Tommaso Ostillio, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
Room C/9
Kozminski University
Ul. Jagielloń ska 57/59
03-301, Warsaw, Poland
+48 22 51 92 153
tostillio@kozminski.edu.pl

The Philosophy of Dumbness: A Philosophical

Romance about Rationality
Abstract: In this work, I investigate the implications of reversing the common assumption
of rationality on behalf of human agents typically underlying philosophical research.
Instead, I assume that human agents can become rational only if they learn to edge against
their dumbness. Specifically, I show that intelligence cannot be considered the opposite of
dumbness. To this end, I embrace the difference among System 1, System 2, and System
1.5. On these grounds, I argue that System 2 can be considered the system of intelligence,
whereas Systems 1 and 1.5 can be viewed as the systems of rationality. More precisely, I
argue that System 2 concerns theoretical reasoning, whereas System 1 and 1.5 concern
practical reasoning. Accordingly, I show that people are dumber whenever they fail to
have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5, whereas people become more rational
whenever they manage to have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5.
Interestingly, both cases can be considered the causes of two distinct social processes. On
one side, when dumbness increases among individuals, social groups achieve coordination
that detriments general welfare. On the other, when dumbness decreases among
individuals, social groups achieve coordination that maximizes general welfare.

Keywords: rationality; cognitive bias; functional stupidity; decision; system 1; system 1.5;
system 2; practical reasoning.

Introduction

Several years ago, while I was lecturing on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641
[2017]), one of my students asked me a question that—at that time—sounded
philosophically irrelevant, i.e., what would Descartes say about all those people who do not think
and still do exist? Of course, my student only wanted to revive a boring class on Early Modern
Philosophy with some genuine humor. Thus, I just answered back with a big laugh and
continued to lecture. Nonetheless, as the years passed, I realized that my student had a
point, and his question was philosophically insightful. As a result, I grew convinced that
my student’s question could become the main research question of a philosophical
investigation into the nuances of human stupidity (or dumbness, as we call it herein).
Surprisingly, human dumbness has received little attention in the exceptionally vast
philosophical literature on rationality, rational cognition, and the like. That is probably
because philosophers, like anybody else inside and outside academia, dismiss dumbness
as a lack of intelligence or brightness. Concurrently, the term foolosophy usually connotes
pie-in-the-sky (or silly) philosophizing rather than a philosophy of stupidity. For this
reason, foolosophy has no positive meaning among philosophers. Accordingly, in this
work, I attempt to provide a credible philosophical definition of dumbness and discuss the
good and bad effects of dumb behavior.
More precisely, my primary claim is that dumbness has little to do with intelligence,
regardless of how intelligence is defined. Instead, as I argue below, it concerns people’s
tendency to make hasty inferences from contextual information and evidence, leading to
equally hasty decisions and actions. In other words, I claim that dumbness does not result
from a lack of intelligence on behalf of individuals but concerns a lack of rational control
over one’s beliefs, decisions, and actions. Moreover, I maintain that dumbness can be the
driver of two diametrically opposite types of hasty decisions: those decisions resulting in
fortuitous success and those decisions bearing detrimental failure. In this regard, I show
that both decisions are attributable to definable social and psychological mechanisms
whose activation is the subject of the discussion below.

What is dumbness?

