I love this, but...I've read Thucydides. Allowing one week for that book suggests you have incurable optimism about people's reading abilities and speeds 😂. I think it took me about 6 months. And may I recommend The Landmark Thucydides if one is going to make the attempt? The maps and annotations make this fascinating work so much more accessible...
Ted is simply a freak of nature. I'm always astounded by the amount of information he's able to produce on his substack, all while reading, listening, watching, etc. to put information into his substack. Most likely he has a warped perspective relating to his comment regarding being a slow reader. And I wonder if he sleeps more than fifteen minutes a day. Probably not, given his long association with coffee.
Each student at St. John’s College reads this entire list and much more. No need to reinvent the wheel. But time to recognize the great colleges already here.
I did some quick math on the W.H. Auden list. Assuming 14 weeks of a semester the 6000 pages of reading would require 85 pages every day or, if one only read Monday to Friday, they would have to do 98 pages per pay. Tough but by no means impossible.
Washington Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge with his wife and father, had to take all these courses in just 3 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic: “His senior thesis was to be on "Design for a Suspension Aqueduct," but in three years' time he had also to master nearly a hundred different courses, including, among others. Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions, Differential and Integral Calculus, Calculus of Variations, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis, Determinative Mineralogy, Higher Geodesy (the mathematical science of the size and shape of the earth). Logical and Rhetorical Criticism, French Composition and Literature, Orthographic and Spherical Projections, Acoustics, Optics, Thermotics, Geology of Mining, Paleontology, Rational Mechanics of SoHds and Fluids, Spherical Astronomy, Kinematics (the study of motion exclusive of the influences of mass and force). Machine Design, Hydraulic Motors, Steam Engines, Stability of Structures, Engineering and Architectural Design and Construction, and Intellectual and Ethical Philosophy.”
From David McCullough’s wonderful book, The Great Bridge.
At that time, the knowledge in that fields was scarcer, so he had to learn less than an engineer now, for same domain. Also the curriculum of engineering is quite vast now. Just look at MIT curriculum.
MIT requires 8 “subjects” (read “courses”) per year for 4 years. About 32-34 total courses. This is the equivalent of what Roebling took in one year. So Roebling’s training was roughly 4x as demanding in terms of the course load.
From the MIT registrar’s website: “Each program is designed so it can be completed with a normal academic load—the equivalent of 8 to 8.5 subjects each year—for a total of 32–34 subjects.”
MIT, like most science and engineering schools, tends to teach the most powerful methods, so newer courses tend to subsume multiple older courses. Judging from older textbooks, there were numerous older courses built into each of the courses I took on systems theory and linear algebra.
I think mathematics leads the paradigm as mathematicians build higher and higher levels of abstraction to so the entire fields of study are turned into special cases of more powerful theories. Oh, that two term course? Now it's covered in the lecture when they describe what happens that N equals zero.
I suppose you could roll up the romantic poets in liberal arts and then roll them up into romantic literature, but you'd be missing the point.
Obviously you didn't study engineering, which I did, I studied advanced math 6 courses, advanced physics 1 course , 3 courses electricity, 1 foreign language, 2 courses in humanities, programming
2 ,mechanics 2, microcontrollers 2,Sensors and measurement 1 , this in first 2 years. Next 2 were filled with speciality courses.
I hate when people complain that in the past was better. If it was better, then I would have remained. If it was better to use horses, we would ride horses now, not driving cars.
So you are saying you took about 10 courses per year, 40 total. Roebling took 100 in 3 years. 3x the rate of what you did. Is there equivalence between the courses? Who knows?
I agree: liberal arts v. engineering. And disagree. Unfortunately "today's" universities have been attempting to enforce DIE upon math (engineering) and sciences. Let's call it outlandish, just because I like that word. The university where I earned my BS Arch thirty-eight years ago has changed the architecture program's name from The School of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) to The College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA). Public Affairs? WTF? So much for the classes I took that included many on Bruce Lambert's list above. My experience with recent graduates has been particularly disappointing, with (thankfully) some bright exceptions. But the same can be said of those who graduated in nineteen eighty-six, although the proportions are favorable to them.
I’m a professor at University with a big engineering school. Students take about four courses per quarter maybe five at the most. And they attend classes for 3 quarters per year. None of them is taking 30 courses per year or 100 courses in three years. It’s simply not happening. At universities that operate on the semester system That would be 15 courses per semester which is also not happening.
An awful lot of those look more like topics than courses. Analytic geometry which covers projections spherical and otherwise is usually packaged with differential and integral calculus. Kinematics is just one piece of a physics course that covers a lot of mechanics, electrostatics and dynamics and so on. A thermodynamics course would cover machine design, steam engines and so on. Chad Orzel had a piece over Counting Atoms recently had a piece on the difference between STEM and liberal arts course structure. There are just a lot fewer 100 and 200 level courses in STEM fields than in liberal arts fields, and they tend to cover a lot of ground.
