What is your definition of *stupidity*?
I guess we all agree that stupid is not just the opposite of intelligent, because we all know some person who is fairly intelligent but also stupid.
So was is the main characteristic of stupid people?
My personal definition is "being unable to think outside the box".
Stupid people are severly blinkered, they are living inside their box (often together with like-minded people!), they know everything about the interior of this box, which is their world, they may be renowned experts about this box-world (yes, there are stupid professors !), but they can't step outside (mentally) to look around and to gather new evidence, maybe even to change their mind.
They may be wonderful persons, funny, nice, empathic, altruistic.... but intellectually their little box is the world, and that's it.
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AnneWimsey
Level 9
Nov 23, 2021
0
@Matias actually, if someone says that (why it is in quotes) it is the final definition of them.
Stupidity: the act of rejecting facts.
Examples include the triumph of ideology over data (sex abstinence as a form of birth control instead of teaching young people about the facts), the misrepresentation one thing as another (claiming that the Bible is the evidence God's existence, not the claim of God's existence), and being terrified of the side effects of Covid-19 vaccines while ignoring the consequences of having Covid-19.
I see stupidity as just one manifestation of cognitive deficiency.
anglophone
Level 9
Nov 22, 2021
0
"The significant difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its' limits."
(quote often wrongly attributed to Einstein)
FearlessFly
Level 9
Nov 22, 2021
2
In my opinion, stupidity is making the same type of cognitive errors and decisions repeatedly. Yes, I’ve heard the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, but stupidity is a failure to take cognizance of one’s ignorance or shortcomings, ignore new information and thus fail to learn, whether it be from one’s own prior mistakes or the mistakes of others.
p-nullifidian
Level 8
Nov 22, 2021
3
It may not exist at all. Just as there is no such thing as dark, only a lack of light, and no such thing as cold only a lack of heat, so there may be, no such thing as stupid only too little thinking.
Fernapple
Level 9
Nov 22, 2021
4
Curious. But what if too little thinking, like intelligence, could be mapped to genetics? Might the definition be of less importance than basic cause-and-effect?
@Matias, @p-nullifidian The cause and effects would be very important and the definition much less so. But since a definition is a immaterial human cultural construct, and genetics a material part of nature, they exist in almost completely different magisteria anyway.
Word
Level 8
Nov 22, 2021
0
Interesting but I think Vonnegut had it right.
Stupidity is flawed thinking that goes against ones own best interest.......
Dhiltong
Level 8
Nov 22, 2021
2
What if one's interests involve removing others, maybe parents, from this picture? Is it then intelligent to kill them?
Then people discover A Glitch in the Matrix and start “thinking” way too far outside the box with Mandela effects everywhere in sight. So it can go the other way.
But there are post-structuralists such as Baudrillard who inspire us to think outside the box. The Matrix was a bastardization of his ideas.
Scott321
Level 7
Nov 22, 2021
2
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