On Stupidity

 

1.    A Model of Stupidity that is also its Perfect Illustration

I recently came across a 1976 essay called ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’ by Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla, in which he argues that the greatest threat to a civilisation is not evil but stupidity, which, being an economist and thinking in economic terms, he defines by positioning  all human beings along two axes according to the benefits and losses they cause themselves and the benefits and losses they cause others, which, according to Cipolla, produces four basic character types:

1.      Bandits who benefit themselves at the expense of others;

2.      The helpless or naïve, who may benefit others but often do so at their own expense, often because others take advantage of their naivety in order to use them;

3.      The intelligent who, realising that there is more advantage to be gained by working with others rather than against them, look for win/win solutions to problems so that both they and others benefit from the outcome;

4.      The stupid who act to the detriment of others but accrue no benefit to themselves, effectively producing a lose/lose outcome.

While this classification of societal character types is sometimes illuminating, there are, however, a number of problems with it. For not only will all of us probably fall into each of the first three categories at some time, and probably all four – as Cipolla, himself, admits – but the system is not quite as symmetrical as it initially seems, not least because no sane individual, with the possible exception of someone driven by an overwhelming desire for revenge, would deliberately act to the detriment of others without at least believing that they would, themselves, gain some benefit from it. This means that category 4 actually comprises two different groups of people, the first of which are merely failed bandits: people who try to benefit themselves at others’ expense but are just not smart enough to pull it off. It is the second group, therefore, which is the more interesting. For these are people who do not deliberately act to the detriment of others but are too stupid to realise that that is actually what they are doing. In fact, stupid people are often at their most dangerous precisely when they think they are helping others.

An even bigger problem with this classification, however, is that it is just that, a classification, which does not attempt to understand why people act stupidly and doesn’t therefore explain or define what stupidity actually is. In fact, Cipolla’s second law of stupidity says that ‘the probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person’, which would seem to imply that the probability of being afflicted with stupidity is completely random. He also says that stupidity can be found in every class and walk of life, additionally suggesting, therefore, that it is not determined by any external factors such as education or upbringing but is entirely innate.

His most extraordinary claim, however, is that, while stupidity is randomly distributed throughout the population, the percentage of stupid people in any given population is constant. When I first read this, in fact, I was utterly astonished by it. It stems, however, from the fact that Cipolla’s whole system is grounded in economics and statistics, rather than psychology or sociology, which not only gives rise to his very distinctive characterization of stupidity but also explains why he thinks that stupidity is a greater threat to society than evil. For of all his four character types, the stupid person is the only one who contributes a negative balance to society’s benefits and losses account. The successful bandit, for instance, merely transfers benefits, which we more commonly refer to as wealth, from others to himself, while both the intelligent and naïve person may actually increase overall societal wealth. By depriving others of benefits while gaining nothing for himself, the stupid person is thus the only one who actually destroys wealth: a defining characteristic of stupidity which is not only central to Cipolla’s entire thesis, but consequently places a limit on the number of stupid people any society can tolerate. For there are only so many wealth-destroying people a society can withstand before that society is, itself, destroyed. Hence the greater threat to society posed by stupidity rather than evil.

While this consequence of his classification may be central to Cipolla’s whole thesis, however, it causes him a very serious problem. For while it follows from his classification system that the number of stupid people in a society cannot rise above a certain threshold level without that society ceasing to exist, this does not mean that the number could not be below this level or that it is constant. In fact, it could vary from zero to whatever the threshold number is. In order to explain such variations, however, Cipolla would have to introduce external, societal factors into his theory which are outside the scope of his model and, indeed, his field of expertise.

One of the problems his not doing this causes, however, is that he cannot explain, for instance, why we find more stupid people in positions of power in societies that are in decline than in societies which are on the rise, other than to suggest that the stupid people in positions of power who cause the decline then tend to appoint other stupid people to positions of power. While this may be true, however, statistically, it is far more likely that an increase in the number of stupid people in prominent positions is actually a reflection of an increase in stupidity in the population as a whole. What’s more, it is also highly likely that this relationship between the stupidity of a population and the stupidity of its representatives contains an element of circularity. For not only are stupid people more likely to elect stupid leaders, but stupid leaders are far more likely to introduce social measures which actually increase the level of stupidity in their populations, thus increasing the threat to society about which Cipolla is trying to warn us but cannot state explicitly within the confines of his model.

