“Everyone is stupid except me”

In Homer the Heretic, Homer Simpson falls asleep on the couch with a lit cigar in his mouth while smugly saying to himself “everyone is stupid except me”. Of course, it’s meant to be an illustration of his hubris. The cigar drops out of his mouth setting the Simpsons’ household on fire and making Homer need rescuing by the “stupid” people.

Most character traits are on a bell-type-curve, with few people at either extreme and many in the middle. While this is uncontroversial, we often hold views of the general public that disregard this. For example, thinking that all or most people are stupid/lazy/immoral – in contrast us who are smart, hard-working and honest.

The fundamental attribution error is part of why this comes so easily. We have access to our private thoughts, so when we do something we know the background circumstances that contributed to our act. Since we don’t know this for most other people, we assume their actions are because of their character. So while I wasn’t lazy but tired from a stressful day at work, someone else is just lazy as a person.

Even if you don’t hold the explicit idea that “most people are stupid”, there are lot of common views where this is implied, in spite of the evidence.

Kids-these-days

This is the eternal idea that kids/teenagers/young people are now even more lazy, entitled, ignorant, undisciplined, and demanding constant praise. Putting aside “think-pieces” about millenials, I’m at an age where my own friends are starting to complain about not being able to find good graduate talent to hire. Of course this attitude requires us forgetting how ignorant we were at that age. After all it’s hard to pretend you don’t know something in your memories of yourself, if you know it today. Which is another variation on “all people are stupid”.

Spelling

A very large percentage of the public (including native speakers) consistently have trouble with major parts of English spelling. Much of it is from a small number of cases (eg. to/too/two, your/you’re, “could of” etc). Trouble with English spelling is older than Modern English. If you consult your anecdotal experience, I bet you’d find these errors spanning all levels of intelligence and capability.

So what conclusion do most of us draw? That English is intrinsically hard to spell? That we should be accommodating and maybe do some spelling reform? Nope. It’s that everyone is stupid because they can’t get these basic rules right and we don’t spend enough time teaching Good Old Grammar because things ain’t what they used to be. Bullshit. For such a widespread problem making it out to be a lack of virtue is just elitist (not to mention classist, ablist etc) crap. It’s also common to trot out anecdote – “well I spell correctly”) – as if that disproves the overwhelming evidence that English spelling is hard.

If it’s too hard to see for English, have a look at Chinese which is a much harder writing system to use. Yes, even for native speakers. Look up character amnesia and ask yourself how the idea that most Chinese speakers are stupid and lazy when it comes to writing their own language sounds.

Long-term weight loss

The science of health, weight and fat is very complex and we’re still learning a lot. So it’s pretty remarkable to get such a robust finding: significant long term weight loss is super hard. So few people manage to keep the weight loss off that you could round it up to impossible. Diets of course don’t work but even major lifestyle changes don’t actually succeed often enough. To make it even harder, a person who has lost weight needs to consume significantly less calories than someone of who was at that weight throughout their life.

So what conclusion do most people draw? That weight loss is intrinsically hard? That that humans are biologically programmed against long-term weight loss? That this should inform our medical research, public policy and personal attitudes to fat people? Nope, it’s that fat people are lazy and lack discipline and if most of them just worked hard enough they’d achieve what medical science shows is next to impossible. Again, there’s the use of anecdotal exceptions (“but I lost XYZkgs!”) which reminds me of the doubling-down of “you’ve gotta have faith!” when presented with contradictory evidence.

Cheating

Lots of people in long-term relationships cheat. The order of magnitude seems to be something like 50%. Even taking some biased research into account, by far the largest slice of the relationships pie are heterosexual monogamous relationships and of those a very large percentage have an encounter with cheating.

Someone like Dan Savage concludes from this that monogamous relationships are intrinsically hard for humans. So should use that knowledge when we make decisions for our lives? Should we not be so quick to jump to the monogamy default, at the individual and societal level? Do the stats provide valuable context which can inform our expectations and communication with our partner(s)? “Nope!” says a huge percentage of the public. “People cheat because they’re immoral and weak. This is everyone’s individual fault and because of the disintegration of the family, something something gay marriage, something abortion and witchcraft”.

Virginity pledges/abstinence

A very large number of kids and teenagers who take those creepy virginity pledges will break them. The idea of abstinence to prevent STIs and pregnancy show similar results. So is the conclusion that these expectations are generally difficult if so many people can’t fulfil them? Nope, they’re sinners. You see, abstinence is 100% effective by definition, geddit? Which the few who don’t break the pledge anecdotally prove, of course.

Class mobility

Of course some of the above actually stem from the mentality of individualistic “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” thinking. The idea that you “hatched from the egg Ayn Rand laid” [Twitter credit] can and does influence topics beyond economics in neo-liberal circles. But it’s in class mobility that this line of thinking finds its home. Class mobility can be measured, and is measured. Often. Most societies don’t have nearly as much of it as their grand narratives say. If you’re born poor your chances of actually bootstrapping are in most countries so small that you can again effectively round it down to zero.

So is the conclusion that our system is not actually designed for the possibility of class mobility at all? That if we wanted it to be a thing more than just at the margins then we’d have to make some actual changes? Nope, the “obvious” reason is that the vast majority of poor people are lazy, immoral and stupid. (While few would say this so explicitly today, to get a feel for a more straight-talking era I invite you to look up some historical arguments about eugenics and class.)

Of course those who are wedded to that belief can and do find examples of the bootstrappers. Just like you can find the person who lost weight long-term and so forth. You can also find people who won the lottery. But as this example shows, the trotting out of the rare lottery winner is particularly malicious in using the exception to justify the system that produced the rule. And when you realise how offensive it is here you’ll see how offensive it is in other cases. Which is what happens when you allow yourself to believe in a model that has most people as stupid, lazy or evil.