Especially when they are a British Member of Parliament and they are saying on the radio.."the young people of this nation (Great Britain) are champing at the bit to go abroad and fight the forces of tyranny,our young people WANT to go to Eastern Europe and push back the Russian advance and save The Ukraine for the Democracy and Liberty we all love. Therefore CONSCRIPTION is a Great Idea and will be welcomed and embraced by the whole UK population (except a few lily-livered cowards),the fact is people are not choosing to voluntarily enlist in the Services any more,not since we actually started sending them to real fighting conflicts where they come back minus arms,legs or bollocks! So a general draft would do em all good and they'll LUV it. Of course I won't be goin' meself,too much constituency work don't ya know. What's that my words sound like the spiel from 1914.? What's 1914? History. Oh no one bothers with irrelevant stuff like that anymore.
I think the most efficient way to understand stupidity is to learn about logical fallacies and universal cognitive biases. It'll train you to avoid common pitfalls when making decisions of all kinds and also make better sense of everything from the 'culture wars' & political partisanship to social interactions & personal relationships.
By far the 2 most important courses I took in college were Social Psychology and a class called Problem Solving that focused on critical thinking and how to reason.
More broadly, gaining even a basic understanding of the following subjects will go a long way in making you less stupid: probability, statistics, behavioral economics (e.g. game theory) and evolutionary psychology.
These are all great recommendations! If I could add one to the list, Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin, specifically the chapter on the psychology of human misjudgements is fantastic.
Great list! I recommended Kahneman's book myself before I got to your comment. I'm a big fan of Hans Rosling too. I'd also recommend his TED talks, all fascinating, educational and entertaining.
I am utterly taken aback that Carlo M. Cipolla's "The basic laws of human stupidity" is not even mentioned. It's literally the only "serious" study of the subject by an utter genius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
I agree. I am continually at how perceptive the laws of human stupidity are, particularly the first law. We really underestimate how many stupid people are out there, and where they can be found. The analysis of why societies go to war, and how they conduct it is very revealing…. the USA’s last three in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and even the decisions not to goto war in Syria and Ukraine have been monumental examples of collective stupidity. Sadly it’s with the benefit of hindsight. I think Ted’s implicit point about history informing the present is quite valid, however the neoliberal abandonment of investment in the Arts in favour of STEM studies has meant that there is a lack of informed leaders and advice based on what happened in the past.
I missed “amazed”. An amusing thought about this is that often people don’t realise that they are stupid…. I wonder if i’m being stupid at times and not know it.
I think that while there are plenty of idiots out there, intelligence is somewhat overrated; good thinking like much else is learned at least by observation and if you are fortunate by family, friends, even coworkers who teach you how.
Some people are just too dumb or foolish, but too often nobody took the effort to show them how to use what intelligence they have, or more importantly, how to be wise for **that** is even more lacking.
And everyone, and trust me on this, most certainly me, has been an idiot or a fool sometimes. Knowing (and truly accepting that) is the beginning of wisdom.
Great comment. I'll add that what seems to be lacking is good old-fashioned common sense. I don't know it that's even available anymore, certainly not in the political realm.
Well I know I am stupid because from my earliest memories everyone (except my Mum) has not hesitated to tell me so. The fact that I'm still here aged 70 and a lot of them are not here doesn't of itself make my state of stupid more desirable than their high IQ of course. I often reflect that instead of living in bourgeois comfort as a Stupid,if I was high IQ I could be sleeping in a shop doorway,in rags adopting the beggars whine to coax a few pennies out of the Stupids. So enviable.
Why do STEM and the Arts have to be unbalanced? One to the semi-exclusion of the other? My husband is continually shocked at seeing the school buses rolling at 2:30 pm. I’m not active in any school system, as my kids have kids of their own and live elsewhere. I do note that I’ve heard “When Charles was Coronated” more times than I wish to…🥹
In Australia, our previous conservative government set the contribution fees (HECS)for Arts undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at rates much higher than STEM courses. It discourages students and consequently a wide range of Arts courses disappeared. Quite disappointing, but i think it was trying to eliminate those lefties from the system, you know the ones who protest.
Or perhaps it may be (or certainly is) because, in the real world that's likely to yield a better return on the taxpayers' investment. I do admit it's difficult to quantify what the return would be investing in the arts. I believe that, with the exception of state-run schools (and then only with states' tax dollars), the government should have no involvement in funding post-secondary education, and in the US getting the government out of backing school loans, which before Obamacare, were required to be paid, with no option for default. I also think that the colleges and universities should be responsible for providing loans to students. It would inevitably result in a reduction of tuition costs, which are completely out of hand.
