IMO ignorance and stupidity are two completely different things. Ignorance is not knowing things. It's a universal malady; we all suffer from it, and it can be cured, piece by piece here and there, by learning.
Stupidity is different. Stupidity does not consist of not knowing, but of not *learning.* If your ignorance causes you to do something dumb, and this brings immediate consequences that clearly demonstrate that that was a bad idea, and then you do it again anyway, *that* is stupidity.
Yes and then you have to distinguish unintelligent from stupid. Stupidity describes behaviour you actually do; unintelligent/intelligent describes the mental tools at your disposal, your POTENTIAL for effective reasoning etc.
Amen! - the expert has the most limited perspective on possibility:
"Never confuse education with intelligence - you can have a PhD and still be an idiot."
...and...
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts…The experts who are leading you may be wrong… I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television -- words, books, and so on -- are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.”
> Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts…The experts who are leading you may be wrong.
Always remember that the most famous scientist of all time, the man whose very name has become synonymous with genius, Albert Einstein, earned his fame by proving that the well-understood, universally accepted principles of Newtonian physics were, in fact, incorrect.
Someone can indeed have a PhD and still be an idiot (and not know it).
But don't make the logically fallacious leap to the idea that all (or even most) people with PhDs are idiots. A lot of the comments below the line on this excellent essay seem to be leaning in that direction.
Fantastic! I found a couple of ways to address my own bias: 1. get rid of the labels that bind you to an identity and belief system, and 2. just shut up. Ignore the temptation always to respond, and, as you noted, win arguments. I changed my political party affiliation to Independent years ago, which profoundly impacted my thinking. More recently, when I'm with someone who makes ridiculous, unfounded, and politically biased assertions, I nod my head and smile.
> 2. just shut up. Ignore the temptation always to respond, and, as you noted, win arguments. I changed my political party affiliation to Independent years ago, which profoundly impacted my thinking. More recently, when I'm with someone who makes ridiculous, unfounded, and politically biased assertions, I nod my head and smile.
Do you find that your mind forms beliefs on the topic of discussion, despite not getting involved in the argument?
The first one is arguably difficult for me to achieve. But i have experienced how good number 2 can be. Not only do we not make a fool of ourselves, I tend to hear their assumptions if we let people talk long enough.
Best thing ever did for my own intellectual honesty was to become independent, because I no longer felt bound to defend the indefensible Because My Tribe.
As someone who was brought up in a cult and managed to break free later in life, this article hits pretty close to home because I've experienced how adept we can be at self delusion in an extreme way.
And just like the article says, I don't think intelligence had much to do with my leaving; several of my former acquaintances were much smarter than me and are still in the cult, staunchly defending beliefs that are totally irrational.
Unfortunately it usually takes facing the real-life consequences of an irrational belief in order to burst an ideological bubble.
The current gender cult tries very hard not just to keep deluding itself but to demonise anyone who disagrees. It succeeds in this by dismissing "real world consequences" as the lies and accusation of bigots ("transphobes"): with a virulence that betrays psychological projection.
The most common projection pattern of transactivists is "DARVO": Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
I have left two cults in my life. One, a religious cult into which I was born, and the other, a political one I was unknowingly led into early in my academic life. I escaped each one by being willing to explore the worlds outside the cults, by reading and listening to other viewpoints (the Forbidden Zone). It was frightening as hell the first time. Even worried I might get zapped from heaven. Went to counseling and literally asked the clueless professional, “where does one go when one comes to realize “the true church” is not, in fact, true.” The second time, years later, was also a huge awakening but not as frightening as I soon recognized the landscape as similar to my age 29 religious awakening. Still, it was a process and very disconcerting. I also felt the need to jettison labels entirely and live in the liminal space of no labels and radical curiosity. I am very attuned now to cult like behavior. I feel triggered by it but try to keep that to myself in my professional practice.
Excellent work. I now have a much better understanding why I avoid the company of intelligent people generally, while cherishing those with humility and character.
Good article - thank you. And in some ways the conclusion is similar to that of George Orwell in his essay, Notes on Nationalism:
"As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one's own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognise that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it."
This was absolutely phenomenal. It's like a short manual to alethiology. I've caught myself engaging in exactly those kinds of rationalizations for FIBs (and probably much more often, not caught myself), and my experience is precisely what you describe - by focusing on curiosity, wanting to know simply for the sake of wanting to know, I'm best able to dodge around the gorilla mind that wants to be confirmed to be 'right' far more than it wants to be right.
> So be open to the possibility that you may be wrong, and always be willing to change your mind
This is the topic I exclusively write in my substack: skepticism. The problem is that people misunderstand what skepticism should mean, even self-described "skeptics".
