Survival Of The Stupidest

http://www.science20.com/hammock_physicist/survival_stupidest-77846

by pathik • 15 years ago

79 26 15 years ago

merraksh• 15 years ago

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.

mml• 15 years ago

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.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

Well he does quote the third law of stupidity:

"Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."

jerf• 15 years ago

(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.)

arethuza2• 15 years ago

Some of the stupidest things I have ever seen were done by people who, by any reasonable measure, are extremely smart. I've never personally met anyone who was "smart" in every possible area of their lives - its not just "work/tech" smarts that count if you insist on making this evaluation.

mechnik• 15 years ago

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

aaronmorey• 15 years ago

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.

wazoox• 15 years ago

> 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've read a quite thorough explanation similar to this in one of Scott Adams' books : most people are somewhat intelligent, but behave stupidly at times - In fact, we may assume most people behave stupidly most of the time. Maybe he called that the "Dogbert principle" or something similar.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

"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.

kiba• 15 years ago

Maybe it's just you cherrypicking examples. Just as you think we are discourage tinkering, I can point to the DIY and Maker movement, the proliberation of Hackerspaces, and so much more.

In any case, humans do not build a civilization by having really smart men who know everything, but having specialists in all area of life.

The scientists would do well not to express their disgust and disdain for the lowly plumbers or the trashmen,

Yes, we are stupid, but so are you. Just pick an area that you know nothing about.

jimbokun• 15 years ago

Thank you, God, for creating Norman Borlaug!

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

verisimilitude2• 15 years ago

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

tokenadult• 15 years ago

Alas, the Wikipedia article you kindly linked to is an example of the point-of-view pushing that goes on too much on Wikipedia in relation to the topic of human intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...

It's going to be a long, long, LONG time before Wikipedia will come close to correctly representing what the most reliable sources say about time trends in IQ in national populations, about the relationship of genetic factors to the development of human intelligence, or about most related subjects.

For a reliable source on the subject you are curious about, see Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Genes-Success-Scientists-...

with articles by several expert statisticians, geneticists, and psychologists.

verisimilitude2• 15 years ago

Thank you for the extra information! I'll add that to my reading list.

To clarify: I've always taken the plot of "Idiocracy" to be fictional fantasy, and I simply used Wikipedia articles as a short-hand to summarize the ideas advanced by the movie. I realized that such a plot is so charged with the potential to offend people, I've never had a conversation with anyone about it (after all, we all think we're on the 'sweet' side of the curve, right?). Personally, I don't think such a brain drain could occur, but I'm always interested in research about such topics.

Also: thanks for pointing out the importance of the IQ/intelligence debate. From what I've seen in my reading, IQ is really a proxy for a few things: quality of education, social advantages, etc. I agree 100% that IQ≠intelligence; the Wikipedia articles in question should be rewritten to reflect this fact.

However, while IQ does not represent intellectual horsepower, it has been shown to be that aforementioned _proxy_ for other sociological and other factors -- in that sense, it is still useful to compare IQ with fertility. I do understand your concern that the consensus regarding such studies is poorly represented on Wikipedia.

hermannj3142• 15 years ago

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.

arethuza2• 15 years ago

"labeled as stupid"

I strongly dislike the idea of labelling people as stupid, or for that matter smart, as it then implies that everything they do is then destined to be "stupid" or "smart". I am, more than happy to label individual decisions as stupid or smart.

wturner• 15 years ago

There's no such thing as a stupid person, just people who are intuitively "smart" in their own interest based on time, place and circumstance. Which is what I think the underline point of the article was, albeit written in a manner with empirical examples to demonstrate. So, Yippy! Let's get stupid..er, I mean smart!

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

look at the reference class of all days that you make such a suggestion. compare the negative utility of "bringing umbrella; no rain" and "didn't bring umbrella; rain".

georgieporgie2• 15 years ago

I am, by definition, stupid because I caused a loss for another person and derived no gain.

How did you cause a loss for your daughter, unless you took a sandwich out of her hand and replaced it with an umbrella, leaving her to go hungry?

hermannj3142• 15 years ago

I considered the burden of carrying the umbrella as the cost (loss).

pessimizer• 15 years ago

I don't think its outcome-based, its expected utility based, which is a present value, not a future one.

EGreg• 15 years ago

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".

donnaware• 15 years ago

this explains the "tea party"

angkec• 15 years ago

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.

Survival Of The Stupidest

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