Chief rabbi: Steve Jobs' Apple lust spreads misery, despair

I don't know Txt....based on the American TV viewing habits and what drivel stays on week after week and what intelligent, entertaining shows are canceled, I would be loathe to give the American Consumer more credit for intelligence than they aptly demonstrate in the Nielsens.

Given that Australian viewing habits are pretty similar, I'd also hesitate to give most Australians much credit for intelligence.

On the other hand, perhaps it just goes to show that the less real power people have in their own, actual personal lives, the more easily they are distracted by shiny surfaces, colorful dress and noisy spectacles?

Hey Sun God,

I was expanding the base, not contracting it. So I am saying some of the elite (as determined by wealth) can be included in the lower rungs of intelligence and taste scales. So how does that make me an optimist? How were my words become so readily misperceived?

I guess it is my propensity to deliver non-sense wrapped in pretty ribbon, which makes my words so readily deformable.

Thus, I exit chastened, but I will not surrender ...

YBT

Quoting:Given that Australian viewing habits are pretty similar, I'd also hesitate to give most Australians much credit for intelligence.

Let's face it, the whole world doesn't have many intelligent people. That is why marketing works so well and politicians keep their positions so long every where in the world.

One word: Kardashians.

One show: Dancing with the Stars

@Fettoosh: Actually, I think it's a little different from this. I don't think most people are quite that idiotic; the problem is that even the most brilliant genius becomes a complete idiot when you put him in a group with other people. We see this in corporations all the time: take a bunch of smart engineers, stick them in a room together (called a "meeting"), and out comes some incredibly stupid ideas. Here's a great poster about this:

http://www.despair.com/meetings.html

Grishnakh, the automotive engineers at American Motors proved your point years ago.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/08/0824_uglycars/index_...

@helios: Don't blame that abomination on the engineers. Engineers are not stylists/designers. Ugly cars are completely the fault of corporate management, who hire these cr@ppy designers and green-light their ugly designs. The engineers just turn them into reality. Of course, this is still an example of group stupidity: were all the managers and executives of AMC total idiots, or was is group-think that allowed them to green-light those horrible designs?

Engineers, in groups, still come up with some awfully stupid stuff. Just look at the mechanicals of the American cars in the 80s and 90s; those things were arranged horribly, it was nearly impossible to do a lot of service without doing things like partially removing the engine, etc. Those things are complete the fault of engineers. By contrast, the 90s Japanese cars I've had were totally the opposite: it was like they were designed specifically to be easy to work on.

Quoting:were all the managers and executives of AMC total idiots, or was it group-think that allowed them to green-light those horrible designs?

Yes.

Quoting: Let's face it, the whole world doesn't have many intelligent people. That is why marketing works so well and politicians keep their positions so long every where in the world.

I would think that an even bigger problem is that most otherwise intelligent people seem to think that they are themselves immune to the tricks and methods used by the marketing industry -- which are of course largely aimed exploiting ignorance (aka "non-symmetrical information") and at subverting &/or circumventing the consumers logical facilities.

This is admittedly harder, when the target has some knowledge and expertise concerning the subject matter (eg. purveying electronic/computing technology to participants on LXer forums) ;-) But as MS/Windows-devotees, political campaigners, compilers of the the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and the financial industries have all clarified in such often dramatic fashion, such knowledge and expertise are hardly a reliable or completely effective antidote.

The thing is, advertisers mostly skip right past the logical faculties, but people, and perhaps especially even intelligent people, are very good at rationalizing a less than rational decision -- when they're even conscious of making one. By the time conscious, rational thought is even exercised, unconscious filters and biases have had plenty of opportunity to affect the final conclusion.

it was nearly impossible to do a lot of service without doing things like partially removing the engine, etc.

Yes...My first car bought from the showroom floor was a 76 Pinto. I mean besides the fact that it was a 2000 lb Molotov coctail, you had to break the front motor mount loose and jack it up 1/4 of an inch to drop the starter.

friggin' idiots.

That's nothing.

I have a Pontiac Montana. I was going to change the plugs before I realised that you have to unhook a load of stuff from the engine and rotate it with a strap!

It's a transverse V6 and half of the plugs are under the bulkhead :(

And there's is practically nothing you can do without removing the engine from the vehicle. Even reaching the oil filter requires an act of flexibility that I would normally only expect to see at the circus.

@skelband

That's just shockingly bad design not the fact that its a tranverse engine, which has been used in the original British Mini's since 1959 and practically all front wheel drive cars since then without the need to remove the engine.

My dad used to have a Mini back in the early 70's, and I loved the thing and in general I don't like cars so that's saying a lot.

@Koriel: Agreed

My last two cars have been transverse, both Kias: a Pride and a Mentor both with Mazda engines I believe and you could do practically anything without removing the engine or dicking with straps and stuff.

Quoting:the problem is that even the most brilliant genius becomes a complete idiot when you put him in a group with other people.

What I said has nothing to do with contagious idiocy, which on & off adds to the large pool of idiots in the world.

Quoting:it was nearly impossible to do a lot of service without doing things like partially removing the engine, etc.

Has it occurred to you that this may be a by-design feature?

Yep Fettoosh...Toyota ushered in the "our parts or no parts" marketplace for automobile parts. If you take it to a service shop, they will purchase toyota parts to make the repair.

Not here, where you can get and use generic parts.

My family had a Trabant (the *real* Trabant, not this new-fangled thing with the Polo engine). When you looked under the hood you wondered how something so simple could work so well ;)