Why Some of the Smartest People Can Be So Very Stupid
9th August 2021
Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes.
High intelligence merely means that one thinks very very fast; it is no guarantee of the quality of the resulting conclusion. In fact, it often guarantees just the opposite, because the more quickly one comes to a conclusion, the more apt one is to think ‘it’s just obvious’ and put more weight behind its correctness than is deserved. That’s the truth behind the meme ‘an idea so bad that only an intellectual would believe it’.