Stupidity

For other uses, see Stupid (disambiguation).

Stupidity is the quality or condition of being stupid, or lacking intelligence, as opposed to being merely ignorant or uneducated. This quality can be attributed to both an individual himself (e.g. Penny Person is stupid.) or his actions, words or beliefs (e.g., Penny Person's policies are stupid.). The term can thus also refer to poor use of judgement, or insensitivity to nuances in a person who is otherwise intelligent. The determination of who is stupid is relatively difficult, despite attempts to measure intelligence (and thus stupidity) such as IQ tests. The adjective is also used as a general pejorative. (e.g., I didn't borrow your stupid cap - go look for it yourself.)

Manifested by the educated

Recently a great deal of attention has been paid to another class of stupidity: stupid actions by those that are very educated and worldly. It is an important subject as it is increasingly evident that powerful, and generally very intelligent, people sometimes do stupid things. In recent years a number of notions such as groupthink have been developed to explain this. This is a fairly new topic for researchers and there are still few academic works on the subject, though in the 19th Century Oscar Wilde wrote There is no sin except stupidity. [1]

Otherwise intelligent individuals may also become stupid when their rational thought is derailed by strong opinions or rigid beliefs. In this case the victim falls into confirmation bias and begins selecting data: becoming intentionally blind and deaf to contrary evidence, while at the same time collecting evidence which supports the beliefs. Rather than being based on low intelligence or missing knowledge, this is the stupidity of closed-mindedness and willful ignorance. Note that modern science specifically evolved to combat this form of stupidity. During scientific thought we should constantly criticise our own beliefs and assumptions (attempt to disprove hypotheses), while also using humility and extreme self-honesty to reduce our ego-based biases.

The Encyclopedia of Stupidity by Matthijs van Boxsel is based on the author's contention that "stupidity is in fact the foundation of our civilization" and his idea that no one is intelligent enough to realise how stupid they are. This is not as stupid as it sounds if one includes in the definition of stupidity "unwitting self-destruction, the ability to act against one's best wishes". A saying attributed to Albert Einstein is "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Stupidity may be more accurately viewed not the opposite of intelligence but as a kind of flawed or absence of intelligence, the darkness that makes the light of true intelligence visible. Contrasted with ignorance, which is the lack of knowledge, not the lack of intelligence.

A popular aphorism goes, " The stupider something seems, the more important it probably is. "

In comedy

For as long as comedy has existed, stupidity has been a source of immense entertainment. Generally the entertainers are merely pretending to be stupid. The buffoon of ancient plays is the progenitor of a venerable lineage that continued through Falstaff, Bottom, Goofy, Eccles, Norman Wisdom, Jerry Lewis and countless others, and is portrayed in contemporary Western culture by characters such as Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin. The fool/buffoon has been a central character in most comedy. Today there are a wide array of television shows that showcase stupidity, from the America's Funniest Home Videos genre to shows like Jackass. Often the greatest stupidity is deliberately generated by very smart minds such as the Oxbridge comedy of Monty Python.

Use as a sales tactic

Pretending to be less intelligent than your prospect is a form of pretending to be stupid without irony that is exploited by salespeople. As in most fields, to be successful in sales requires a great deal of intelligence and empathy. However, if one is selling something, the prospective buyer must feel as though he is in control. Therefore, it can help to know how to pretend to be stupid. The most successful salespeople tend to be extremely intelligent despite their 'idiot facade', particularly when their prospect is of above average intelligence, or is himself trained in such sales techniques. The television character Lieutenant Columbo used this technique to solve crimes. See also Socratic irony

This mode is akin to the satirical tradition of supposedly naive observers, such as Oliver Goldsmith's supposedly Chinese letter-writer in 18th-century London, in The Citizen of the World, and others, including Montesquieu's Persian Letters.

Individual vs collective stupidity

In psychology, this is known as deindividuation in crowds, and can lead to behaviours usually not displayed outside the specific social situation. The behaviours occur because individuals will conform to perceived social norms in order to 'fit in' or project an impression of self as "normal".

References

• Matthijs van Boxsel. De encyclopedie van de domheid. 1999. Translated by A. and E. Pomerans as The Encyclopedia of Stupidity. London: Reaktion Books, 2003. ISBN 1-86189-159-8, 2005 edition: ISBN 1-86189-231-4, Book description at The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature

See also

• Darwin Awards
• Genius
• Ignorance
• Irrationality
• Low comedy
• Lowest common denominator

External links

• In praise of irrationality

• ERASMUS: PRAISE OF FOLLY
• "Unskilled and unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments" The authors received the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology.
• The Power of Stupidity by Giancarlo Livraghi, the first in a series of three papers on the nature of human stupidity.
• Understanding Stupidity by James F Welles, Ph.D.
• The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, a monograph by Carlo M. Cipolla.