Survival Of The Stupidest

(Bear in mind that for the duration of this post, I am adopting the definition of stupid as given in "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity." It is not quite the same as "unintelligent", and it is sufficiently well-defined that it is no longer merely an insult, either.)

Amusing, but less insightful than "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity". While it is true that you can construct cases where two stupid people may ruin one smart one's day while coming out with a net win for one or both of them, you have to go farther and show that this case dominates. I would submit that it in fact does not, and stupid people will still tend to harm themselves more than anyone around them, if for no other reason than that is the easiest outcome for them to obtain. I do not thing there is a great benefit in running in a great herd of people who are constantly causing the herd a net harm (by definition of stupid), and the herds in this case would tend to eliminate themselves.

I think it is sufficient to observe merely that being smart is hard. In the great space of all actions one may take, the vast bulk of them are bad actions that will cause harm. Rather than complicated and IMHO probably false theories about how stupid people can win in herds, somehow converting their huge set of transactions each of which is a net harm into some sort of benefit, one need merely point out that as more people become intelligent, it actually raises the bar for further intelligent actions. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked. For example, some people who were very well adapted for producing net value in the 20th century find it much more difficult in the 21st because we've successfully captured so much value already.

(Also the article falls prey a bit to the idea that a carefully constructed game play strategy can fall to a player who acts stupidly. While, again, you can construct scenarios in which this is true as was done in the article, it is the exception. In general good gameplay strategies do not fall apart when presented with a stupid opponent, they win swiftly. If you really believe this is a general property of game strategies, I invite you to download any competent chess playing program and attack it with a "random" move strategy. It is true that you may force it off the opening book relatively early, but it will still efficiently tear you apart, not react with the AI-equivalent of stunned confusion. This is a sort of low-grade AI/game theory urban legend.)

I told my daughter to bring her umbrella to school today because the weather report called for rain. But it didn't rain. I am, by definition, stupid because I caused a loss for another person and derived no gain.

So it seems odd to have an outcome-based definition of stupidity and not a decision-based definition. Stupidity can't be attributed to a person if it is defined by the random forces existing outside of them.

I, for one, believe stupidity has degrees of intensity and is context-sensitive. I find it shallow when people are labeled as stupid simply because they failed to make an optimal decision in one of thousands of decisions they make everyday, possibly in an area for which they have no concern or for which the cost of finding the optimal decision far outweighed even difference in benefits between the worst and best outcome.

I'm not convinced that there are really two distinct sets of people in the world: stupid and not stupid. In my experience, most people are pretty good at some things and stupid with other things. I notice that in myself to a certain extent, and forces like the Dunning-Kruger effect probably prevent me from noticing more.

In terms of the original article, I think that answers the question of why stupidity continues to exist. Most people (even ones who appear to me to be stupid) are smart enough at enough things that they continue to live and procreate.

The game theory examples the author gives in the second half of the article over-simplify the issue by assuming stupid is a binary on/off attribute. Within a game, you can assume that's true by assuming the people make stupid decisions within the rules of the game. But in real life, there isn't one single set of rules that determines whether we or not we live and procreate.

I was hoping this article would address the dysgenics-based[1] theory in the film Idiocracy: fertility decreases with rising intelligence[2], resulting in a severe "brain drain" and producing a profoundly stupid, simple society.

Regardless, I appreciated the extension of Cipolla's ideas into game theory -- stupid people can do everything from take your money to kill you.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenic#Intelligence_dysgenics [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

My pet theory corollary to this (and one that I think has become increasingly prevalent in the age of anti-elitism and -intellectualism) can be described as "never attribute to human achievement that which can be explained by religious miracle".

It's gotten so prevalent, in fact, that Apple uses it in it's modern marketing campaigns. The idea that a consumer electronic device can be "magical" is a nauseating reminder once again that, because of globalization and layers of both self-imposed and corporate-sponsored abstraction/obfuscation, we no longer know how even the most basic concepts operate or what things we consume are made of.

It's gotten to the point where we openly discourage tinkering. For example: What once was a proud young hacker's rite of passage going to Radio Shack and buying a breadboard to make LEDs shine and motors whir, is nowadays seen with derision or as malicious alchemy ("he's a terrorist building some kinda bomb or sumthin'", et al.).

And, it's not even about education, though in many cases you'd think it were. When a doctor has slaved away for years in academia, plied his trade in residency, done fellowships and participated in research for novel procedures and drug discoveries, their saving of a patient's life is more likely than not attributed by the patient to God than their exhaustive efforts. Ditto, any economic downturn/upturn, droughts and bumper crop seasons, etc.

Most people don't know who Norman Borlaug is, but they sure know who made their drought- and pest-resistant, season and climate-independent, abundant and hearty sandwich bread be so cheap and taste so good: God.

In politics, one need not look further than the Tea Party to see that this "magical" thinking is rife in political discourse, with so many clinging on to America's "manifest destiny" and "American exceptionalism" as the answer to both why we got to where we are and where we need to go. Nevermind that most of our "exceptionalism" stemmed from the fact that we were the only industrialized country left standing after WWII and had factories ready to serve the world. Now that we have no war? It's the illegal invader's from Mexico's fault we're going downhill, which isn't even Occam's razor "a => b" thinking, just simpleminded bigotry.

The author neglects an obvious point: stupid people can be very useful, in that you can get them to do harm to others, while you benefit, and they get nothing.

Stupid quote: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/quotes?qt=qt0427901

I found this article to be very informative actually.

I also would like to point out that it's not possible to be smart in every area. As Mark Twain said, "we are all stupid, just on different subjects".

so this can probably explain why randomly selecting stocks turn out to make a profit than professionals: in a game of stupid(irrational), randomly select (being the most stupid) turn out to win.

this explains the "tea party"

I guess one of the strengths of the population of stupid people is being oblivious of belonging to them -- a membership that even rational people cannot avoid. Stupidity manifesting in the most unexpected ways and occasions is a proof of its ubiquity, and implies that it is difficult to find not even a vaccine but a simple method of diagnosis.