The irony of this, however, is not just that Cipolla’s way of characterising stupidity draws our attention to a threat to society which it simultaneously prevents us from properly understanding, but that his whole approach to the subject is one of the most perfect examples of stupidity I have ever come across. For in constructing this heuristic artifice in which to explore stupidity, he so constrains his way of thinking that he cannot step out of it in order to see that it is totally divorced from our phenomenal experience: a ‘disconnect’ which takes us much closer to the real essence of stupidity than anything Cipolla actually tells us about it.

2.    Stupidity as an Affliction of the Collective rather than of the Individual

This detachment from reality is evident, in fact, from the very beginning of the essay, in Cipolla’s pronouncement of his first law stupidity, which states that ‘always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation’, a claim on which he further elaborates by observing how ‘repeatedly startled’ we are to discover that ‘people whom we had once judged to be rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid’.

The purpose of his assertion that we are ‘repeatedly startled’ by such discoveries is, of course, to make us think about just how many undiscovered stupid people may still be out there. In all my seventy years, however, I have never actually had this experience, either in my private life or at work, which, if such startling discoveries were real and commonplace, I’m fairly sure I would have done. What this indicates, therefore, is that Cipolla’s rather simplistic two-dimensional model simply doesn’t reflect the complicated, multi-dimensional nature of our real world relationships with others, not least because they are dynamic rather than static. After all, we only get to know most of the people with whom we are acquainted slowly, over time, and even then we usually only get to see certain aspects of their characters. Does this mean that they sometimes surprise us? Of course, they do. But often in a good way, as when we are suddenly struck, for instance, by their tact and considerateness in a particularly delicate situation. Do they sometimes disappoint us? Yes, to that too. But not because of their stupidity. As long as the consequences are not too serious, in fact, a friend who does something stupid usually makes us smile or even laugh. It is the gradual revelation of a character trait such as petty vindictiveness that makes us feel uneasy and may cause us to withdraw from someone’s company, not stupidity.

That’s not to say, of course, that stupidity does not have its darker side or that it may not, in fact, be a greater threat to civilization than evil. This kind of stupidity, however, is nothing like what Cipolla thinks it is. For in addition to making the mistake of characterizing stupidity in terms of an over-simplified model, he makes the further mistake of assuming that stupidity is primarily an affliction of individuals, who then threaten society, whereas, in fact, it is primarily an affliction of society, itself, which then infects individuals and makes them stupid.

This is because one of the primary characteristics of stupidity is an adherence to false beliefs and/or faulty ways of thinking, which lead us to arrive at false conclusions. In most cases, however, we, as individuals, do not originate these false beliefs and faulty ways of thinking. Yes, at some point, there must have been someone who did originate them; but most of us are not that person. Most of us acquire our beliefs and ways of thinking from the society which collectively subscribes to them. Thus it is that, if those beliefs and ways of thinking are false or lead us to arrive at false conclusions, it is society that is the primary source of our stupidity.

In fact, this is merely the reverse side of a coin which, on the other side, has been entirely to our advantage, constituting one of the most important factors in our success as a species. This is because society acts as the repository of all that society’s collective knowledge and wisdom, which it then transmits from generation to generation. Without it, each individual would not just have to learn everything from scratch but discover everything from scratch, from which plants are edible and which are poisonous, to when to sow seeds to how to forge metals. The problem is that, along with all this useful knowledge and wisdom, society also acquires and stores a lot of far less useful stuff, including superstitions, old wives’ tales and beliefs that are simply false, along with ways of thinking that are not just stupid but downright dangerous, leading to wars, religious persecutions and ritual killings.

Given how pernicious this kind of stupidity can be, one might therefore ask why, throughout most of our history, we have allowed it to be perpetuated. The answer, however, is because it is perpetuated by exactly the same character traits in human beings that perpetuate our more useful beliefs and ways of thinking, primarily an innate conservatism, which has also played an important part in our evolutionary success. This is because, throughout most of our history, most of the more useful stuff stored in a society’s repository of knowledge and wisdom has been of a practical nature, concerning such things as how to grow crops, how to store them and how to prepare food. Once these techniques have been perfected, therefore, people are very reluctant to change them. After all, the wastage of food as a result of poor storage and preparation could be a death sentence. Primitive societies have always, therefore, been resistant to change, with the result that anyone suggesting change is not just regarded as stupid but dangerous.

The problem with this is that, because, in most cases, primitive people do not know why certain practices are efficacious, they do not know which practices actually are. They probably know, for instance, that watering a crop is important; but they don’t know that chanting a prayer while doing so is not. So they do everything in the same way every time, leaving nothing out, with the result that some very barbaric and harmful practices are maintained to the detriment of some people and the benefit of none: an equation which exactly fits Carlo Cipolla’s definition of stupidity but with, I hope, a little more substance behind it and a little more understanding of what stupidity actually is.