Our journey into the philosophical nuances of dumbness shall start from the famous
distinction between system 1 (i.e., the system of intuition) and system 2 (i.e., the system
of reasoning), which cognitive psychologists commonly accept. In a nutshell, the first
system encompasses all those mental mechanisms allowing us to process environmental
information automatically, e.g., perceptions. In contrast, the second system regards all
those mental mechanisms involving the cognitive representation of complex or abstract,
e.g., an arithmetic operation. Importantly, system 1 is liable for much of our cognitive
blunders because system 2 has no control over the hasty inferences of system 1.
Specifically, system 2 can correct the errors of system 1 only after system 1 has performed
a wrong inference from contextual information (Kahneman, 2003).
Moreover, system 2 can correct the wrong inferences of system 1 because humans are
capable of self-reflection. Accordingly—as Boghossian (2019) proposes—it is arguably
true that there exists an intermediate system between systems 1 and 2, i.e., system 1.5,
allowing system 2 to access the mistakes of system 1 and correct them via self-reflection.
If we apply these definitions to our initial claim (i.e., the view that dumbness concerns a
lack of rationality rather than a lack of intelligence), we may claim that dumbness is rooted
in System 1, whereas intelligence is rooted in System 2. Indeed, while intelligence
concerns our reasoning skills and our general ability to represent and understand complex
abstract information, dumbness concerns our inability to make correct inferences from the
contextual data that is immediately available to us.
Concurrently, the critical difference between dumbness and intelligence is that someone’s
intelligence tends to stay close to its initial value throughout their lives. In contrast,
someone’s dumbness can increase or decrease throughout their lives. Namely, if dumbness
were measured like intelligence and produced a normal curve like a standard IQ test, we
could certainly see that some people are dumber than average, whereas others are less
dumb than average. In this regard, one undoubtedly good thing about being a human being
is that humans can change their minds for the better (McRaney, 2022). Thus, if someone
makes good use of system 1.5 and, thus, increases their self-reflection skills, they can move
from right to left under the bell-shaped curve.
Notably, these remarks indicate that it might be incorrect to consider dumbness the
opposite of intelligence. That is because—as we shall see below—when system 1.5
functions correctly on the individual level, agents coordinate most efficiently on the group
level. Instead, when system 1.5 does not function properly on the individual level, agents
coordinate in the least efficient way on the group level. Expressed otherwise, a sharp
reduction in dumbness on the individual level dramatically reduces dumbness on the
group level. Conversely, widespread dumbness on the individual level dramatically
increases dumbness on the group level. Therefore, if dumbness must be defined in one
line, we might state that dumbness is one’s inability to properly use intuition (i.e., system
1) and self-reflection (i.e., system 1.5).
Utmost dumbness

Because this volume concerns reason and its locality, the reader may now ask what
dumbness has to do with reason and its locality if dumbness has much to do with intuition
and self-reflection. The most tempting answer would be a resounding “Nothing!”
Nonetheless, if—as we claim—dumbness indicates a lack of rationality on behalf of
individuals, it must have something to do with reason, too. A credible justification for this
claim is available in a famous story from Jewish popular humor whose narration goes as
follows. During the times of the USSR, a policeman detained a Russian rabbi for
interrogation. Yet, before the interrogation begins, the rabbi tells the policeman that he
will answer any question only if the policeman helps him resolve a doubt that has been
tormenting him for days. Namely, if two men fall into a chimney simultaneously, and one
gets dirty but the other does not, who takes a shower first?1
Having heard the rabbi’s question, the policeman does not hesitate to answer that the dirty
man takes a shower first. Yet the rabbi immediately retorts that the answer is wrong
because the clean man sees his fellow dirty and—thinking he is dirty, too—takes a shower
first. So, the rabbi asks the policeman the same question again, and the policeman
immediately replies that the clean man takes a shower first. But the rabbi retorts that the
answer is wrong because the clean man points out to his fellow that he is very dirty and—
thus—should go take a shower first. So, the rabbi asks the policeman the same question
for the last time, and the policeman replies that the dirty fellow takes a shower first. Upon
receiving the policeman’s third answer, the rabbi stands up and says he has nothing to say
to a man who believes two men can fall into a chimney.
Now, there are two good take-homes from this story. Firstly, if someone is adequately
manipulated (like the policeman by the rabbi), they can buy into absurd beliefs, such as
the belief that two men can fall into a chimney. Secondly, framing information in a
particular way can force system 1 to misuse the available information. As we shall see
below, these two problems lie at the foundations of the heuristics and biases program,
which analyzes how system 1 can produce wrong beliefs. Yet, for now, we shall bother
ourselves with a much more fundamental question, i.e., what does the above story tell us about
reason and its locality? Hence, let us analyze the three possible answers to the rabbi’s riddle
philosophically, i.e., as if they were philosophical arguments.

