"1. Pure Stupidity...2. Ignorant stupidity...3. Fish-out-of-water stupidity...4. Rule-based stupidity...5. Overthinking stupidity...6. Emergent stupidity...7. Ego-driven stupidity...-Ian Leslie, "Seven Varieties of Stupidity." ianleslie.substack.com. May 21, 2022 It's a fun classification exercise. I'd say that 3 is a subset of 2, being in an unfamiliar environment is a variety of ignorance. However, if you think about the kinds … Continue reading Seven Varieties of Stupidity
Tag: stupid
Identifying a Stupid Person
"...a stupid person causes damage to others while deriving no gain, or even possibly incurring losses. We invariably underestimate the number of stupid individuals in circulation as the probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of other characteristics or credentials (e.g., they can have a Ph.D. or be President). We (the non-stupid) are … Continue reading Identifying a Stupid Person
[Question] Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses.
"To be explained: It feels to me that in recent years, people have gotten stupider, or that stupid has gotten bigger, or that the parts of people that were always stupid have gotten louder, or something like that.I’ve come up with a suite of hypotheses to explain this (with a little help from my friends). … Continue reading [Question] Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses.
How Not to Be Stupid
"...stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment...[Stupidity:] overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information...When it comes to overloading our cognitive brains, the seven factors are: being outside of your circle of competence, stress, rushing or urgency, fixation on an outcome, information overload, and being in the presence of an “authority.” Acting alone any of … Continue reading How Not to Be Stupid
