1594 She Gets It.

by

The last couple of days my brain has felt blank. there’s just this constant background static of annoying things in my life all the time and it’s making my brain just shut down. I’m glad I have the comic stuff at least planned out enough that I can autopilot the actual creation process at the moment. I feel disconnected from everything and overwhelmed by it at the same time. I don’t know. Just talk amongst yourselves. I’m gonna do some damn thing. Sorry.

No. You know what? I just thought of something. Stupid people never realize how exasperating they are to smart people. It’s like they just suck the life right out of you. The thing is that no matter how hard you try they’ll never understand what you’re trying to tell them. They can only get there at their own pace so it’s like banging your head against a wall. They’re fine, but you’re slowly dying.

It’s the same with conspiracy theorists or even people who don’t share your political opinions. You can’t change their minds. You can’t do anything so all the energy you expend is worthless. To you it looks like it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal, but to them it’s mud. And a lot of the time they aren’t being malicious. They just understand the world in a way that’s different from the other person, possibly a wrong way, but there’s nothing you can do to help. They have to decide to change, you can’t decide for them.

52 Comments

That was a real stroke of genius at the end. Really penetrates straight to the issues.

Reggie seems underwhelmed by the cut and thrust of the intercourse between these rapier witted induhviduals …

Maddi makes me want to learn how to full nelson.
And then abandon chivalry.

There is a, very strange, song from 1982, called: Body Slam.
The song is by “Bootsy’s Rubber Band”.

A line in the song is often misquoted as: ” I wanna teach your mama how to body slam”.
O.o

[ For those who don’t watch p.w.- a “body slam” is a pro-wrestling move].

This may be relevant – it’s a study of why some people are more likely to believe bullshit. It won the Ig Nobel Prize this year – which does not mean it’s stupid!

http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html

Wow, that’s pretty interesting! I don’t really agree with their cognitive models — I think they make the mistake of not really considering alternatives — but their primary goal, as they point out, was establishing that people vary in BS receptivity, and a standard measure for it.

It’s worth mentioning that pseudo-profound bullshit of the type studied is not necessarily entirely meaningless. They are referring to sentences with proper grammar but no intended meaning. The famous sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” fits into that category, but over the years since it was penned, plenty of people have invented meanings for it. Similarly, the people in the studies who are rating sentences as profound might be coming up with actual meanings for them.

Its like song lyrics. When a song is confusing and abstract, people will often invent highly personal meanings for it. They might realize something which they wouldn’t have thought of without the song, even though the song wasn’t ‘really’ saying that.

I once jokingly suggested that ‘I Am The Walrus’ was either a grocery list or the ingredients for a rather odd sandwich.

Salmolina Pilchard is the name of a company that sells canned sardines. If it’s “climbing up the Eiffel Tower, then the bread is a baguette and there’s sardines on the top and bottom layer…. Etc.

I am the walrus was john lennon writing deliberate nonsense to pester his old English teacher when he discovered that the teacher was using Beatles songs as poetry when teaching further generstions of students,

Even intellectual people are not immune to such biases. It is easier to hold on to old notions than it is to accept new information.

It is one of the anchors slowing innovative thinking and acceptance of new data at face value in a lot of the established sciences. The old generation and their boot lickers, ere, supporters, have to quite literally die off before newer ideas can come to the forefront.

There is an important distinction between ignorance and indifference. It is a shame that indifference tends to breed ignorance, but that doesn’t mean that all slow people are unwilling to learn or change their ways. I definitely appreciate all of my friends and family who are willing to explain things to me over and over again until it finally makes sense, and I try to honor that same patience when it is my role to explain something to others.

But yeah, the stubborn folk who don’t care to listen? Fuck ’em. If they won’t listen to you, then you have no reason to listen to them.

There is a vast gulf between the merely ignorant and the chronically stupid.
Ignorance is treatable with knowledge.
Unfortunately the rate of uptake is variable from GROK to quantum leaps and bounds.

This is what I was going to point out. I have worked with people who had a lower IQ than I do and they did their damnedest with they had, quiet successfully. On the other hand, I have know people with a higher IQ than I who did nothing with what they have.

I agree that ignorance is curable with knowledge. Ignorance becomes stupidity if you refuse to learn from the knowledge.

Stupidity is *having* the brain power to do X and refusing to use it.

Is……..is it umm wrong that I am somewhat attracted to the fictional character that is Maddi who finds sex euphemisms funny? I feel like it should be but I don’t really know………does…does that make me a bad person?

Yes, yes it does. Welcome!

I don’t know how to respond………..but now that I have seen the latest comic…I kinda feel bad for Maddi. Wes is one helluva jerk and Madi, while nice, albeit slow, but nice, doesn’t deserve what is being said about her behind her back by Wes to Reggie. Kudos to Reggie for taking the high ground.