Regarding Australia: My wife lived in Melbourne for three years in the late nineteen seventies. Her sons attended Catholic school and wore uniforms. Nothing fancy; very inexpensive. She thought that was a great system. She also talks about your version of Social Security (Superannuation I think it is/was called?) and thought it was also well conceived. I love the great tennis players of the sixties, seventies, and eighties: Laver, Emerson, Rosewall, Court, and Goolagong. I actually got to play with Emerson and Rosewall in a pro-am doubles tournament, and attend a cocktail party with them the following evening. Simply great guys. I hope you can turn things around a bit after the government overreach that occurred for several years as a result of the Wuflu.
Good list. Thucydides depicts blunders, but if we call it stupidity we may think we would do better under the circumstances. But the people making the blunders were not necessarily stupid. The total effect was stupid, but each decision along the way seemed to make sense. So, there is more tragedy than farce in Thucydides. Nonetheless, yes, read it. I read it in college and would like to read it again.
I must disagree (and strongly). Whether others would make better decisions quite misses the point. Human arrogance faces serious competition only from human ignorance. The cruelty is gratuitous. But the bone-deep stupidity is undeniable. And Thucydides demonstrates this very clearly.
Oh, thank you for the mention of Barbara Tuchman. I read "The Guns of August" way back when I was an undergrad in history in the early 70s and was a fan from that book onward. I particularly liked the title of the chapter of the American experience in Vietnam from "The March of Folly" - America Betrays Herself in Vietnam.
I often say to myself something I heard her mention in a lecture she gave: "It's not what you know but how fast you can look it up."
The Guns of August, what a read! I don't know if this is factual, but apparently President Kennedy had read that book, and wanted no part of all the Pentagon's "plans" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It may well have saved us all. Also, JFK was a man that experienced combat, and few people who have been in combat blather on about how they're gonna kick ass.
The late Duchess of Devonshire, the one who was a Mitford sister,in her very readable autobiography said that JFK and the then British Prime Minister,posh old MacMillan got on very well,and found a deep bond despite outwordly looking so different. JFK the new golden boy of the post-history era,the shiny good looker for the shiny new age versus the Edwardian gentleman toff redolent of the Belle Epoque but they had both BEEN IN War. JFK in WW2 + Mac in WW1. They both KNEW WHAT IT WAS LIKE.
Now we have politicians (in UK) who are spouting all that Your Countries Need You rhetoric like it's 1914 and the 20th century never happened. So who is stupid then. The people like me who remember or at least seen Oh What a Lovely War!,or the people who respond yeah,let's get up and at em,(people my age who know (but are they right) they won't get sent to the battlefront. And presumably don't mind sending their grandkids. Heartless bastards.
“5. Sociologist Max Weber claimed that bureaucracies are efficient because they decide everything by clear and well considered rules. Yet people constantly complain that bureaucracies are stupid. How is this contradiction possible?”
I’ve worked in several government bureaucracies over the last 20 years as a contractor. Couldn’t help but laugh. I’ve experienced anything but “…clear and well considered rules…”
I'm reading about how the Chinese when forced to farm collectively for no individual benefit did as little work as possible,produced as little harvest as possible and the whole farming sector was unproductive. This was not a political action,it was just sinful bad wicked undemocratic human nature,when everyone gets the same what point is there for you to do more than him. It's a helter-skelter slide to the bottom. So when Mao (power comes from the barrel of a gun) died the next China boss let farmers rent plots of land within the collectives and keep the extra money they made and production shot up. Because people especially the Chinese,are like that. In UK there is a saying," you never hear of a Chinaman on the dole". (On welfare that is). I don't know if this is statistically true but the fact is they can always get work in their "community" they support each other that way. Not by pats on the head + kind words but by you can wash the dishes and clean the kitchen from 11pm to 4am,cousin,until you find that job. Tough love kind of support
Frank Herbert, in his books featuring Jori X McKie (Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment – are the only two in aware of. According to Wikipedia there are also two short stories, both published in Eye), saboteur extraordinary who works for BuSab (the bureaux of sabotage) postulates that efficient government was disastrous for intelligent species, hence the founding of the bureaux, the job of which is to slow down the wheels of government.
Max Weber was an educated stupid, who is quoted by others without an analys. Rules are general they don't apply to every case. Bureaucracies priorities rule Compliance versus efficiency and common sense. They are not efficient by any means.
While I always appreciate Ted's illuminated reading lists, I like to remind myself that some of the most enlightened beings in our midst have never read Thucydides nor Eco, indeed maybe some of them don't even know how to read. There is a vast intelligence available to us as humans that centers on knowledge and understanding of the plants, the earth, the stars, and the human body itself. Don't get me wrong, I love reading. But I keep returning to the natural world for the unspoken wisdom that propels our species.
Great post. Just one point. It's not the Tree of Knowledge but rather the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. It's not general knowledge that the text is concerned with but rather an intimate familiarity with that which is bad.
