On the Importance of Stupid

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” (Benjamin Franklin).

By way of example, a man who jumps for the first time off a building with a parachute is ‘foolish.’ It is irrational to think that whatever benefit may be gained from jumping with no experience could possibly outweigh the risk of pan-caking on the pavement. A woman who jumps from a building without a parachute, in order to commit suicide is ‘ignorant,’ if she fails to consider that the building is too short to accomplish terminal velocity. And our first man (above) is ‘mistaken,’ if he discovers midway down that the parachute pack contains his lunch instead of the parachute he neatly packed in another, identical pack, and left on the back seat of his SUV.

‘Stupid,’ means a lack of capacity. Most commonly, when someone acts stupidly, they have plenty of information, they have made no mistake or miscalculation about the probable outcome, and have considered the likely result. With all this, and with the nearly certain outcome that their action will harm themselves and others, they proceed anyway. They lack the capacity to hold the barest quantity of information in their consciousness, and are bereft of an ability to use what information they have managed to apprehend to inform their decisions.

For example, drivers in New England have a proclivity to overtake-on-the-right. To my knowledge, in all localities where the designated lane of travel is on the right (e.g. the USA), overtaking on the right is illegal. It is illegal because it is profoundly dangerous and unnecessary. When traveling on a multi-lane road, such as an interstate highway, overtaking on the left is permitted and far safer. Yet, New England drivers would prefer to abruptly veer over to the right-hand lane, and speed along the margin to overtake even a single vehicle. Compound this with the fact that not one person in a thousand on a highway has any legitimate time constraint which would suggest that they race in a dangerous manner on public roads. A doctor, racing to save a dying patient; a parent racing to pick up a child left standing at some remote location; or a police officer pursuing a suspect. All these require haste, no question. Though I haven’t actually sampled the driving population on New England highways, experience would suggest that most are going shopping for something they don’t need, headed to a meeting with someone else with limited demands on their time, or screaming ahead to get food or entertainment (neither of which they really need). In short, most people’s time is completely wasted, even when they fill it with their most pressing activities.

In the foregoing example, the drivers overtaking-on-the-right are aware that what they are doing is both dangerous and illegal. At some level, they must know that whatever agenda items speeds them forward is completely unimportant. And anyone not completely asleep can comprehend that the most probably outcome of overtaking on the right is a violent collision. And yet nearly every driver does it. It’s stupid.

My criticism of New England drivers is not my point – the abysmal lack of driving skills here is well documented. My point is merely that stupid behavior seems universal.

I posit that stupidity is actually the only universal thing, common to all humans. Certainly many people make mistakes, and that might be considered universal. But upon closer examination, most people’s actions are not strictly mistakes – they are actually just stupid. And certainly many people are ignorant or ill-informed. However, remove all the complex decisions presented to modern humans, and examine only the most pedestrian of activities requiring only the most basic information, and people still behave stupidly in awe-inspiring numbers. Consider people smoking cigarettes, playing the lottery, or documenting their life publicly on Facebook. None of these conveys the least bit of benefit. These are destructive and damaging behaviors. Information is readily available, even for those who don’t seek it out, demonstrating beyond doubt that the behaviors are dilatory. And yet . . . many, many people engage in one, two, or all three of these; often at the same time.

I do not have any explanation for why people behave stupidly. Here, I point only to the universality of acting stupidly. It is truly the one thing that we all have in common. And I repeat, it may be the only thing we humans truly have in common.

This leads to several important questions. First, when seeking accord and agreement, is the most stupid result the most likely to be acceptable to all? Second, when crafting safety measures to protect society, should we attenuate risk according to how stupid an action is, most stupid first? Third, do we need to revisit our political and economic views, with an eye toward people acting stupidly on a consistent basis (more consistently than on a rational basis)?

First, anticipating the most stupid actions. When I taught my children to drive, even though we were not in New England at the time, my guiding principle then as now is clear and simple. Assume that every vehicle which could possibly come in contact with yours is driven by an perfect idiot, who is about to do the dumbest possible thing. Further, assume that everyone will do it all at once. If you conduct yourself along these lines, you will be surprised at how un-surprised you become. Try it.

Second, what possible benefit can obtain from enacting laws to mitigate stupidity? Instead of making it hard to get cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs, we need to focus on confining its use to well-known, and hard-to-leave places. These places should prevent the impact of these substances on those who choose not to partake. Thus, buildings constructed of 16-inch reinforced concrete walls, with sealed ventilation systems, and only entrances, no exits, should answer the need. We don't need to arrest people, they will pay to get in.

Third, our views on politics and economics are badly misinformed; stupid, you might say. Acting stupidly is a fundamental part of being human. That is, no law or restriction can possibly prevent people from acting stupidly. It’s too deep in our DNA. So we should stop trying to invent laws which restrict people’s ability to be stupid. The lottery serves a critical function. One might argue that government-run lotteries raise revenue for government projects. But that is synonymous with raising money in order to dissipate it. The real value of the lottery is that it provides an important outlet for stupidity. When people have a sudden urge to act stupidly, but the urge does not reach the level of substance abuse or actual violence, then the lottery is just the thing. It fills a niche akin to snack-food, although most snack-‘food’ is stupid on its own merits. If people could not gradually satisfy their need to be stupid in small ways, I posit that it would simply build up and eventually burst out in something profoundly stupid. Thus, if the average person were not able to fritter away a few dollars at a time buying lottery tickets, they might get a 'stupid back-up,' and burst out by engaging a debt consolidation professional, or something equally impressive on the stupid-scale. Or, if things got severely plugged up, and there were no ready outlet for them to act stupidly, they might hire a professional broker, whose job it is to act stupidly on their behalf. In other words, things like the lottery provide a ‘relief valve’ on stupid, so that stupid does not dam up into truly lethal reservoirs.

Along similar lines, our ideas of economics are badly broken. The fundamental rule of economics, as taught in our esteemed universities to legions of future stupid people, is that each individual can be relied upon to act in their own best interest. This is the antipode of established fact. People act in their own interest rarely, and only by accident. Take, for example, the most hallowed market, the stock market. Buying a stock could only be viewed as an act of complete altruism. Normally, the buyer deems him or herself fortunate if their recover their initial investment. Only in rare cases, and completely by happy accident, a precious few individuals reap some reward from a particular stock purchase. Therefore, if we want to build accurate economic models, we must begin from the ground up – and we must assume that each individual transaction in the market place will be driven not by self-interest, but by stupidity. This will be wrong on some occasions, but less wrong than the current state of affairs.

I believe that stupidity has gotten an undeserved reputation for being, well, stupid. Stupidity is important to society, if the sheer abundance of it is any indication. Stupidity is necessary, since it seems to be central to the human animal. And stupidity is something we all share. It binds us together as a species as being universal, where genius, or wisdom, or cleverness is quite rare.

So the next time I call you stupid, please understand that I mean it in the nicest possible way.