1
This aphorism is a readaptation of the aphorism presented by Telushkin (1988).
The first possibility has much to do with reason—as we commonly understand reason in
philosophy. Indeed, it is a straightforward logical deduction, i.e., 𝜑 → 𝜓, 𝜑 ∴ 𝜓 (by modus
ponens). More precisely, given that combustion causes any chimney to become dirty, if
someone falls into it, they shall be dirty, too, and must shower afterward. In contrast, the
second possibility is philosophical but requires a more abstract consideration, i.e., a modal
consideration. In fact, the rabbi is correct in pointing out that there might be a possible
world where someone comes out clean after falling into the chimney. Namely, we may
claim that—in a possible world—if someone falls into a chimney that has never been used,
they shall come out clean and need not shower afterward. Eventually, the third possibility
is the most tempting: why should we even discuss a much unlikely case?
Therefore, based on the initial information in our guiding example, the first two cases
concern two possible beliefs that anyone capable of abstract reasoning (i.e., of using
System 2 correctly) could produce. On this basis, we might mistakenly conclude that no
one capable of sound reasoning would buy into such a riddle as the rabbi’s. Yet—and this
is of tremendous importance—such a conclusion would be as fallacious as it is easy to
reach. In this regard, the third case shows us how easily System 1 can feed our minds with
beliefs unlikely to be justifiable. Specifically, reasoning errors like the one shown in the
story above can produce dumb beliefs that spread like wildfire among individuals. In our
digital lives, we see many such cases. Indeed, many pieces of rough evidence from social
media reveal that some people can find rational justifications to uphold beliefs as absurd
as the belief that two men can fall into a chimney.
For example, there are entire online communities whose members uphold that the Earth
is flat, while the opposite belief is a conspiracy of acclaimed scientists against humanity.
Furthermore, there are online communities whose members maintain that vaccines are a
conspiracy of Big Pharma to make people sick and enrich themselves. Finally, some online
users openly oppose the introduction of Arabic numerals into Western school programs
(see below). These three cases are also remarkable examples of what happens when system
2 loses control over system 1. More precisely, while system 2 correctly functions when it
follows defined laws (i.e., the rules of logic), dumbness results from definable systematic
deviations from those laws, i.e., from wrong inference performed by system 1.
Analogously, while rational behavior on the level of social groups occurs within the
boundaries of those social rules maximizing general welfare, widespread dumbness results
from definable processes that cross those boundaries and detriment general welfare.
These remarks are essential to sustain our primary claim: reasoning and cognitive skills
are indeed associated with intelligence. Yet reasoning is not only theoretical. It can be
practical, too. Thus, wrong beliefs have consequences on actions, regardless of whether
they are individual or group actions. For this reason, dumbness can also be considered the
dark side of reason on both the individual and the group levels. Hence, if reason can be
located on both levels, dumbness can too. Particularly, extreme forms of utmost
dumbness, like the ones in the abovementioned cases, directly result from definable
cognitive blunders caused by system 1.
Thus, we might claim that dumbness is of two types: the first concerns the devastating
effects of a lack of rational control over one's beliefs; the second concerns the behavior of
groups whose members have fallen victim to the first type of dumbness. In fact, when
dumbness hits hard on the individual level, people easily herd around biased beliefs that
can later become cornerstones of polarized groups whose behavior can affect society at
large, e.g., the QAnon community and the sad assault of Capital Hill on Jan 6th, 2021.
These considerations have received much investigation by Cipolla (2011), who has
established five laws governing stupid human behavior:
(1) “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in
circulation” (Cipolla, 2011: p. 19).
(2) “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic
of that person” (Cipolla, 2011: p. 24).
(3) “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons
while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses” (Cipolla, 2011: p.
36).
(4) “Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In
particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any
circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a
costly mistake” (Cipolla, 2011: p. 56).
(5) “A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit” (Cipolla, 2011: p. 59).
As concerns (1)—and consistently with our thesis—several pieces of evidence prove
Cipolla (2011) right. In this respect, before dying, Umberto Eco famously stated that social
media are amplifiers for the voices of imbeciles. For instance, Figure 1 shows the results
of a Twitter survey about the abovementioned Arabic numerals. Interestingly, if we code
YES as 1 and NO as 0 for the 270 respondents and perform a Chi-square test χ! on the
data with 𝑑𝑓 = 1, we find that the span between YES (29%) and NO (71%) is statistically
significant because p < 0.05 and the size of the statistical effect φ is well above 30%
(χ! (1) = 48.133 (p = 0.000) with φ = 0.42).

[Figure 1]

