Comment on Assuming a button that, every time you push it, your intelligence goes up. The obvious and sane thing to do is to push the button all day. Yes? No? Maybe? Is there something that I'm missing here?

Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Then you are in agreement with the majority of the replies here.

  It’s weird. I assumed that everybody wanted to be smarter.

  Maybe they’re just being contrary. Maybe the contrariness-urge is what’s ubiquitous.

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  • Acamon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Its not that being smart is bad necessarily, but neither is it automatically good. I would never wish myself dumber, and maybe being smarter would be helpful… But most of my problems on life aren’t linked to a limited intelligence.

    Obviously, it depends on your definition of intelligence (itself a complicated issue) but if the button would just give me better IQ score type intelligence I don’t think it’d help much. I’m plenty smart for my day to day life, job, relationships etc. The internal problems that prevent me achieving things are to do with focus and discipline / time management. And the main actual barriers are social or economic.

    So sure, if the button made me so smart that I could somehow just see some novel solution that I could then market for money, so I could afford the life coach who would help me actually achieve the goals I want, then yeah smart me up! But being given a bunch of money would be a more direct solution. And a button that that improved my ability to actualise the plans I’m already smart enough to create would be muchore appealing!

    Tldr: lemmy is full of people who are smart enough that not being smarter isn’t the main barrier I’m their life.

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  • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ever heard the saying ignorance is bliss? Being just smarter without an outlet means you’re just going to be focused on… well nothing which is also debilitating. Most people we see as smart are just focused on a specific skillset or aptitude and have spent a lot of their own time honing that. For some people that focus comes easier.

    Slamming a button that makes you smarter just means you might be more aware of what you don’t know and how you handle that could be more of a curse than a blessing.

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    • dope@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You (and pretty much every person in this thread. It’s amazing how you people are in agreement that being smart is bad) should go into the scrap irony business.

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• ivanafterall@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You've just cursed some poor catfish.

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• CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah it’d be like being Luke Wilson in Idiocracy.

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