There's a marvelous mural in one of the dining halls at MIT complete with the motto "Ye Shall Be As Gods Knowing Good and Evil.” It was a great way to encourage undergraduate hubris, though it could also be read as a warning. It was painted in the 1920s, so the Great War was still fresh in everyone's minds.
In the Olden Days Catholic Priests sometimes committed the sin of suicide so weighed down were they by the weight of the Carnal Knowledge they carried from all those confessions. They knew more about human sexuality than anyone ever wanted or needed to know. And I know just how they felt. Purely from the chronological fact of becoming a young adult circa 1970 and just living a normal life I think I took have that same weight of carnal knowledge and I've even felt that sense of,it's too much. And I've not read or sought out porn or done anything dodgy. I've just read books,+ newspapers back in the day,watched tv (back in the day),radio,pop songs,we just get told this stuff,it just gets snuck past undercover.
I think I have as much carnal knowledge as any one of those troubled pastors but luckily not from personal experience. Eat your heart out pretty girls with fucked lives,no sympathy from me. Your taxi driver boyfriends in jail now but you're a whore forever
Thank you for the primer in stupidity. I am rather relieved to find that "Foucault's Pendulum" made the list, one of the three books I have re-read in my life (the other two are "Don Quijote de la Mancha" volumes one and two, which I think the 2nd part is the real masterpiece, but, hey, that's just me- they also deal with stupidity in a very deep manner). I do not watch TV nor read any (mainstream- my "bullsh*t-o-meter" is always on HIGH)news because I wind up facepalming 99% of the time. Will definitely check your reading list. Will the final exam be with "open books"?
Thank you so much for making us all think a bit better. Gonna have to subscribe, though...
A marvelous syllabus. I hope I can get to most of these. If there’s room for some plays and TV, I’d also add Waiting for Godot, Da Ali G Show, and Veep.
Time for Beany. In the 50s, Stan Freeberg and Daws Butler nailed stupidity night after night, on tv, under the guise of a children's show. The characters were Beany an overly bright little boy, his uncle, Uncle Captain, and Cecil The SeaSick Sea Serpent. The ship they sailed on was the Leaking Lena.
That worked well didn't it. In eliminating stupidity. Almost as effective as all that cruel,sharp,on point and very funny satire in Weimar Germany derailed Hitler. And of course that crop of intensely bright young men in the early 1960s,the likes of David Frost,Johnathan Miller,Alan Bennet et al with their undeniable truth couched in laugh out loud funniness they shamed old privilege out of countenance and brought in the new meritocratic age and thanks to them no longer is Britain's Parliamentary system dominated by public school educated men and our state media ie the BBC no longer requires all entrants to be possessed of a degree (even the cleaners I expect). How antiquated was it,when the majority of our Prime Ministers had the common factor of being educated at Eton.
1) Munger: “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
Hahahahaha “That’s not education or erudition—it’s cruelty”…
May take me a long time to process this one, Ted 🤣 but did I ever need the humor tonight.
I just signed up for a free online course called “Chemistry for the Liberal Arts”. Lol. That goes on the dumb list, but I truly am learning how beautiful chemistry and physics are as knowledge for the sake of knowledge, even if I only took undergrad classes in them. Some of the theory and deeper understanding is over my head.
The most beautiful thing about learning is that feeling you get when you synthesize a new idea from a book or class into a song, post, poem, or just a chat with a dear friend✨Alchemy💛
I love this, but...I've read Thucydides. Allowing one week for that book suggests you have incurable optimism about people's reading abilities and speeds 😂. I think it took me about 6 months. And may I recommend The Landmark Thucydides if one is going to make the attempt? The maps and annotations make this fascinating work so much more accessible...
Maybe Ted forgot that some people have to leave the house to go to work.
Or can't reach the big red button "Destroy All Distractions". Bathroom breaks not included.
Ted is simply a freak of nature. I'm always astounded by the amount of information he's able to produce on his substack, all while reading, listening, watching, etc. to put information into his substack. Most likely he has a warped perspective relating to his comment regarding being a slow reader. And I wonder if he sleeps more than fifteen minutes a day. Probably not, given his long association with coffee.
Whatever his deficits are, they benefit his readers.
T.G. is a national treasure.
To hell with leaving the house, I have books to read.
Me too, but I have to go out to buy food and books.
😀
Each student at St. John’s College reads this entire list and much more. No need to reinvent the wheel. But time to recognize the great colleges already here.
That is fantastic. I celebrate their commitment.
I did some quick math on the W.H. Auden list. Assuming 14 weeks of a semester the 6000 pages of reading would require 85 pages every day or, if one only read Monday to Friday, they would have to do 98 pages per pay. Tough but by no means impossible.
I happened to notice that Landmark is what's in the picture above of Ted's books of stupid.
Ha! So it is. I missed that!
The Landmark series of ancient authors is superb. I have this one and several others.
