This is a remarkable promotional item that one of our readers just sent in.
Michael Lewis demonstrates his lack of judgment and intelligence right in his own promotional piece. Aren’t those the two elements of stupidity?
First, the image of himself he is using — the court jester — represents the polar opposite of “conquering stupidity.”
Second, he claims he got a “bombastic” response to his announcement — like that’s a good thing. Apparently he doesn’t know the word means “high-sounding but with little meaning; inflated.”
Then he announces that some people offered to write success stories on the webinar even before he delivers it. WTF? That’s a good thing? Tells you how much “success stories” are worth. I guess his saving grace is that the people he is targeting are stupider than he is. As the old saying goes, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
That’s not all. He announces that he hasn’t even put his seminar together yet. Why publicize that? But claims he will cover:
Why stupidity and self-importance often go hand in hand. Exhibit 1: Michael Lewis
Why people who have nothing intelligent to say insist on proving that again and again. Exhibit 1: Michael Lewis
Why so many people actually PREFER to remain stupid. Every single scientologist on earth who refuse to look at facts…
Oi vey.
Why has Tony Ortega’s website disappeared? Anything sinister?
I’ve had no problem finding and reading Tony’s Underground Bunker, Are you using the correct address?
I have the website saved into my browser. Today is the first time I’ve been able to access in a week. Odd!
I think of Scientology as sort of a Dunning-Kruger faith, a connection I see Jere has already made earlier. Dianetics’ appeal was to DIY amateurism, rejecting expertise and authority – and of course actual science, and the rigor of proper research rather than gleeful anecdotalism – while Scientology has built on and expanded that.
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical* cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.
As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the bias results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others”.[1] It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their level of competence.”
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
This, referenced above, also describes the scientological worldview and scientologists’ self-perception:
“In the field of social psychology, illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits.”
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority
And all too typically for scientologists, it seems that the author Lewis is projecting, falling into exactly what he is accusing others of, and lacking (or having thought-stopped) the self-awareness to recognize it.
* while some of the details of Dunning & Kruger’s description and classification of a cognitive bias are under question, the basic underlying concept is not, for example:
” So the bias is definitively not that incompetent people think they’re better than competent people. Rather, it’s that incompetent people think they’re much better than they actually are. But they typically still don’t think they’re quite as good as people who, you know, actually are good.”
That still allows for atypical outliers, and I’d argue that Hubbard and his followers often fall into being at the extreme of thinking they’re as good as, or even better than, people who are actually are good and who are have true expertise.
The greatest – and most dangerous – form of stupidity is the result of the certainty that you already know everything.
In the mind of a scientologist, hype is the highest tone level. Hype is proof that you’re with the program, that you’re on purpose and successful. That should keep you safe.
Hype, hype, hooray.
The Word Clearer in me is on the floor. Michael Lewis sounding off about stupidity… with a Crashing MU on the word, “bombastic”…. OMG… can’t make this up…still laughing!
In addition to being informed that psychiatrists caused the Holocaust, drugs are stored in the fat cells, and all homosexuals are 1.1 (sorry Tim Cook) I’m wondering what other pearls of wisdom Michael will impart to us. Inquiring minds want to know.
I think it’s a perfect example in practice of the statement “the scientologist is the last to know about scientology”. But it is super stupid ridiculous funny.
What a dunce.
Too bad it isn’t only scientology to be blind about.
A “How To Conquer Gullibility” webinar might cause some “blows”.
Was I gullible? Nah . . . I have some good excuses.
This guy should be careful when criticizing “people who have nothing intelligent to say” that “insist on proving that again and again.”
No one would doubt for a moment that Huckstard was a loudmouth who clearly believed that quantity of expression was a lot more important than its quality. This belief is carried on in the cult to this day as evidenced by their constant bragging about the quantity of Huckstard’s “works” or the number of fields that he made usually questionable “contributions” to.
To say that he was a man of mediocre intellectual giftedness would be doing him a solid. Case in point, WHO outside the cult is recognizing his contributions? Which ones of the many fields he was allegedly expert in recognizes him as such?
Even in Sci-Fi, you’d be hard pressed to find a scholar who recognizes him as a “giant of the golden age”. The odds are that he goes entirely unmentioned. If he’s lucky he may be remembered as a “titan of typing.”
So if “stupidity and self-importance often go hand in hand” and if the stupid insist on making sure that everyone within ear shot knows who they are, Michael Lewis may want to be careful to educate his cult on the subject. Clearly, they can not afford any more defections!
WHAT WAS IT THAT FORREST GUMP ONCE SAID……………..
“STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES”………………………..
Dunning–Kruger effect in action.
As an intelligent brain once said:
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein
Mike: These types of unprofessional promo examples seem to be arriving at a steady pace. It may speak to what some refer to as a “brain drain.” All the high ability talent is NOT joining this group; if such people were in, they are gone now. I caught that, too, with the “bombastic.” Oh my (who would claim this as a point of pride?)
“Brain drain” or drained brains?
In my experience, ‘study tech’ left those of us who COULD study less capable, more uncertain we understood anything we read.
Peridot, respectfully, “brain drain” would be a step UP for this character. I think the problem is there’s no brain TO drain 🙂
When you are dead, you don’t know that you are dead. It is difficult only for the others… It is the same when you are stupid… Quote by Philippe Geluck about stupidity.