Your two high values--humility and curiosity--are contained in my high value: *uncertainty*. When one is uncertain about everything one believes, that irreducibly leads to humility. And because one doesn't know anything with 100% certainty, there's always something more to learn, which leads to curiosity.
Your quote about rationality not being about intelligence rings very similar to my quote: "rationality is not about being good at logic: it’s about not being bad at it". A "rational" person may wrongly conclude that not being bad at something is the same as being good at it, but that's the thing: are you 100% certain?
Precisely because skepticism today is misunderstood I invented a new term: meta-skeptic. A meta-skeptic is uncertain about absolutely everything, especially his/her own skepticism.
It’s interesting to see how people spin parts of this piece to fit their biases, without realizing that they are committing errors the piece warns against.
People troubled by the criticisms of “wokeism” seem to think that the kind of criticism Gurwinder makes can’t be consistent with respect for wokeism’s good intentions, or appreciation for the worth of much of that ideology’s values. His criticism is actually pretty mild, it seems to me.
Another misunderstanding is that criticism of wokeism is an implicit acceptance of the various dubious ideas found on the right.
It’s actually possible to be troubled by flaws on both sides; creeping authoritarianism on the right doesn’t justify irrational conclusions on the left, any more than dubious thinking on the left justifies creeping authoritarianism on the right.
But surely a key element of wokeism IS …. authoritarianism. The (quite briskly!) creeping authoritarianism is coming from the LEFT. And, I’m sorry, I will confess to not a shadow of self doubt in making that assertion.
The Power of "I Don't Know" in our modern culture has been underestimated. I am drawn to people who are honest and forthright enough to admit when they don't know something. It is so rare to find.
One of the smartest humans I ever knew used to ask dumb questions all the time, questions that any smart human ought to be able to answer. Stuff that should have been embarrassing not to know.
Ideology must by definition be irrational therefore biased: it is a fixed notion in a world who's minutiae and paradigms constantly shift. If we accept that most people at "expert" status are literate in many theories of knowledge their bias may come more from fear than bad or selective epistemiology. EG I can debate equality with a moderate leftist - we both want as open a society as possible and value equality as a social good. We disagree on method - i favour fixing rules to create equal opportunities where they want to fix outcomes. One or other will carry the debate. Now you can't do that with people like Oxbridge, Harvard or Samual Cartwright types who believe the colour of a man's skin equates to his character. Holocaust museums, rigorous historians (yes there are some) and events in the Balkans, Rwanda and now Ukraine are testament to this. Bias against these closed ideologies of left or right origin is not necessarily just the blind spot Gurwinder identifies, but may simply be normal human fear. The best solution to racial supremacists and men with beards and penises claiming to be women is the rule of law. Sure they should be aloud to carry on in their own private homes or consenting social clubs but when they get into the public square (or ladies changing room) then the rest of us have some say. Trying to return UK/US/ANZAC countries to the rule of law is the best solution to the threat of closeed society ideologues. If that doesn't work we'll evetually have to go to the mat, as Ukraine has had to with Russia.
Tu as toujours de l’esprit et de la sensibilité dans tes textes, j’aime vraiment bien te lire. C’est vrai que l’humilité et la curiosité font partie des plus jolies qualités !
Once at a former job, I took an action that my boss questioned me about. (I’m not trying to be hopelessly vague; I simply don’t remember what the action was.) I told her I did it because I was curious. “Maybe you’re too curious,” she said, trying to dissuade me from similar actions. I immediately started looking for another job. The idea that a leader would try to squash curiosity was so abhorrent to me.
Excellent piece. ‘Convictions are the disguised servants of our passions...’ according to Joseph Conrad (in The Secret Agent), an idea developed from Nietzsche. Ask ‘what am I trying to achieve by thinking this, what are my real motives?’
Once upon a time, ignorance could be used to excuse stupidity. Then we got the internet and found out that ignorance was never the problem.
IMO ignorance and stupidity are two completely different things. Ignorance is not knowing things. It's a universal malady; we all suffer from it, and it can be cured, piece by piece here and there, by learning.
Stupidity is different. Stupidity does not consist of not knowing, but of not *learning.* If your ignorance causes you to do something dumb, and this brings immediate consequences that clearly demonstrate that that was a bad idea, and then you do it again anyway, *that* is stupidity.
I think that was Caz's point.
Yes and then you have to distinguish unintelligent from stupid. Stupidity describes behaviour you actually do; unintelligent/intelligent describes the mental tools at your disposal, your POTENTIAL for effective reasoning etc.
Great comment.