Washington Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge with his wife and father, had to take all these courses in just 3 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic: “His senior thesis was to be on "Design for a Suspension Aqueduct," but in three years' time he had also to master nearly a hundred different courses, including, among others. Analytical Geometry of Three Dimensions, Differential and Integral Calculus, Calculus of Variations, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis, Determinative Mineralogy, Higher Geodesy (the mathematical science of the size and shape of the earth). Logical and Rhetorical Criticism, French Composition and Literature, Orthographic and Spherical Projections, Acoustics, Optics, Thermotics, Geology of Mining, Paleontology, Rational Mechanics of SoHds and Fluids, Spherical Astronomy, Kinematics (the study of motion exclusive of the influences of mass and force). Machine Design, Hydraulic Motors, Steam Engines, Stability of Structures, Engineering and Architectural Design and Construction, and Intellectual and Ethical Philosophy.”
From David McCullough’s wonderful book, The Great Bridge.
College ain’t what it used to be.
At that time, the knowledge in that fields was scarcer, so he had to learn less than an engineer now, for same domain. Also the curriculum of engineering is quite vast now. Just look at MIT curriculum.
MIT requires 8 “subjects” (read “courses”) per year for 4 years. About 32-34 total courses. This is the equivalent of what Roebling took in one year. So Roebling’s training was roughly 4x as demanding in terms of the course load.
From the MIT registrar’s website: “Each program is designed so it can be completed with a normal academic load—the equivalent of 8 to 8.5 subjects each year—for a total of 32–34 subjects.”
https://catalog.mit.edu/mit/undergraduate-education/general-institute-requirements/
MIT, like most science and engineering schools, tends to teach the most powerful methods, so newer courses tend to subsume multiple older courses. Judging from older textbooks, there were numerous older courses built into each of the courses I took on systems theory and linear algebra.
I think mathematics leads the paradigm as mathematicians build higher and higher levels of abstraction to so the entire fields of study are turned into special cases of more powerful theories. Oh, that two term course? Now it's covered in the lecture when they describe what happens that N equals zero.
I suppose you could roll up the romantic poets in liberal arts and then roll them up into romantic literature, but you'd be missing the point.
Obviously you didn't study engineering, which I did, I studied advanced math 6 courses, advanced physics 1 course , 3 courses electricity, 1 foreign language, 2 courses in humanities, programming
2 ,mechanics 2, microcontrollers 2,Sensors and measurement 1 , this in first 2 years. Next 2 were filled with speciality courses.
I hate when people complain that in the past was better. If it was better, then I would have remained. If it was better to use horses, we would ride horses now, not driving cars.
So you are saying you took about 10 courses per year, 40 total. Roebling took 100 in 3 years. 3x the rate of what you did. Is there equivalence between the courses? Who knows?
No, it was 40 course in 2 years. 20 courses/yr
That's not unlike today's engineering courses. Don't confuse a liberal arts education with an engineering education. They are nothing alike.
I agree: liberal arts v. engineering. And disagree. Unfortunately "today's" universities have been attempting to enforce DIE upon math (engineering) and sciences. Let's call it outlandish, just because I like that word. The university where I earned my BS Arch thirty-eight years ago has changed the architecture program's name from The School of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) to The College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA). Public Affairs? WTF? So much for the classes I took that included many on Bruce Lambert's list above. My experience with recent graduates has been particularly disappointing, with (thankfully) some bright exceptions. But the same can be said of those who graduated in nineteen eighty-six, although the proportions are favorable to them.
I’m a professor at University with a big engineering school. Students take about four courses per quarter maybe five at the most. And they attend classes for 3 quarters per year. None of them is taking 30 courses per year or 100 courses in three years. It’s simply not happening. At universities that operate on the semester system That would be 15 courses per semester which is also not happening.
An awful lot of those look more like topics than courses. Analytic geometry which covers projections spherical and otherwise is usually packaged with differential and integral calculus. Kinematics is just one piece of a physics course that covers a lot of mechanics, electrostatics and dynamics and so on. A thermodynamics course would cover machine design, steam engines and so on. Chad Orzel had a piece over Counting Atoms recently had a piece on the difference between STEM and liberal arts course structure. There are just a lot fewer 100 and 200 level courses in STEM fields than in liberal arts fields, and they tend to cover a lot of ground.
It's amazing what 3 people can do when they put there minds and muscles to it.
That's how I read it too!
Amazingly it was up and open in just 3 days. SCO (Special Construction Operation)
Maybe each one worked for one day, or 3, 8 hr. shifts per day for 3 days. Either way, congratulations on a superhuman effort.
Hoorah!
Ignorance in general does not bother me, because it is all around me.
What does bother me is when someone is ignorant and proud of it!
They don't know that they're ignorant and they're just proud of what they know. Aren't we all?
The first rule of Dunning Kruger?
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child. Teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man. Follow him.