3.    The Rise & Fall of Critical Thinking

Because societally based stupidity is so entrenched in our evolutionary psychology and so hard to shift, it is little wonder, therefore, that it took thousands of years for those rare individuals who wanted to develop different, more rational ways of thinking to actually do so, or that they were often persecuted for it. Nor did it help that in order to develop new ways of thinking about the world around them, they also had to develop new ways of thinking about thinking, itself, making it also quite natural that, in ancient Greece, for instance, the development of the natural sciences was accompanied by the development of philosophy or that, at their most basic level, these two ways of thinking should share the same fundamental structure, comprising two main aspects or stages: the analytic and the synthetic.

In fact, all forms of what is generally referred to as ‘critical thinking’ follow this same pattern. In the natural sciences, for instance, we first make individual observations and collect data (analysis). We then construct a hypothesis or theory which both explains and brings this data together to form a consistent view of how some part of the world works (synthesis). Similarly, in philosophy, we start by looking for self-evident truths, which we then synthesise into more complex propositions using logical argument. In fact, the same structure is to be found in just about every scientific or rigorous academic discipline. Historians, for instance, start by gathering the known facts which they then piece together to form a coherent account of something which happened in the past.

Importantly, both the analytical phase of this process and its synthesising phase are equally essential. If one doesn’t get the facts right or starts from false or unsound premises then one is hardly likely to arrive at a sound or meaningful conclusion. If all one has is a few facts, however, or the basis for an argument which one cannot actually build, one hasn’t really got anything meaningful at all. Analysis without synthesis is bit like taking a motorcycle apart and then not being able to put it back together again. Indeed, one of the best tests of whether someone really understands something – whether it be an object or a text – is not just to get them to analyse it but to explain it, the explanation being a kind of reconstruction.

The same is also true with respect to the creative arts, most of which have two sides to them in the same way as critical thinking. Someone who has a basic understanding of music, for instance, will be able to analyse it with respect to its musical form, key and time signature etc. The best proof that someone really understands music, however, is their ability to compose – which is to say ‘synthesise’ – a wholly new piece.

This also reveals something else which critical thinking and the creative arts have in common. For neither of them comes easily to us. Unlike imitation, which is central to the societal transmission of practical knowledge, critical thinking, like learning to read and write music and play a musical instrument, is something in which we first have to be trained and which we then have to constantly practice, requiring a disciplined regime which is made all the more difficult by the fact that most people, even within the education system, do not understand what critical thinking is and cannot therefore teach it: an obstacle to its cultivation which  raises the question as to how, over the last five hundred years or so – since the Reformation, in fact – it has so manifestly managed to flourish.

The answer is that we learn it – or, at least, used to – without actually knowing that we are learning it, primarily through the reading of books and other long form texts. It is for this reason, indeed, that the Reformation was so important in its development. For before the Reformation, most people in Europe couldn’t read. The one book of which they knew anything was the Bible, which was written in Latin and explained to them by the Roman Catholic Church, which thus placed all the power inherent in the possession of this knowledge in the hands of the clergy. In fact, it was the desire of many people to be able to read the Bible for themselves, in their own language, and therefore decide for themselves what it meant, that was one of the main drivers of reform, as well as one of the principal motives behind the opposition to reform by those in power. For the ability to acquire knowledge by reading a book is the most liberating and empowering ability one can ever acquire, not because of the knowledge contained in any one book, but because reading teaches one to think for oneself rather than simply being told. In short, it teaches one critical thinking.

This is because, in reading a book, whether we are conscious of it or not, our first task is to analyse the text in order to extract from it the individual propositions or pieces of information of which the text is comprised. We then synthesise this information in order to work out the meaning of the text as a whole, a two stage process which is made even more starkly clear if we think about it in terms of hermeneutics, a theory about what we actually do whenever we read a long form text which was first put forward in the early 19^th century by the German theologian and biblical scholar, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and which states that in understanding any long form text – and, indeed, many other things as well – we interpret the whole on the basis of our understanding of the individual parts, but we also interpret the individual parts on the basis of our understanding of the whole.

We most often notice this, in fact, if we read a book more than once. For even though we start synthesising our overall understanding of a book from the moment we start reading it, on our first reading that understanding is almost entirely informed by our interpretation of individual passages. Only when we have got to the end of the book do we usually have a fully formed understanding of the book as a whole. If we then go back to the beginning, however, and start reading it again with this overall understanding now in our possession, we often find that our first interpretation of some of the early passages was incorrect. Not having known the significance of some of these early passages, indeed, we may even have totally overlooked them. This means that we now interpret them afresh in the light of our new overall understanding of the book, which, in turn, can alter that understanding once again, forcing us to reinterpret other individual passages in what is potentially an infinite feedback loop.

