Re:Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
by xvector on Thursday December 05, 2024 @03:53AM
(#42326281)
The general population is... incredibly dumb. Like, the average person is totally incapable of long term thinking, viewing their quality of life in historical context, adjusting for rose-tinted glasses.
People are shockingly easy to manipulate, even to commit atrocities (to the point that Myanmar's military intelligence was able to instigate a genocide via Facebook posts.) Charisma will always beat reason for most people.
So yeah, I think the sentiment of the general population is relevant only in the cases where it leads to self-fulfilling prophecies; otherwise, irrelevant.
Forgive my lack of humbleness, but.. here on HN, most of us are intelligent (users are probably in the top decile, with a large fraction in the top percentile.) Most of us work and socialize with similarly intelligent peers, maybe even since high school - and it's easy to lose sight of that.
The average person is not us or our peers. If we think something is wrong, we are confident enough in our intelligence to trust our own analysis. I would not, however, trust the sentiment of the average person.
People are shockingly easy to manipulate, even to commit atrocities (to the point that Myanmar's military intelligence was able to instigate a genocide via Facebook posts.) Charisma will always beat reason for most people.
So yeah, I think the sentiment of the general population is relevant only in the cases where it leads to self-fulfilling prophecies; otherwise, irrelevant.
Forgive my lack of humbleness, but.. here on HN, most of us are intelligent (users are probably in the top decile, with a large fraction in the top percentile.) Most of us work and socialize with similarly intelligent peers, maybe even since high school - and it's easy to lose sight of that.
The average person is not us or our peers. If we think something is wrong, we are confident enough in our intelligence to trust our own analysis. I would not, however, trust the sentiment of the average person.