Discerning the last two of these is requires at least this Course in Stupidity, if not a lifetime more.
Especially when they are a British Member of Parliament and they are saying on the radio.."the young people of this nation (Great Britain) are champing at the bit to go abroad and fight the forces of tyranny,our young people WANT to go to Eastern Europe and push back the Russian advance and save The Ukraine for the Democracy and Liberty we all love. Therefore CONSCRIPTION is a Great Idea and will be welcomed and embraced by the whole UK population (except a few lily-livered cowards),the fact is people are not choosing to voluntarily enlist in the Services any more,not since we actually started sending them to real fighting conflicts where they come back minus arms,legs or bollocks! So a general draft would do em all good and they'll LUV it. Of course I won't be goin' meself,too much constituency work don't ya know. What's that my words sound like the spiel from 1914.? What's 1914? History. Oh no one bothers with irrelevant stuff like that anymore.
I think the most efficient way to understand stupidity is to learn about logical fallacies and universal cognitive biases. It'll train you to avoid common pitfalls when making decisions of all kinds and also make better sense of everything from the 'culture wars' & political partisanship to social interactions & personal relationships.
By far the 2 most important courses I took in college were Social Psychology and a class called Problem Solving that focused on critical thinking and how to reason.
More broadly, gaining even a basic understanding of the following subjects will go a long way in making you less stupid: probability, statistics, behavioral economics (e.g. game theory) and evolutionary psychology.
Some book recommendations:
The Scout Mindset - Julia Galef
Rationality & Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
Thinking, Fast and Slow & Noise - Daniel Kahneman
Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely
Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
Superforecasting - Philip E. Tetlock
Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz
The Signal and the Noise - Nate Silver
Influence - Robert Cialdini
Misbehaving - Richard Thaler
Factfulness - Hans Rosling
The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt
These are all great recommendations! If I could add one to the list, Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin, specifically the chapter on the psychology of human misjudgements is fantastic.
Excellent list
Good list; have read all of them ex Thaler whose work i know quite well; Schultz and Cialdini.
Great list! I recommended Kahneman's book myself before I got to your comment. I'm a big fan of Hans Rosling too. I'd also recommend his TED talks, all fascinating, educational and entertaining.
Thank you for this list.
I am utterly taken aback that Carlo M. Cipolla's "The basic laws of human stupidity" is not even mentioned. It's literally the only "serious" study of the subject by an utter genius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
I agree. I am continually at how perceptive the laws of human stupidity are, particularly the first law. We really underestimate how many stupid people are out there, and where they can be found. The analysis of why societies go to war, and how they conduct it is very revealing…. the USA’s last three in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and even the decisions not to goto war in Syria and Ukraine have been monumental examples of collective stupidity. Sadly it’s with the benefit of hindsight. I think Ted’s implicit point about history informing the present is quite valid, however the neoliberal abandonment of investment in the Arts in favour of STEM studies has meant that there is a lack of informed leaders and advice based on what happened in the past.
I missed “amazed”. An amusing thought about this is that often people don’t realise that they are stupid…. I wonder if i’m being stupid at times and not know it.
I think that while there are plenty of idiots out there, intelligence is somewhat overrated; good thinking like much else is learned at least by observation and if you are fortunate by family, friends, even coworkers who teach you how.
Some people are just too dumb or foolish, but too often nobody took the effort to show them how to use what intelligence they have, or more importantly, how to be wise for **that** is even more lacking.
And everyone, and trust me on this, most certainly me, has been an idiot or a fool sometimes. Knowing (and truly accepting that) is the beginning of wisdom.
Great comment. I'll add that what seems to be lacking is good old-fashioned common sense. I don't know it that's even available anymore, certainly not in the political realm.
Well I know I am stupid because from my earliest memories everyone (except my Mum) has not hesitated to tell me so. The fact that I'm still here aged 70 and a lot of them are not here doesn't of itself make my state of stupid more desirable than their high IQ of course. I often reflect that instead of living in bourgeois comfort as a Stupid,if I was high IQ I could be sleeping in a shop doorway,in rags adopting the beggars whine to coax a few pennies out of the Stupids. So enviable.
Why do STEM and the Arts have to be unbalanced? One to the semi-exclusion of the other? My husband is continually shocked at seeing the school buses rolling at 2:30 pm. I’m not active in any school system, as my kids have kids of their own and live elsewhere. I do note that I’ve heard “When Charles was Coronated” more times than I wish to…🥹
In Australia, our previous conservative government set the contribution fees (HECS)for Arts undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at rates much higher than STEM courses. It discourages students and consequently a wide range of Arts courses disappeared. Quite disappointing, but i think it was trying to eliminate those lefties from the system, you know the ones who protest.
