Sadly we cannot vaccinate people against stupidity, but If enough people remain calm and rational, we can limit the spread of stupid ideas and flatten the hysteria curve. Yes, in these times of madness, only herd-sanity can inoculate us against this hysteria.
The ridiculous behaviour of other people is beginning to have an effect on my health, and probably yours too. Our entire society appears to be in a constant state of anxiety and chaos and there has never been a better time for a new strategy. That strategy should be: herd sanity. Only when we reach critical mass of sane people who remain calm and rational that stupid, insane ideas can no longer spread too far.
Once this level of 'mass common sense' is achieved in a population, any stupid idea like ‘Speech is violence’, ‘Defund the police’, or 'wear a mask so you don't die' will only be able to get so far without running into a sane, normal person and immediately dying out.
This is the pandemic of Stupid Ideas Rapidly Spreading – or SIRS, to give it its proper code. This is a new phenomenon largely due to the advent of Facebook and Twitter, Studies have shown a surprising number of people who possess the very latest technology, yet have not even bothered to switch their brains on. These are spreaders of the stupid virus which can, all to easily, develop into the full-blown hysteria stage of the sickness.
Stupidity has always been with us of course, but it was never able to spread very far, due to the fact that humans mainly lived in small villages where we married our cousins and then died of Consumption at 26 (that was mainly the men; women died predominantly of ‘nervousness’ or ‘excessive agitation’). But in 2020, you can get on the internet and say any number of stupid things like ‘Luxury communism now!’ or ‘White lives don’t matter. As white lives’ and thousands of people will mistakenly think you have said something profound. An even quicker way of spreading the stupid virus is in the form of a Meme, you can put any old bollocks on one of those, and as long as its accompanied by a photo that catches the eye, you've infected a shed load of others susceptible to the stupidity virus. Depending on the 'virus loading' of the meme full blown Hysteria can occur.
Take the idea of social-distancing and mask wearing. Visual reminders of an imagined foe. The carrier will quickly show signs of hysteria and likely, transmit the Stupid Idea in a rapid and difficult to contain fashion to everyone around them, or on their social media account, causing, in some cases, a full-on pandemic of Stupidity.
Now, all is not lost. we are able to track this, to a degree, using something dubbed the ‘S-rate’ (Stupid Rate) – which can be thought of as ‘The expected number of cases [of Stupidity] directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible [to Stupidity]’. However, this figure is somewhat flawed as it does not take into account things like how long one has been Stupid. So, for example, if the S-rate is halved but the time one has been Stupid is doubled, then the Total Stupidity (TS) will be the same. Thus it becomes incredibly difficult to successfully contain an outbreak of Stupid.
The problem is further complicated by all the people who are not technically Stupid, but are merely acting stupid to go with the crowd, or simply have not put their brain in gear.
There are those who retain a degree of scepticism regarding the seriousness of the Stupidity virus, and that it can so very easily develop into full-blown hysteria. Yes, Stupidity is unpleasant, they say, but it is still pretty minor in the scheme of things. These 'deniers' are most dangerous to the population as they will go on to spread their stupidity to others, rapidly, and we have a major hysteria outbreak on our hands.
Some may argue that as it is viral Stupidity we are fighting, the only logical strategy is herd intelligence. However, as we have seen recently, one can be a Cambridge professor, for example, and still be absolutely riddled with Stupidity. This is because intelligence without sanity actually results in more Stupidity (i – sy = s²).
We have seen how, not exercising your brain with regular bouts of independent thought can make you sluggish, slow and susceptible to any old bollocks that you're told. The nonsense around the Coronavirus, spouted by supposed 'experts' riddled with the stupidity virus has meant you are exposed to a 'heavy viral load' meaning that it may be more difficult for your system to fight off this amount of stupidity. Limiting your exposure to super-spreaders like Neil Ferguson, Chris Whitty and the BBC will increase your overall survival rate as prolonged exposure to these possible 'Patient Zeros' may result in potentially severe Stupidity.
We shouldn't take any of this lightly. If we hold our nerve the virus will eventually die out, as even the most aggressive strains of Stupidity cannot live in a sane population for very long.
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