A world full of stupid people

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Terrorists? I seriously doubt that.

Mechanicalgirl39: Your presumptuous older classmates committed fallacies. In this case, it seems to be a mixture of ad hominem and fallacy of affirming the consequent. Over time, I've learned to name almost every fallacy that these people commit. Sometimes they'll even commit two or three fallacies in a row, so you have to be on your guard!

People just don't realize how smart we are.

To the government: I beg you to keep the less attractive in your hearts. Know that if I need to, I will suffer for my cause.

Exactly. I wish critical thinking were taught in schools everywhere. People would be much less inclined to take in faulty ideas and agree with them without any analysis.

Marilyn vos Savant, who has the highest measured IQ in the world, seems to agree.

"First, we should study mathematics throughout our early years, including elementary and high school ... Second, in high school and college, we should study logical processes with particular attention to the fallacies, which could use great expansion. Strong powers of logic help us achieve our goals in life, and in our increasingly complex society, opportunities for success expand enormously for those with the ability to reason well." (The Power of Logical Thinking, p. 94)

"Which could use great expansion": this might mean that there are fallacies that haven't yet been named.

Some of these fallacies might even depend on the misapplication of the concepts of 'desire' and 'enjoyment.' If so, then the following might be considered new fallacies:

Fallacy of Attributing Enjoyment -- Consists in stating that because someone acts a certain way or has a certain personality trait, he or she 'enjoys' acting that way or having that trait. This may, perhaps, have occured in Nietzsche's writings: "[Schopenhauer's] anger was his balm, his refreshment, his reward." And later, "The sick are one and all dreadfully eager and inventive in discovering occasions for painful affects; they enjoy being mistrustful and dwelling on nasty deeds..." (On the Genealogy of Morals)

Fallacy of the Unconditional Motive -- Consists in identifying a motive that is merely conditional on someone's circumstances with that person's grand, overall intentions and stating that he or she had that motive (and possibly wanted those circumstances) all along. In saying, "I want," the lower-order 'want' may only occur in a higher-order circumstance that itself is unwanted. The fallacy is commited when 'wantedness' is expanded to the entire scenario. For example, when kidnapped, I may want to scream or punish the kidnapper, but that doesn't mean I wanted to do either of those things before being kidnapped, or that I wanted or planned to be kidnapped in the first place.

Fallacy of Freedom from Behavioral Reinforcement -- Consists in the assumption that someone can perform any action 'just as easily' as any other, as if he or she had perfect psychological freedom in space with his or her actions. This fallacy is in danger of being used by people who want to 'frame' others and make them appear guilty or deserving of suffering through tactical manipulation.

(The above is an excerpt from a comment I made on Wikipedia.)

Another new fallacy could be called the Fallacy of Perfect Freedom, which states that we have the ability to do just about anything. Our responsibilities could be made dependent on hard-to-accomplish (if not outright impossible) feats of human physicality that could leave one wondering how it is that one is supposed to do such things.

Being 100% correct all the time can be highly stressful. These fallacies you mentioned are happening whether or not you do anything about them. People just get mad when you correct their behavior, they don't actually change. What are you hoping to accomplish by pointing out these fallacies?

To make the world a happier place.

Good luck with that.
Genius is easy. The hard part is explaining it to the rest of the world.
Many schools attempt to do that. Most pretend to do so.
Then they turn around and tell the kids to get in line for lunch.
Most elementary teachers are incapable of critical thinking; that's part of why they become elementary teachers in the first place. (Yes, I can make such a generalization. It's a self-selected group. Another generalization one can make is that most of them are math-phobes.)

If you use your critical thinking and arrive at a conclusion that is inconvenient for the warden, god help you. The hypocritical attempt to teach critical thinking probably does more harm than good.

My boss always told me "If you're gonna complain about something you'd better be prepared to fix it." I think it's true, people who are in a position to implement changes don't take advice very willingly.

I feel that the problem with most educational systems is the format. Math is something that requires intense immersion for some students. I've been scared by some of the teachers because of the intolerence for errors, there's this attitude of "keep up with me or fail" this puts a higher emphasis on grades rather than comprehension.

You're the kind of guy who should be refining the school curriculums, not some career conscious bueracrat.

aspies are socially stupid too.

That's just his disingenuous (smart azz, dishonest) way of telling you to shut up.
The solutions to complex problems come in a lot of stages. Defining a problem can be a massive job in itself. To say that you are not allowed to know or say that there's a problem until you have all the answers is absurd. If everyone did that, we would be having this discussion in front of a cave.

LePetitPrince, you might want to read my essay about Asperger's Syndrome here. I explain how a diagnosis can arise from rejection alone by one's (possibly stupid) peer group.

I totally agree. Plus you shouldn't have to be powerful enough to fix a problem that affects you before you have the right to complain about it.

umm, who's "neither of you" ?

Ok, my boss was telling me to shut up, but he had a pretty good point. I can't count the number of people who point out problems, how many actually try to solve the problems?

Good one. I could quibble with a few details, but I essentially agree.

"Being well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society is no measure of health." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I second that, excellent essay.