How many times have you seen a blogger write something like:
Whenever the hated enemy attacks my ideas, I know I'm doing something right. Just look at all the idiotic comments they left on my last post!
Not to bloggers: the internet has plenty of stupidity. Receiving a poorly punctuated death threat is not a badge of honor, it's just something that happens.
Today's post, Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence was originally published on 12 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
The world's greatest fool may say the Sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out. Stalin also believed that 2 + 2 = 4. Stupidity or human evil do not anticorrelate with truth. Arguing against weaker advocates proves nothing, because even the strongest idea will attract weak advocates.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.