As for (2), Cipolla’s (2011) law can be considered a broad consequence of

the dysrationalia problem (Stanovich, 1993). The latter problem highlights a substantial
mismatch (i.e., a surprisingly low correlation) between the scores of those tests predicting
high intelligence (e.g., the SAT score) and the scores of those indicating high rationality
(e.g., the cognitive reflection test). Namely, the dysrationalia problem involves the idea that
one can be very intelligent and hold very irrational beliefs. For instance, the brilliant
French virologist and Nobel Prize recipient Luc Montagnier pioneered the research on
HIV but was a staunch supporter of the conspiracy theories about the origins of the SARS-
CoV-2 virus and the purpose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Analogously, Kary Mullis—also
a Nobel Prize recipient and the most brilliant physician of the 20th Century—denied the
existence of AIDS and claimed to have been abducted by UFO (Robson, 2019).
On the other hand, as for (3), when the traditional media provides excessive coverage of
conspiracy theories circulating online, those watching and listening to traditional media
can infer wrong conclusions from that information and take extreme actions. For instance,
the excessive coverage of conspiracy theories locating the origin of the COVID-19 virus in
the 5G antennas has pushed some people across Europe to burn 5G antennas down. Even
more absurdly, some people in Maddaloni—in the Italian province of Caserta—
preemptively burnt the local phone and internet antennas, leaving Maddaloni’s
inhabitants without phone and internet coverage for about two weeks.2
Importantly, the available rough evidence suggests that even well-educated people (i.e.,
people with a degree) can buy into conspiracy theories. In fact, as for (4), the anti-vaxxer
movements have a significant follow-up even among well-educated people. For instance,
Roberto Burioni—an internationally acknowledged Italian virologist who’s been fighting
against anti-vaxxers for years—recounts that he once confronted a well-educated anti-
vaxxer who insisted that Burioni defended Big Pharma because—as a physician—it was

2
<
https://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/04/22/news/maddaloni_antenne_bruciate_per_la_paura_del_
g5-254706941/ > accessed on May 9th, 2022, at 01:14 pm.
in interest. Besides, Burioni’s contender argued that Big Pharma devises vaccines to make
people sicker. To this statement, Burioni retorted that Big Pharma would significantly
increase if vaccines were unavailable. Yet Burioni’s contender—a holder of a degree in
economics—retorted that Burioni had to be wrong because everyone in his anti-vaxxer
circle contended the opposite of Burioni’s statements (Burioni, 2016).
Finally, the abovementioned pieces of rough evidence from social media provide a terrific
verification of (5). One example is undoubtedly of the Capitol Hill assault. Yet there are
equally sad cases. For instance, we might recall Luca Traini, who fell victim to Matto
Salvini’s propaganda and—as a result—felt entitled to open fire on a group of African
immigrants in Italy’s Macerata to vindicate a young Italian woman who had been
murdered by a drug dealer of Nigerian origins. Similarly, Edgar Maddison Welch
embraced his assault rifle and attacked a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., because he had
read online that Hillary Clinton was running a child abuse scheme in the pizzeria’s
basement (where, for the records, there was no basement).
It is now imperative to remark that these cases do not only provide an empirical
verification of Cipolla's (2011) five laws. These cases also show how dumbness can
increase among groups of individuals when it spreads among individuals like wildfire. In
this respect, conspiracy theorists and the like constitute a spectacular confirmation of the
claim that dumbness, like reason, can be located on both the individual and the group
level. Furthermore, the abovementioned cases show us the effects on practical reasoning
resulting from a deep dive into the dark side of reason, which is, in fact, dumbness—as we
claim. As such cases are extreme cases of dumbness, we shall now ask whether individual
dumbness can positively affect the behavior of groups of individuals.
Dumbness for the best

In this section, we shall now ask ourselves a much deeper question: can dumbness also lead
to maximizing outcomes that enhance general welfare? If we only consider our examples above
and Cipolla’s (2011) laws, our answer would undoubtedly be negative. Such a stance is
nonetheless as incorrect as easy to take. This point in our discussion is crucial because it
concerns the claim that dumbness is not the contrary of intelligence. In fact, although we
have no measure of dumbness and many criteria for measuring intelligence, we can
nonetheless claim that if dumbness were measured like intelligence and produced a bell-
shape (i.e., a normal) curve, the examples mentioned would result from the actions of
individuals whose dumbness is below the right-hand tail of the normal curve. In other
words, the cases of utmost dumbness can be considered extreme values under the right-
hand tail of the normal curve.
Hence, we shall instead ask ourselves: what about those people whose dumbness is close to or less
than average? This question has tremendous implications for our discussion because if—as
we claim—dumbness has much to do with rationality and little to do with intelligence,
those whose dumbness is average can find some rational control over the dumb beliefs that
can influence their decisions and actions. In other words, system 1.5 can function as a
reducer of dumbness because it can moderate the effects of the hasty inferences of system
1 on practical reasoning. This claim finds a valid justification in the popular distinction
between the constructivist and the ecological approaches to economic rationality (Smith,
2007). In a nutshell, the first approach assumes omniscience and sound rational thinking
on behalf of the homo oeconomicus. In contrast, the second approach assumes that the
homo oeconomicus isn’t always rational but can improve his rationality as he learns to
deal with different challenging situations (Hayek, 1973). No one has expressed this
difference better than Aumann (1985: pp. 11-12):