Of course, we only usually undertake such multiple readings with regard to particularly difficult or important books, but the principle holds for all long form texts, even novels, which we may only read for pleasure but to which we still apply this same continuous process of analysis and synthesis. In fact, crime or detective novels provide us with some of best opportunities to practice what is, in essence, critical thinking. For alongside the detective, we are constantly being presented with new clues and vital bits of information which we continuously attempt to synthesise into a theory of ‘whodunit’. Because we read novels for pleasure, moreover, and may spend quite a lot of time doing so, they also help us improve our readings skills and our ability to sustain concentration.

This is important because, with a decline in the reading of books among generations younger than my own, many university lecturers are now reporting that many students cannot read more than one book a week, if that. Instead of handing out reading lists at the beginning of their courses, this has therefore led to most lecturers now handing out photocopied passages from key texts at the beginning of each lecture, during which, of course, they then provide an analysis of these selected passages. This means that students do not have to undertake either of the two essential analytical tasks involved in reading an entire book: that of determining which are the key passages in a given text and exactly why they are so important. They are simply told.

To compound this further, in many subjects, the long form essay, which students used to have to write in answer to questions designed to reveal their level of understanding of the subject in question, has now given way to multiple choice questionnaires or questions which only require short form answers. This means that they no longer have to take the results of their analysis and synthesise them into a coherent explanation of why something is the case.

This decline in both aspects of critical thinking has also resulted in a collapse of the distinction between information, which is passively received, and knowledge, which has to be attained by forming connections or putting things together, which, from a neurophysiological perspective, involves the laying down of new neural pathways which tend to be more durable than simple memories. This is why techniques designed to improve one’s memory nearly always involve the making of connections, using such constructs as ‘memory palaces’ for instance. In most cases today, however, we don’t even bother to commit information to memory, knowing that, if we need to retrieve it, we can simply look it up on the internet, society’s new repository of all knowledge and wisdom, to which most of us resort fairly uncritically, assuming that most of the information stored there is  true or correct without really even thinking about it.

After five hundred years of increasing literacy rates, increased reading and more widespread critical thinking, it now seems, indeed, as if our failure to understand critical thinking, a change in technology and a consequent decline in long form reading may actually be causing us to slip backwards.

4.    Stupidity & Mob Rule

If stupidity is once again on the rise, however, it is not entirely due to either changes in technology or the debasement of an education system which never understood critical thinking in the first place. Our evolutionary psychology still plays a massive part. For even though departures from the societal consensus may not now mean the difference between life and death, we are still extremely resistant to them, with the result that, having lost the ability to think critically, the societal consensus now has as big a hold over us as it has ever had. Once a stupid idea has been adopted by a society and become part of that consensus, it is consequently very difficult to get rid of it. What’s more, anyone who tries to do so, is subject to the same mob rule as they ever were. Today, contrarian critical thinkers may not be lynched, but their lives can be destroyed in other ways.

In my last but one essay, for instance, called ‘The Overly Narrow Focus of Today’s Climate Science’, I reviewed a lecture by Dr John Clauser, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2022, in which he demonstrates quite clearly that none of the papers which have supposedly contributed to the IPCC’s findings on radiative imbalance actually support those findings. In fact, he demonstrates that the science contained in these papers is so poor that one cannot draw any conclusions from them at all, a finding which, in itself, is very disturbing. Instead of being congratulated for his clear-sighted analysis, however, Dr Clauser was universally castigated for casting doubt on the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. He even had a presentation he was due to give to the IMF cancelled.

Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the AGW theory, this travesty of the principles of disinterestedness and objectivity in science is so incomprehensible that, if it weren’t actually happening, I suspect that it would also be very hard to believe. After all, it is the duty of every scientist to critically examine everything, including the work of other scientists. To persecute a scientist for merely doing his job thus marks, in a very real way, the end of our scientifically based culture and civilization. What’s more, the fact that we do not seem to understand this or what it means is another very clear indication of just how stupid we have become. For the material consequences of turning our backs on that which made European civilization the most successful civilization there has ever been are likely to be very serious indeed.

Just recently, for instance, the British government’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) announced funding for experimental research into Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), which will include planes releasing tiny particles into the stratosphere to reflect more of the sun’s radiation back into space, which, if it were done on a large scale, could be very dangerous. The reason for this, as Dr Clauser coincidentally explains in the second half of his lecture, is that this reflection of the sun’s radiation away from the earth’s surface is something that is already being done… by clouds. In fact, clouds reflect up to a third of the sunlight entering the atmosphere, an amount I both hope and suspect we could never match. For the most important thing about the way in which clouds do this job is that it is self-regulating. This is because, by limiting the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface, over 70% of which is covered in water, they limit the amount of water vapour created by evaporation, which then reduces the number of clouds being formed. With less clouds, more sunlight then reaches the earth’s surface causing more evaporation and hence more clouds.

