Further to the Foregoing...
07:42 Thursday, 6 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.8°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 92
That's what I get for searching the interwebs and IMDB before being adequately caffeinated in the morning.
The movie I clicked on was MIB^3 (superscript 3), which I failed to notice. It explains why I didn't find the quote I was looking for. Since I was just using the in-page search function in Safari, I didn't actually read any of the quotes, or I'd have noticed something was amiss.
Anyway, the relevant quotation is: "A person is smart. People are dumb."
I guess a person can be dumb sometimes too.
✍️ Reply by emailDeterministic
05:36 Thursday, 6 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.94°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 543
I had to ask ChatGPT to help me remember the word "deterministic." Every time I can't recall a name or a word, I worry I'm beginning to show signs of dementia. Sucks getting old.
I'm disappointed that I didn't seem to learn about Dietrich Bonhoeffer until only recently. I do seem to recall passing mentions of him in books I'd read recently about Germany under the Nazis, and that he'd been executed in prison just before the end of the war.
Anyway, I have his bio in the queue, if I can muster the courage to read it, and I'm currently grazing on Letters and Papers From Prison. The opening essay is entitled After Ten Years, A Reckoning made at New Year 1943. If you can find that somewhere, probably worth reading, though it won't inspire much in the way of optimism.
Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity," is taken from a section of that essay, although it's called "folly" in the book I have. You can find a pdf of that section here. I'm inclined to prefer the word "folly" as it lacks the pejorative valence (As in "charge." Then why not use "charge"? Because I like "valence." You're not my supervisor, or my editor!) of "stupidity."
Quoting Agent K in the movie, Men In Black, which, disappointingly, doesn't seem to appear in the Quotes page at IMDB, "A person is smart. People are dumb." (Maybe "stupid.") This seems to suggest, as one should always think deeply on the dialogue in motion pictures, that "stupidity" or "folly" is an emergent property, whenever people interact in large numbers.
I think this is correct. It's what I was referring to when I wrote:
Shit happens. Shit is an emergent property of complex, non-linear social systems. It's inherently chaotic. You think you understand what the boundaries of the phase-space are, and the system teaches you otherwise.
Where by "shit," I mean the unwanted, negative, destructive actions and behaviors of individuals acting as agents within a complex, non-linear dynamic system. Basically, anyone working for Elon Musk these days.
Which is why there is little you can do about it. Bonhoeffer writes of "liberation," an external act that "frees" the "fools" from the spell they're under. That's usually a catastrophe. Sometimes referred to by the technical term, "fuck around and find out."
"Stupidity," or "folly" ("shit") is an emergent phenomenon in groups.
Foolish or stupid behavior by an individual is a contingent phenomenon.
Contingent on many things, culture, education, conditioning, trauma, fatigue, diet, anxiety, state of intoxication, many things. But the point is that we are not the "masters of our fate, the captain's of our souls" we flatter ourselves to be. Please see the Milgram experiment. Also the present behavior of all the government employees who are allowing Musk and his script-kiddies to do as they please.
Bonhoeffer has much to say about such people, but that's for another post.
All of which is to say, it's not deterministic. The word I was searching for this morning, and alarmed that I could not recall at my command, and mostly prompted this post.
Anyway... We are in a shit-storm. Seek shelter. Damage assessments can wait until after it passes. They will be heart-breaking.
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