Mike Burr - log

[mind] pfft thats stupid

Did you know that "pfft thats stupid" is something you practice? Check yourself, as they say. I'm real sure that you do. More than never.

Here's an interesting fact: no matter what is stupid, there are minimally hundreds of millions of people on earth who would think it's not stupid. If you could stop time and tally up and get a vote for all of humanity on the thing that you said was stupid, it would surely be along a bell curve.

I daresay if we chose random things that you thought were or were not stupid, compared it with the accurately measured mean opinion on thing globally, it would lay out nicely in a bell curve. Way out on the left you are in 1%-er land "no, I still really think smart phones are stupid" territory. Way out on the right you would find that, yep, fully 63% of the planet strongly agree with me, "running from the cops is stupid" all the way to 1% territory, "witchcraft is stupid".

Your opinions are bell shaped.

So, to go through life having strong feelings about what is and what is not stupid just means that you very much like the shape of your own bell curve. Great.

Imagine if your goal instead was to just extract helpful truths or patterns from all peoples' bellcurves. "Hmm" you might say.

Get off your high bellcurve.