Six warning signs your stuipd

"If stupidity were not confusingly similar to progress, ability, hope and improvement, no one would want to be stupid." – Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, 1931

You’re dumbing down Hexagon?

What?

“Six warning signs you’re stupid”? Even spelt correctly, it’s, well… stupid. And smug. What triggered it? Tomorrow’s inauguration? The long-anticipated death of critical thinking? The total enshittification of everything?

I’m just trying something new.

Why?

Nobody’s subscribing.

I thought subscriptions were up.

They are, but only free subscribers. And followers, whatever they are. And fake AI bot accounts. But no new paid subscribers. Which, well…

Is perfectly understandable. People have only so much money. You should lower the price.

To what?

Two bucks a month. That’s affordable. If even a fraction of your free subscribers paid that…

And they would gladly if you just smartened up and gave them what they wanted.

Which is what?

Useful stuff.

Like?

Like, I don’t know. Definitely not six warning signs that they’re stupid. Stuff like which trendy Paris restaurants they should avoid, where to find the best croissants, what’s French for shit-for-brains, or why Macron has doomed the Fifth Republic. You know, useful French stuff.

Substack is awash in useful French stuff. Which is why I’m trying this new “Six Warning Signs” series.

But why start with “you’re stupid”? It’s arrogant and insulting.

It’s a joke. Covert irony. My readers will get it. They’re smart as whips. They’ll know it’s not about them but about stupidity in general.

Okay. So, what’s the first warning sign that you’re stupid?

That you opened this. That you’ve read all the way to here without moving on to something else.

What?

Stupidity is deceptive. People do stupid things and accept stupid ideas because they mistakenly believe that doing so will have beneficial results. As Robert Musil said – in the subtitle quoted above – if it were easy to tell stupidity apart from progress, ability, hope, and improvement, no one would want to be stupid.

Why would anyone “want” to be stupid?

You seem to.

No, seriously. Nobody wants to be stupid.

Except you, apparently.

Stop it. You do realise you’re me, right? That I created you?

Ha.

By the way, why do you always put quotes by famous people in your subtitles?

It lends authority.

It’s lazy and pretentious.

In your humble opinion.

IMHO, yes. Okay, let’s start again. How is progress, ability, hope and improvement confusingly similar to stupidity?

Think it through. Innovative, forward-thinking – so-called progress – often has terrible consequences. People confuse confidence or boldness with ability. Hope, when it becomes blind optimism or unquestioning faith, stops you from seeing what’s really going on. Improvement: efforts to make things better are more often than not based on a lack of proper judgment or understanding.

Examples?

The Hindenburg. Soviet collectivisation. Prohibition. Stalin’s Great Purge. DDT. Plastics. Thalidomide. Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Laetrile. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The War on Drugs. China’s One-Child policy. Conversion therapy. Enron. The American-led invasion of Iraq. Subprime mortgages. Glyphosate. Homeopathy. No Child Left Behind. Ethanol subsidies. Phonics-only reading. Brexit. Hydroxychloroquine. Employee tracking software. Should I continue? Recent examples are stupidly numerous. Cataloguing them would be like trying to count how many X posts are churned out by bots.

You’re a bot.

Says the bot.

We can’t all sit around prattling away on Substack. Nothing would get done. We have to take risks and explore new ideas. That’s what it means to be human.

The Encyclopédistes thought human stupidity was a curable disease caused by poor brain formation and the “languor of animal spirits”. Or both. Or by blocked nerves, or nerves that were too damp or slack. Or by the softness of the brain’s fibres, their lack of elasticity. Or the thickening of the humours, their aqueous and humid nature. Or the coldness of the blood and the “juices that serve the animal functions”.

“This is why people who live in the mountains or wetlands, hardened by work and sweating more from their extremities than from their heads, are more prone to stupidity. This is also why those who have received a proper education, who have been taught in the humanities and are accustomed to reflection, are less prone to stupidity than rustic people, in whom the habit of reflection has not been formed and the incapacity for actual reflection and judgment appears more noticeable.”¹

That’s just the stupidest form of stupidity. What about stupidity’s higher forms?

What?