“[homo oeconomicus] is the species that always acts both purposefully and logically,
has well-defined goals, is motivated solely by the desire to approach these goals as closely
as possible, and has the calculating ability required to do so [In contrast] his real-life
cousin, homo sapiens, is often guided by subconscious psychological drives, or even by
conscious ones, that are totally irrational; herd instincts play a large role in his behavior;
even when his goals are well-defined, which isn’t often, his motivation to achieve them
may be less than complete; far from possessing infinite calculating ability, he is often
downright stupid; and even when intelligent, he may be tired or hungry or distracted or
 cross or drunk or stoned, unable to think under pressure, able to think only under
pressure, or guided more by his emotions than his brains.”

Interestingly, Aumann (1985) tells us—from a theoretical perspective—the assumption of

constructive rationality on behalf of the homo oeconomicus is needed to ensure that the
homo oeconomicus behaves in the way economic models predict. Expressed otherwise,
the assumption of constructive rationality involves ensuring that the homo oeconomicus
behaves rationally because his behavior is overall coherently with the assumptions (or
axioms) of an economic model representing it. For instance, consumers always spend an
amount of money that is less than or equal to their budget, maximizing their utility
accordingly. In contrast, producers always earn a profit because their total revenue is high
enough to cover the expenses related to producing an additional unit of product. For
economists, these rules—also known as maximization rules—underlie much of our
economic behavior.
However, as Aumann (1985) correctly points out, there exists a significant difference
between the homo oeconomicus and the homo sapiens. That is why economic models
seldom reflect the actual behavior of economic agents. Yet relaxing the assumption of
perfect rationality bears remarkable benefits regarding prediction. Indeed, the ecological
approach to economic behavior explains how economic agents learn from their mistakes
and improve their rational control over their beliefs—consistently with our claim that a
properly functioning system 1.5 enhances one's practical reasoning. Specifically, the
ecological approach to economic behavior is reducible to the view that human action
results from decisions taken under information, time, and cognitive constraints, i.e., the
bounded rationality model (Simon, 1957).
In this regard, Smith (1962) has famously proven that boundedly rational traders can
produce the wealth-maximizing outcomes predicted by economic models in experimental
markets even if the assumptions about their rationality are relaxed. More precisely,
clueless agents who trade following trial-and-error strategies can make markets for
perishable goods efficient (Gjerstad & Smith, 2014). Analogously, when clueless agents
sell re-tradable assets in experimental markets, they often cause the market to bubble
(Porter & Smith, 1994). Yet, as their experience and expertise grow, or agents find some
valid justification for their expectations, experimental financial markets can function
efficiently, at least for some time (Smith, 2007). In other words, when system 1.5 does its
job, one’s rationality improves.
Accordingly, the available evidence suggests that random behavior resulting from rules of
thumb and rudimental heuristics can make markets efficient through some time-lapse.
Namely, dispersed dumb behavior can have some positive side effects. But that is not all.
The authors of the Norwegian TV show Økonomiekspertene ran a fascinating experiment
with two stock analysts, an astrologist, a beauty blogger, and five cows. Each was given
10,000 NOK (a bit more than $1,200) to be invested in stocks listed in the OBX index, i.e.,
the Oslo Stock Exchange's top 25 firms.
Given that the cows could not make an intentional decision, Økonomiekspertene drew a
5 × 5 square on the lawn where the cows grazed. Each square 1 × 1 represented one of
the 25 stocks listed on the OBX index. So, the cows chose stocks by randomly defecating
on one of the 1 × 1 squares. Astonishingly, the performance of the cows (7.26% ROI)3
closely matched the performance of the stock analysts (7.28% ROI), who used complicated
computations to estimate the future values of the stocks. Instead, the beauty blogger
followed her gut feeling and obtained a 10% ROI, while the astrologist linked their
decision to the astral movements, getting a -5% ROI.4
How did it happen? It happened because, as the great American Lebanese Nassim
Nicholas Taleb (2006: p. 246) puts it, “no matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we
are at dominating the odds, randomness will [always] have the last word.” This claim is not an
aphorism. It is instead backed by research. In fact, Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996) have
shown that much human decision-making under uncertainty follows specific heuristics
bearing tremendous success. Particularly, Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996) have coined the
term take-the-best heuristic, which concerns those decisions that rely upon cue-based
discrimination between mutually exclusive alternatives. Importantly, Gigerenzer &
Goldstein (1996) report that the take-the-best heuristic outperforms any other substitute
for decision-making based on more complicated computations. Thus, people whose
dumbness is on the left of the mean under a normal curve can make maximizing decisions,
regardless of their initial cluelessness.
Thus—once more—when system 1.5 does its job and someone's rational control over their
decisions increases, things improve. In this regard, Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996) find
that decisions based on the take-the-best heuristic easily outperform complicated multiple-
regression-based simulations for decision-making. In other words, Gigerenzer &

