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[Scoops Novel]

Or is there a more valuable way of looking at people?

[None]

Inasmuch as you are people and I am people and I place value in the people who is myself, I must transitively place value in the people who are not myself.

Everyone's got hopes and dreams, lad. It's okay if they're not grandiose, those who don't do have the capacity to. It's silly at best and genocidal at worst to arbitrarily determine who does and doesn't have value.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

It's a multifaceted issue.

There's I guess a 2-axis graph at its simplest?

preconceived notions or learned frameworks
               ^
               |
No info <-+-> All the data, context, opinions
               |
               V
New and unfamiliar situation with no precedents

EDIT: Where independent and cognitive thought starts and reaction ends is hard to define, and is different in many situations.

[wierd]

This is a hot take question that is super trap-bait.

I will (foolishly) answer anyway.


First up, the question is super loaded, and implies that all humans are fungible. This is a false presumption.  However, I will answer under the premise that you meant "Most humans", or even just "A sufficiently large demographic of humans."


A sufficiently large demographic of humans are hopelessly dependent upon the social hierarchical system as a natural consequence of division of labor, and specialization.  Likewise, due to division of labor and specialization, the necessary knowledge required to properly administer a massive multi-million individual society (such as a modern industrial nation) is not well conserved within the population.  This results in people being forced, on the by-and-large, to resort to poorly constructed mental models that may or may not actually resemble reality.

One can easily observe this with things such as the rise of the QAnon phenomenon, or with the Antivaxx movements, or the "STOLEN ELECTION!" movements, or the "Climate change is a myth!" movement, etc.

By and large, the general population lacks all the needed knowledge and expertise needed to authoratively deal with any of those situations, and any individual human will run a rather wide gamut of potentials on how capable they are at being so, given any specific one of them.

This means that the bulk population is easily misled, especially when misinformation is highly magnified, such as through media attention, or social media amplification.


In that capacity, yes, a significant portion of the population are "Sheep" being led to slaughter by judas goats.  They are not sheep because they are inherently stupid, or inherently inferior to other humans in some capacity-- it is really just the society bumping heads with the hard limitations on human cognition, with the prerequisite that a democratic society be granted ultimate authority to its citizens, with unscrupulous people capitalizing on this hard limitation for their own gain.

[nenjin]

Maximum disagree, because agreeing means you're a sheep.

[wierd]

Again, I wanted to divorce the pejorative from the concept.

The pejorative is "Cannot think for themselves".  The concept is "Follows the rhetoric or ideation of others."


People are "Sheep", in the same way that "People trust that a doctor knows more about medicine than they do."  This is the direct tie-in with hard limits on cognition.  A doctor becomes a doctor after spending 8 years at university, then 4 more years in a residency program. That is 12 years of their lives spent LEARNING TO BECOME a doctor, FULL TIME.  That same time that they spend learning to become a doctor, is time they are NOT AVAILABLE to learn some other specialty, such as say-- High energy physics.


The issue, is that most people are a specialist of a more ordinary kind-- such as being specialized at salesmanship, or general management.  The time and energy spent in reaching that specialization is time they were not able to spend learning how their government works under the hood, or how the legal system operates. (Indeed, this reality is precisely the reason why Lawyers exist, and why the adage "A man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client." is real.)


Within the confines of their specialty, they can be crack shots. Never miss. Very adept, and highly capable. -- they are not idiots incapable of original thought.  This is why the pejorative needs to be divorced from the concept.


Our society is growing more and more based on specialized laborers, as the minutia of each discipline start getting more and more difficult to ignore, as things get more and more sophisticated.  That growing trend toward specialization means that people are less and less capable of being able to offer cogent or sensible insights into things like national security, or national economics. (outside of course, from the appropriate specialists who would have very good grasps of those things-- but those people are minorities.)

This means that most people are 'sheep'-- they MUST defer to the rhetoric of individuals that they consider to be authoritative in that area of expertise.  The ISSUE, is Dunning Kruger. The less actually capable of understanding the subject you are (due to lack of experience, education, or expertise), the less capable you become of being able to judge that competency in others (and worse still, the greater your chances of mis-identifying your own level of capability.)  It is this feature that is used to systemically mislead people, and is the mechanism by which the afor mentioned "Judas goats" manage to string people along, and cajole into voting for things that are really not in their interests at all. 

[feelotraveller]

Homo sapiens are a different species than Ovis aries.

[Scoops Novel]

I appreciate what you're saying; and in the respect of the collective consciousness, you're right, and it will be a worsening  problem. However, this is a nasty question, so lets get nasty.

