the diploma to the scarecrow who has no brain he says "There are many people where I come from who have no more brains than you do. But what they do have is what I am handing to you, a diploma" To the less sharp of the world an outward sign of being smart that others can see is the point of being smart.
A good way to see this: Midwits confuse the "simple" with the "complex". They add minutia to things with long time scales (le "AI risk" and "longtermism") yet renders immediate things abstract (deus/market/woke ex machina). https://www.swyx.io/simplicity-rush
If this is not some kind of super-fragility (as per Taleb) I dunno what is.
I heard that 87% of the worlds population believe in a creator. Particle physics people believe matter is made of fundamental particles that came from a creation day. Solar mechanics think stars run on a fuel that came from the same magic hole in the sky creation event. They have amazingly complicated stories about these physics defying events that they believe true. After your childhood socialization you wont notice the silliness. You will protect your programming. Proud to be a simpleton if that works for you, but its about something other than that intelligence Bell graph. Bell graph of Fads maybe? Thank you for an interesting article.
I've always considered Vox Day to be the perfect example of a midwit. Besides viewing himself as a genius and an "elite athlete" because he plays on some over 50 soccer league. The best is when he said Joe Rogan can't fight, only to then be called out to challenge an white belt in BJJ his own age/weight (or lower) in Italy--he never accepted the challenge.
That “Pacific Standard” slavery link from 2010 is really bad. I know you gotta keep that Simpsons quote in but it’s inapt to the point you’re making about complex causes. In fact the most important thing about the “It was slavery” cover-explainer is it’s an avenue of compromise and helpfully short-circuits all the realpolitik of Western expansion and fighting with Indians (who also owned slaves, as if that was the relevant factor of their pro-Confederate sympathy). Don’t straw-man the criticism of “It was slavery”—it’s both true in the barest, limited sense and also conducive to a false impression of North & South competing to demonstrate technical solutions for cotton-picking; also, elides the differences *within* the South, e.g. Virginia vs. the rest, and Missouri vs. the rest. You are just recommending stupidity here because it saves the time of having to understand things.
To extoll “It was slavery” not only as a good-enough-answer-for-convenience, but awkshually the superior heuristic on its own for U.S. Civil War history—your apparent stance from the post—is a category error. Same shtick as moronic contemporary Time Machine Ride arguments about which side did better Holocaust policy in WWII.
When I used to go to church, the Pastor told me a little secret: 10% of the congregation would cause 90% of the problems, and the other 10% of the congregation did 90% of the work.
Taxonomizing obvious things is only sensible when the translucency of their properties doesn't already speak for themselves.
There is no midwit trap; as the mechanisms from trap-space are self-realized, and the project of classification is only useful or interesting to said midwit pyramids.
But this isn't free.
You are describing imbecilic classes of thinking so poisonous and irrelevant, that to theory of mind them, feels like an exhausting mental attack; thus this article seems intentionally tonedeaf.
Midwits can form consensus reality bubbles that last for years. This is how politics online 2016-2022 has functioned, with so much airtime given to denialism about whether or not a boomer reality tv star was in fact the figurehead of a fascistic movement.
Surprise! First comment… Trump.
You are the midwit
I think the pi meme is actually correct. In physics we usually approximate it as 3. (Although I've seen quantum/particle physics professors approximate it as 1 LOL)
Ok, that's interesting! Now that you point it out, I can see how it would make sense to approximate it in some contexts, I just don't know anything about physics :)
I was thinking about a practical context like calculating the volume of a container in an industrial plant, but even there it might be ok to approximate? I'm not sure. It was just the first idea that popped into my head while I was writing this.
If the container is a cylinder, the error would be a little under 5% if we use 3 as an approximation for pi. But an approximation of 3.14 is something like 99.99% accurate and is no closer to being a transcendental number than 3!
Yeah, I came here to say this.
In theory, no circle in the real world is a "perfect circle" because it's it's always drawn using 3.1 or 3.14 or 3.145 etc, and not all the infinite digits of pi, so it's a teeny tiny bit off.
In practice, 10 or so digits of pi would give you a circle that was perfect down to the degree that could possibly be measured in this universe, and the rest of pi is, for any possible practical purposes, an amusing mathematical quirk.
Bravo !!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Great post!
