I Am Going To Do Some Virtual Sleight of Hand

I need to take a vacation from mentioning, at least directly, a certain blogger. But I saw something posted by this silly person that got me to thinking about a few, let's call them rare but sorta reliable truisms.

Mostly, one should be careful when painting with a broad brush. Sometimes the math and/or otherwise real world data will back you up. Usually it doesn't. In the law of evidence there is this doctrine/rule about so called judicial notice. That allows the court to take basic facts about the known world, or at the smaller scale, what everyone in town knows about the town, for granted, and just move on. The further away from that level of certainty one's statement of alleged reality gets, the more likely someone is saying something speculative, false, and likely embarrassing, when held up to scrutiny.

And in addition to that, I will risk falling under governance of my first observation by saying that when someone starts a statement with words to the effect,"In my experience . . . ," and the following point is not really really empirical, and by that I mean, supported by personal observation after repetitious doing or observing of specific tasks or phenomena? What ever follows will have a large degree of flat out bullshit, if not is mostly bullshit. People live life. People have opinions about things that they actually experience with some good degree of specific observation. And as well they can have opinions that are based for the most part on nothing more than their own biases and prejudices. So that's something that needs to be remembered, I would say.

And lastly, when it comes to broad brush statements about qualitative judgments, expect the judgment to be mostly bullshit. People believe all sorts of shit about the world around them, and their grasp of it. Every now and then (think of the broken face-dial clock being right twice a day) their broad brush bullshit might have some merit. But less than the broken clock, that is not inevitable.

Oh. And the specific remark that led to this commentary:

In my experience — and I'm old, so it's long — people who make a noticeable exhibition of their smartness are not the most intelligent people. They're not the dumbest people. But the smartest people are strategic about displaying intelligence. That's how they outsmart you.

Firstly my counter argument to that is, how smart can someone be if they are relying on one of the oldest bluff, bullshit cliches known to the species? For example if I ever encounter someone pulling some variant of the,"I's justa sim pull 'cuntry law-ya," routine, my radar will immediately go up. That's such a cliche and a well known flim flam, con man, drifter line that who ever uses might well be quoting Iago, in sum from the play, "Othello," but thusly:

Sirah I aim to lead you tenderly by the nose, as asses are. Forsooth!

Now everyone might not be as "on notice" as I am with that "aw shucks" shit. But I know I am not alone in thinking that way. But beyond that point on that "opinion," I am sure a lot of people believe that bullshit. And I can not say for sure that there is no possible way that could be even minimally more the case than not. But the absence of any proof of it, makes it a rather idiotic statement. Unless we are going to count Road Runner cartoons as proof. But hey. Bugs Bunny is way the fuck smarter than his rivals. That's the whole theme that's in play in (well most at least) the 'toons. Wise cracking, joke throwing, smart ass but smart rabbit outwits dummy. So the whole 'toons as proof thing gets us nowhere, at least.