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[Scoops Novel]

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.

Practical is practical. If people are dumb; they are in fact dumb. Why are you unwilling to accept negative judgements can reasonably be drawn from data?

More to the point; i literally make a thread to discuss something buzzing around my brain and i am clearly not even trying to hear a different opinion?

And then of course, you make a point of implying that i believe sheep are racist.

This is a thread about willful ignorance; whether because of emotion, or not. If you're wondering why i believe in it, look at what i've just said.

[martinuzz]

Four legs good, two legs baaaahhhd

[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.

Practical is practical. If people are dumb; they are in fact dumb. Why are you unwilling to accept negative judgements can reasonably be drawn from data?

More to the point; i literally make a thread to discuss something buzzing around my brain and i am clearly not even trying to hear a different opinion?

And then of course, you make a point of implying that i believe sheep are racist.

This is a thread about willful ignorance; whether because of emotion, or not. If you're wondering why i believe in it, look at what i've just said.

Sky's red. Sure, it's only in the evening, typically when there's no clouds, but the sky's red. Reasonable judgment that can be drawn from data, it's just incomplete data.

Point is, the topic is a loaded question to springboard this disdainful idea you have. I don't buy into it, and that doesn't make me willfully ignorant, because I'd have to agree with you in order not to be ignorant by your metric.

And no, the bit about black sheep isn't about racism- the metaphor about black sheep getting together and thinking they're normal is an awkward one because it's a human valuation of a nonhuman creature that doesn't care what the color of its wool is. They don't think it's normal or not, they just don't think about these things. They're sheep.

[Starver]

I'll go along with the majority position on this, and say that we're not sheep.

[feelotraveller]

I think there is a substantial opinion is that Ovis aries aren't 'sheep' either.  Slightly decentred but this link to a gloss on research recently published in Science might be of interest here: https://theconversation.com/clever-cockatoos-in-southern-sydney-have-learned-to-open-kerb-side-bins-and-it-has-global-significance-164794

For decades, scientists believed humans were the only animals capable of culture. Now, thanks to the community’s observations, we can add parrots to this small (but growing) list, which also includes chimpanzees, humpback whales and New Caledonian crows.

Personally I have seen Ovis aries repeatedly engage in very thoughtful responses when encountering problems like wild dogs or inclement weather.  Which leaves the foundational metaphor gasping for air.

[Imic]

People will go with the crowd when they believe it is in their best interests, and they'll go against it if they believe it's in their best interests. The issue with crowds is that when everyone's saying the same thing, it's not necessarily easy to think of other things. Crowds are very good at convincing people that the crowd is right through the argumentative equivalent of brute force. At the end of the day, whether or not people are sheep is complicated. We're pack animals, but we're not eusocial animals, we rely on each other but we're not all one big hive mind. Sometimes people will follow the crowd, sometimes they won't, it all depends on how loud and convincing the crowd is.

[feelotraveller]

From an interesting book by Elias Canetti entitled Crowds and Power:

"On the questioner the effect is a feeling of enhanced power. He enjoys this and consequentially asks more and more questions; every answer he receives is an act of submission. Personal freedom consists largely in having a defense against questions. The most blatant tyranny is the one which asks the most blatant questions."

[dragdeler]

Let's throw puppies biological machines from rooftops like truely enlightened wordthinkers.

[anewaname]

The possibly-sheep are not waiting to be manipulated, they are waiting for a communication exchange on the emotional level. They are waiting for the emotional exchange that triggers the release of I-am-happily-in-my-herd drugs.

That biological system, that triggers the release of drugs, that causes emotions to be expressed in audible or visual cues, that system is always in effect even when suppressed by the cognitive mind. That system has strong influence on decision-making when the cognitive part of the mind isn't educated enough to make decisions. It is not "a choice to be stupid", it is a choice to submit without struggle in the fight for herd hierarchy. The person who is uneducated on a technology vector is forced to rely on others, and the only decision they can make is "is the emotional conversation positive?"

Emotional communication (and connection) can be more important than lingual communication and logical thought because it forms bonds through the release of happy-herd-member drugs. Addicts always seek more. Manipulators offer more. Watch a huckster selling merchandise, they are making emotional connections. Watch a manipulator saying he is like you while expressing authority and decisiveness, he is attempting to hijack your familial emotional connections.

Sheep think, it is just not as complex as dogs or humans. The bastards will not make a run for the open gate if they think they can get through in time.

[Nirur Torir]

Humans are anti-sheep.

