Why are there so many idiots?
Stupid people make stupid decisions. Like teasing a wild animal. Or vaping after losing a lung to cigarette smoking. But no worries- in principle, Natural Selection will slowly decimate their ranks.
In principle.
Unfortunately, instead of living in nature “red in tooth and claw”, civilization buffers us from the consequences of our actions. Breaking Natural Selection’s feedback loop. True, a few covidiots expired from the disease. Which is sad. And ironic. But many more were spared by the very public health system they maligned for actually trying to save their lives.
Clorox cocktails, anyone?
We are a stupid country. Our life expectancy has declined while the rest of the developed world’s has risen. We believe in the healing power of crystals while failing to support cheap public health measures. Infant mortality, mass shootings, incarceration rates and even democratic benchmarks rank near the bottom of our peers.
What is the root cause of our persistent stupidity? There are two: blind faith and consequence-free speech.
Trust is the glue that binds society together. Without trust, we would spend all our waking hours on high alert, never benefiting from the knowledge or kindness of others. Even so, as Ronald Reagan so famously quipped, there are limits to faith- “trust, but verify” was his motto. Trust must be tested, earned, and challenged again. Otherwise, by mindlessly following a politician, religion, or TikTok meme out of blind faith, you may accept dumb ideas as scripture. And since trust is emotionally reinforced by peer pressure, “verifying” is not celebrated as a virtue, but seen as a threat to your core group identity.
For these reasons, it takes generations to undo the damage blind trust may cause. Look how long it took for Catholics to hold the church accountable for its systemic pedophilia and coverups. Despite the evidence from brave investigative reporting, eye witness testimony and the reluctant confession of church elders, true believers remained unconvinced. Logic and facts are blunt instruments against the sharp knife of blind trust.
And the threat of eternal damnation.
As Billy Murray noted “It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person. It’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.”
Yet some people hope a free market in the exchange of ideas will convince the stupid of the error of their ways. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant” they proclaim, encouraging big money, AI disinformation agents, conspiracy mongers and just plain old idiots to make their case. Hoping truth will crowd out stupidity in the marketplace of ideas. And that rational inquiry will prevail.
But ideas without consequences are dangerous.
Our overly expansive First Amendment diminishes personal responsibility for our tirades, leaving society to clean up the mess. Absent consequences, the stupid never learn their lessons.
In America, it’s essentially impossible to sue or be prosecuted for speech offered as protected “opinion”, even if that speech is demonstrably a lie. Believing space lasers start wildfires or obscure jungle fruits are a “super-food” able to cure the latest ailment, seems innocuous enough. Yet words have consequences. Followers putting their faith in your ideas can be harmed. And repetition is as powerful a cudgel as an immediate call-to-action. That’s why propaganda works.
False opinions splinter society’s ability to draw together in times of crisis. It crowds out effective solutions and wastes precious resources. And most critically of all, fails to distinguish between effective rational discourse and incoherent arguments. Intelligence is a muscle and without proper exercise, atrophies.
Caveat emptor.
I’ll offer a few solutions to address rampant stupidity, but perhaps we should move cautiously and tolerate a little bit of idiocy? After all, evolutionary biologists recognize the benefits of genetic and cultural diversity. In times of stress, evolution draws upon a reservoir of variation to assure the survival of the species. A gene halving seed production appears deleterious- stupid even. It should quickly die out. But if that same gene also improves drought tolerance in a world of global warming, that stupid plant holds the blueprint for the future.
Perhaps stupid people force the rest of us to better hone our arguments? To avoid complacent rationality? Even serving as object lessons- acknowledging that luck plays as much a role in life as raw skill. We all are stupid sometimes, and should cut each other a bit of slack.
And sometimes stupid is right.
Except the ranks of the stupid have grown so numerous, they now block, rather then incentivize, smart solutions. We’re not concerned with a single dumb act or political/moral disagreements. The lung cancer victim who vapes may be otherwise rational except in this one area, where their mind is clouded by a powerful addiction.
The problem is systemic idiocy. Brainwashing an entire generation of young men into solving problems with violence or misogyny. Transferring a blind faith in god to a blind faith in demagogues. Allowing our base instincts for power to overwhelm reason, inventing excuses to force our desires on others without considering the likely consequences.
You know, being stupid.
