A preamble: this post can be offensive to most.
I can’t help but have to say – being a smart thinking sensible person in this society is tiring and hard. Suppose an ignorant comment is made – a stupid person can and will usually dumb it down and laugh it off with a comment like “aiyah you know I’m not an expert in this mah” or “aiyah you know I’m stupid mah”. That’s that excuse for making thoughtless statements and assertions, and spread all kinds of lies and rumours.
Most of the time I feel socially awkward – to what extent can I tolerate rubbish people assert, and when exactly can I chip in my knowledge of affairs? Is it wrong for me, from an epistemic viewpoint, to ignore and thereby encourage the proliferation of worthless comments? Is there a socially appropriate time to correct? Or even a socially appropriate manner to correct? Am I aiming for some kind of knowledge hegemony? Perhaps. But once you realize how tiring it is to have to dumb down things that you say to people, and try to laugh off certain rubbish they utter, you’d want to think like me.
And you know something I hate more? When a smart person makes a similar comment to try to build rapport with these people, and the stupid asses comeback with “ay, I didn’t expect you will say this kind of things”. What kind of bullshit is that?!