Wuoww how accurate and sharp mate! Comment at the level of the post
Amen! - the expert has the most limited perspective on possibility:
"Never confuse education with intelligence - you can have a PhD and still be an idiot."
...and...
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts…The experts who are leading you may be wrong… I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television -- words, books, and so on -- are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.”
~ Richard Feynman, Quantum Physicist
> Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts…The experts who are leading you may be wrong.
Always remember that the most famous scientist of all time, the man whose very name has become synonymous with genius, Albert Einstein, earned his fame by proving that the well-understood, universally accepted principles of Newtonian physics were, in fact, incorrect.
"You can have a PhD and still be an idiot, but at least you'll know it." Fixed it for you.
O but they don't - that's the whole point.
Someone can indeed have a PhD and still be an idiot (and not know it).
But don't make the logically fallacious leap to the idea that all (or even most) people with PhDs are idiots. A lot of the comments below the line on this excellent essay seem to be leaning in that direction.
Yes, and I blame Hollywood movies for much of that. Did Wonder Woman actually lasso an RPG??
Fantastic! I found a couple of ways to address my own bias: 1. get rid of the labels that bind you to an identity and belief system, and 2. just shut up. Ignore the temptation always to respond, and, as you noted, win arguments. I changed my political party affiliation to Independent years ago, which profoundly impacted my thinking. More recently, when I'm with someone who makes ridiculous, unfounded, and politically biased assertions, I nod my head and smile.
Some additional thoughts on humility and curiosity and changes in the workplace: http://www.valerius.us/blog-posts/quality-thinking-essential-skills-for-the-21st-century-or-how-to-make-friends-with-the-big-brain
> 2. just shut up. Ignore the temptation always to respond, and, as you noted, win arguments. I changed my political party affiliation to Independent years ago, which profoundly impacted my thinking. More recently, when I'm with someone who makes ridiculous, unfounded, and politically biased assertions, I nod my head and smile.
Do you find that your mind forms beliefs on the topic of discussion, despite not getting involved in the argument?
I also don't use labels. Not just for myself, but when I describe others. I find some people hate that! They want you on their team!
The first one is arguably difficult for me to achieve. But i have experienced how good number 2 can be. Not only do we not make a fool of ourselves, I tend to hear their assumptions if we let people talk long enough.
Best thing ever did for my own intellectual honesty was to become independent, because I no longer felt bound to defend the indefensible Because My Tribe.
Just shut up. 100%! :)
As someone who was brought up in a cult and managed to break free later in life, this article hits pretty close to home because I've experienced how adept we can be at self delusion in an extreme way.
And just like the article says, I don't think intelligence had much to do with my leaving; several of my former acquaintances were much smarter than me and are still in the cult, staunchly defending beliefs that are totally irrational.
Unfortunately it usually takes facing the real-life consequences of an irrational belief in order to burst an ideological bubble.
Good for you in breaking free.
The current gender cult tries very hard not just to keep deluding itself but to demonise anyone who disagrees. It succeeds in this by dismissing "real world consequences" as the lies and accusation of bigots ("transphobes"): with a virulence that betrays psychological projection.
The most common projection pattern of transactivists is "DARVO": Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
I have left two cults in my life. One, a religious cult into which I was born, and the other, a political one I was unknowingly led into early in my academic life. I escaped each one by being willing to explore the worlds outside the cults, by reading and listening to other viewpoints (the Forbidden Zone). It was frightening as hell the first time. Even worried I might get zapped from heaven. Went to counseling and literally asked the clueless professional, “where does one go when one comes to realize “the true church” is not, in fact, true.” The second time, years later, was also a huge awakening but not as frightening as I soon recognized the landscape as similar to my age 29 religious awakening. Still, it was a process and very disconcerting. I also felt the need to jettison labels entirely and live in the liminal space of no labels and radical curiosity. I am very attuned now to cult like behavior. I feel triggered by it but try to keep that to myself in my professional practice.
Exactly like paying tithe in the religion actually causes mor harm than leaving the religion and saving money and your life gets better
Excellent work. I now have a much better understanding why I avoid the company of intelligent people generally, while cherishing those with humility and character.
"I avoid intelligent people generally".
It should be on a t-shirt, I love it.
Good article - thank you. And in some ways the conclusion is similar to that of George Orwell in his essay, Notes on Nationalism:
"As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one's own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognise that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it."
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
This was absolutely phenomenal. It's like a short manual to alethiology. I've caught myself engaging in exactly those kinds of rationalizations for FIBs (and probably much more often, not caught myself), and my experience is precisely what you describe - by focusing on curiosity, wanting to know simply for the sake of wanting to know, I'm best able to dodge around the gorilla mind that wants to be confirmed to be 'right' far more than it wants to be right.
