When I yell at people for being stupid on the internet, it's because I think of stupid as a *behavior* rather than admitting to myself that they are simply unable to grasp what is going on, and are already doing their best.

Unfortunately I have to stop living in this fantasy.

I tried to explain to some stupid Americans that it's very tricky getting people to marry later in countries like Nigeria without creating a bunch of unwed mothers, because contraception (and STD treatments and abortions) are not as available.

They can't be "teenagers" safely.

The resulting clusterfuck was the most appalling display of racist ignorance I have ever seen, and this from "progressive left" types who were trying to reason about questions surrounding paedophila.

No notion that in places without birth control, early marriage is often wise.

Eventually I realized: they're simply too stupid to think through what is actually happening. They can't process the statistics and they can't think themselves into the situation of the families with no access to contraception etc.

So the result is a hostile lashing out at data.

Realizing that their world model does not match reality causes them pain and they lash out until the badnoise stops and they can go back to their malicious little hamster balls of ignorance content that the entire world is six inches across.

It's time to change tactics now.

I've just really realized that I can read something like this in a few minutes, slot the numbers into a reasonably accurate global base model, and interpret what the study really means and *actually* that's not how people in general are operating. At all. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1145#:~:text=Although%20prevalence%20of%20single%20motherhood,births%20(UNICEF%2C%202013)

My egalitarian bias is ineffective.

I need to start owning how exceptional I am, and accepting that I can't teach stupid people how to understand the situation in smart ways.

I just have to emit signals that get as much of the message across the gulf as possible: results focus.

This is a bit sad for me: from "educator" to "trainer" in the old, kind of bad, senses of those words.

But it's just clearer every day that I'm over-estimating people's willingness to listen and learn, and that's kinda gotta stop now.

I must be a realist.