So here are three suggestions to tamp down rampant idiocy. First, we need to reform and toughen our liability laws by plugging statutes enabling risk-free speech. Free speech does not mean irresponsible speech. Don’t worry, the First Amendment is brief enough, yet flexible enough, to accommodate this new interpretation.
Here we are not talking about blasphemy, uncomfortable, unpopular, extreme, political, sarcastic or even racist speech. That’s the price of living in a free and pluralistic society. Instead we are concerned with speech asserting verifiable lies, especially lies which can reasonably be proven to drive others to commit crimes or are irreparably harmful.
And yes, heightened liability could be a slippery slope descending into Orwellian tyranny. The definition of a “lie” can be manipulated, and history provides many examples¹. Except we are already barreling toward hell in a car fueled by AI disinformation and demagoguery, where lies outpace reasoned debate. The field is flooded with sh*t, to quote Steve Bannon, and when we take shortcuts to making decisions, reason suffers. Society desperately needs to install a few handbrakes.
Heightened liability expands on the limited narrow free-speech exceptions of “intended to and likely to cause imminent violence” or libel made with “actual malice and reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
So if you claim a new fruit drink actually helps prevent disease but is really just empty calories, you can’t wiggle out under some weak FDA exemption for nutraceuticals. It’s both dangerous and teaches poor reasoning skills. That exemption must go. Or hide under a broad free speech umbrella by insisting covid vaccines are part of conspiracy to inject microchips. People die from these lies. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
Nor can you produce a campaign ad implying your opponent is a successful businessman when in fact they are a convicted scammer. Not only will you be taken to court, but the fines should be severe and might even disqualify the campaign from matching funds.
Second, we must address blind trust. Blind trust feeds on itself by encouraging its adherents to isolate from non-believers. It festers into closed pustules of diseased thinking. These infections must be drained, and that means finding ways to mix all niches of society together so they engage in dialog and painful debate.
The solution here is very difficult, and harkens back to ancient Athens where Kleisthenes broke apart existing cliques and forced them to work together as new, homogenous political units. Soon their allegiance shifted from parochialism to the greater good.
Study after study demonstrates the financial, social and mental advantages of breaking up cabals. Mechanisms include more affordable housing to limit geographic income stratification, vibrant public schools, multi-member districts so all communities share in power, effective anti-discrimination laws, equitable taxation which treats all sources of income and wealth uniformly, and revitalizing rural and rust-belt communities.
Thirdly, we must bolster public education in critical thinking and shared values. Realistically, most stupid habits are ingrained and intractable, but others can be moderated with training and exposure to new ideas².
Unfortunately, learning how to think clearly has fallen by the wayside. Between the politicization of civics classes, the fragmentation into charter, private and home schools, narrowcast social media and the soft logic of “following my personal truth”, the ability to reason accurately and be open to change has atrophied. We are most comfortable living in a self-reinforcing echo chamber. Refusing to open our minds and hearts to alternate realities.
Educational and cultural reform are the long-game. It's our personal responsibility to support the many initiatives reaching across political divides, teaching critical thinking, and reinforcing core democratic values at the national and local neighborhood level.
Otherwise the stupid will win, by default.
Endnotes:
[1] A very informative book promoting free-speech absolutism is Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, by Jacob Mchangama. Basic Books, Hachette Book Group, New York, NY, 10104, 528 pp., Hardcover, ISBN 9781541600492
Every society carves out exceptions to free speech, whether out of fear of losing power (generally by political or religious elites) or to promote the ostensible general good (banning racist speech or elections lies). Eventually all such exceptions backfire, but I’m not convinced more speech is the antidote. Even a free-speech warrior and view-point absolutist like Mchangama ends by quoting George Orwell:
“The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
Thus my emphasis on promoting free speech as a societal goal, limiting any restrictions to provable factual lies and distortions which also can be shown to cause significant harm. Enforcement cannot be by the same groups who benefit from those lies- independence, transparency and neutrality are key.
Throwing up our hands and defaulting to free-speech absolutism isn’t the only solution.
[2] Numerous real-world and controlled lab studies have tried teaching rational thinking skills. Other groups host cross-tribal gatherings and safe-zone discussions, putting a human face on your darkest fears. These often move people’s opinions towards the center, at least in the short-term.
Unfortunately in the long-term few of these initiatives are effective. People return to their home environment which has not evolved, reinforcing their old habits.
It takes decades to shift cultural norms.
