Stupidity, Reconsidered

Thinking about: Your mind

Although you aren’t stupid—if you were, you wouldn’t be reading this post—it is highly likely that you know people who are stupid. Furthermore, their stupidity might have had a negative impact not only on their life, which would be bad enough, but on yours as well. In such cases, you will have been a victim of their stupidity.

There is an important difference between being stupid and being ignorant. We are all ignorant—including yours truly. Yes, I know many things, but what I don’t know not only would fill libraries but literally fills them: Think of all the books I haven’t read! I am, for example, woefully ignorant of Byzantine history. Ask me a question about it, and I will hold up my hands in despair. I am likewise ignorant of the properties of the subatomic particles known as charm quarks, the mating habits of platypuses, and the rules of cricket—the game, not the insect. (And truth be told, I don’t know much about the insect, either.)

Because human mental capacity is limited, ignorance is inevitable. Consequently, ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of. What is shameful is remaining ignorant about things that can have a significant impact on our well-being and that, with a bit of effort, we can learn about. This is why a Thinker will exercise due diligence before entering into an agreement or committing to a course of action. Yes, doing so will take time and mental effort, but it can prevent considerable anguish in the future.

Ignorance can get you into trouble, but metaignorance can have fatal consequences. You are ignorant with respect to metaignorance? Let me fill you in. You are ignorant when you don’t know something. You are metaignorant when you don’t know that you don’t know something. Consequently, although I am ignorant about the mating habits of platypuses, I am not metaignorant, for the simple reason that I am aware of my ignorance.

Suppose you are called on to make an important decision. If you have a thorough understanding of your situation, you might make it with confidence. If you realize that there are significant unknowns, however, you might refrain from making the decision until you gain additional information. A metaignorant person will mistakenly think they fully understand a situation, even though it has important aspects of which they are blissfully unaware. As a result, they might confidently act on a mistaken belief with tragic consequences, both for them and for those around them.

Thinkers will agree with Henry David Thoreau, paraphrasing Confucius, that “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” They will also concur with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insightful but widely mocked comment that “there are known knowns: There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Thinkers realize that it is the unknown unknowns that pose the greatest threat to our well-being.

People are often ashamed to admit their ignorance. As a result, when they don’t know the answer to a question, they find it difficult to utter the words “I don’t know.” They instead improvise an answer, and if challenged, might double down and defend that answer. Their ego has come into play, and ego involvement is almost always an obstacle to reasoning. In contrast, Thinkers will be quite willing to admit their ignorance about a topic; indeed, they might even be proud to make such an admission, because it is evidence that they are aware of the limits of their knowledge—an awareness, I might add, that can have a profoundly beneficial impact on their life.

Although epistemic humility—a willingness to admit your ignorance—will serve you well in life, it will likely sabotage your advancement in corporate management or politics. To succeed in those arenas, you would do well to project an aura of omniscience. In management, you are paid to have the answers; admit that you don’t, and you might lose ground to a rival who claims to have them. In politics, admit that you don’t have the answer to a question, and your opponents will pounce. When asked a difficult question, politicians might therefore respond by deliberately misinterpreting the question, answering a different question than the one they were asked, giving a long-winded nonanswer to the question, or telling a lie—the bigger and more blatant, the better.

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Being stupid is not only different from being ignorant; it is also different from being misinformed. As I explain in my book How to Think More and Better: Being Reasonable in Unreasonable Times,

to count as stupid, it isn’t enough that your mind harbors mistaken beliefs. You must also be in a state of mind that makes it unlikely that you will ever become aware of those beliefs so you can eradicate them. A stupid person won’t see any point in looking for his mistaken beliefs because he is smugly confident that there are none to be found. When presented with evidence that challenges one of his beliefs, he might simply shrug it off, or might verbally abuse or even physically attack the bearer of that evidence.

Realize, too, that being stupid is different from being crazy. Stupid people can, with some effort, overcome their stupidity. It is a character flaw—maybe a mix of laziness and smugness—that prevents them from doing so. This is not the case with crazy people. As a result of a mental disorder, they lack the ability to reason their way to conclusions.

You have doubtless encountered stupid individuals, maybe at your workplace or at an extended family gathering. You might also have seen them pontificating on television or social media. Indeed, expose yourself to the daily news, and you might understandably draw the conclusion that by some twist of fate, the stupids are running the show, and in the process are ruining people’s lives.

The idea that the stupids have taken control is, to be sure, a far-fetched hypothesis, but one with considerable explanatory power. Don’t you think?