I wish I was really stupid sometimes. Life would be so much easier. Getting good grades wouldn't matter. I wouldn't think about whether God was real or not, I would just accept it. I would never think up questions about physics, space, and other things that I know will never be answered in my lifetime. Damn.

You mean I wish I were stupid. ;) j/k

On a more serious note, unless you have already done so, I recommend that you obtain and peruse a copy of Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley. It's a sublime and colorful piece of literature which regards the topic over which you seem so horribly exasperated, comrade.
:cool:

Yours Truly,
Redoubt

! Maybe I am stupid! Hurray!

excellente' Redoubtable!

I think it's natural to never be truly satisfied with what you are. The young want to be older. The old want to be younger. I'm quite tired of being an adolescent, but there isn't very much I can do about it for the time being. I think that instead of wishing to be stupid, you should wish to be simple. Think Winnie the Pooh. Not stupid, but simple, always happy, always content. Doesn't care about things that don't matter, and hardly anything matters, except for honey.

Pollux, are you reading or have you read The Social Contract? If so, how is it?:)

I am reading it. At times Rousseau (spelt correctly?) can speak quite eloquently, however it seems that at other times the text degenerates into almost completely unintelligible babble. Maybe it's just my translation. But it is really cool stuff, the first lines of the book automatically prompt you to re-examine the entire world. Getting past his prose is proving to be quite the challenge however...

edit: Given the choice, I'd rather read Plato.

I wonder if there is a drug one could take to "dumb himself up" for a day... I heard of a pill that basically shuts down one half of the brain. They use it for experiements.

Just become a democrat!:D

But wouldn't that cause permanent damage???

:D

You mean I wish I were stupid. Not really, not in this case! :p

Were is a past tense, so that would imply the person in question used to be stupid, but is now not stupid. This does not seem to be what the writer here meant; She seems to wish to still be stupid. :D

No mgwisni, you're not stupid. I know what you mean; if someone was stupid they wouldn't know any different. However this would have some downsides: they would be missin gout on some things, while they are there for others to appreciate. :)

In Italy (I did a Philosophy course in Italy this summer) there was a girl in my class who was the epitome of stuck-in-a-bubble. If this were the matrix she would be so locked in they'd have to kill her, there'd be no chance of pulling her out. She lived in her own little wealthy world with no knowledge of reality and not a single bit of understanding on how people truly functioned or that people different than her actually existed.

What was hilarious was one day we had the matrix discussion in class; would you rather remain in a happy matrix or know the truth? Her answer - in a purely hypothetical setting, of course....

"I don't think I could deal with not understanding what's around me. I'd feel like I was trapped and locked up."


Everyone has at one point said the words "I wish I was dumb". What you eventually learn is, you might be. I once repeated that phrase quite often to myself, and I was one of those who eventually just realized I am already.

And before we get into the whole debate again, I do not consider myself a complete idiot. Just simply far from intelligent in any kind of true or valuable way. The same goes for being "aware" - a phrase people here love to use. I don't consider myself that aware either. When you're in the process of realizing everything you know is wrong, you tend not to consider yourself very aware.

Oh - and it is my experience that there is not a single human being who has been educated at all that does not ponder the existence of god. You'd be surprised the kind of people I've had this discussion with. Think of the most thugged out, ridiculous stoner dumb-ass at your high school...

Trust me, he's pondered the existence of a higher power.

Originally posted by Tyler
Oh - and it is my experience that there is not a single human being who has been educated at all that does not ponder the existence of god. You'd be surprised the kind of people I've had this discussion with. Think of the most thugged out, ridiculous stoner dumb-ass at your high school...

Trust me, he's pondered the existence of a higher power.

Well is that beacuse he/she is naturally Inquisitorial or is it a drug inspired quandary?

Completely sober.

mgwisni, I must give you congrats for accomplishing your goal:P

Completely agree with Pollux and Tyler. I often hear the phrase "the most ingenious things are the simplest" or something to that affect. There have been numerous times where that might apply. For instance when something is wrong with your computer what is the first thing the tech support personnel will tell you?

"Is it plugged in?"

And unless a peron knows everything there is to know in this universe, then that person is already plain and simply dumb. But if you were to say you wish to be "dumber" then I suppose it's just all relative.

And before we get into the whole debate again, I do not consider myself a complete idiot. Just simply far from intelligent in any kind of true or valuable way. The same goes for being "aware" - a phrase people here love to use. I don't consider myself that aware either. When you're in the process of realizing everything you know is wrong, you tend not to consider yourself very aware.

Tyler, don't we need someone to make a comparison to, in order to place ourselves relative to him/her intellectually? You can't say that your car is slow when you've never seen a fast car. Who do you consider "aware"--"enlightened," and for what reasons? What puts them above you?

"I'd rather be rich than stupid."-Jack Handey

ignorance is bliss, really.
i wish i was stupid.

re: matrix, i'd totally rather be in the matrix. that guy who betrayed the team when he made a deal with the robots, i completely understand him. if i'm in the matrix now and some dude in some metal desert "unplugs" me, i'd kick his ass.

i wish i was a sheep...not understanding anything.. just blindly believing what i was told. its much easier to live that way.

Granted..........what's your second wish?:D

I don't know... things are confusing enough. I cannot imagine how bad it is being stupid.

Take instructions on shampoo for instance; who the fuck is so stupid that they don't know how to use shampoo? And if they don't know that I doubt if they can read anyway so why bother printing directions on the bottle?

