wrong. stupid can mean slow to learn or grasp a concept, and i never said someone can be stupid of anything. i sad someone can be stupid ABOUT something. i am starting to think your not even reading my posts.

consider a thought example. An arrow will be shot at a disc. The arrow's head is 1 point large. The head will hit the disc somewhere at random. The disc has an infinite number of points. The chance of the arrow hitting any single point on the disc is thus 1/∞=0.

If you merely lack belief that most people are stupid, then you are neither correct nor incorrect since you hold no belief on the matter. If you believe what I wrote before, then you are wrong. It is pretty obvious that most people are stupid.

I find that IQs are not a good measure of stupidity. Even many people with high IQs are stupid. Having a high IQ is nothing more than being good at solving abstract "find the pattern" problems, not very applicable to common human life which is concrete and not abstract. But even in common life people fail. They do stupid things such as smoking, driving while drunk, become too drunk, eat the wrong food etc. even though they know of the consequences and know that these consequences are in conflict with their long-term interests.

What you wrote was:

but as an example i will take a guess that you know little about entomology, and will know little about it for the rest of your life. that makes you stupid in the field of entomology over a long period of time, and so by (your) definition makes you a stupid person.

"Stupid in" isn't English either. And, you are still confusing ignorance with stupidity. If I don't know anything about bugs, then I am ignorant of entomology. I am not "stupid in" entomology. Whatever that might mean.

i am using the term stupid in a strange way in this sentence but not because i am confusing it with ignorance in my dictionary it states it defines stupid in a few ways and one of those was is and i quote, "Marked by a lack of intelligence" as in you have a lack of intelligence in reference to entomology. intelligence being used here to mean information. also the fact that ignorance and stupidity are similar if not the same in meaning is not unintelligent seeing as how stupid and ignoramus are synonyms of each other.

the argument of the exact meaning of stupid seems to me tedious, and since we are talking about whether or not people are slow or unintelligent, meaning without intelligence or without data in this conversation what wording we use is little more than semantics which could be cleared up simply by you going to dictionary. com and looking up the words. there you will see that the word stupid has in fact several meanings. the point i was trying to make is the important thing not the wording i have chosen. i am unsure at this point how i can further explain my view on this subject

you seem to be stuck on the word stupid. you obviously dislike the word or have some problem with it. the reason i have used the term stupid has not been to be offensive but because it is the wording used by the thread maker, and i wonder if i had used a different word with a similar meaning if you would have agreed with me.

If you know no entomology, you are ignorant of entomolgy..You are not "stupid of entomology", "stupid in entomology", or stupid at all. "Ignorant" means, "do not know". You may, however be ignorant because you are stupid. But ignorance (not knowing) can be caused in other ways too. I have no idea what your point is, or, indeed, whether you have one.

I have quoted the dictionary, and told you what dictionary I use, and where to find it to read it for yourself. you have already made this point, and I refuted it with evidence. unless you have a rebuttal I have not already rectified there is nothing I can add to the conversation. repeating myself would only bore the both of us.

Accepting and assuming are different. Assuming is without adequate evidence. Accepting can be with or without adequate evidence. At least, that's how I use them. People sometimes criticize others for assuming 'without proof' something, which is kind of a stupid criticism since all assumptions are 'without proof'. To talk of assuming something with good reason is a contradiction. Though people sometimes write things like "we have good reason to assume [P]" but that is different. And this is not important or relevant for the topic of this thread, that is, the stupidity of the general population.

The argument given in standard english should be taken as identical to the one expressed below in formal english and formal logic. What I meant with the quoted passage is that from the premises and the assumption we can deduce a contradiction and thus the assumption is false. This is standard RAA procedure. RAA meaning reductio ad absurdum.

I wasn't questioning the procedure. I was questioning why you accepted what you accepted; I am questioning something specific to this argument.

Here, let me try again: Can you explain premise 1 to me?

The probability of the arrow hitting any single point is 0. The arrow hits one point at random. There are an infinite number of points. The probability is thus 1/∞, that is, 0.

Eh, exactly what did you refute?

But you can use what we currently know and then come to a reasonable conclusion. All brains are not equal. This is demonstrated almost every day. Some people are so mentally retarded, they cannot even care for themselves properly. They don't have the capacity to understand how to use the telephone, let alone grasp the innerworkings of a theoretical physics equation. And no matter how much time these people are given, it doesn't change the fact that they are disabled.

If you put a dog in a room with a calculus book and a good teacher, you think the dog would eventually learn calculus? I think the reasonable answer is no, it will not learn calculus. A dog is unable to learn calculus, no matter how long you try to teach it.

and for a second arrow...probabity would be one over infinity minus 1 ? not zero ?

stupid 1541, "mentally slow," from M.Fr. stupide, from L. stupidus "amazed, confounded," lit. "struck senseless," from stupere "be stunned, amazed, confounded," from PIE *(s)tupe- "hit," from base *(s)teu- (see steep (adj.)). Native words for this idea include negative compounds with words for "wise" (cf. O.E. unwis, unsnotor, ungleaw), also dol (from root of Ger. toll "mad," related to Gk. tholeros "muddy, turbid"), and dysig (see dizzy

Assuming that it could not hit the same spot, it would still be 0. 1/∞ = 1/(∞-1), because ∞-1=∞.

The probability of the arrow hitting any single point is 0. The arrow hits one point at random. There are an infinite number of points. The probability is thus 1/∞, that is, 0.

hitchhikers guide to the galaxy argues that people think they are intelligent because of their ability to think about all kinds of things, alternatively it states that dolphins are inteligent because all they do is swim around all day and have fun. so forth a societys social construction of stupidity is what makes people stupid, without inequalities in society there wouldnt be a vast number of stupid people without comparison the word means nothing.

as the number of arrows approaches infinity, when number of arrows is infinity minus 2..still same answer ? zero probability ?
when does this zero probability change ? at what mark ?
If ∞-1=∞.
then it seems to me that ∞ - (∞-1) = 1,
whereas. since ∞-1=∞, it should leave 0

∞ - (∞-1), where ∞-1=∞
= ∞-∞
= 0

But why is the probability of the arrow hitting any single point 0? Is this bowman that bad? Is he/she not even shooting in the general direction?

The probability of the arrow hitting any single point is 0. The arrow hits one point at random. There are an infinite number of points. The probability is thus 1/∞, that is, 0.

The probability of a random arrow hitting somewhere within a square mile on an infinite plane is also 0.