superrific
Inconceivable Member
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There was a discussion on the other thread about the perennial question: are MAGA voters unintelligent? And the answer is indisputably, "not really." Maybe on average they have lower IQs and SAT scores, but lots of people I know have MAGA co-workers. Those co-workers do their jobs just fine. They are lawyers, engineers, programmers, software engineers -- and then when it comes to politics, their brain switches off. Their political beliefs, in the majority of cases, are objectively stupid. And why? What happens? I was talking with my son about this last night and I think I have an analogy. Unfortunately, it's a bit complicated but anyway . . .
In quantum mechanics, there's a phenomenon known as electron tunneling. Basically, it's this weird effect where an electron can travel through an electric field even when it doesn't have enough energy to do so. It's more easily understood if you think about a ball rolling up and down a hill. If the ball starts at the bottom of the hill with a high enough velocity, it can make to the top of the hill and then roll down the other side, but it it doesn't have enough velocity, it will get near the top but fall back down. And electrons are the same way, except the force to overcome is electromagnetic. Except that in quantum mechanics, sometimes the electron "tunnels" through the hill and ends up on the other side even though it didn't have enough energy.
So here's the analogy. Think of the hill as intelligence. There's an outcome on the other side of the hill or barrier that you want. I don't know, it could be a Christian nation or a communist paradise. Point is, you want to get there. But you are also smart, and so you're trying to push the electron through the field but it doesn't have enough energy. The communist paradise just doesn't make sense. You can try and try to make justifications or theoretical arguments about how it will work, and dismiss all the failed attempts as "not real communism" or "not true to the Marxist paradigm of historical stages," but they don't work. When you think about it deeply, carefully and without bias, the hill is too steep.
But MAGAs have the ability to tunnel the electron through the hill. It's a shortcut. It lets them get where they want to go, without all that pesky critical reasoning. And when they are in the tunnel, they are being objectively stupid. It's the only way they can get there. So when we say they are dumb, that's what we are referring to -- it's the process by which they short circuit their own intelligence to get them to a conclusion that they can't get to with their rational mind.
This doesn't only apply to MAGAs. It commonly happens with Supreme Court justices, which is why sometimes their opinions just seem so ridiculous. In the Trump immunity decision, John Roberts looked at the facts of the case and literally wrote that biggest danger we face is the prospect of serial persecution of outgoing presidents for political purposes, not criminal behavior by presidents. And he wrote that despite also noting that it's never happened before in the history of the Republic, whereas criminal behavior by presidents is known and at least something of a problem, and the case before them involved a defendant ex-president who absolutely did commit crimes, which we know from public information. So how did he get to "we must give the president immunity to save the Republic from something that never happened before." He mentally tunneled through his own intelligence.
Or the gerrymandering case. Roberts wrote, joined by all the conservative justices, that gerrymandering is a problem that only the legislature can solve. Courts are ill-equipped to draw lines (in this case, somewhat literally). Which isn't entirely wrong about the courts and their equipment, but anyone with half a brain realizes that gerrymandering is one of the few problems that the legislature CAN'T solve. It's a problem that the legislature creates. It's the effect of the decision to give district drawing power to the people elected from those districts. The problem exists because legislators have all the incentive to gerrymander. Saying that only the legislature can fix it is baffling. Again, he tunneled through his own intelligence to get where he wanted to go.
What do you think? Helpful analogy? Empirically accurate?
In quantum mechanics, there's a phenomenon known as electron tunneling. Basically, it's this weird effect where an electron can travel through an electric field even when it doesn't have enough energy to do so. It's more easily understood if you think about a ball rolling up and down a hill. If the ball starts at the bottom of the hill with a high enough velocity, it can make to the top of the hill and then roll down the other side, but it it doesn't have enough velocity, it will get near the top but fall back down. And electrons are the same way, except the force to overcome is electromagnetic. Except that in quantum mechanics, sometimes the electron "tunnels" through the hill and ends up on the other side even though it didn't have enough energy.
So here's the analogy. Think of the hill as intelligence. There's an outcome on the other side of the hill or barrier that you want. I don't know, it could be a Christian nation or a communist paradise. Point is, you want to get there. But you are also smart, and so you're trying to push the electron through the field but it doesn't have enough energy. The communist paradise just doesn't make sense. You can try and try to make justifications or theoretical arguments about how it will work, and dismiss all the failed attempts as "not real communism" or "not true to the Marxist paradigm of historical stages," but they don't work. When you think about it deeply, carefully and without bias, the hill is too steep.
But MAGAs have the ability to tunnel the electron through the hill. It's a shortcut. It lets them get where they want to go, without all that pesky critical reasoning. And when they are in the tunnel, they are being objectively stupid. It's the only way they can get there. So when we say they are dumb, that's what we are referring to -- it's the process by which they short circuit their own intelligence to get them to a conclusion that they can't get to with their rational mind.
This doesn't only apply to MAGAs. It commonly happens with Supreme Court justices, which is why sometimes their opinions just seem so ridiculous. In the Trump immunity decision, John Roberts looked at the facts of the case and literally wrote that biggest danger we face is the prospect of serial persecution of outgoing presidents for political purposes, not criminal behavior by presidents. And he wrote that despite also noting that it's never happened before in the history of the Republic, whereas criminal behavior by presidents is known and at least something of a problem, and the case before them involved a defendant ex-president who absolutely did commit crimes, which we know from public information. So how did he get to "we must give the president immunity to save the Republic from something that never happened before." He mentally tunneled through his own intelligence.
Or the gerrymandering case. Roberts wrote, joined by all the conservative justices, that gerrymandering is a problem that only the legislature can solve. Courts are ill-equipped to draw lines (in this case, somewhat literally). Which isn't entirely wrong about the courts and their equipment, but anyone with half a brain realizes that gerrymandering is one of the few problems that the legislature CAN'T solve. It's a problem that the legislature creates. It's the effect of the decision to give district drawing power to the people elected from those districts. The problem exists because legislators have all the incentive to gerrymander. Saying that only the legislature can fix it is baffling. Again, he tunneled through his own intelligence to get where he wanted to go.
What do you think? Helpful analogy? Empirically accurate?