How about the whole Florida voting fiasco? You know what? If you're too fucking dumb to figure out how to punch a ballot then I don't care what your vote was. It doesn't matter because you're too stupid to have a relevant political opinion in the first place.

How about crosswalk signs? Here's a clue: If a 2000lb + vehicle is barreling down the road in your direction don't step in font of it. Or better yet, go right ahead.

Personally, I think the problem is that there are already too many stupid people. They're dragging us down and holding us back. If it weren't for all the time the rest of us waste fixing problems caused by stupid people, explaining things to them, and making things 'safe' for them we'd have been crossing the galaxy in our interstellar spaceships a thousand years ago. But noooo... we have to look out for all the idiots in the world and clean up all their messes.

So here's my idea: Remove all warning labels... from everything. Are you too stupid to know that you shouldn't use a hairdryer in the bathtub? Too bad. ZAP! Mommy doesn't know that junior shouldn't run around with a plastic bag on his head. Too bad. This'll start weaning the stupid people from the genetic pool and kick intellectual evolution into over-drive. Maybe in a few thousand years we'll be able to get off of this rock and do something really interesting.

:)

~Raithere

P.S. For my subject heading just take Randy Newman's song "Short People" and replace words like short and little with dumb and stupid.

http://dag.wieers.com/personal/lyrics/Short_People.php

Those safeguards are in place to keep people from suing corporations or the government for stupid reasons. Some woman won a few million dollars from Mcdonals because she spilled coffee on herself at a takeout window, on the grounds that if there had been a warning label telling her that the coffee was hot nothing would have happened to her. Now every Mcdonalds coffee cup has to have a warning on it. Likewise, if you get hit by a car at an intersection where there are no warnings, and survive, it isn't profitable for the government to shell out a ton of money for your damages and not put up a warning there to keep something like that from happening again.

This is, of course, excluding the whole morality of the issue...

Originally posted by Pollux V
Those safeguards are in place to keep people from suing corporations or the government for stupid reasons. Some woman won a few million dollars from Mcdonals because she spilled coffee on herself at a takeout window, on the grounds that if there had been a warning label telling her that the coffee was hot nothing would have happened to her.I know, I know. And if I was the judge I would have said, "So your case is that the coffee was hot? No shit. *bang* Case dismissed."

But you missed the point. If we remove ALL of the warnings people that don't know that coffee is served hot and can burn you wouldn't live long enough to get the point where they could drive up and place the piping hot coffee between their legs in the first place. She surely would have died from drinking bleach or trying to feed the lions (or should that be 'feeding the lions'?) But no, some one or some sign warned her off and she lived, got burned, sued McDonalds and won, and now we have yet another warning to keep even more idiots safe.

It's a vicious cycle, I tell you.

~Raithere

Rather than wishing to be stupid, you should be wishing more people to not be quite as stupid as they are.
Then, the problems that the blissfully ignorant do not see WOULD be seen and you can be one of the bright ones that have the tools and the wisdom to help solve them.

Originally posted by Pollux V
Some woman won a few million dollars from Mcdonals because she spilled coffee on herself at a takeout window, on the grounds that if there had been a warning label telling her that the coffee was hot nothing would have happened to her.

Just a little off-topic side note:
It seems that most people do not know this, but she was not awarded millions of dollars.
The jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages and 2.7 Million in punitive damages.
However, the compensatory damages were reduced to $160,000 because the jury decided she (Stella Liebeck) was determined to be 20% at fault in the spill, and a trial court subsequently reduced the punitive damages to $480,000.
THEN, McDonalds and Liebeck came to a "secret" settlement, which has never been made public.

Don't get me wrong, I am not condoning this.
Even a $640,000 award in this case is ridiculous and the case should have been thrown out of court, but I just wanted the "real facts" of the case to be known.

The information is widely available public knowledge and not hard to find.

It just annoys me when people talk about these things and stir up anger for the outrageous "facts" of the stories, when, in actuality, they are only working with 1/2 facts and rumors and the real facts are somewhat less extraordinary.
One of the related stories (http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm)

Sorry for the interruption.

Originally posted by Mucker
Not really, not in this case! :p

Were is a past tense, so that would imply the person in question used to be stupid, but is now not stupid. This does not seem to be what the writer here meant; She seems to wish to still be stupid. :D

Sorry...

So, what are you saying?
That mgwisni should have said:
"I wish I be stupid"
or
"I wish I am stupid"
or maybe
"I wish I is stupid"
?

None of the above would be correct in this situation.

Sorry, Mucker, but Redoubtable was correct in this case.
mgwisni should have used "were" since (s)he was attempting to use the subjunctive (http://www.bartleby.com/61/28/S0842800.html) verbal mood for the verb "be".

English has had a subjunctive mood since Old English times, but most of the functions of the old subjunctive have been taken over by auxiliary verbs like may and should, and the subjunctive survives only in very limited situations. It has a present and past form. The present form is identical to the base form of the verb, so you only notice it in the third person singular, which has no final -s, and in the case of the verb be, which has the form be instead of am, is, and are. The past subjunctive is identical with the past tense except in the case of the verb be, which uses were for all persons: If I were rich …, If he were rich …, If they were rich…

Read more if you wish to... (http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html#SUBJUNCTIVE1)

i just can't believe that this stupid woman actually had a driver's license.

I think the world would be just as deppressing not knowing or not caring as a stupid person would i expect.