Comments on: “Lazy” Hurt Less Than “Stupid”?

By: gwern

gwern — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:34:02 +0000

‘ignorance is bliss’. Also, don’t adults envy children when they enjoy simple-minded games? It’s not that the children are ignorant, it’s just that they are stupid enough to still enjoy it – they really can’t solve tic-tac-toe on their own, it’s just too hard.

By: Some good reads « N=1

Some good reads « N=1 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:16:15 +0000

[...] “Lazy” hurts more than “stupid” Conscientiousness, i.e., not being lazy, matters about as much as intelligence, i.e., not being stupid. And it is similarly heritable, i.e., genetic, it is more correlated with gender, and probably similarly correlated with race, class, and ethnicity. Yet stupidity seems a far more sensitive topic. [...]

By: Joseph Knecht

Joseph Knecht — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:58:07 +0000

I think it comes down to (1) [perceived] choice, (2) [perceived] responsibility, (3) [perceived] difficulty/rapidity of ‘fixing the problem’.

1. laziness is conceptualized as a choice, while smarts is conceptualized as being mostly beyond our ability to choose; 2. from the first point, it follows that the lazy person is responsible for their state, and so they are more deserving of insult, etc.; 3. the lazy individual is perceived to be able to change his state at will and very quickly (if he only tries hard enough [which he is surely capable of]), while smarts can either not be change or can only be changed with long and arduous effort.

By: Alex Harris

Alex Harris — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:42:29 +0000

One of my law professors once explained why firms prefer students with top grades from top law schools: “Firms know they can’t be both lazy and stupid.” That got me thinking. I would much rather be lazy and smart than hardworking and dumb. I get the same results with less effort if I’m lazy and smart. (Hence, “work smarter, not harder.”) People who can coast through life doing very little but achieving a lot are more impressive (because we want to emulate them more) than people who have to fight for every scrap.

By: Taemojitsu

Taemojitsu — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:15:09 +0000

English doesn’t really have a pejorative word for having low ‘conscientiousness’. Lazy can mean avoiding unnecessary work as well. It is likely that at least some of the negative correlation is social factors because it will usually be the superiors in an organization that determine what is ‘necessary’ or not; but again mostly just because it’s hard to compare and so people have different readings of the actual word, ‘lazy’

By: Constant

Constant — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:32:39 +0000

Rather than taxing natural differences, let us eliminate natural differences. Everyone will be a clone of everyone else, and there will be no life on the planet but us (since if natural differences among humans are problematic, consider the natural differences between species). We will, of course, eat each other.

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:15:38 +0000

All ideas about taxing natural goods to equalize happiness end badly in my mind, because there will always be one more important natural good to tax. And many goods, like beauty, are somewhat subjective and thus a lot harder to measure than height. The ultimate natural good, indeed the ultimate good period, and really the most logical thing to tax in equality’s name, is “well-being” – one of the least measurable goods of all.

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:55:16 +0000

I get such great satisfaction out of hearing people explain why Bryan Caplan is stupid and wrong… it’s one bias I just want confirmed over and over.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:15:35 +0000

If traits like consientiousness are so heritable, shouldn’t we be talking about taxing them like we’re going to tax height? After all, Mankiw just used height as an example of attributes that are associated with increased earnings.

By: andrew c

andrew c — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:06:38 +0000

Lazy people by definition don’t care as much about ‘life outcomes’.