Cards on the table; i agree, up until the holes in the metaphor. If we're talking about sheep-men; well, there's the problem. Sheep don't kennel themselves.

I think you can say half the sheep choose to be stupid, because it scratches a itch or thier just buggy, and the other half just can't be bothered to think so long as it's convienent.

A lot of it comes down to people being able to think within a certain scope, and no further. Within it they're reasonably intelligent; outside of it they're sheep. The size of their mind is the size of thier world.

And on the note of buggy people; there's more then one intellectual parasite we can't get rid of that take advantage of the bugs in peoples brain, where they can accept something inherently contradictory. I'm sure you can all come up with some examples.

I guess what i'm asking is if people are just waiting to be manipulated or if there's more to it.

"By and large, the general population lacks all the needed knowledge and expertise needed to authoratively deal with any of those situations, and any individual human will run a rather wide gamut of potentials on how capable they are at being so, given any specific one of them."

There's a point to be made here that people may have very consistent common ground, but the uncommon ground is plentiful. Sheep gives a impression of false uniformity, which can randomly diverge at a moments notice. Sometimes so many black sheep come together that they think they're not like the other sheep.

It really depends on the sense in which you mean it; if you're talking about people being manipulated, that's one ball game, but if you're talking about people acting as one, that's another. The peer pressure means of herding is more like... strategically placed salt licks then actual herding.

[WealthyRadish]

I don't want to just state the obvious, but there is no organism on the planet less like a sheep than a human being.

[wierd]

YOu havent seen some of the people I have.  I honestly think I could harvest wool from some humans.

[Zangi]

People can't be experts or well-informed about everything on their own.
And hey, in this modern world, we have people giving/arriving at different opinionsfacts. 
People are still sheep, but they have the freedumb to pick whichever fact they like more.

[None]

It frustrates me that you can use this notion that everyone's just trying to do their own best or just trying to make it and that's somehow a metric by which to personally devalue and dismiss large swaths of the population. By any metric, you're not even looking to be convinced otherwise.

Unrelated, but I'm pretty sure that actual sheep don't actually care if a sheep's wool is black or not. That's a strictly human valuation.

[Vector]

there is no organism on the planet less like a sheep than a human being

[wierd]

It frustrates me that you can use this notion that everyone's just trying to do their own best or just trying to make it and that's somehow a metric by which to personally devalue and dismiss large swaths of the population. By any metric, you're not even looking to be convinced otherwise.

Unrelated, but I'm pretty sure that actual sheep don't actually care if a sheep's wool is black or not. That's a strictly human valuation.

What?

Where are you getting that from?  My position is more in line with "For the same reason most people should not be practicing medicine, most people really shouldnt be practicing government"

That reason is "Most people are not trained to be [appropriate specialist with special training] (aka, doctors)"

The incorrect notion is to ascribe this as being a FAILURE.  That somehow people are not living up to their potential or something. No-- I am pointing out that humans are not infinitely capable, and the neural platform we all have has fundamental limits.  The need for specialization is a direct consequence of that very same limitation, and that same specialization, and the need for specialization as our civilization gets more and more complex, with more precise needs, results in Dunning Kruger being writ large.

It is not meant to demean, devalue, or ridicule anyone.  It is a harsh critique of human civilization in the modern western world, as it bumps head-first into the limits of its constituent humans.

For a practical example about yourself-- (which again, this is NOT meant to demean, ridicule, or devalue you)-- Recently, the topic of gun control came up.  You were unaware that the military uses otherwise consumer-grade hunting rifles in a military capacity, and just slaps a new name on it. You were "Quite sure" they did not do that, until it was demonstrated to you that they do in fact do that.  That was specialist information, and minutia that was pertinent to the process of determining what guns need to be controlled, when and why, that you previously did not have, and likely would not have had, until it was pointed out to you. You are in no way stupid, nor should your insight be dismissed--- Only, that the lack of that knowledge predisposed you to simultaneously thinking you were correct about something that you were not, AND, that it predisposed you to being manipulated into supporting a ban for a gun that you would otherwise not have supported a ban of (a hunting rifle.) 

There are unscrupulous people who specialize in exploiting this kind of situation for political purposes.  You can find them in places like The Heritage Foundation.  These are the people I refer to as "Judas Goats."

Rather than think I am excluding myself from the rest of humanity, rather, see it as a lament--- I too am afflicted. I am INCAPABLE of knowing everything I need to know, to properly and effectively utilize my ability to vote to guide the nation properly.

[None]

No, not you, weird, and that's precisely why I think that labeling people as sheep for having convergent thought or not being willing or able to master everything is frivolous grandstanding.