3
ROI = Return on Investment.
4
< https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7922601/Cows-match-performance-human-stock-
analysts-Norwegian-experiment.html > accessed on July 21st, 2021, at 14:40.
Goldstein (1996) show that people can make fast, effective decisions despite the
information, cognitive, and time constraints. For the same reason, as Gigerenzer (2008)
demonstrated, one good reason to invest in a stock, e.g., a gut feeling, is a powerful
heuristic that can often overperform even the most complicated financial models. Thus,
our rationality—bounded as it may be—can become the most powerful tool for dealing
with randomness. Expressed otherwise, when System 1.5 properly moderates the hasty
inferences of System 1, agents can make maximizing decisions.
It follows that—contrary to common wisdom among philosophers—rationality is not
always concerned with forming sound beliefs that logically follow other sound beliefs
because people’s beliefs, decisions, and actions can be influenced by the information their
surrounding environment transmits. That is why—in cases of high uncertainty and
randomness—a gut feeling (or an intuition) might offer a good reason to issue a decision
that eventually bears success. Analogously, in other cases of high uncertainty and
randomness, people rely on contextual information as a valid justification to issue a
decision or take an action that may eventually be successful.
For example, when we do not know how to find a room at a conference venue, we assume
that other people are looking for the same room, follow them, and eventually find the
room without exchanging a word with them. Instead, when we do not know what laptop
to buy, we might base our purchase decision on a few conversations with some trusted
acquaintances, eventually making a good purchase. Accordingly, it seems that—in many
cases—people can be aware of their cluelessness and hedge against dumbness. It follows
that rationality concerns much of the process through which people trade off less rational
(or dumber) beliefs for better (or less dumb) beliefs that maximize their overall well-being
(Sowell, 1980). For this reason, if people become less dumb (or more rational) when
system 1.5 functions correctly, it is arguably true that one’s dumbness can move from the
center or the right-hand tail of a normal distribution curve to its left. More specifically, if
contextual information can activate the learning processes that lead individuals and social
groups to reject dumb beliefs for better ones, a decrease in dumbness on both the individual
and social levels involves an increase in rationality on both levels.
Notably, the latter learning processes have two fundamental implications. On the one
hand, such strategies enable society to create markets whose internal rules allow
coordination among market participants who use the price system as their preferred way
of communication with one another (Hayek, 1937). On the other hand, and for the same
reason, humans can create shared sociolinguistic and social institutions that allow them
to live together (Guala, 2016). In other words, trading a dumb belief for a more rational
belief grants that human socio-institutions can evolve and progress. For instance, when
Edward Jenner discovered that inoculation could reduce the circulation of smallpox
infections, his fellow citizens rejected his claims on religious grounds. Yet, as time passed
and inoculation proved effective, his fellow citizens accepted inoculation as a shared
practice maximizing general well-being.