Someone will form a group to rebel against any given issue, whether important or banal. Surely, even early pre-humans had traditionalists keeping the tribe alive, and anti-traditionalists thinking the old ways were dumb and looking for new ways to do things. "This spicy rotten fruit juice good." "Me tired of nomadry. Me stay here, tend plants, make much-much spicy rotten fruit juice." "Maybe the Earth is round." "I think dried cow blood can protect me from disease." "We should use our nuclear weapons." "Everything is a coverup, the Earth is flat." "Maybe injecting dried cow blood causes autism." "Things are/aren't fine as they are."

Perhaps this is a unique quirk of Humanity that has allowed rapid technological advancement¹. Or perhaps it is a common prerequisite for advanced civilizations. Will this be what lets us overcome the Great Filter and become an interstellar species, or will it all be destroyed by a group of angry space-luddites weaponizing their standardized anti-matter reactors?

¹ - I like to think about China through the ages at this point. A country is not a great data point for extrapolating how aliens without the constant off-group break-offs might advance, but it's the closest real point I can think of. They were a giant ocean of stability for millennia, with everything they theoretically needed to advance, and perhaps rule the world. But they didn't use their gunpowder to build guns. They scuttled their navy of giant ships and shipyards because their political power was focused into one singular point, without anti-sheep continuing the fleet. They were too stable, and had little reason to shake up the status quo.

[Imic]

Humans are anti-sheep.

Someone will form a group to rebel against any given issue, whether important or banal. Surely, even early pre-humans had traditionalists keeping the tribe alive, and anti-traditionalists thinking the old ways were dumb and looking for new ways to do things. "This spicy rotten fruit juice good." "Me tired of nomadry. Me stay here, tend plants, make much-much spicy rotten fruit juice." "Maybe the Earth is round." "I think dried cow blood can protect me from disease." "We should use our nuclear weapons." "Everything is a coverup, the Earth is flat." "Maybe injecting dried cow blood causes autism." "Things are/aren't fine as they are."

Perhaps this is a unique quirk of Humanity that has allowed rapid technological advancement¹. Or perhaps it is a common prerequisite for advanced civilizations. Will this be what lets us overcome the Great Filter and become an interstellar species, or will it all be destroyed by a group of angry space-luddites weaponizing their standardized anti-matter reactors?

¹ - I like to think about China through the ages at this point. A country is not a great data point for extrapolating how aliens without the constant off-group break-offs might advance, but it's the closest real point I can think of. They were a giant ocean of stability for millennia, with everything they theoretically needed to advance, and perhaps rule the world. But they didn't use their gunpowder to build guns. They scuttled their navy of giant ships and shipyards because their political power was focused into one singular point, without anti-sheep continuing the fleet. They were too stable, and had little reason to shake up the status quo.

That might be one of the single most optimistic observations of Humanity I have ever seen, Anti-Vaxxers not withstanding.

[dragdeler]

Can't help myself from poking at this. I tried.

get their behavior very directly from genetics, not from their capacity for whatever physical processes we associate with the basic ability to "think for one's self"

You know flowstates? That level of concentration where you just succeed. That state of mind that blesses us with true greatness the like of which we love to define our species by (achievements in arts and sports, science too since it's an art, in the sense of artisanat/"hand"werk, so rather concerning sudden breakthroughs, not long methodical studies, but those aren't the sexy stories we tell ourselves anyway). Flowstates don't tend to be verbalized thought, maybe wordpieces flying by especially if it's about something technical, but not real sentences - often it's simply raw experience in action, no intermediary language parsing bits of information from A to B. I take issue in animals don't think/ don't think for themselves. They actually can't take a semantic shortcut devoid of experience, so it's litterally impossible that something could think in their place, that seems to be a special ability dependant on a specific level of language skills (the specific level being: just short of enough). You could say they don't reflect and I'd say nothing, but I would still make a face.

Long story short I should have answered as very first person with this below, and never looked back again 

On a scale from 0 to 100? Yes.
But please don't diss sheep.

[Vector]

OK, Novel Scoops has returned and clarified their (his?) question, so I'll stop shitposting and say what I actually think.

The thread right now has moved away from the original point to discuss questions of animal vs. human intelligence. On this point, we now have spinach sending emails, so. I also want to encourage everyone invested in the concept of a linear world with human intelligence at the top and everything else branching below us to look into the Great Chain of Being and think about how invested in it you want to be.


For the other question: I don't think it's possible to answer this question for people in general. Just cultural differences alone could change how much a person is willing to listen to others.

I think that the usual, metaphorical characterization of people as "sheep" whitewashes a history of rebellion under repressive regimes, and fits into a narrative of the docility of ruled people that is a. false and b. exists solely to benefit the ruling classes.

[Caz]

/thread

[scriver]

/thread

I rebel against this idea!