Maybe you don’t ask yourself these questions. Maybe you do.
This is more than merely a Dunning-Kruger article. If you already know what Dunning-Kruger is, you are way ahead of the game here. Irony is not just a river in Egypt.
There is an old saying that crazy people don’t question their sanity, so if you’re questioning your sanity (they say,) you must be sane. I don’t believe that for a minute. I believe many insane people question their sanity. Some conclude “I’m definitely crazy,” and then they just go on with their day. Some regular squares think they are nuts, and they aren’t. It’s quite the fad these days to trumpet how “weird” and crazy you are on social media. Every plain-vanilla normie who robotically mimics whatever the wacknut fringe is doing at the moment LOVES to shout “Look how weird and wild I am! I’m so kookie! I’m so ‘out there’!” to the ether, non-stop. External odd extravagances in clothing, hairstyle/color, piercing, marking, etc. do not stand in for a personality.
I’m getting off the point. The point is that some crazy people question their sanity, and some sane people do as well. Some nutjobs think they are totally fine.
But I don’t think most stupid people think about how stupid they are. Maybe I’m wrong. And I’m not talking about the dumb-girl schtick where – to mitigate embarrassment in a social situation – someone acts dumb.
Intelligence is a sticky topic. It’s way further off-limits for most people than religion and politics. Talking religion or politics is infinitely safer than talking about intelligence. It’s a perilous topic, fraught with danger.
I used to mix all of these things when I spoke publicly in churches. I would start out by insulting the audience, something you aren’t supposed to do. I begin with a verse: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” (1 Cor. 1:26) Which is to say, “listen, if you consider yourself a believer, you are drawn from the pool of the not wise, not mighty, and ignoble. We come from the shallow end of the pool.”
I believe we (as people,) are markedly dumber than people were just a few centuries ago. In fact, people are demonstrably dumber than they were when I was a child. Across the board – dumber. We have more information than any generation in history, but hyper-specialization coupled with the capability of storing and accessing information faster and with greater bandwidth than at any time in history has created a false impression of societal intelligence. But I think that any honest person would say that a high school graduate in 1850 was far more practically intelligent than even the average college graduate today. We like to flatter ourselves into thinking that the old days were the dark ages of ignorance. Why, they used to bleed themselves with leeches! What we don’t really consider is that the average adult in 1910 could milk a cow, make cheese and butter, butcher meat, and grow a successful garden. They could speak on numerous topics, and quote from well-known books. They could do basic accounting, and most knew the basics of civics, and history, and had at least a cursory knowledge of the main works of literature. They had the attention span to write letters and read physical books.
In order to attend what would become Princeton University at the age of 18, James Madison had to show fluency in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. He had to answer questions about any books that would have been a part of cultural/political/social literacy at the time – and he had to respond, in writing, to these questions in any of the aforementioned three languages. But he didn’t have much to worry about. He’d been proficient in Latin since he was 15.
You can get a good measure of the massive decrease in general intelligence by reading books targeted to 8th graders over a period of a few centuries. Perusing a reading comprehension textbook from 1828, in a single short lesson, I found these words…
- Seasonably
- Telemachus
- Ulysses
- Amiable
- Aversion
- Immoderately
- Presently
- Inaccessible
- Goodly
- Pulverized
- Pensive
- Labouring
- Circumstantiated
- Irreligion
Listen, my spell-checker even highlighted some of these words as “wrong” because the computer doesn’t understand them. We learn vocabulary from the things we read, and the things we read (to those of us who do read) are getting dumber every minute. I can usually tell you what someone reads (and if they read) by just talking with them for a few minutes.
So, we have (I believe) a steady decrease in real intelligence over time. Intelligence isn’t just vocabulary. It consists of things like spatial awareness, problem-solving, curiosity, the ability to frame and ask questions, intellectual humility (knowing that you don’t know,) etc. In all of these areas, real intelligence is plummeting. Specialization has had a lot to do with it, but the biggest cause (I believe) is the death of reading.
If you took a newborn child today and raised them and educated them like it was 1828, you’d end up with a different product. A more intelligent product. If we read more difficult books at a younger age, we develop a more extensive vocabulary, increase curiosity, and build a healthy level of intellectual humility. Vocabulary doesn’t just help us describe things, it helps us “think” things. There are things you cannot think because you don’t have the vocabulary for them.
