@dredmorbius Just responding to the first sentence of the quote -- https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hpvw7DGEQtH
I'd say that stupidity causes harm *primarily* when it is being used as a tool by malice.
I can elaborate if needed.
@dredmorbius It is, but it's of a much lower order of danger.
When you collect stupid and point it all in the same direction, that''s when you get the *real* trouble.
@woozle @dredmorbius imho stupidity is dangerous as eating food off of some random dirt ground is dangerous. Potentially lethal even, yes..
(but *not* always lethal, no... not by a long shot even, if you think about it...)
@FerdiZ @woozle I've run across two excellent items on this recently:
Amathia: "unteachable stupidity": https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
Bonhoeffer: "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil": https://religiousgrounds.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity-entire-quote/
Serious food for thought. From people who ought know -- the first bit references Hanah Arendt. Bonhoeffer was a Nazi intelligence service (Abwehr) officer -- an unlikely pool of anti-Hitler resistance in WWII. Executed just before the war's end.
It seems likely to me that this conversation suffers from lack of clarity as to which type of "stupidity" we're talking about.
The German letter may indeed be agreeing with my point, or at least not contradicting it.
I can't see my response fitting into 500 characters, which means I probably shouldn't be taking the time to get into it right now.
If it's sufficiently urgent, however, I can attempt to do so.
Can we at least agree that stupidity and power-to-the-malicious are kind of like CO2 release and global temperatures -- a feedback loop?
@woozle That's an option.
Unfortunately, I disagree. Stupidity is in and of itself dangerous. *Because it is stupid.*