Incentives matter. "Smart" DEI/ESG commissars hold stupid beliefs because they get paid well to espouse them. Their strategy akin to religion: stoke fear, repent by paying them, then keep hiring more priests because the work is never done. Our institutions are now crumbling under the weight of these destructive commissars: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2. Calculate your ESG score here: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-raise-your-esg-score
> So be open to the possibility that you may be wrong, and always be willing to change your mind
This is the topic I exclusively write in my substack: skepticism. The problem is that people misunderstand what skepticism should mean, even self-described "skeptics".
Your two high values--humility and curiosity--are contained in my high value: *uncertainty*. When one is uncertain about everything one believes, that irreducibly leads to humility. And because one doesn't know anything with 100% certainty, there's always something more to learn, which leads to curiosity.
Your quote about rationality not being about intelligence rings very similar to my quote: "rationality is not about being good at logic: it’s about not being bad at it". A "rational" person may wrongly conclude that not being bad at something is the same as being good at it, but that's the thing: are you 100% certain?
Precisely because skepticism today is misunderstood I invented a new term: meta-skeptic. A meta-skeptic is uncertain about absolutely everything, especially his/her own skepticism.
Tim’s Maxim: Everyone is mostly wrong about everything, always.
It’s interesting to see how people spin parts of this piece to fit their biases, without realizing that they are committing errors the piece warns against.
People troubled by the criticisms of “wokeism” seem to think that the kind of criticism Gurwinder makes can’t be consistent with respect for wokeism’s good intentions, or appreciation for the worth of much of that ideology’s values. His criticism is actually pretty mild, it seems to me.
Another misunderstanding is that criticism of wokeism is an implicit acceptance of the various dubious ideas found on the right.
It’s actually possible to be troubled by flaws on both sides; creeping authoritarianism on the right doesn’t justify irrational conclusions on the left, any more than dubious thinking on the left justifies creeping authoritarianism on the right.
But surely a key element of wokeism IS …. authoritarianism. The (quite briskly!) creeping authoritarianism is coming from the LEFT. And, I’m sorry, I will confess to not a shadow of self doubt in making that assertion.
The Power of "I Don't Know" in our modern culture has been underestimated. I am drawn to people who are honest and forthright enough to admit when they don't know something. It is so rare to find.
One of the smartest humans I ever knew used to ask dumb questions all the time, questions that any smart human ought to be able to answer. Stuff that should have been embarrassing not to know.
Later I figured out why he does that.
Ideology must by definition be irrational therefore biased: it is a fixed notion in a world who's minutiae and paradigms constantly shift. If we accept that most people at "expert" status are literate in many theories of knowledge their bias may come more from fear than bad or selective epistemiology. EG I can debate equality with a moderate leftist - we both want as open a society as possible and value equality as a social good. We disagree on method - i favour fixing rules to create equal opportunities where they want to fix outcomes. One or other will carry the debate. Now you can't do that with people like Oxbridge, Harvard or Samual Cartwright types who believe the colour of a man's skin equates to his character. Holocaust museums, rigorous historians (yes there are some) and events in the Balkans, Rwanda and now Ukraine are testament to this. Bias against these closed ideologies of left or right origin is not necessarily just the blind spot Gurwinder identifies, but may simply be normal human fear. The best solution to racial supremacists and men with beards and penises claiming to be women is the rule of law. Sure they should be aloud to carry on in their own private homes or consenting social clubs but when they get into the public square (or ladies changing room) then the rest of us have some say. Trying to return UK/US/ANZAC countries to the rule of law is the best solution to the threat of closeed society ideologues. If that doesn't work we'll evetually have to go to the mat, as Ukraine has had to with Russia.
Tu as toujours de l’esprit et de la sensibilité dans tes textes, j’aime vraiment bien te lire. C’est vrai que l’humilité et la curiosité font partie des plus jolies qualités !
Fantastic post!
Once at a former job, I took an action that my boss questioned me about. (I’m not trying to be hopelessly vague; I simply don’t remember what the action was.) I told her I did it because I was curious. “Maybe you’re too curious,” she said, trying to dissuade me from similar actions. I immediately started looking for another job. The idea that a leader would try to squash curiosity was so abhorrent to me.
Excellent piece. ‘Convictions are the disguised servants of our passions...’ according to Joseph Conrad (in The Secret Agent), an idea developed from Nietzsche. Ask ‘what am I trying to achieve by thinking this, what are my real motives?’
Bravo. Just became a paid subscriber, and with pleasure, on the basis of this post. Thank you.
I also.