Why Stupid People are Confident and Smart People Are Full of Doubt

We’ve all seen those facepalm posts online where people are not only saying something really quite dumb and uneducated. Maybe they are making fun of people who think our sun is a star or something like that and when people jump in gently correct them, they double down and make fun of those that are correcting them.

A similar thing seems to happen with parents. The really good ones are full of doubt and are hard on themselves when the absolutely worst ones are sure they are just fine and blame everyone except themselves when their homes are a train wreck. I’ve found the same to be true about doctors. The best doctors that I’ve known are the ones that have tended to be more timid and doubtful about their own competence when the real nut jobs are quite sure that they can’t do anything wrong.

But why? Why does this seem so pervasively true? Why are flat earthers so absolutely sure of themselves and completely undeterred when they most diligent researches and scholars have often tended to be full of doubt? One of history’s most brilliant inventors, Nicola Tesla, was known to be passive and timid while relenting to a less brilliant inventor, Thomas Edison, who took a ton of credit even though the only thing he really did was stuff smart people in the room and tell them to get to work.

“Someone told me the sun was a star. What a moron!”

Measuring Intelligence

Speaking of stupid. It’s interesting that we have arrived at determining how intelligence is determined. School grades especially are a stupid way to determine smart people when most school subjects don’t provide education that is relevant to the most important jobs in our society. Doctors and lawyers are automatically labelled as intelligent and why? Because they are good at school? I’ve met and interacted with enough doctors and lawyers to confidently say that these people are just as stupid about everyday things as the rest of us.

I think we need to put different parameters on what it means to be intelligent and I think this phenomenon about stupid people being confident and smart people being full of doubt gives a potential starting point.

“What if exercising self-doubt is in itself an act of intelligence?”

What if smart people are full of doubt because they scrutinize everything including and especially themselves and this is itself an act of intelligence? Smart people are able to honestly question what is right and what is wrong, what is correct and what is incorrect. Questioning the apparent reality and the status quo is an act of intelligence. Admitting that you don’t know is being smart. Admitting that you were wrong is even smarter.

Dumb people don’t do this. Not being able to think critically, with scrutiny or an open mind is an act of stupidity. Labelling people as wrong just because they disagree with you is stupid and labelling people as evil just because they disagree with you is terminally stupid.

Smart people doubt themselves because this is an act of intelligence. They know that they can be wrong at any time and about anything and they aren’t willing to plow forward if they aren’t exactly sure because that’s called being smart. I don’t think it’s that smart people are doubtful I think that doubtful people are smart. Conversely, it’s not that stupid people don’t doubt themselves it’s that people that don’t doubt themselves are stupid. The less someone doubts themselves, the dumber they probably are.

Emotional Stupidity

I think another good way to gauge intelligence is to determine how much people rely on logic and reason and how much people rely on emotions to get them through everyday. Your romantic partnership needs to be a logical and rational decision as much as it needs to be a decision made from the heart. Marrying someone just because it feels like the right thing to do at the time is foolish. If this is what you hinge your romantic decisions on then there’s probably a good chance that family court is in your future.

Chaotic and dysfunctional people feel their way through life. People that feel their way through everything aren’t just dysfunctional. They’re… well… stupid. Relying only on emotion is also the primary ingredient for being crazy. Granted, we’re all a bit crazy but I’m talking about unmitigated levels of crazy. Feelings are not facts people. The act of taking all emotions as unquestionable facts is an act of stupidity.

The good news is that this type of stupid can be fixed. People can learn to use their thinking brain to navigate life instead of their emotional brain. Easier said than done because, as we know, stupid people often don’t engage in the intelligent act of self-examination. The emotional people are fortunately a type of stupid that can be fixed.

Fixing Stupid

Here are some basic steps that you can follow that will help you become smart in the event that it is determined that you are stupid.

1. Admit that you’re a moron — We’re all morons. Me, you, Santa Clause. All of us. Socrates? Plato? Aristotle? Morons. Socrates was basically a self-admitted moron because he knew it was necessary to realize that you were a moron before you could be smart. The most knowledgeable among us know a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of all the things that is possible to know. When you realize that you’re a moron, then you can really start to learn.
2. Learn and then learn some more — Smart people learn. They especially learn about themselves. Do you understand yourself? Do you understand your own emotions and behavior? Do you have real sense of who you are? How much do you feel in control of your life and your destiny? Are you happy? Do you feel empowered? Most people don’t know as much about themselves as they think they do. Do you want to be smart? Then never stop learning.
3. Question everything — I know, this is cliche. Everybody says this. I even knew a guy that was a textbook narcissist that encouraged people to question everything. Even a broken clock is perfectly accurate twice a day. (Speaking of cliche’s right?) There’s a good chance that you belong to an echo chamber. There’s a good chance that you’ve fallen into group think. I say there’s a good chance of this because I truly believe that all of us have this happen to us. It’s just part of life.
4. Keep your emotions in check — Learn to use your thinking brain more and your emotional brain less. Your emotions make you stupid. They cause you to jump to conclusions, think in black and white and blocks your ability to see things from a different perspective. Learn to use your thinking brain and only put your emotions into things that you love or are passionate about. Learn to think first and feel second.

A lot of people wonder how to enhance their thinking skills and decrease their emotional reactions. Start with meditation, learning and philosophy. If you put your phone down for an hour and read a book instead everyday, you’ll be on the road to being smart in no time.