Daily Journal

It’s prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­teed that we now have more stu­pid peo­ple on the plan­et than ever before. Of course, we might be tempt­ed to think; just look at how many of them dis­agree with my pol­i­tics. But this unprece­dent­ed stu­pid­i­ty is pri­mar­i­ly, if not entire­ly, a func­tion of an unprece­dent­ed­ly large glob­al pop­u­la­tion. The more impor­tant mat­ter has less to do with quan­ti­ty of stu­pid­i­ty than with its qual­i­ty: of all the forms it can take, which does the most dam­age? Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Pow­er and The Laws of Human Nature, address­es that ques­tion in the clip above from an inter­view with pod­cast­er Chris Williamson.

“What makes peo­ple stu­pid,” Greene explains, “is their cer­tain­ty that they have all the answers.” The basic idea may sound famil­iar, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture the relat­ed phe­nom­e­non of the Dun­ning-Kruger effect. In some sense, stu­pid peo­ple who know they’re stu­pid aren’t actu­al­ly stu­pid, or at least not harm­ful­ly so.

True to form, Greene makes a clas­si­cal ref­er­ence: Athens’ lead­ers went into the Pelo­pon­nesian War cer­tain of vic­to­ry, when it actu­al­ly brought about the end of the Athen­ian gold­en age. “Peo­ple who are cer­tain of things are very stu­pid,” he says, “and when they have pow­er, they’re very, very dan­ger­ous,” per­haps more so than those we would call evil.

This brings to mind the oft-quot­ed prin­ci­ple known as Han­lon’s Razor: “Nev­er attribute to mal­ice that which is ade­quate­ly explained by stu­pid­i­ty.” But even in oth­er­wise intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als, a ten­den­cy toward pre­ma­ture cer­tain­ty can induce that stu­pid­i­ty. Bet­ter, in Greene’s view, to cul­ti­vate what John Keats, inspired by Shake­speare, called “neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty”: the pow­er to “hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, two thoughts that appar­ent­ly con­tra­dict each oth­er.” We might con­sid­er, for instance, enter­tain­ing the ideas of our afore­men­tioned polit­i­cal ene­mies — not ful­ly accept­ing them, mind you, but also not ful­ly accept­ing our own. It may, at least, pre­vent the onset of stu­pid­i­ty, a con­di­tion that’s clear­ly dif­fi­cult to cure.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Com­pe­tent: The Dun­ning-Kruger Effect, Explained

Bertrand Rus­sell: The Every­day Ben­e­fit of Phi­los­o­phy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncer­tain­ty

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (Oth­er­wise Known as the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

24 Com­mon Cog­ni­tive Bias­es: A Visu­al List of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sys­tems Errors That Keep Us From Think­ing Ratio­nal­ly

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Amaz­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son from David Dun­ning (of the Famous “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect”)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.