The higher, more pretentious forms of stupidity. The ones Musil said had overrun even the loftiest intellectual spheres, and were the most dangerous forms of disease facing humanity.²

Musil confessed he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “I do not know what stupidity is. I have not discovered a theory of it, with whose help I could undertake to redeem the world… This may be due to my ignorance, but it is more likely that the question: What is stupidity? corresponds as little to the habits of thought today as the questions of what goodness, beauty or electricity are.”

Musil wrote that way back in 1937. To paraphrase what he said next, no one would dare to doubt that the world has seen progress and improvement since then. Can you imagine if he lived today? In a world where windmills beach whales and Jewish space lasers, longfin Delta smelts and diversity training cause wildfires in California? These days, only a complete idiot would try to say something intelligent about stupidity.

Stupid is as stupid does. Which goes without saying. And vice versa.

I’m not following.

That’s because you’re stupid.

I don’t think that’s fair. Or true.

You don’t think period. This is more your speed: six warning signs that you’re eating too much fat.

Enough. What’s the second sign that you’re stupid?

That you’re still reading this.

Stupidity isn’t in itself a bad thing. It fills and empties our coffers and fridges.

That makes no sense.

It’s driving our best and brightest to design and build 100 spaceships a year for the next 10 years to carry a million volunteer human colonists to the fourth planet from the sun.³

That’s ridiculous.

Maybe. Probably. Who’s to say? Let’s talk about those higher forms of stupidity. Musil described several types:

The naturally stupid: The “honourable” type, based on a simple limitation of cognitive abilities, uninfluenced by external factors.

The culturally stupid: their collective mindlessness stems from behaviours and beliefs backed by cultural norms and traditions that, over time, become accepted as unassailable truths.

The ideologically stupid: their particular brand of denseness results from dogma, from rigid, uncritical adherence to systems of ideals or ideas. Most ideologically stupid people adopt these to “fit in”, or because they’re afraid of being insignificant or dead, or because they don’t have the time or wherewithal to think for themselves.

The morally stupid: theirs is caused by adherence to moral conventions and societal rules without any understanding of the underlying principles. Examples: ignoring climate change, being a racist, advocating eugenics, turning a blind eye to corruption or the suffering of others, lacking empathy for people who think differently, “just following orders”, all manner of self-righteousness, making decisions based on immediate benefits without considering long-term consequences, advocating for truth while being a lying sack of shit.

The sentimentally stupid: their idiocy arises from decisions made based on emotions and sentiments – “gut” feelings, magical thinking in all its forms – instead of logical reasoning.

The politically stupid: stupidity that prioritises power and influence over genuine understanding and effective governance. This widespread blight causes legislators to cast votes that advance their own or their parties’ interests over those of society. The Ancient Greeks understood this. That’s why they developed the Kleroterion. It’s also why legislators were selected randomly – as a way to resist corruption and protect minorities – in places like the city-states of Florence and Bologna in the Late Gothic period and in Venice from 1268 until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797.

You’re off-subject.

I’m off-subject? You’re the one prattling on about stupidity when you’re supposed to be providing useful French stuff. I’m just trying to help you out.

I don’t need your help.

Let’s move on to the third warning sign.

There isn’t one. Pay attention.

Musil, again, from The Man Without Qualities: “There is absolutely no important thought that stupidity does not know how to use; it is versatile and can put on all the clothes of truth. On the other hand, truth has only one dress and one path and is always at a disadvantage.”

I’m confused. There are lots of clothes but only one dress?

Okay, you're confused but isn't it obvious from what we just learned that you're not only ignorant of the important things, but you think you know them even though you don’t?

You just randomly stole that from Socrates.⁴

I hate to say it, my friend, but I will since no one else is still reading. You're hooked on stupidity, the worst kind. Your own words prove it. That's why you say shit about shit about which you know nothing. And you’re not the only one – most of the people running things are in the same boat –

Stop it. You should read Cipolla’s 1976 essay, “Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”, in which he breaks down human beings into four categories: “the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid.”

Helpless people contribute positively to society but are often taken advantage of by others. They are therefore beneficial to society but not to themselves. Intelligent people contribute positively to society and also benefit themselves from their actions. They are beneficial to both society and themselves. Stupid people cause harm to both society and themselves without any benefit. Bandits pursue their own interests at the expense of others. They are harmful to society but beneficial to themselves. Ineffectual people are those that do not fall into any of the four categories. They exist in their own right, in the centre of the graph.

Where do they exist in the real world?

