I was pointed toward a study piece today, it’s rather long and boring but, made a valid point all the same .. the link is here if you are interested

As none of us really like long winded scientific stuff, here is the thrust of it …

It is now widely accepted that some people are so stupid, they are too stupid to know they are stupid!

Put another way, someone can make stupid decisions but, because they, as a person, are stupid, they have no idea their decisions are stupid so believe them to make perfect sense. If someone argued with them their decision was stupid they’d still not get it because they are stupid.

So, for some people, until they ‘get’ that realisation that they may be stupid, they’ll simply have no concept that they are, in fact, stupid.

Seems obvious but …. not if your stupid!

How about this, it makes little sense on first reading and then, perfect sense afterwards … unless you are stupid of course:

There are things we know we know about. There are things we know we don’t know.  And there are things that are unknown unknowns.  We don’t know that we don’t know.

Does that make sense to you?

OK, let’s break it down for you … the first part:

There are things we know we know about … We know we know the sky is blue

There are things we know we don’t know …. I know I don’t know the boiling point of battery acid

There are unknown unknowns …. That is, I mentioned the two above because I know they exist, if I didn’t know something existed then I’d not only not know the details of it but also have no idea that ‘it’ existed so, I’d not know what I don’t know.

Hence the last statement … we don’t know that we don’t know or, we are that stupid but we are too stupid to know it, others know it but, the stupid don’t so, to them, they cannot know they are stupid until they know what stupid is.

There, glad I sorted that out for you .. if you are still struggling with it, it’s OK, if you know you have no idea what this was about then, you are probably not ‘that’ stupid!