Or perhaps it may be (or certainly is) because, in the real world that's likely to yield a better return on the taxpayers' investment. I do admit it's difficult to quantify what the return would be investing in the arts. I believe that, with the exception of state-run schools (and then only with states' tax dollars), the government should have no involvement in funding post-secondary education, and in the US getting the government out of backing school loans, which before Obamacare, were required to be paid, with no option for default. I also think that the colleges and universities should be responsible for providing loans to students. It would inevitably result in a reduction of tuition costs, which are completely out of hand.
Regarding Australia: My wife lived in Melbourne for three years in the late nineteen seventies. Her sons attended Catholic school and wore uniforms. Nothing fancy; very inexpensive. She thought that was a great system. She also talks about your version of Social Security (Superannuation I think it is/was called?) and thought it was also well conceived. I love the great tennis players of the sixties, seventies, and eighties: Laver, Emerson, Rosewall, Court, and Goolagong. I actually got to play with Emerson and Rosewall in a pro-am doubles tournament, and attend a cocktail party with them the following evening. Simply great guys. I hope you can turn things around a bit after the government overreach that occurred for several years as a result of the Wuflu.
I thought the same.
I read Cippola’s theory of stupidity in the sorely-missed Coevolution Quarterly (later renamed as The Whole Earth Review) way back when.
Good list. Thucydides depicts blunders, but if we call it stupidity we may think we would do better under the circumstances. But the people making the blunders were not necessarily stupid. The total effect was stupid, but each decision along the way seemed to make sense. So, there is more tragedy than farce in Thucydides. Nonetheless, yes, read it. I read it in college and would like to read it again.
I must disagree (and strongly). Whether others would make better decisions quite misses the point. Human arrogance faces serious competition only from human ignorance. The cruelty is gratuitous. But the bone-deep stupidity is undeniable. And Thucydides demonstrates this very clearly.
Oh, thank you for the mention of Barbara Tuchman. I read "The Guns of August" way back when I was an undergrad in history in the early 70s and was a fan from that book onward. I particularly liked the title of the chapter of the American experience in Vietnam from "The March of Folly" - America Betrays Herself in Vietnam.
I often say to myself something I heard her mention in a lecture she gave: "It's not what you know but how fast you can look it up."
The Guns of August, what a read! I don't know if this is factual, but apparently President Kennedy had read that book, and wanted no part of all the Pentagon's "plans" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It may well have saved us all. Also, JFK was a man that experienced combat, and few people who have been in combat blather on about how they're gonna kick ass.
The late Duchess of Devonshire, the one who was a Mitford sister,in her very readable autobiography said that JFK and the then British Prime Minister,posh old MacMillan got on very well,and found a deep bond despite outwordly looking so different. JFK the new golden boy of the post-history era,the shiny good looker for the shiny new age versus the Edwardian gentleman toff redolent of the Belle Epoque but they had both BEEN IN War. JFK in WW2 + Mac in WW1. They both KNEW WHAT IT WAS LIKE.
Now we have politicians (in UK) who are spouting all that Your Countries Need You rhetoric like it's 1914 and the 20th century never happened. So who is stupid then. The people like me who remember or at least seen Oh What a Lovely War!,or the people who respond yeah,let's get up and at em,(people my age who know (but are they right) they won't get sent to the battlefront. And presumably don't mind sending their grandkids. Heartless bastards.
Thank you Jane. You are up on history. The present lot...well I think you've said it best.
“5. Sociologist Max Weber claimed that bureaucracies are efficient because they decide everything by clear and well considered rules. Yet people constantly complain that bureaucracies are stupid. How is this contradiction possible?”
I’ve worked in several government bureaucracies over the last 20 years as a contractor. Couldn’t help but laugh. I’ve experienced anything but “…clear and well considered rules…”
In the beginning bureaucracies can be effective, but over time, they become filled with empire builders, corrupt insiders, or just uncaring workers.
I'm reading about how the Chinese when forced to farm collectively for no individual benefit did as little work as possible,produced as little harvest as possible and the whole farming sector was unproductive. This was not a political action,it was just sinful bad wicked undemocratic human nature,when everyone gets the same what point is there for you to do more than him. It's a helter-skelter slide to the bottom. So when Mao (power comes from the barrel of a gun) died the next China boss let farmers rent plots of land within the collectives and keep the extra money they made and production shot up. Because people especially the Chinese,are like that. In UK there is a saying," you never hear of a Chinaman on the dole". (On welfare that is). I don't know if this is statistically true but the fact is they can always get work in their "community" they support each other that way. Not by pats on the head + kind words but by you can wash the dishes and clean the kitchen from 11pm to 4am,cousin,until you find that job. Tough love kind of support
Frank Herbert, in his books featuring Jori X McKie (Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment – are the only two in aware of. According to Wikipedia there are also two short stories, both published in Eye), saboteur extraordinary who works for BuSab (the bureaux of sabotage) postulates that efficient government was disastrous for intelligent species, hence the founding of the bureaux, the job of which is to slow down the wheels of government.
