Reflections on the envious

I remember back to elementary school.  There were kids who were smarter than I was and certainly many that were more athletic than I was.  I think that all of us (at least somewhat) wanted to be more like those kids.

But over time, we realized that we couldn't be like those kids.  We just didn't have the mental or athletic talent that those kids naturally had.

For most of us, we realized that was OK.  We didn't envy those other kids.  We just accepted the fact that they would be better at sports than us or get better grades than us.  We weren't mad at them because they didn't cheat.  We all played by the same rules.  They just played better than us.

I think that some of us used them as... I don't want to say "role model"... but we did sort of look up to them and wanted to be as good as them.  They were something to aspire to.  They made us want to be better than we were.  And that's a good thing.

But something happened after I was in school.  Somehow those people were to be envied - in a negative way.  Kids were taught that these other kids who excelled were "stealing" our success somehow.  That these successful kids should hold themselves back to let others "shine".  To me that's sort of like letting someone win.  That's not helpful to either the "winner" or the "loser".

The "winner" gets a false sense of ability.  As one of my college professors put it "The first step in being smart is knowing what you are dumb at."  Unless you know your deficiencies, you can't overcome them.  If you believe that you are smart, you stop studying/learning/improving and you atrophy.

I see so many walking examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect today that it's scary.  People so ignorant that they don't know that they are ignorant.  Worse, many of these people think that they are smarter than all the people around them and they get really mad when you point out that they aren't.  They are actually holding themselves back from being better.

That's one of the reasons I like programming: It's a very humbling experience.  It constantly lets you know that you are not nearly as smart/knowledgeable as you think you are.  You don't see too many elites in the programming profession.

Now we get to the problems with the ignorant elites: when they get power, the nearly always F* things all up.

Take the recent flooding in Midland.  The dams that failed were privately owned.  The elites wanted the dams let the water rise so that the muscles in the lake would thrive.  The owners refused because they said that the dams were old and couldn't handle it.  The elites (in this case the Tyrant Whitmer and her accomplice Dangerous Dana Nessel) sued with the result that the dams came under the ownership/control of the state - who promptly raised the water levels of the lakes.

The result: the dams failed and flooding ensued.  Will the elites take responsibility for their error?  Of course not.  Failures are always someone else's fault.

So, remember, listen to the people who others call "expert".  Those people are outstanding in their field and have real knowledge.
Ignore the ones who call themselves "expert".  Those people are out, standing in their field.  And like most scarecrows, have no brains.

It's easy to mark the "experts" who are scarecrows.  They are always putting down the real experts because they envy the real expert's real knowledge.