That’s right. Wasn’t it Socrates who said that its a wise man who knows what he doesn’t know? ( I’m paraphrasing.)
I guess that’s why we just have to do the best we can with what we have to work with Aquamarine.
To paraphrase the great and wise sage, Rich Evans : “Stupid people always overestimate their importance and capabilities, because they are too stupid to critically think about themselves.”
HG Wells wrote a short story entitled “The Countryof the Blind”. It was about a sighted man who fell off a mountain and miraculously survived – to find himself in an unknown, isolated courtry where everyone was blind.
He thinks he will be King, as the saying goes. However, the people don’t understand his explanations of sight, and are unsettled by him. Eventually, he village doctor decides that his eyes are diseased and causing erratic behaviour. He recommends they be removed.
The protaganist manages to escape before the villagers blind him, and returns home.
I think Scientology is the same. The clever man in an org would be punished for his talent and forced to behave as stupidly as everyone else.
Talk about Scientologists “Going Stupid” it reminds me of Barry Coziahr, executive staffer in St Louis who told me passing out the Way to Happiness booklets in Ferguson lowered crime.
He said it with a insouciant certainty.
I posted on the WTH thread but posted the wrong link about Bat Shit Crazy Barry Coziahr, the Way to Happiness Ambassador for the Midwest who blew his post and moved to Clearwater, Florida where he out ethically continues up the Bridge to Total Stupidity.
Here is the link about Bat Shit Crazy Barry Coziahr on an SP site loaded with hilarious satire about Scamintology:
https://scientology411.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/st-louis-still-crime-free-utopia-thanks-to-scientology/
Here is the video with that sleazy politician posing with Barry and his Tu-Dee, Claire Coziahr, who blew her post from a Narconon Center in South Africa in order to marry Barry Coziahr months after meeting him on a 2-D website, Affinity Exchange.
https://youtu.be/hof_hMa3nEw
They had never met before but their knowing ness about past lives made them a dream team in St Louis for Scamintology’s Front Group – The Way to Happiness Foundation
https://www.able.org/content/way-happiness-saint-louis-transforming-americas-heartland
https://www.able.org/content/way-happiness-saint-louis-transforming-americas-heartland
I would like to attest that passing out the Way to Happiness booklets DID NOT STOP THE KILLING. It is as bad today as it has always been.
TWTH never did nothing but increase the amount of trash in the street 😃
This made me laugh and cringe in equal measure! Oh, Michael…
That over-the-top St Louis video was FUNNY! 😁
It really is over the top. LOL
$cientology is the psychological phenomenon of projection take to an illogical extreme.
“Why so many people actually PREFER to remain stupid.”
Basically what he really means is that those who are not in SCN or are not interested in it suffer from chronic stupidity, and so here is what it is right to understand and do about it.
Of course all his audience will be stupidity-free.
Typical example of an useless, egocentric and conceited fascist.
Wait until he finds out from OSA that he made a fool out of himself pontificating about stupidity whilst being too lazy to look up the meaning of the word “bombastic”. Poor Michael Lewis. He gonna have some ‘splainin’ ta do. Offhand I’d say the cult will put him in “Liability”. He’ll have to “make up the damage to the group he’s pretending to be a part of”, etc.
Maybe they’ll make him redo Student Hat – which he’s probably already done twice. Oh, this is rich! Dying laughing here!
I knew Micheal Lewis pretty well in the old days. Now he is the poster boy for the gleeful clown who is crying inside.
He lost his wife to cancer and his son had such a tragic death due to Scientology. And yet he try’s to act so happy and wise. He is the epitome of “stupid”. It is the blind leading the blind. This post with Tony’s post today about the ideal Orgs USA virtual fundraiser are a window into the sanity of David Miscavige’s members and organization. It is the reincarnation of Bedlam. It’s the largest cult of mentally deranged people on the planet.
https://tonyortega.org/2021/07/11/scientologys-full-report-on-its-all-ideal-usa-blowout-its-a-fundraising-juggernaut/#more-79474
Michael has been wearing that same wig for over 40 years. While his friends and colleagues sport grey hair now, he still has his all black same wig he wears. He also did 2D seminars and I know some things about his marriage to Divona (RIP) that I would think disqualify him as the model to emulate in a marriage.
MOST of the seminar-givers, if their backgrounds were examined, would be disqualified from speaking on their subjects, in my experience. Especially any sea Org person discussing ARC. — or expansion.
Yes, like Michael Feshbach giving finance seminars and Jay Spina’s business expansion seminars. The former a bankrupt; the latter having “expanded” his business by fraudulently billing Medicare 80 million dollars!
Didn’t Michael Feshback also have back taxes and were facing jail if they didn’t pay up or make a payment plan? Or was some other big OL in the church?
That’s him alright 🙂
Jere, so true. SO person and ARC don’t even go in the same sentence. Same with any SO member discussing expansion. You called it!
The last 2 full sentences in the article say it all. “Why so many people actually PREFER to remain stupid. Every single scientologist on earth who refuse to look at facts…”
Yep, stupid us as stupid does!
If you want to see something amazing, go look at his Scientology Service Completions.
Unless they’ve collapsed the comps with another of the same name….
re-do bridge much?
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/m/michael-lewis.html
Glad to see Michael’s keeping up with his redos. He wouldn’t want to piss off COB now would he?