Brilliant
TL;DR/ Noooooo!!!!! I have to write a 10,000 word article explaining the midwit trap/ TL;DR
Middling folks are into social status. Seeming to be smart is important to them. Ivy League schools with this group are not about how smart you are to get in but how rich you are. If there was a pill that could actually make these people smart but unpopular they would not swallow it. Perfect example of this is in The Wizard of Oz. When the con man wizard hands out the diploma to the scarecrow who has no brain he says "There are many people where I come from who have no more brains than you do. But what they do have is what I am handing to you, a diploma" To the less sharp of the world an outward sign of being smart that others can see is the point of being smart.
That's a pretty hilarious joke, I had forgotten that's in the Wizard of Oz.
Quadruple-vaxxed double-masked Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a bit of a midwit himself (or is it xerself?)
Im a fan of his, but have been laughing at him due to his covid response. We all have our blind spots.
Hahaha mass sudden adult death syndrome, how about that “black swan” lol
No shit though. Covid got Taleb shook, but I refuse to let that cloud my judgement of his past work.
The minute Mr. Fragile Squidink sided with Goldman Sachs and Big Phamra, he was dead to me
Covid revealed a lot of things about a lot of people.
A good way to see this: Midwits confuse the "simple" with the "complex". They add minutia to things with long time scales (le "AI risk" and "longtermism") yet renders immediate things abstract (deus/market/woke ex machina). https://www.swyx.io/simplicity-rush
If this is not some kind of super-fragility (as per Taleb) I dunno what is.
I heard that 87% of the worlds population believe in a creator. Particle physics people believe matter is made of fundamental particles that came from a creation day. Solar mechanics think stars run on a fuel that came from the same magic hole in the sky creation event. They have amazingly complicated stories about these physics defying events that they believe true. After your childhood socialization you wont notice the silliness. You will protect your programming. Proud to be a simpleton if that works for you, but its about something other than that intelligence Bell graph. Bell graph of Fads maybe? Thank you for an interesting article.
Secession caused the Civil War.
I've always considered Vox Day to be the perfect example of a midwit. Besides viewing himself as a genius and an "elite athlete" because he plays on some over 50 soccer league. The best is when he said Joe Rogan can't fight, only to then be called out to challenge an white belt in BJJ his own age/weight (or lower) in Italy--he never accepted the challenge.
That “Pacific Standard” slavery link from 2010 is really bad. I know you gotta keep that Simpsons quote in but it’s inapt to the point you’re making about complex causes. In fact the most important thing about the “It was slavery” cover-explainer is it’s an avenue of compromise and helpfully short-circuits all the realpolitik of Western expansion and fighting with Indians (who also owned slaves, as if that was the relevant factor of their pro-Confederate sympathy). Don’t straw-man the criticism of “It was slavery”—it’s both true in the barest, limited sense and also conducive to a false impression of North & South competing to demonstrate technical solutions for cotton-picking; also, elides the differences *within* the South, e.g. Virginia vs. the rest, and Missouri vs. the rest. You are just recommending stupidity here because it saves the time of having to understand things.
To extoll “It was slavery” not only as a good-enough-answer-for-convenience, but awkshually the superior heuristic on its own for U.S. Civil War history—your apparent stance from the post—is a category error. Same shtick as moronic contemporary Time Machine Ride arguments about which side did better Holocaust policy in WWII.
When I used to go to church, the Pastor told me a little secret: 10% of the congregation would cause 90% of the problems, and the other 10% of the congregation did 90% of the work.
Taxonomizing obvious things is only sensible when the translucency of their properties doesn't already speak for themselves.
There is no midwit trap; as the mechanisms from trap-space are self-realized, and the project of classification is only useful or interesting to said midwit pyramids.
But this isn't free.
You are describing imbecilic classes of thinking so poisonous and irrelevant, that to theory of mind them, feels like an exhausting mental attack; thus this article seems intentionally tonedeaf.
Stop, you’re trying too hard. I can’t help but find it ironic.
Try harding what...? But yeah I can appreciate 2 ironies here:
Irony 1: I take a personal stance on the category of midwit, despite evidently being one.
Irony 2: Your psychological assessment on "tryness" as holding some midwit explanatory power here.
big words hurt brain