Is stupidity the opposite of intelligence?
No. There’s actually a whole taxonomy of concepts that are worth thinking about. So there’s intelligence, there’s genius, there’s stupidity, there’s ignorance, and there’s being wrong. And it’s worth unpacking what each of these might mean.
Ignorance is insufficient data. So it doesn’t matter how smart you are; if you don’t have enough data to solve a problem, you’ll never solve it.
Intelligence is finding very simple solutions to complex problems. For example, if you say to someone, “You made that look effortless!” you’re saying to them, “You’re smart.” If you say to someone, “You made that look really hard,” you’re saying, “That’s stupid.” So stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting it right; in fact, it makes it more likely that you get it wrong.
So being wrong has in common with ignorance the fact that you’re more likely to get it right when you get extra data. So stupidity is a very interesting class of phenomena in history and it has to do with rule systems that have made it harder for us to arrive at the truth, and we could talk about it.
It’s an interesting fact that while there are numerous individuals who study intelligence—there are whole departments that are interested in it—if you were to ask yourself what’s the greatest problem facing the world today, I would say it would be stupidity. So we should have professors of Stupidity; it would just be embarrassing to be called the Stupid Professor!
- Read the full interview with David Krakauer here
No. There’s actually a whole taxonomy of concepts that are worth thinking about. So there’s intelligence, there’s genius, there’s stupidity, there’s ignorance, and there’s being wrong. And it’s worth unpacking what each of these might mean.
Ignorance is insufficient data. So it doesn’t matter how smart you are; if you don’t have enough data to solve a problem, you’ll never solve it.
Intelligence is finding very simple solutions to complex problems. For example, if you say to someone, “You made that look effortless!” you’re saying to them, “You’re smart.” If you say to someone, “You made that look really hard,” you’re saying, “That’s stupid.” So stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting it right; in fact, it makes it more likely that you get it wrong.
So being wrong has in common with ignorance the fact that you’re more likely to get it right when you get extra data. So stupidity is a very interesting class of phenomena in history and it has to do with rule systems that have made it harder for us to arrive at the truth, and we could talk about it.
It’s an interesting fact that while there are numerous individuals who study intelligence—there are whole departments that are interested in it—if you were to ask yourself what’s the greatest problem facing the world today, I would say it would be stupidity. So we should have professors of Stupidity; it would just be embarrassing to be called the Stupid Professor!
- Read the full interview with David Krakauer here
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