Showing posts with label wedge issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedge issues. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Analysis paralysis and wedge issues: When knowledge isn't power

A vulnerability exists in individuals who are especially receptive to learning, which could allow an attacker to flood them with information that could induce an excess of self-doubt and disunity. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take partial control of an affected mind.


A few months after Hitler took over as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Bertrand Russell responded with the kind of violence that is typical of philosophers: with a scathing essay. He called this essay The Triumph of Stupidity, and I want to expand on just two sentences from it. The first is one of his most famous quotes. Speaking of the new regime, he lamented that "the fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."