People think stupidity is the opposite of intelligence. In fact, stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment.
Stupidity can be defined as overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information.
It’s crucial information: You better pay attention to it. It’s conspicuous: It’s right in front of your nose and yet you either overlook it or you dismiss it.

Defining Stupidity

<ul><li>Being outside your normal environment or changing your routines.</li><li>Being in the presence of a group(social pressure).</li><li>Being in the presence of an expert or if you, yourself, are an expert.</li><li>Doing any task that requires intense focus, or fixating on a particular outcome.</li><li>Information overload. </li><li>Physical or emotional stress, fatigue. </li><li>Rushing or urgency.</li></ul>The probability of missing key information (stupidity) increases the more the above factors are present.

Seven Factors that Lead to Stupidity

Most of the factors are ubiquitous in modern-day life such as stress, rushing, and information overload. Therefore, our modern life is already susceptible to missing key information and making stupid mistakes.All factors are present in US hospitals. Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Modern Life And Stupidity

<ul><li>Recognize and know that you are in ”the stupid zone”</li><li>Pause. Just sit. Stop, before leaving your environment. If you can’t sit still for a minute, you don’t have the time not to!</li><li>Have a buddy whose job is to watch us. That is their only task, and can’t have the same responsibility as us. Have your own “pit crew”.</li><li>Don’t make decisions or do anything when in the stupid zone. For example, don’t sign a contract or drive.</li></ul>

The Solution

Stupidity is not the opposite of intelligence.

Stupidity is overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information. Here are seven situational factors that compromise your cognitive ability and result in increased odds of stupidity.

Stashed ideas

How Not to Be Stupid - Farnam Street

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by, you are invariably lowballing the total. This problem is compounded by biased assumptions that certain people are intelligent based on superficial factors like their job, education level, or other traits we believe to be exclusive of stupidity. They aren’t.

The Numbers

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.Stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid college professors. There are stupid people at Davos and at the UN General Assembly. There are stupid people in every nation on earth. How numerous are the stupid amongst us? It’s impossible to say. And any guess would almost certainly violate the first law, anyway.

Nothing Else Matters

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.A stupid person is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.The uncle unable to stop himself from posting fake news articles on Facebook? Stupid. The customer service representative who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up on you twice, and somehow still manages to screw up your account? Stupid.

The Golden Law Of Stupidity

There are three phenotypes that co-exist alongside stupidity. First, there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly, there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense.

Stupidity Vs Non-Stupidity

The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.However, consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous.

The Non-Stupid

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality.With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places.

Unreasonable Behaviour

Law 4: 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, dealing and/or associating with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

A Costly Mistake

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them is the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.

Hidden Danger

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

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The five universal laws of human stupidity

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How Not to Be Stupid - Farnam Street

The five universal laws of human stupidity

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