I loved the Whipping Star... I know Herbet's better known for Dune, but he might be at his best when he brings out the chair-dogs.
Max Weber was an educated stupid, who is quoted by others without an analys. Rules are general they don't apply to every case. Bureaucracies priorities rule Compliance versus efficiency and common sense. They are not efficient by any means.
While I always appreciate Ted's illuminated reading lists, I like to remind myself that some of the most enlightened beings in our midst have never read Thucydides nor Eco, indeed maybe some of them don't even know how to read. There is a vast intelligence available to us as humans that centers on knowledge and understanding of the plants, the earth, the stars, and the human body itself. Don't get me wrong, I love reading. But I keep returning to the natural world for the unspoken wisdom that propels our species.
Do my Steven Pressfield books count for the Peloponnesian War? Asking for a friend 😃
Great post. Just one point. It's not the Tree of Knowledge but rather the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. It's not general knowledge that the text is concerned with but rather an intimate familiarity with that which is bad.
There's a marvelous mural in one of the dining halls at MIT complete with the motto "Ye Shall Be As Gods Knowing Good and Evil.” It was a great way to encourage undergraduate hubris, though it could also be read as a warning. It was painted in the 1920s, so the Great War was still fresh in everyone's minds.
In the Olden Days Catholic Priests sometimes committed the sin of suicide so weighed down were they by the weight of the Carnal Knowledge they carried from all those confessions. They knew more about human sexuality than anyone ever wanted or needed to know. And I know just how they felt. Purely from the chronological fact of becoming a young adult circa 1970 and just living a normal life I think I took have that same weight of carnal knowledge and I've even felt that sense of,it's too much. And I've not read or sought out porn or done anything dodgy. I've just read books,+ newspapers back in the day,watched tv (back in the day),radio,pop songs,we just get told this stuff,it just gets snuck past undercover.
I think I have as much carnal knowledge as any one of those troubled pastors but luckily not from personal experience. Eat your heart out pretty girls with fucked lives,no sympathy from me. Your taxi driver boyfriends in jail now but you're a whore forever
Thank you for the primer in stupidity. I am rather relieved to find that "Foucault's Pendulum" made the list, one of the three books I have re-read in my life (the other two are "Don Quijote de la Mancha" volumes one and two, which I think the 2nd part is the real masterpiece, but, hey, that's just me- they also deal with stupidity in a very deep manner). I do not watch TV nor read any (mainstream- my "bullsh*t-o-meter" is always on HIGH)news because I wind up facepalming 99% of the time. Will definitely check your reading list. Will the final exam be with "open books"?
Thank you so much for making us all think a bit better. Gonna have to subscribe, though...
Grazie Mille, Signore Gioia!
I hope the final will be multiple choice, and we can choose the lesser of two weevils.🙃\
A marvelous syllabus. I hope I can get to most of these. If there’s room for some plays and TV, I’d also add Waiting for Godot, Da Ali G Show, and Veep.
Time for Beany. In the 50s, Stan Freeberg and Daws Butler nailed stupidity night after night, on tv, under the guise of a children's show. The characters were Beany an overly bright little boy, his uncle, Uncle Captain, and Cecil The SeaSick Sea Serpent. The ship they sailed on was the Leaking Lena.
That worked well didn't it. In eliminating stupidity. Almost as effective as all that cruel,sharp,on point and very funny satire in Weimar Germany derailed Hitler. And of course that crop of intensely bright young men in the early 1960s,the likes of David Frost,Johnathan Miller,Alan Bennet et al with their undeniable truth couched in laugh out loud funniness they shamed old privilege out of countenance and brought in the new meritocratic age and thanks to them no longer is Britain's Parliamentary system dominated by public school educated men and our state media ie the BBC no longer requires all entrants to be possessed of a degree (even the cleaners I expect). How antiquated was it,when the majority of our Prime Ministers had the common factor of being educated at Eton.
It's amazing what you can get done if you don't watch TV.
Or get stuck on the computer, the computer, the computer.
or disappearing down a rabbit-hole by reading Substack
I love this. Two things come to mind:
1) Munger: “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
2) What I Learned Losing $1,000,000: https://amzn.to/3wBrcPb
a little-known fact is that "Idiocracy" is actually a documentary.
Hahahahaha “That’s not education or erudition—it’s cruelty”…
May take me a long time to process this one, Ted 🤣 but did I ever need the humor tonight.
I just signed up for a free online course called “Chemistry for the Liberal Arts”. Lol. That goes on the dumb list, but I truly am learning how beautiful chemistry and physics are as knowledge for the sake of knowledge, even if I only took undergrad classes in them. Some of the theory and deeper understanding is over my head.
The most beautiful thing about learning is that feeling you get when you synthesize a new idea from a book or class into a song, post, poem, or just a chat with a dear friend✨Alchemy💛