“They just understand the world in a way that’s different from the other person, possibly a wrong way, but there’s nothing you can do to help.”

You stated this very well, and even managed to prove your point by interjecting “possibly a wrong way”, showing that even those who recognize that everyone perceives the world around them in (sometimes) slightly different ways is not immune to bias. Personally, I agree with you that there are “wrong” ways, for instance murder is wrong by all reasonable standards of human civilization, but an individual could argue against it and, possibly, even manage to make a rational case. The hard part isn’t in the argumentation, it’s in the variable nature of human intelligence and perception that trips you up every time.

P.S. It feels like and entirely too philosophical discussion for me to be having on Friday while suffering from a cold and reading comics during a break at work. I think I need a nap now. ;)

“I hear dumb people. They’re everywhere. *They don’t know they’re dumb!*”.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. Talking to a fanatic of any stripe very much fits this definition of insanity. They aren’t going to change their mind, and they aren’t going to shut up about it. So politely distance yourself from it.

This is not being rude, this is self preservation. If someone’s comments are toxic, remove yourself from the toxic environment for your own health and mental and emotional well being.

Man, I adore this comic, but never have I come across a more self gratifying person than this artist. Seriously. You’re no be all end all.

I think what you mean to say is self aggrandizing. Self gratifying would mean that my strongest motivation is the pursuit of self pleasure. (that wouldn’t be wholly inaccurate…) Going on context I assume you mean that you think I hold myself above all other people. That could not be further from the truth. I have a much clearer concept of where I belong in the hierarchy of humanity than most people. I’m so crushingly aware of my inadequacies I can hardly bring myself to get out of bed anymore. Though said ineloquently, this post, and probably many others, is an affirmation of this understanding, and the understanding that we are not all given gifts in equal measure. I think that people don’t understand that not everyone experiences the world the same way. Meaning that what some people perceive as stupidity isn’t so much a deficiency as it is a programming difference. Some people learn one thing slowly when another picks it up almost instantly. I have to do even simple maths on my fingers. I can’t remember the multiplication tables, but I’m certainly not a moron. My language skills are well above what is considered average. I know a pointless amount of words. More words than most people would ever have need of. So many that the vast majority of them are superfluous. Where I an deficient in one area I more than compensate for it in another. I am certainly no “be all end all” as you put it.

I am, however, human, and more prone to feeling deeply betrayed and wounded when complimented in the same breath that I am denounced. If your goal was to hurt me then points to you. You’ve succeeded in making my day worse. I hope the inverse is true for you.

Take heart Jackie, most of us appear to have enough sophistication to follow your thinking … or at least the good manners to not insult you without taking the time to understand what you were saying …

I hope your day gets much better!

I think to be self gratifying would be a wonderful thing, in that to be able to satisfy your aims and desires just by being yourself I think would be anyone’s goal.

And then have a wank to celebrate.

The people who are the most annoying and soul-sucking are those who are SURE they are correct, but at the same time need validation for their opinions.

So there is no winning with them. Not only are they always right in their own minds (or at least that’s how they present themselves) but any disagreement about their opinions leads them to double down because their entire identity is tied up in whatever that opinion is.

I used to know a girl a lot like Maddy. She was a good person, and sweet, and a hell of a lot of fun as long as you didn’t want to have a conversation with any depth. She was a loving mother to her kids and would give you the shirt off her back…

Oh and she had no inhibitions and shagged anyone who was interested in a manner not unlike a rotund ferret on PCP. ;-)

“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” Seems appropriate. Some groups are unfairly maligned, and other people hate them because they believe what they’ve been told. You can’t blame them for despising someone they believe such things about. You can blame them for the naivete and ignorance. But people don’t have the time or energy to research everything, and wer’re probably all guilty of believing what we’re told- especially about those things that are not high on our priorities.

I politely disagree, sir. Arrogance of intellect can be dangerous, but so can aggregated stupidity. Individually, I think people should be entitled to living with their own stupidity. And most of the time there is a way to change people’s minds, if you understand their way of thinking and preferring. That doesn’t mean this way will be based on reason, or that you actually have the ability or time to pursue it. Always worth trying though, if you want to learn to handle people. That said, you cannot control them at will and the annoying part boils down to someone occupying discourse, thought and attention space without having anything to say that you would value. Or as in Maddi’s case, someone so occupied with their own thought process they do not have the cognitive resources to assess the importance of their utterances for other people.

I must bow out of my attempts of making lots of double-meanings, about [certain male attributes.
I must admit, making them isn’t a forte of mind. I must depart.
You know: “spare the rod…”, and all of that.

Jeez. I tried putting this on, as a reply to one of tyresome’s comments!. The internet isn’t being my friend, today. : (

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