Stupidity isn’t just annoying — it’s an existential threat. It spreads faster than a bad meme, wrecks civilizations, and somehow still gets invited to dinner. The worst part? It isn’t about IQ points. It’s about people willingly handing over their critical thinking card because thinking is hard, and following the crowd is easy.
Look around. Political tribalism, influencers peddling nonsense, social media arguments that make kindergarten disputes look Socratic—none of this happens because people are dumb. It happens because stupidity is convenient. Thinking takes effort, and effort is out of fashion. Instead of verifying facts, we click ‘like.’ Instead of engaging with complexity, we pick a side. Instead of admitting we might be wrong, we double down and buy the T-shirt.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who literally had skin in the game fighting the Nazis, argued that stupidity is more dangerous than evil. Evil, at least, knows what it’s doing. Stupidity just follows orders, smiles, and assumes everything will work out. And once stupidity goes viral, good luck stopping it. Bonhoeffer saw firsthand how people surrendered their independent thought not because they lacked intelligence, but because they preferred comfort over confrontation. Thinking critically would have made them outcasts, and being an outcast is exhausting.
Frictionless Stupidity. Courtesy: Social Media and AI
Fast forward to today: same stupidity, shinier tools. Social media doesn’t just allow stupidity—it optimizes for it. Algorithms reward knee-jerk reactions over thoughtful debate, outrage over nuance, and slogans over ideas. AI assistants could help, but are currently defaulting to being helpful affirmers rather than intellectual sparring partners. The result? A public square where the loudest idiot wins.
If you need a real-world case study in how stupidity operates, look no further than political polarization. The great intellectual bankruptcy of our time isn’t that people disagree — it’s that they do so with such mindless predictability. Political stupidity doesn’t belong to any one party, movement, or “flavor.” It’s not confined to the right, the left, the centrists, or the radicals. It’s the collective failure of people to think beyond pre-approved scripts, to weigh ideas on their merits rather than their tribal affiliations.
On Fake and Aimless Stupidity
Cipolla, the economic historian who mapped the anatomy of stupidity, noted that true stupidity harms others without benefiting itself. This is polarization in a nutshell. The battle lines are drawn, not because either side has a coherent master plan, but because stupidity needs division to thrive. It doesn’t need to be right; it just needs to keep people busy fighting shadows. The more divided the public is, the easier it is to keep them distracted, enraged, and—most importantly—predictable. Stupidity adores predictability because it means no one has to think.
But here’s where it gets worse: stupidity isn’t always passive. It can be dangerously active. It doesn’t need brilliance to be effective—it just needs momentum. Think of it like a virus that mutates to evade containment. The best stupidity is agile, adaptable, and utterly convinced of its own wisdom. It wears the mask of righteousness, speaks with conviction, and bulldozes over reason not with logic, but with sheer, unrelenting force. It thrives in institutions, fuels movements, and rewrites history while the reasonable people are still composing their rebuttals.
Then there’s Manfred Kets de Vries, who adds another delightful wrinkle: some stupidity is fake. He calls it ‘pseudo-stupidity’—people who play dumb on purpose to manipulate others. Politicians pretending they don’t understand economics, influencers dumbing down complex issues for engagement, corporate leaders feigning ignorance about their own scandals. It’s all a show, and the audience eats it up.
Are we Doomed to be Stupid?
But here’s the uncomfortable bit: are we really any better? We love pointing fingers at ‘the stupid masses,’ but we all fall for easy narratives. We all pick the lazy option sometimes. We all hit ‘share’ before checking the facts. Stupidity isn’t just a thing that happens to other people—it’s a thing we participate in, often without realizing it. And that’s the real kicker of polarization: the belief that stupidity is always on the other side.
If Cipolla is right, stupidity is universal and inescapable. If Bonhoeffer is right, it’s a moral failing. If Kets de Vries is right, it’s sometimes a performance. So which is it? Maybe all of them. Maybe stupidity is like a hydra: cut off one head, and two more sprout in the comments section.
So what do we do? Cipolla says contain it. Bonhoeffer says resist it. Kets de Vries says expose it. Maybe the best we can do is start with ourselves—catch ourselves when we slip into lazy thinking, question our own certainties, and, for the love of all that is rational, stop rewarding stupidity with our attention. And instead of self-victimizing or feeling entitled, how about we try leaving things better than we found them for a change? Small acts of clarity, effort, and responsibility could go a long way in breaking the cycle.
Because if history has taught us anything, it’s that stupidity doesn’t need a grand plan. It just needs people to let it slide. And sometimes, that’s the most intelligent thing it does.