similar to anti-gun or anti-gym takes, anti-vidya takes invariably reveal 1. lack of first-hand experience and 2. emotional instability. you never see an anti-vidya argument from someone who has played video games and analyzed them dispassionately https://twitter.com/logo_daedalus/status/1361344465030545409

the substance of the anti-vidya argument, when it’s there, is usually a comparison to other diversions like reading, claiming that these produce direct practical benefit in contrast to vidya which doesn’t

this traps vidya defenders into defending it on the grounds of practical usefulness. the argument is already lost before it has begun

no one thinks to defend an art exhibit for its practical value. in fact, the greater a work of art, the less obviously practical is its function, counterintuitively

what the anti-vidya types are probably responding to is the large number of people who become obsessed with video games to the detriment of their normal working life, sacrificing opportunity and personal progress for their obsession. this definitely exists

the flaw in logic is attributing this behavior to the object rather than the subject. similar to how midwits blame guns for the behavior of bad people with guns, they blame the ruinous behavior of many gamers on video games

it’s a type of anthropomorhization that midwits engage in regularly, lacking the ignorance necessary for useful heuristics but also lacking the cognitive integrity to rely wholly upon analytical frameworks

midwittery is most often revealed in value judgments. the midwit enjoys the benefit of higher cognitive skills when applied to narrow contexts, but when applied to more abstract/complex systems it becomes counterproductive

the dimwit can’t access higher cognitive functions easily, so for complex systems he has to rely on fast and frugal heuristics. counterintuitively, these are not only more economical but also more accurate than incomplete critical analysis

incomplete critical analysis also opens conclusions to corrupting forces like emotions and ego, which invariably leads to self-deception. the midwit knows he is smarter than the dimwit, and as a result assumes that the dimwit’s mental toolkit is subpar. in fact it is the best

the point that really grinds midwits’ gears is that ignorance is sometimes adaptive depending on context. this is anathema to the midwit’s value hierarchy because it’s based on the idea that being a midwit is better than being a dimwit

thus the midwit makes a category error before any value judgment even begins. the failure isn’t in the conclusion— it’s in thinking the conclusion is correct because of the presupposition that he understands the problem

this presupposition is the primary way that prefernce for the rational faculty is corrupted by ego. every value judgment is accompanied by the implied presumption that the value judgment is correct, which means that a differing value judgment can only come from someone ignorant

take guns for example. the midwit attempts to rationally analyze the concept (already a failure). he perceives no proximal need for guns in his own life, because his higher cognitive capability allows him to access more secure life options

the dimwit response to this observation would be to assume that if people want them, they must need them (a fast and frugal heuristic, but logically untenable)

the midwit knows that it is illogical to assume people need the things they want, so this heuristic is unavailable. starting from a value hierarchy based on cognitive ability, he assumes that dumb people want things they don’t need, couching value within a practical context

a meta value judgment has already been made: things that don’t offer practical utility lack value. there is of course no solid boundary between practical utility and personal value, so the arbitration is left to emotional bias and ego

ultimately this is why midwits are against noble abstracts. lip service is sometimes given to things like beauty, dignity, honor etc. but because they are too complex to be easily quantified into practical variables, they are only valued according to subjective whim

the dimwit also values according to subjective whim, but the midwit’s higher cognition encourages him to extrapolate from his whims sweeping value judgments, which are ultimately arbitrary. ayn rand is the paragonof this archetype https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/ayn-rand-reviews-childrens-movies

the new atheists reveal deep midwittery in their highly emotional response to any mention of the word faith. what bothers them isn’t that someone reaches a conclusion with a logically untenable method— it’s the implication that a logically untenable method could be valuable

circling back to the original point about vidya vs reading, this midwit operating system bug explains why midwits are obsessed with reading a higher number of books. there flaw prevents them from penetrating the deep mysteries, so books are reduced to information dispensers

perhaps in primitive times the midwit brain would have been adaptive for grunt work, performing narrow tasks too boring for topwits and too irrelevant to dimwits. as it expands into academic and aesthetic domains it sucks them of eros and thumos