Saturday, June 27, 2009

Brazen Obliviousness

What is stupidity anyway? Check out the movie "Stupidity" for an introduction. It points out that there's been very little research on the subject. I have been struggling to understand the rationale behind ignorance for some time. This movie shed some light on why people choose to be stupid and why they're threatened by intelligence and knowledge.

It included an interview with the author of the book "Smart People Can Be Stupid". He described a few fallacies which include: the omniscience fallacy, the omnipotentance fallacy, and the invulnerability fallacy.

They also interviewed Trevor Strong, the author of "Get Stupid" which provides instruction on how to become stupid by following 7 steps. Here are a few quotes: "A mind is a terrible thing.", "When you reach for the stars, you put out your back.", "If you do manage to reach a moment of pure stupidity, you'll actually never know it.".

One person interviewed blamed rigid belief systems for the "learned corruption of learning." "A failure to see things as they really are...This is the mechanism for the creation of stupidity."

The movie had a few other great quotes like this one:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

For the record, though I consider myself to be a smart person, I'm not above being stupid.