Slashdot Mirror
Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas
CHESTER COPPERPOT writes "Scott Berkun writes an interesting essay on 'Why smart people defend bad ideas'. He states a number of interesting highlights on smart people and dumb ideas. From the article: 'In the software industry, the common example of thinking at the wrong level is a team of rock star programmers who can make anything, but don't really know what to make: so they tend to build whatever things come to mind, never stopping to find someone who might not be adept at writing code, but can see where the value of their programming skills would be best applied.'."
And I guess under the totalitarian theocratic regime of the Lama the Tibetian people are going to be any better of?
I think you may be confusing agreement with people who decide that you're a complete idiot [...]
:-)
I doubt anyone who is aware of my background (entered university at age 13; Putnam fellow; D.Phil. student at Oxford University) would decide that I was a complete idiot.
Now, they might decide that I was insane (as another poster suggested), but that's quite a different matter.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
You're trolling, but I'll bite.
Countries are taken over all the time, their ownership changes hands and has changed hands quite often over the past few thousand years.
This also happened with the natives of North and South America. What happened that you seem enraged about, is the fact that Christopher Columbus and many others "discovered" a new land in the eyes of Europe and other lands and began to populate it / make it their own and remove it's inhabitants.
This has been happening all over the world. However, it is the most recent example on such a large scale AND you fail to realize other cultures in Europe and Asia have had this done for centuries. What have you to say about them? Break the Chineese "Republic" up and back into is multiple warring countries? Give Poland back to the old Germanic tribes from how many hundreds of years ago? Give one tribal land back to the "old tribe" somewhere in africa?
What happened even exzisted among the Native Americans. They had wars. They had conflicts. They had many things that we also don't know about because their written history was almost zero.
You and the rest of the "... give the USA back to the native Americans or go home and shut the fuck up. people need to take your own advice and Shut the FUCK up. The United States of America were what our founding fathers created out of such conquored lands and hence never belonged to the native americans. It then and now belongs to us.
So get a grip on reality, take some fucking history lessons AND a healthy dose of STFU. Now let's get back to the discussion at hand.
Ignorant fools.
"Perhaps he just refuses to believe in something for which there is no evidence beyond the smug assertions of people like you?"
So... he doesn't believe that something exists until proof smacks him over the head.
Isn't that basically the definition of one with a small mind? If you're shaking your head, then please tell me, what do you think of people who thought the world was flat?
"Derp de derp."
1 -- China and Tibet have been under one government in the past and speak a related languages
2 -- If Tibet had aligned with India, China would not have been able to defeat India as easily.
3 -- With Tibet as part of China, it can't be manipulated and oppressed by the West any more
4 -- The fact that China was able to defeat Tibet so easily shows that there was a dangerous power vacuum there without China; the same is true of East Turkestan etc.
5 -- Your turn will come, gwailo.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
"Why, do you have some proof to offer? Ok, forget proof, how about some evidence?"
I'm really curious if we'd know anything about atoms today if people behaved like you'd like them to.
"Derp de derp."