Stupid People

Here's what I don't get about stupid people: they never seem to realize that they are stupid.

But they are everywhere. 

Your family members have strong but uninformed opinions. Your neighbors have racist friends who come over to their cookouts. Your boss gives you instructions that don't withstand intellectual scrutiny. Your co-workers have such a strong political bias that every topic comes back to blaming either Obama or  George W for whatever it is they are complaining about.

Homer Simpson once said that there was no room on this earth for someone with a 105 IQ. Sadly, he was right.

I'm not speaking about uneducated people. There are plenty of people without formal educations who have common sense.  But sadly, the dumbest people you'll meet are the ones most likely to think that they alone are the Universe's Lone Source of Truth.

There are many kinds of stupid people. But those who are dumb and proud of it are the worst.

Dumb, Proud and Sure

Read a good, long facebook rant lately? There's a five-percent chance it came from your friend who is a brilliant ideologue and  95 percent chance it came from an idiot who felt the world needed to hear their unique thoughts despite the author's failure to master punctuation, the spelling of two-syllable words, or the distinction between "your" and "you're." These types cross all political perspectives, but ironically many of them seem to be the people most likely to have strong opinions that no language other than English be spoken in America in any circumstance, even though they themselves have yet to master it.

These are the people for whom the depth of their knowledge and the strength of their opinions are entirely disproportionate.  These are the stupid people who make up for their lack of intellectual rigor by clinging to every opinion they possess as a moral certainty, as though the strength of a wacky belief somehow makes it more likely to be true.

It's hard to have a conversation with one of this type without hearing an opinion based on three or four assumptions that are provably false.  But if you point out a logical flaw in their argument, they will respond by slightly changing the subject to shift the argument in a different direction.

I had an interaction like this the other day:

Stupid Person:  The problem with America today is that we've got a Muslim President who is an atheist, and he's only making laws to help minorities.

Me: The President doesn't actually make laws. And if he's a Muslim, then he can't also be an atheist. But actually...

Stupid Person: Well, I just think we need to go back to the days when America was free.

You can't argue with logic like that.  You literally can't--especially on facebook.  That's a lesson I learned years ago the hard way.  It's best to just walk away from these conversations.  But not all stupid people are so easily avoided. For instance:

The Idiot

These people are just dumb.  Unlike the first category, these people don't mean to inflict their Stupid on you, they just can't help it. They are less blameworthy but also more likely to ruin your day. 

When you buy a 99 cent drink and 75 cent candy bar and the cashier tells you without blinking that your total is $3.25, you know you are in the midst of an idiot.  You do the math for them, but they argue that the nearly $2.00 difference is because you forgot to include sales tax on your $1.64 purchase. You point out that sales tax is only nine percent, and to get the total to $3.25 it would have to be 200 percent. You get a blank stare, and a repeated point to the total on the register.

Daily life is full of these people, because they never get promoted beyond performing the menial tasks that fill our days. These are the customer service reps who tell you that you can report your internet outage online. This is the insurance rep who tells you that your policy was cancelled because you didn't renew, and that no renewal notice was sent because your policy was cancelled.

They live in a perfectly circular pool of logic, never quite coming around full circle. It isn't their fault that they are stupid, but that doesn't make dealing with them any easier. 

Some people are born stupid.  Others get there as a lifestyle choice.  The idiots are the former. The latter are...

the Happily Stupid Slackers

They also answer the phone often for large companies. When you call to say your bill is wrong, they refuse to investigate beyond looking at it and confirming that you owe whatever it says.

When you call a restaurant to ask if it will be open Christmas Eve, this is the employee who asks you what day it falls on and then quotes you the regular schedule for that day without giving the Christmas Eve issue a second thought. 

These are the computer service techs who can walk you through their pre-written script, but are useless when asked a question outside of it, and are unable to even start the script from page 3 when you tell them what you've already tried.

Whatever your problem is, these are the people who might have the wherewithal to help, but they choose not to, coasting instead through life on the logic of the information directly in front of them.  These people are the people who adopt every single belief their parents have, not because they've explored and rejected the alternatives, but because they don't want to put in the effort.

These people don't have to be stupid. They just choose to be.

I could give you more examples, but I'd prefer to just rest of the skimpy few paragraphs I've written above.

Anyway, the people who choose not to know anything are pretty much the opposite of...

The Secret Expert

Standing next to the microwave causes cancer. You shouldn't go to sleep with wet hair, or you'll get pneumonia. The experts say you should chew each bite of food 48 times, and drink 8 glasses of water every day. Statistics show that cats whose names start with T live longer than others.  The government says it isn't conducting studies on alien life forms, but my uncle knows a guy who told me they are.  And trust me, they are.

You can't argue with someone whose opinions are supported by unnamed experts in every field whose opinions can be introduced on a whim to support whatever proposition is up for debate. Eight out of ten surveys show that this is the hardest kind of argument to win.

The experts all agree.

But what about?

Everyone Else

Everyone has an illogical habit and a few thoughts that don't always add up.  Yesterday, I brought my lunch to work, heated it and then absentmindedly put it back in my lunch container uneaten and brought it home, so perhaps I'm not the best person to write this column.

I do stupid things more often I'd like.  That's why I don't blame people for being stupid. I only blame people for being stupid and obnoxious.

If you don't want to be one of those people, just consider that if don't know very much about a given subject, maybe it's not a good idea to have a really strong opinion about it. If you don't have an informed source for your opinion, maybe you should look into getting one. But not one that you just made up on the spot.

Even if you do think you know a lot about a subject, it still might be a good idea to listen to the other person's side of the argument. 

That is, unless the person on the other side fits into one of those categories above.