It’s OK to be Dumb (But Not Stupid)

Where does intelligence — must less wisdom — really begin? Let me distill the heart of the question: what’s the difference between dumb and stupid?

Let’s take a recent example of a comment here.

“If that’s the case why do the pension managers for public employees and teachers have hedge funds in their investment portfolios? If those investments allow kindergarten teachers to retire at 55, aren’t they then benefiting the kindergarten teachers? Furthermore, you don’t seem too interested in shutting off the monetary spigot that was opened in August 1971 that has — by your own standards — increased inequality and created this class of hedge fund managers…”

Let me destroy this profoundly silly comment in a few sentences.

First, if teachers wanted to really max their retirement funds, hedge funds needn’t have anything to do with it. Index funds outperform the vast majority of hedge funds — and Apple shares outperform all of them. So all teachers would have had to do was invest in market indices, or Apple shares, to earn equivalent returns, at far less cost and risk (ie without billions being siphoned off the top by hedge funds).

Second, no “monetary spigot” has not been “on” since 1971 that “created” hedge funds…that’s utter nonsense. Paul Volcker of course in the early eighties crushed the economy with record high interest rates. Hedge funds weren’t invented in the 70s — but the 50s. The era of cheap money certainly has fuelled the profitability of the financial sector — but that’s due first to the opacity of financial institutions, like hedge funds. That is: they’d be (as they historically have been) supernormally profitable even if money were “expensive”.

Now, forget the economics. Here’s the real lesson in this little exchange, and it’s about life.

Stupid is not knowing how dumb you are. And that is one of the biggest obstacles which prevents many of us from reaching our potential.

It’s not just that the commenter has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s that he thinks he does — and that’s the difference between dumb and stupid.

It’s OK to be dumb. Dumb admits it’s ignorance. And so it can learn, absorb, grow. Dumb doesn’t know, and doesn’t pretend to. Realizing that you’re dumb, you might crack open a book…listen to a talk…stop and think. Awareness of one’s dumbness is the first precondition of gaining any kind of knowledge.

But stupid is different. Stupid thinks it knows…all that there is to know. When, in truth, it doesn’t. And therefore stupid cannot learn, absorb, grow. It can only stay stupid…get stupider…suffer needlessly…harm it’s communitya and society…shrink as a thinking, feeling human being.

I fear that we’re suffering from an epidemic of stupid. Let me give you an example.

Let’s imagine you went to the doctor. He diagnosed you with (heaven forbid) brain cancer. You say: “Well, doc, I disagree. I think it’s just a hangover! I think I’m gonna go have a martini”. That would be really, really…stupid.

But that’s precisely what happens predictably everyday. The great thinkers of this age aren’t just ignored — many of us think they’re foolish. Whether it’s Joe Stiglitz telling us the economy is broken, or Francis Fukuyama telling us that politics is institutionally decaying, many of us think…we think that we know better.

That’s not just dumb. That’s stupid. Like telling your doctor that you “know” your brain cancer is just a hangover.

Social media has diminished us in many ways. But the foremost, I often think, is that it’s turned us from dumb to stupid. We don’t think we don’t know, anymore — which is what, sitting in a great library, surrounded by knowledge, we might have once thought. We’re convinced we do. That’s far more dangerous. If society today seems to be in peril, perhaps it’s an epidemic of stupidity that is contributing.

In other words, we believe in a false egalitarianism of opinion. Do you really know as much about the human body as the doctor? About the economy as Joe Stiglitz? About politics as Frank Fukuyama? You might believe you do. But that’s precisely what stupidity is. The simple truth is that your opinion doesn’t count unless, at the very least, you’re smart enough to know how dumb you are — and that being dumb is OK, because that way, one can learn. Your opinion begins to count, in a word, when you’re not just stupid.

Let us all learn the limits of our own ignorance. That, as Socrates pointed out, is the beginning of true knowledge.

Of course, the good people of Athens were smart enough kill him for it. That was the beginning of one great Age of Stupid. Let’s hope we’re dumb enough — but not stupid enough — to learn the lesson. Stupid is not knowing how dumb you are. Dumb, on the other hand, is knowing enough not to be stupid.