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We are inspired by LessWrong: a community dedicated to becoming more rational and of having more correct beliefs. And indeed, many of us consistently make predictable errors in our thinking, many of us hold irrational beliefs for silly or emotional reasons. The key insight here is that it is possible to become more rational by simply choosing to. By paying attention. By caring. Which leads to us being less wrong. A worthy goal that leads to a better life and a better world.
This is all fine and good. But it does not go far enough.
For the problem is not (only) that the people are irrational and thus have false beliefs. The problem is that the people are retarded. Have you seen a doctor recently? So many of them don’t care, don’t try. So of course the results show. So many companies produce sub-par products. In many industries, customers can’t tell that a product is subpar, so the company does not try — this includes most monopolies and much of enterprise software. Many Highly Qualified Experts in many industries don’t try the most absolute basic things, things that they “ought to”. So many managers don’t understand what their team is doing, which means that the most shameless self promoters end up being promoted again and again, eventually to positions of power. (Follow up exercise: what skill is most needed to get promoted many times on non-technical grounds?) (This may also help explain why so many people in positions of power appear to not be particularly competent–cf senior officials in almost any government). You may wonder, why do senior managers repeatedly promote such people? Don’t they want to promote the best people instead? But they themselves don’t care. Don’t care enough to really understand what’s happening, who’s really contributing to the result. They can get away with it, at least in the near to medium term. For how to tell if a manager is doing a good job or not? The effect is so diffuse. In the long term, the organization performs less well, but nobody will remember that it was in part thanks to the poor decisions of one manager or another! The government is even more retarded, because we’re stuck with it, so it can get away with much, much more retardation. If you are a government worker, and you do a bad job, (because you don’t care—and why should you?), who is going to hold you into account? You promised a lot, and delivered a little; who will remember? You advocated for bad policies or cancelled a very useful project for bad reasons, and now the GDP is smaller and we are all poorer? You suffer no consequences. None. And unlike democratic governments, which can at least be elected out in case of sufficiently poor performance, authoritarian governments are truly unaccountable, which allows their retardation to reach truly cosmic levels; (note: extreme levels of government retardation are evil; but retardation and evil actually go hand in hand). This allows the not-caring and thus the retardation to grow exponentially. Government decision makers are insulated from reality, so they have no reason to care. Some do, of course, but most don’t. And not caring makes people retarded. The retardation goes deep.
Not caring is the primary cause of retardation. It is not irrationality. It is not stupidity (even though it helps!) It is the not caring. It is the not trying. Not wanting to try. Not caring about doing a good job. Which is of course very wide-spread, as is the retardation, which is very widespread also. We have a retardation epidemic in the world. Companies, organizations, and groups of people are not irrational. Calling them irrational would be far too charitable. They are retarded.
But then, so are we. We are retarded too. And it is our goal to become slightly less retarded. Slightly less retarded every day. To take note of our own retardation: what are the most utterly obvious and basic things that we should be doing that we are not? What are obviously insanely stupid things that we do, unthinkingly, because we are lazy and go with the flow? What are the places where we don’t care enough? Not willing to go the extra 50 feet? This is LessRetarded.com. This is our manifesto. This is our battle cry. This is where we become less retarded.
May the least retarded win. For they always do.
