- Stupider Than They Think

This is an interesting essay on how stupid people are.

I'm down with that. I think most people are not only stupid but they're much stupider than they believe. Wanna know how I can tell? Ask anyone how smart they are and you'll get responses which range from 'much smarter than average' at the high end to "about average" at the low end.

Obviously, when your intelligence dips, self assessment of that intelligence is the first thing to go. Some of those "about average" people are clearly below average - most people see that coming. But what's probably more important in the grand scheme of things, is that many of those "above average" people aren't actually above average at all.

"Enlightenment" is the key. If you believe yourself to possess some secret human truth that's been hidden from the global population since all of pre-history but has now finally arrived in your mind, then you are probably one of the people who isn't quite as smart as you think you are. Human nature has been mostly defined for centuries at least; probably more like millenniums. If you believe that you are so rare a creature that you can think of a fundamental human truth that never occurred to Newton, Archimedes, Descartes, Plato or Einstein, then you are probably as delusional as the worst of the "about average" people.

There is an adage in my business that "everything has been thought of". It's not exactly true, but pretty close. The thought is that there are no truly new ideas - or at least not enough of them that you can make a living bringing them to light. Even adding one new tiny brick to the vast pyramid built of others knowledge is exceedingly rare.

I'm a little smarter than the average bear myself and I've invested the bulk of my life trying to think up something new. To my knowledge, in over 20 years of trying I've only managed to come up with one original idea, and for all I know there are 100 people out there who thought of it too. That is - I only thought of one thing which also turned out to be true. Everything else had either been done a million times by others (meaning there was very little meat left on the bone for me) or turned out to not accurately reflect reality.

That last part is the key to the reliable failure of liberal 'enlightenment", it simply doesn't reflect reality. It doesn't stand up to objective verification. Unilateral disarmament doesn't lead to peace. Redistribution of wealth doesn't lead to prosperity. High taxes don't incentivize wealth creation, and labor unions don't add economic value. But don't try telling that to a liberal. To them, challenging their demonstrably stupid ideas is a recipe for anger. They see themselves as being more enlightened than you, and if you challenge their ideas you're challenging their superiority. Their ego's can't handle that.

Anyway, if liberals were genuinely stupid then I think there would be fewer problems in the world, but they aren't. Most of them are actually "about average" but think of themselves as "above average". They are just barely smart enough to come up with rationalizations that justify their lack of "actual" success in spite of their (inaccurately self assessed) superior intelligence.

The most over self-estimated liberals imagine conspiracies. It's "the man" or "the patriarchy" that is keeping them down. The next up moralize it away. They would never "concern themselves with such base issues as profit" when there is a "higher truth" to be found. And the smartest but still vastly over self-estimated do both. "The entire system is based on greed and exploitation and should be dismantled from the ground up."

These last ones are the group we're hearing from every Mayday, and at every "Occupy Wall Street" protest. They are the ones that define the message of the far left. They are all people that are within .5 STD of the mean intelligence, but believe themselves to be the only ones who have discovered a new human truth. It's nothing but vanity, and envy, and stupidity masking itself as wit and enlightenment.

How easy life would be for all of us if they had the emotional strength to face their own self delusions.