Stupid Sayings

Power corrupts.


If I get much power & I use it to help people & improve things, will people say power made me good?

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You might be the exception - as, indeed, there have been some notable exceptions in the past, but the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment tend to support the observation. It's not universal, but neither is it entirely stupid. Take at as warning, rather than a rule.

 

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"The average IQ is 100, which means half the human race is dumber than that."

My reply, "If you're going to castigate such a huge block of people for being stupid you might at least attempt to sound like you're qualified to do so."

 

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Ooo!

If it hasn't already been said: "Make America Great Again!"

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I did not mean to say it is invalid because some people are not corrupted. Maybe I was not clear enough,

If power or money or whatever seems to change someone & make them better or worse, it is extremely likely that was in their character before. If John handles power well & Sam handles it badly, it is due to each existing psychological condition.

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I've heard that you can change behavior, but you can never change character.

 

You don't change character. Character is already a nebulous entity, not cast in concrete: it's shifting and and responding all the time.
People may have some inborn capabilities and limitations; they have the internalized values of their earliest training; they have a temperament that they can learn to control to a greater or lesser degree. But nobody is purely one kind of person or another kind of person; we all have dozens of traits, proclivities, tastes, thought-processes, weaknesses and blind spots, virtues and strengths, some innate, some internalized, some adapted some cultivated deliberately.
Circumstances, from the first to the last moment of our lives, affect which of those traits are thwarted, which are stunted, which thrive, which are empowered, etc. This is why money, love, fame, alcohol, illness, hardship, power or humiliation affect different people differently - but they do affect everyone in some way.
And there are statistical indications that some traits which all humans have to various degrees are affected in a generally similar way by generally similar circumstances.

 

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

This is a particularly idiotic statement, when you stop and think about it for a moment.

It seems to be a favourite of cdesign proponentsists.

 

Absence is evidence of absence.

 

...and absence of evidence is evidence of the absence of evidence... yea, verily...
which would be ample reason to throw a criminal case out of court,
but somehow does the opposite for the existence of Gawd: absence of evidence is precisely what keeps that bogey in play

 

He was voted off the show.


Until I finally watched the show, that idiocy had me thinking they had people voting against contestants they do not like rather than for the ones they like.

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Absence of evidence is evidence of conspiracy.

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"Jesus is always with me." Must make going to the loo a bit suspect.

 

Especially when Santa Claus is watching the both of you.

 

I wish he'd post those lists online. Save a lot time in the bars.

 

While it is open to abuse, I do not agree that it is a dumb statement. It has its place in logical debate.

The classic 'black swan' example is one. I don't see any black swans here, but that is poor evidence that they don't exist.

 

I dunno - I've been known to call out his name after a night of binging on chili and doritos.

 

Ah, but did he answer? That's the test.
As for the absence of evidence, there may be a shortage of evidence on one subject in one place or time, and that doesn't prove the non-existence of that subject. Indeed, no evidence actually proves the non-existence of anything.
In the case of black swans, or black holes, or black scientists, in the absence of evidence of their existence, we simply proceed as if they didn't exist and leave the door open, in case one shows up - and then we'll change the theory.
In the case of gods, while there is no evidence of their existence, we are expected to proceed as if they not existed but dictated daily bad behaviour and occasional genocide, and leave the door open to absolute proof of their non-existence, and then we'll stop acting stupidly.