Dumbness for the worse

It is time to make our considerations about dumbness less optimistic and understand why
people can sometimes dive into the dark side of reason. To this end, let us imagine what
the world would be like if everyone were gifted with constructive rationality in the same
way as the homo oeconomicus. On one side, our minds would be infallible mathematical
calculators that always compute the correct odds that a specific action or decision bears
success. On the other side, constructive rationality would enable us to live in a world where
randomness does not affect the course of human life because everyone would be able to
predict the correct odds associated with the occurrence of any event. Of course, these
suppositions are as imaginative as the belief that Santa Claus exists or that two men can
fall into a chimney.
In contrast, the truth we must accept is that the ability of our minds to deal with odds and
randomness is limited. Particularly—as Pinker (2021) explains—one’s knowledge and
acceptance of base rates improves reasoning abilities. In this regard, rationality and
intelligence diverge the most: while the first can improve as we learn to deal with
information correctly, our cognitive abilities are somewhat stable (Robson, 2019). For this
reason, making the most of our cognitive abilities in our actions is up to us. Namely, while
we can improve the functioning of System 1 and System 1.5 over time, the overall skills of
System 2 cannot be boosted throughout the course of our lives. Thus, we can only live
with the fact that “it takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own
ignorance”—as Thomas Sowell once said.
In this regard, it is worth noting that memory—as a justifier of one’s belief—is a double-
edged sword. On the one hand, it is a valid justifier of our beliefs, e.g., we might recall the
name of our mothers or where we were born. On the other hand, memory distorts our
assessment of probabilities and weakens our ability to properly deal with randomness.
More precisely, given that our minds are largely unable to deal with complex
computations involving real numbers, our minds use memories as belief validators by
distorting the odds that a belief is correct. This claim lies at the bottom of the so-called
heuristics and biases program pioneered by Tversky & Kahneman (1974), who were the
first to show that—under uncertainty—our minds justify judgments based on memories
rather than hard evidence.
Tversky & Kahneman’s (1974) can be summed up as the easier something is to recall, the
more we see it as a valid justification for our beliefs. In the digital world, this process of
judgment validation can become pernicious because the algorithms running social media
feeds and search engine hits provide us with information that fits our overall preferences
and tastes (Quintarelli, 2019). Therefore, in the digital world, our constant interaction with
data that fits our beliefs spoils the process of belief validation based on memories even
further. On one side, it becomes a potent enabler of dumbness both on the individual and
the social group levels because it boosts the likelihood that System 1 makes blunders. On
the other side, it reduces the probability that System 1.5 can have some control over the
cognitive errors of System 1.
This problem has received much investigation by Stanovich (2021), who argues that online
algorithms are enablers of two powerful cognitive biases: the belief bias and the
confirmation bias. The former bias concerns our tendency to consider the conclusion of
an argument plausible because it fits our pre-existing beliefs, whereas the latter bias
concerns our inclination to consider a belief valid because we can recall plenty of
information that confirms it, regardless of whether that information is reliable or not. More
precisely, Stanovich (2021) claims that—in the digital world—the belief and confirmation
biases merge into a third and more detrimental bias, i.e., the myside bias.
The latter concerns considering an argument valid because it fits one’s and everyone else's
beliefs in their social circle. Thus, my side bias is not only cognitive. It is also behavioral
because it affects behavior by shaping the beliefs and decisions of individuals and social
groups. In other words, it links biased practical reasoning to dumb decisions and actions.
Consequently, given that online algorithms bring people with similar views and opinions
together, the myside bias becomes an enabler of dumb behavior that tends to increase
rather than decrease. Simply put, the myside bias reduces the likelihood that someone or
a social group might trade off a dumb belief for a more rational one. Accordingly, when
the myside bias activates within filter bubbles, the likelihood of buying into an absurd
belief increases, and cases like those mentioned above occur.
Concurrently, when the myside bias activates within filter bubbles, availability cascades
can force people to herd around dumb beliefs and form opposite and strongly polarized
factions, e.g., the pro and anti-COVID-19 vaccines. Analogously, when the myside bias
activates within filter bubbles, people are driven away from rationality and become
reluctant to justify beliefs based on evidence rather than preconceptions. Eventually, the
activation of the myside bias leads people to create inefficient social institutions and
undertake behavior detrimental to general social welfare. Hence, the myside bias is an
excellent proxy to explain why someone can shift from the left or center of a normal curve
representing dumbness to its right. Particularly, the myside bias can be considered the root-
cause of what Alvesson & Spicer (2016) call functional stupidity, i.e., people’s tendency
to consider a belief true because everyone else upholds it.
More importantly, function stupidity resulting from the myside bias does not only involve
a general increase in dumbness among the members of a social group. It also and overall
involves higher group polarization impacting how people participate in the sociopolitical
and socioeconomic spheres of their lives. In this regard, Stanovich (2021) remarks that the
myside bias predominantly affects people’s capacity to achieve compromise and stipulate
binding agreements that protect the interests of the parties involved. Moreover, when the
myside bias causes functional stupidity to obtain, people reject those values lying at the
core of Western democracies, such as freedom of speech and diversity of opinions.
Consequently, the myside bias and the functional stupidity problems reveal that when
people diverge from truth and objectivity because their beliefs force them to do so, people
become unable to reach those compromises granting social coordination and social
progress. In other words, the functional stupidity problem enables social mechanisms
contrary to those described in the previous section.

Conclusion: is dumbness a new philosophical category?