What we have, in effect, is a continuous feedback loop, in which a warmer earth’s surface causes more clouds to form, thereby cooling the surface, which then causes less clouds to form, thereby warming the surface. In this way, the entire system is kept in balance. By artificially reflecting more of the sun’s radiation back into space, however, less sunlight will reach the earth’s surface, thereby reducing the amount of evaporation and the number of clouds, for which we will then have to compensate by artificially reflecting even more of the sun’s radiation back into space. In fact, by ratcheting this up, we could easily find ourselves taking over the job of clouds completely, but doing it less efficiently and at far greater cost.

What’s more, clouds don’t just regulate the temperature of the earth’s surface; they also  produce rain to water our crops, without which we’d all starve. In fact, meddling with this system has got to be one of the stupidest and most dangerous ideas anyone has ever had, especially as nature has been successfully maintaining this state of balance for millions of years without any help from us.

‘But,’ you say, ‘we have already undermined this natural state of balance by pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have therefore got to do something to rectify this.’ The problem with this argument, however, is that it is largely a myth. Yes, we pump CO₂ into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But most the CO₂ in the atmosphere is produced the way it has always been produced: by cosmic radiation, in the form of the free neutrons, striking the nuclei of nitrogen atoms and knocking out one of their protons, thus turning nitrogen atoms into carbon atoms, which then bind with oxygen atoms to form CO₂ molecules. Being 50% heavier than both nitrogen and oxygen, these then descend to the earth’s surface, where they are either dissolved in the oceans or absorbed by plants, which extract their carbon by photosynthesis to build their own cells while releasing the oxygen back into the atmosphere. All we do is recycle a little of this carbon by burning the fossilized remains of plants which absorbed the CO₂ millions of years ago.

Of course, it will be argued that while we cannot stop carbon being created naturally in the atmosphere, we can keep the carbon that is safely buried in the ground where it is, instead of burning it to form a greenhouse gas that is dangerously overheating the planet. This argument, however, is based on two premises, both of which are false. The first is to suppose that CO₂ makes a significant contribution to this warming effect, when its contribution is actually quite minor, accounting for only around 3% of total warming by greenhouse gases. A far greater contribution is actually made by water vapour, which is thirty times more abundant than CO₂ and accounts for over 90% of all greenhouse gas warming.

The argument, of course, will then be that, while we cannot do anything about the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere except by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface as described above, thereby reducing oceanographic evaporation, we can and should do something about our emissions of CO₂, even though these constitute only a small percentage of all the CO₂ in the atmosphere, which, in turn, only accounts for a very small percentage of the overall warming caused by greenhouse gases. As should be clear, however, this argument is already beginning to look pretty thin.

It is the second false premise upon which these arguments are based, however, that really tips the balance. For this second false premise is the widespread assumption that greenhouse gases, which actually keep the planet warm, are essentially a problem. What no one bothers to ask, however, is how much cooler the planet would be without them. According to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, however, the answer is 33°C. That is to say that instead of a mean surface temperature of around 15°C, without greenhouse gases, the earth would have a mean surface temperature of -18°C. In fact, most if not all of the surface would be covered in ice, making it doubtful whether it could support any life at all. Instead of constituting a threat to the planet, therefore, greenhouse gases are what makes life here possible, with water vapour making by far the greatest contribution, not only keeping us relatively warm at a mean 15°C, but constantly adjusting cloud cover to keep the temperature stable.

If water vapour is the stand out performer in keeping the planet habitable, however, CO2 comes in at a close second. For while its contribution to keeping the planet warm may be relatively small, it is, of course, essential to all plant life and hence all life on earth. In fact, the existence of both water vapour and CO₂ in our atmosphere is probably the best argument for the existence of God I’ve ever come across. And yet we have somehow got it into our heads that these greenhouse gases are ‘bad things’. Which rather raises the question as to how this could have happened. And the answer, of course, is just stupidity. We believe that CO2 is a problem because everyone else believes it, our reasoning being that if everyone believes something, then it must be true. This, however, is the very essence of societally based stupidity. And the way things are going, it could well be the cause of our destruction. For in this one regard, of course, Carlo Cipolla was almost certainly correct: stupidity really is a greater threat to civilisation than evil.