Monday, September 05, 2011

A unified theory of idiocy

Following up on Don's post about religion-as-standard, it turns out that on a purely Darwinian analysis, group idiocy has survival value, and if there's enough of it around it can become an evolutionarily stable strategy. If idiocy exceeds a critical threshold, it can actually become irrational to act rationally. This should strike fear in the heart of Bayesians everywhere.

If ever there was proof that the hand of Loki is at work in the world, surely this is it.

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