Humans are stupid. This is a statement you almost certainly agree with. We look around and see plenty of other we regards as idiots and morons for one reason or an other, perhaps even no reason at all. Probably plenty of other look at us and think the same way. We’ve got idiotic neighbours, pedantic academics, moronic authorities and leaders, dumb employees, stupid bosses, silly kids, crazy grandparents, and imbecile adults all over the place, and we’re most surely one of those.

This is in contrast with traditional consensus that the human species is “the rational animal”, and is “intellectually superior” to other creatures, something that you also probably agree with. It’s often said that the human brain is by far the most powerful computer we know of, and that our intellectual achievements have no parallel in the natural world around us. Not only we egocentrically feel superior to the rest of nature, but we even point at one specific aspect for why is that the case: reason. We often say that other animals act exclusively upon instinct, whereas humans are capable of reasoning their actions and making choices. Besides the fact that choice may be no more than an illusion, and we’re locked in the inevitabilities of physics together with everything else (see more on that here), we like to think that insticts are distinct from rational decisions, and that we choose to do the later ones. Funnily enough, this statement is argued by instict (it feels as if we make choices), while our rational evidence indicates we make no such choices.

Nevertheless, let’s take as true that human behaviour is rational, in that it responds to some reasoning and some cause and effect. Instincts very well fall into this category: they’re quick in-built responses to some stimuli we have evolved over many millenia, hence they are quite reasonable behaviours (such as moving your hand away from a fire, or running and hiding when scared). Rational or not, we still face our first statement as undeniable: humans are, and behave, stupid. Why is that?

Stupid actions are ones associated to illogical, inconsistent, and badly forecasted actions. Short-sighted planning, fallacious reasoning, no reasoning at all, and so on are the essential causes of stupid decisions of all sorts, and all of those reasons rely on either mistakes in the rationale or wrong or missing information in that previous rationale. In other words, stupid decisions are motivated either by wrong deductions, or wrong starting statements for those deductions. Put in terms of maths, a theorem is wrong, either because the proof is wrong, or because the underlying theorems or axioms are wrong or incoherent. We have names for both of those causes, fallacies, and ignorance, and they’re both tragically common.

Notice how the causes for our stupid actions are closely related to being wrong and mistaken; to make mistaken deductions, or starting from wrong or insufficient information. This shows that essentially, being and acting stupid is making mistakes. Put in other words, human stupidity is pretty much human error, an error made in logical reasoning.

For this reason, intelligence (as opposed to stupidity) seems to be about consistent reasoning. The truth behind that reasoning may always be contested, since ideas that were true in the past are constantly being updated as our knowledge about the Universe, ourselves, and our perception of reality progress hand in hand with technology. In this line, we include being consistent with real phenomena in the coherence of our reasoning, as well as the consistence of the logic undermining it as well. It’s clear, then, than intelligent individuals aren’t necessarily those who have the most knowledge (though that is a certain bonus), but those who are capable of putting that knowledge (data) into strong and well deducted conclusions from their reasoning. Said simply, intelligence isn’t about collecting information, but about connecting it consistently.

In knowing what we understand as stupid behaviour we can perhaps find what its root cause (or causes) is, and address those issues. Education (in one form or an other), seems like the best place to start, since no human is born all knowledgeable, not even in terms of how to reason. Fallacies exist, not because our all-logical human brains make occasional mistakes, that would be rather contradictory, but because we learn from our surroundings that they are valid forms of argument, just like we learn wrong and fake bits of information we then call misconceptions; we could say we learn to be stupid from the stupidity of others. For this reason, our education throughout our lives (since one never stops learning) should emphassise reasoning and deduction, rather than memorisation and accumulation of data. It shouldn’t be about memorising formulas, procedures, lists, figures, and names, but about understnding what those mean, where do they come from, and why they are important. History, for example, shouldn’t be about accumulating names and places of events of the past, but about understanding, why they took place, and what effects those had, in order to understand more accurately the world we live in today. Similarly, mathematics and the sciences should bold the reasoning behind every law, formula, and result, rather than the object of the result itself.

Memorising data and algorithms is practical; that’s what computers do, after all, and way more effectively than us; but leaves no gap for progress and novelty. We can only memorise information from the past, whereas deduction is about infering the future from that past experience, whether it is in history, language, physics, or anthropology. The way we understand schools and stupid behaviour must change in this direction, moving from teaching practical procedures and bits of information in exchange for teaching ideas, reasoning, and coherence. Doing otherwise, may be quite stupid from us.