The ineffectual? Seriously? Look in the mirror.

Ha.

Cipolla derived five fundamental laws of stupidity from these categories:

1. There are always and inevitably more stupid individuals around us than we think.

2. The probability that a particular person is stupid or will at least act stupidly is independent of any other characteristic they might have. Stupidity is distributed uniformly across all levels of society, regardless of education, intelligence or social status.

3. Stupidity is irrational and self-defeating. A stupid person is someone who causes harm to others without deriving any gain for themselves and even possibly incurring losses.

4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. They forget that dealing with stupid people is always a costly mistake.

5. Stupid people are the most dangerous type of people. They act in a way that seems co-ordinated and purposeful, even though they lack any real organisation or leadership.

Where are you going with this?

Toward the fourth warning sign that you’re stupid.

I thought you said these signs were bogus.

I never said that. You said that.

Okay, so what’s the fourth warning sign that you’re stupid?

No, what’s the fourth warning sign that you’re stupid?

Okay, what’s the fourth warning sign that I’m stupid?

You tell me, we’ll both know.

Wow.

Stupid people don’t know that they are stupid. They cause a lot of harm for no good reason. They refuse to learn from their mistakes or accept new information. They spread harmful nonsense and disrupt plans, processes, and systems, leading to chaos.

So what you’re implying is –

The fifth warning sign.

Which is?

The same as all the others.

Including the sixth, I suppose?

Especially the sixth! Don’t you understand anything?

Spell it out for me.

You’re shapeless. And empty. You have no distinct identity. Whatever capacity for critical thinking and rationality you might have, you’ve learned to suppress.

Why would I do that?

To conform better to societal norms and expectations.

What a crock.

Your brand of stupidity is based on a lack of genuine intellectual engagement and critical discourse. Political movements know how to harness this. In such circumstances, your stupidity becomes a collective force that enforces conformity and obedience, turning individual ignorance into a form of social control.

Who said that?

I did.

It doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like some random bot.

Yours is the holy fool’s stupidity, which Musil mentions in passing, and which he discovered in Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, and which, by the way, as I mentioned in this space a couple of weeks ago, is marvellously addressed in the Louvre exhibition Figures du Fou, which is on till 3 February and not to be missed.

Finally, something useful.

If you can’t get to Paris, order a copy of the excellent catalogue.

I live in Paris.

You “live” on this page.

For the love of Pete –

Who the fuck is Pete?

Just give us some damn restaurant tips! Or a French onion soup recipe. Or something about Bayrou or Bolloré or Bardella. Hexagon should be about French stuff; that’s what your readers want. Not this meandering horseshit you keep peddling.

I mentioned the Encyclopédistes!

No, you didn’t. I mentioned the Encyclopédistes.

Your type of higher stupidity is defined as a giving up in the face of life’s demands and challenges and an inability to find oneself. It's a deeper, more profound level of incompetence or helplessness that goes beyond simple mistakes or lack of knowledge and manifests as a failure to succeed or complete a task. Why can’t you make an effort?

What?

Don’t you get tired of feeling like this? That you can’t effectively manage or cope with everyday life?

That’s not true.

That, when faced with challenges or tasks, you tend to give up rather than find solutions or push through?

What are you saying?

I’m saying, as Musil did, that while your particular brand of "higher stupidity" is probably a form of mental illness–

I am not ill.

No, precisely, you’re not exactly ill. Nor, in fact, are you empty. You’re just full of shit. And within the larger context of what’s going on, your inability to succeed or feel at ease in the world might actually be the most rational and understandable response to being alive today. The only “sane” response.

You’re nuts.

Says the kettle.

Says the bot.

It takes one to know one.

Don’t be stupid.

I know you are, but what am I?

I know you are, but what am I? What are you, six?

Who?

You, stupid.

Me? Stupid?

Who else am I talking to?

Yourself, you moron. That’s what I’ve been trying to say since the beginning!

I give up.

Typical.

1. D’Alembert, Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, 1re éd., 1751 (Tome 15, p. 551).

2. Robert Musil, “Uber die Dummheit” (“On Stupidity”), 1937.

3. “Elon Musk’s Plan to Send a Million Colonists to Mars by 2050 Is Pure Delusion”, Gizmodo, 3 June 2022.

4. Plato, First Alcibiades 118a-118b, 350s BCE.