Before I start, I must assure the reader that I will give no contemporary example that supports the premise of the title. To do so would alienate at least half my readers, who would in outrage, proclaim that I was the best proof of the title, or even worse, that I fit only the second half of the title. So I’ll wallow in generalities and historical citations to make my point.
First, who’s smart enough to be concomitantly stupid? Just about anyone who has mastered a skill, craft, or profession that requires considerable intellectual ability to attain proficiency. People who are well educated, irrespective of how that education was acquired, and who are current on the key issues and events that press on their daily lives. The stuff that is important to anyone with an enquiring mind is also the soil in which stupidity can take hold like a mushroom in a damp forest.
I’m not writing about error; it afflicts everyone with alarming frequency. My subject is firmly held beliefs that are seemingly the result of reasoned examination. The key word is ‘seemingly’. It appears that rational examination of a problem may be carried out successfully by a person who makes a mess of another problem that poses no more intrinsic difficulty than the first.
This issue is complex and I will only touch on it here. At the piece’s end I will list a couple of sources that deal with it in much greater depth and with a wider lens.
There are several ways for an intelligent mind to ditch its anchor and drift beyond the horizon of reason. The first is laziness. Some people just get tired of thinking and turn off the reason motor at unpredictable moments. When prodded to activity, they can usually be depended on to sort things out.
Perhaps the most spectacular example of a great mind being stupid in the extreme is Isaac Newton’s behavior during the South Sea Bubble of 1720. The details are readily available. Briefly, the South Seas Company was formed in 1711. In 1720 in exchange for taking on a large portion of the government’s debt, the company was granted a supposed monopoly on trade with South America and the islands of the “South Seas”. This deal fueled intense speculation to the point of mania. Early in the boom, Newton sold his shares for a substantial profit, reportedly making around £7,000 (a fortune at the time). As the mania continued and prices soared, Newton re-entered the market. Buying at the top of a market gone mad is not a wise move. When the bubble burst in the autumn of 1720, South Sea shares collapsed to around £150 from a high of over £1,000. Newton is thought to have lost about £20,000, equivalent to 25 million (or more) pounds today.
He may have remarked: “I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” If he did say this, he doesn’t seem to have accepted responsibility for his own foolishness.
Many thoughts are beyond the realm of reason yet remain entrenched in the minds of men for extended periods or even for life. Consider religion. It seems to have a salutary and even ennobling place in the lives of many people. But at its extremes it can turn some of the smartest of its adherents into snarling beasts who commit the most vile and atrocious acts. Its absence can do the same to the brightest of deniers.
If one wishes to deny the existence of a supreme being it can be done without resort to mayhem. An aside, it’s hard to understand how a very intelligent person can be sure of the nonexistence of a deity or some other sort of supreme being based on the available evidence. But such a conclusion is arrogance not stupidity.
Back to stupid. Stupidity often allies with delusion. The two are often difficult, or even impossible, to dissect. When disbelief of demonstrable facts results in riot, a very bright leader in the throes of delusion who thinks his actions are leading to a better disposition of social forces can do uncountable damage.
One of the most frequent reasons for the triumph of stupidity/delusion is Isaiah Berlin’s famous omelet. He was talking about a person who believes he has discovered the perfect solution for the ills of mankind and is convinced that no price is too high to implement this solution: “To make such an omelette, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken.” Of course, the eggs get broken in vast amounts, but the omelet remains unmade.
But this kind of thinking operates on smaller scales than the perfection of society. Eggs are broken in lesser amounts often out of compassion for those who are not doing as well as some very intelligent people wish they were. So they break a few eggs to help the unfortunates who have caught their eye. They often fail to determine, or even enquire, as to the cause of perceived suffering before implementing or advocating a solution. Similarly, they often don’t examine whether a favored solution has been tried elsewhere and with what result. And finally, they typically don’t monitor the outcome of their omelet making. Emotion can so powerfully overwhelm reason that many eggs are broken without an edible omelet.
The unformed desire to do good causes more harm than an army of orcs. Absent a mad dictator gone amok it is responsible for untold harm. This unbridled urge to improve without adequate thought and design is a plague on the “enlightened” world.
The tug of war between reason and emotion is so tilted in favor of the latter that the really bright person can become a menace. Most of us seem to have a limited supply of rationality that is easily exhausted, while emotion, feeding on itself, never appears to run out. A highly intelligent person in the grip of emotion will devise ever more clever ways of manufacturing mischief.
I sketched a problem. Do I have a solution? Probably not. Look at the large number of very smart people who when examining the same problem come to opposite conclusions. Such differences mostly remain resistant to argument and new information. There are occasional surrenders to fact, but they are rare. I realize that many disagreements do not resolve to stupid on one side and smart on the other, but many do. There will be no agreement about this division as is true for almost all opposing beliefs.
Here are a few sources to consider when pondering the question in the title. Daniel Kahneman’s thoughts about thinking fast and thinking slow are a good start. Jonathan Haidt wrote an entire book on the subject – The Righteous Mind. While not strictly on the subject, they are very close and their insights are relevant. My own view is that we’re programmed to be both smart and stupid, albeit in different proportions and varying with the circumstances.
