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churling effect of flea speech
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:56:59 CST
We note with alarm (the others are hallucinations refusing to give their
names) the following suggested warning label:
>FOSS a post from Dan Foss
Now, in contrast with the Old Days, I've - relatively speaking - shut up,
lurked, and striven to the least of my shrunken ability to Deal With, as you
say, my Stupidity. Recall, I never accepted the spurious doctrine of Essential
Smartness, tolled by those who ring The Bell Curve. That's why I made my first
appearance, four years ago, as a raving idiot. Thereafter, making use of my
sole trick usable in faking Smartness, horrendous accumulations of factoid lint
(called "enormous working memory" by Cog Lab), I mimicked academic style, with
mock scholarship thrown in, inducing my not-yet-good-friend Steven C. Mack to
Expose me as "5 or 6 different people sharing one Userid." In substance, I
fear, exposing [collective] you to suckerdom induced by the *compelling effect*
of the *subjective Experience of Smartness as essential*. I knew then, though
I was too Stupid to know I knew it, that the Republicans would win: Ask not
for whom The Bell Curves, 'tis for Thee. Nyaa.
The corollary of the foregoing is: Whenever a largish or large-enough bunch
of people subjectively Experiencing their essential Smartness sink to the level
of Collective Behaviour, the Stupidity observed is as Stupid as that predicted
observable in a comparbly largish or large-enough bunch of people Constructed
as Stupid. Consider the Russian nobility and bourgeoisie in 1917, who boasted
so great a portion, a near-monopoly even, of the accredited secondary and
higher education of the Evil Empire of the Emperors, they called themselves
"Thinking Russia." Yet their politics was so dimwitted, in strategy, tactics,
feasibility, and last and least, popular support, that it was comparable to
the feeble forces [?] associated with Chernomyrdin in the same country today.
Lev D. Trotsky, by spreading a few rumours in certain neighborhoods in St
Petersburg, could send the whole crew packing to Paris and points west. In
his History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky brilliantly explored the social
sources of *determined* Stupidity in the aggretate and its nonleadership.
What we (this writer and perhaps one of you) see here, in the senseless
arguments I've observed (till feeling the Call of Action) is *underdetermined*
Stupidity, howbeit each participant is or was Constructed as possessing Smart-
ness, in some isolated instances possibly even essential. (By the latter, I
mean that it would be as idle to dismiss the possibility of Really Smart people
as it would be to a priori deny the existence of Retards. (By actual Cog Lab
measurement, here and in Stony Brook, I'm a Retard myself. I can even back this
up with Hard Numbers. But won't, as it's Embarassing.) For the most part,
though, we recognize the Smartness of the usual sort as *the social validation
of existing hierarchy*: after all, the word itself has the original sense of
"hurt."
One of the more misguided strategies pursued by those disgusted by ongoing
Stupidities has been to argue, with utmost Smartness, whereunder is subsumed
Articulateness, Cogency, Coherence, Originality, Aptness, and all the other
virtues relevant to the judges appraising your contest entry in 25 words or
less, accompanied by cereal boxtop or soap wrapper. (This may be obsolete; I
don't listen to the radio much; it's been said, too, that the radio's been
superseded by some Thingie with pictures.)
Why doesn't this work? Because the more Smartness fed into the ongoing,
agglomerating, cancerous-tissue-culture-growth-like creeping fungus of the
argumentation *legitimates* its persistence ad infinitum, if only more and
more Smart people might be induced to lend a foot for someone's mouth, bite
the foe's tongue, lick the toes of the delectating hero/ine of the halfhour,
let the Good Times and Collective Behaviour roll, cuz we're on one!
What to do in this situation is so simple and obvious, it takes a Forrest
Gump - one cannot be too original in a place like this - to latch on, catch on,
and batch it (sensu "detatched process the Thingie does noninteractively while
the Unartificial Intelligence is Out"). What I did, in two posts, was to
smother the argument, content be damned, the latter's not my opinion but an
inference from the Collective Behaviour observable on the screen; if the
content be in the slightest degree blessed, its sanctity would hardly be the
occasion for everwidening, yawning gaps of incomprehension on participants'
part. Smother it with an image so Unspeakable, the keywords of the Stupidity
seen only recently cannot be called up without Squirming transpiring at least
figuratively. Eeek. B-r-r-r.
Now, if you, by issuing the warning:
>FOSS a post from Dan Foss
...reduce the readership, especially of the wellmeaning highminded naivelings
most likely to Experience Loathing, Stark Horror, or whatever's Professional
to Experience, that's all way outta my Experience, this is ipso facto eo ipso
in effect and for all practical purposes saying, "The management would like you
to have your argument and enjoy yourselves at leisure."
And wherethehell you get all this leisure?
Daniel A. Foss
<starving but unbought>
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