Intelligence is on the decline, so we have that to work with. We live and move in the midst of what is undoubtedly the dumbest generation of people to ever live. So, how do we know if we’re dumb? I mean, I know I’m dumb compared to James Madison, but am I dumb compared to the average dummy today? Consider the fact that by virtue of there being a theoretical “average” IQ, half of the people you meet are below average intelligence. That’s the definition of the thing. And the thing about dumb people is that they are easy to deceive. If I’m dumb, I could be easily tricked into thinking I’m smart. Get it?
Some dangerous reflections:
- If I surround myself with dummies, I am likely to consider myself smarter than them. Then I conclude that I am smart, when in fact I’m just the smartest dummy in my crew.
- All media, news, propaganda, advertising, etc. is written so that the dumbest people can read it or “understand it.” This means that if I am even slightly smarter than the dumbest people, I could be fooled into thinking that my commanding grasp of dumbed-down information is proof that I am smart. “News” today is merely indoctrination for the dumbest non-thinkers. Memes are programming chips for stupid people. Getting information INTO you is different now than it was one hundred or two hundred years ago, and you have less choice in the matter. You used to have to read a book on purpose. Now you read (or listen to) a book’s worth of dumbed-down information every day, against your will. Usually forced on you by people with an agenda that requires your incapacity to think.
- People, almost without exception, are liars. As I mentioned earlier, intelligence is even more taboo a subject (taboo-er?) than religion or politics today. People will tell you that you are smart because they are liars and they know that one thing you really, desperately want to believe about yourself is that you are not an idiot. People will tell you that they are a Presbyterian or a Libertarian, but they won’t tell you that they are smart. They will even share memes that say something like, “Smart people don’t have to tell people they are smart.” B.S. Really smart people don’t tell you they are smart because they have doubts.
- People, because of their insecurities and unwillingness to put themselves on the spot or be responsible, will say they are stupid even though they really don’t believe it. They’ll even brag about it. But if you need me to translate for you, what they are really saying is not “I’m so dumb!” They are saying, “I’m so smart I can fool you into thinking I’m dumb and avoid responsibility for everything!”
I’ve written extensively about the cognitive bias known as Dunning-Kruger. The following is self-plagiarized from my own article on Real Life NPCs:
“Dunning-Kruger is a cognitive bias in which people who are ignorant about a subject (or hyper-specialized and speaking outside or broader than their expertise) wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because over-confidence and a lack of real and broad knowledge of a topic prevent them from accurately assessing their own skills. Dunning-Kruger can be an example of a circular evidence problem because those affected by this cognitive bias are generally immune to any evidence that they suffer from it. In general, DK is this… the less you know about a topic the more you think you know enough to speak and teach on it. This bias can multiply in areas (like science and especially theology) where even a modicum of knowledge can be seen as knowing more than the average person. This can lead the Dunning-Krugerite to believe they (relatively) are an expert, even though the information they have is insufficient and often wrong.”
So, here is the inventory:
*You can be dumb but think you are smart just because you are surrounded by people who are dumber than you.
*You can be dumb, but think you are smart because you are of average intelligence in a dumb generation, but half of the population (by definition) is dumber than you.
*You can have zero intellectual humility (Dunning-Kruger) so since you do not know what you don’t know, you believe yourself to be smart.
*You invert the ruler and the cloth. That is to say, you measure the measuring stick by the thing you are supposed to be measuring. You sit in judgment on intelligence, but you use un-intelligence to judge it. Like the guy who decided if a one-foot ruler was accurate or not by measuring it with his foot.
*You can be dumb but think you are smart because you are highly specialized. You may have been trained in a narrow field of expertise with its own lexicon, rules, and inside baseball jargon. And because you received a doctorate in your specialization, you think you are an expert in bridge integrity or virology.
*You can be dumb but think you are smart because smart people have learned to manipulate and lie to you to profit from you.
*You can be dumb in the midst of a stupid generation that has a vested interest in never letting you know that you, as the emperor, aren’t wearing any clothes.
I have a story about the first time I was tricked into thinking I was smart. It was in the 8th grade. History class. This column is getting too long, and no one will read it. I’ll have to tell that story in a future column. Let me know if you want to hear it.
I’ll leave you with this, intelligence is not really just a position. It is also a trajectory and a momentum. It is Heisenberg-ish, and about that I am uncertain. We exist in a “location” that is described as a measurable or observable level of intelligence. But we are also moving. This momentum and direction is our capacity, ability, and willingness to learn. Some of this we have no control over, but some of it we do. If you are reading my articles regularly, it doesn’t mean you’re smart (or that I am,) it just means that through time we are moving in the right direction. 😊 Movement requires force. The force here is reading stuff that is harder than the stuff you normally read, and not particularly in your specialty. Do that this week, and you’ll be smarter than you were.
***
Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.