In this work, I analyzed the implications of reversing the common assumption of

rationality on behalf of human agents underlying much philosophical research. Namely,
I assumed that people have some reasoning and cognitive skills that are stable and
unevenly distributed among them (i.e., some level of intelligence). In this regard, I
observed that embracing the standard distinction between theoretical and practical
reasoning leads to the appalling conclusion that one can be tremendously intelligence (i.e.,
good at using system 2) but also tremendously dumb in their behavior (i.e., bad at using
system 1 and 1.5). In other words, our conclusion is that sound theoretical reasoning does
not necessarily imply sound practical reasoning. That is because rationality is not a given.
It is rather something that someone can or cannot achieve depending on whether they are
good at using system 1.5 to moderate the blunders of system 1.
Therefore, when human agents manage to do so, their dumbness decreases. Instead, when
human agents fail to do so, dumbness increases. Analogously, social groups are better off
when they manage to trade dumb beliefs for more rational beliefs. Particularly, functional
social institutions maximizing general welfare emerge from the behavior of agents whose
dumbness decreases. Instead, functional stupidity emerges from the behavior of agents
who have fallen victims of the myside bias. In this case, human agents create institutions
that fail to maximize general welfare. Given that we live in a digital society in which cases
of functional stupidity is under our attention every day, a good question is what
philosophers can do to reduce this trend. Perhaps, philosophers might take dumbness for
what is (i.e., a serious human problem) and start analyzing the implications of the
hypothesis that human agents are not always rational, as I did in this work.

Bibliography:

[01] Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2016). The stupidity paradox: The power and pitfalls of
functional stupidity at work. Profile Books.
[02] Aumann, R. J. (1985). What is game theory trying to accomplish? in Arrow, K. &
Honkapohja, S. (eds.: 1985, pp. 1-34). Blackwell Publishers.
[03] Boghossian, P. (2019). Inference, Agency and Responsibility. in Jackson, M.B.,
& Jackson, B.B. (eds.: 2019). Reasoning: New essays on theoretical and practical
thinking. Oxford University Press.
[04] Burioni, R. (2016). Il vaccino non è un'opinione. Edizioni Mondadori.
[05] Cipolla, C.M. (2011). The basic laws of human stupidity. WH Allen.
[06] Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on First Philosophy. Early Modern Texts. Jonathan
Bennett (ed.: 2017):
https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1641.pdf
[07] Gigerenzer, G. (2008). Rationality for mortals: How people cope with uncertainty.
Oxford University Press.
[08] Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way:
models of bounded rationality. Psychological review, 103(4), 650.
[09] Gjerstad, S.D., & Smith, V.L. (2014). Rethinking housing bubbles: The role of
household and bank balance sheets in modeling economic cycles. Cambridge University
Press.
[10] Guala, F. (2016). Understanding institutions: The science and philosophy of living
together. Princeton University Press.
[11] Hayek von, F. A. (1937). Economics and knowledge. Economica, 4(13), 33-54.
[12] Hayek, F.A (1973). Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order.
University of Chicago Press.
[13] Kahneman, D. (2003). Maps of bounded rationality: Psychology for behavioral
economics. American economic review, 93(5), 1449-1475.
[14] McRaney, D. (2022). How minds change: the surprising science of belief, opinion, and
persuasion. Penguin.
[15] Pinker, S. (2021). Rationality: What it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters. Penguin
Books.
[16] Porter, D.P., & Smith, V.L. (1994). Stock market bubbles in the laboratory.
Applied mathematical finance, 1(2), 111-128.
[17] Quintarelli, S. (2019) Capitalismo immateriale: le tecnologie digitali e il nuovo conflitto
sociale. Bollati Boringhieri.
[18] Robson, D. (2019). The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise Your Thinking and Make
Wiser Decisions. Hachette UK.
[19] Simon, H.A. (1957). Models of man: social and rational; mathematical essays on
rational human behavior in society setting. Wiley Books.
[20] Smith, V.L. (1962). An experimental study of competitive market behavior.
Journal of political economy, 70(2), 111-137.
[21] Smith, V.L. (2007). Rationality in economics: Constructivist and ecological forms.
Cambridge University Press.
[22] Sowell, T. (1980). Knowledge and Decision. Basic Books.
[23] Stanovich, K. E. (1993). Dysrationalia: A new specific learning disability. Journal
of learning disabilities, 26(8), 501-515.
[24] Stanovich, K. E. (2021). The bias that divides us: The science and politics of myside
thinking. MIT Press.
[25] Telushkin, J. (1988). Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews.
HarperCollins.
[26] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics
and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.