I have to thank Ann Althouse for tracking down The Guardian’s feature, “Want to quickly spot idiots? Here are five foolproof red flags” by Arwa Mahdawi. Like so many other junk pieces published these days, the article shouldn’t have been allowed past the desk of a minimally competent editor, but it does raise a valid question: What does qualify as evidence of signature significance proving someone is an idiot beyond a reasonable doubt?
Let’s forget the technical definition of idiot (someone whose IQ in in the 50-70 range), as that’s not how the word is commonly used today. We say someone is an idiot when we believe that they haven’t just said or done something stupid (because everybody does ), but have done or said something nobody who isn’t stupid would never do. I place the men who injure themselves in sensitive places using vacuum cleaners as erotic aids in that category, for example. those who hang out on “Chimpmania” and are proudly racist qualify: bias at that level really does make you stupid, or, in the alternative, you have to be stupid to be that biased. I have to fight down the urge to conclude that some religious zealots of my acquaintance are idiots, though I cannot imagine anything more idiotic than to say, with absolute certainty, even with condescension, that nobody should believe in dinosaurs because they couldn’t have fit on the Ark, and all the fossils were sneaky fakes planted on Earth by God to test our faith. An executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually told me this.
Then there are the people who follow the advice of social media “influencers,” who generally have the acumen of a typical Kardashian, on serious matters. Does that make them idiots, or is it just evidence that our culture is idiotic? These are important questions, so I was eager to know what those “fool proof” red flags were. Let’s see…
1. “Beware of anyone who describes themselves as a ‘proud non-reader of books’”
Who does this and under what stimulus? Moreover, one can now accumulate a lot of knowledge and intellectual stimulation by reading articles, essays, and various publications online. Boasting that one doesn’t read at all is, I think, a genuine “I am an idiot!” declaration.
Incidentally, I have always regarded the people who make the similar boast that they never watch television as a red flag, not of idiocy (necessarily), but of cultural delusion and life incompetence. Television, and now the web, are crucial windows into popular culture that cannot be ignored by anyone who wants to participate meaningfully in society.
2. “Similarly, avoid anyone who thinks that every book should have been a six-paragraph blog post“
Here’s a red flag that indicates a writer who decided that she needed five items on her list and could only think of four. #2 is the same as #1.
3. “Remember that wealth isn’t directly linked to intelligence“
I take that back: she could only think of three. That isn’t even a statement consistent with the stated topic at hand. “Someone who thinks being wealthy automatically indicates superior intelligence” would fit the structure the author is following, but telling the reader what to “remember” doesn’t. Moreover, believing that wealth equals brilliance is no more idiotic than the progressive myth that wealth and success have no relationship to intelligence at all, and that the poor are all just victims of bad luck and a cruel system.
4. “Dropping ‘AI’ or ‘ChatGPT’ into every second sentence is a major idiot red flag“
Obviously, it’s not. Real idiots, even those with IQs above 70, don’t talk about ChatGPT at all, much less “every second sentence.” In fact, someone who refers to the anything in every second sentence is in the midst of some kind of cognitive crisis.
5. “Keep a wide berth from people who obsess about their IQs“
Now we’re back to advice on how to react to people the author doesn’t like rather than a “red flag” description. This was the one that set Ann off; she wrote,
1. It’s a red flag to believe your red flags are foolproof.2. It’s a red flag that you go directly to the most obvious target of just about everything these days, Donald Trump.3. It’s a red flag you seem to have missed all the humor and lightheartedness of “Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”4. It’s a red flag that you don’t know — or won’t admit — that Joe Biden has also boasted about his IQ — and without any humor: “I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do….”5. Boasting about IQ is a bad idea and educated, affluent people who do it are embarrassing, but there are other people who maybe deserve a little empathy, and it’s a red flag that you reject them out of hand.
I’ve written here about Trump’s obsession with boasting about his IQ. It’s a bad sign: I admit that I would have a hard time taking seriously anyone who did that, or, which is more common, made a point of using their college or graduate school to attract respect. But Trump, though he does and says astoundingly idiotic things, is no idiot. One of the idiotic things his critics and adversaries apparently can’t stop themselves from doing is underestimating him. No one has ever become President who was an idiot.
Senility is another matter.
Ethics Alarms 
I think when people use the phrase “idiot” these days, they are generally talking about people who have IQs higher than 70, but who refuse to make use of those cognitive abilities. People make allowances for those who legitimately are not intelligent and cannot help but do unintelligent things. People have less patience for those who are smart enough to figure out that doing something will have negative consequences, and do that something anyways.
Some people are idiots about particular things, while being perfectly normal about other things. Impulse control issues, bias, willful blindness and blame shifting are all things that can lead me to call someone an idiot. If you knew something was going to have negative consequences and you did it anyway, your an idiot. If you blame the consequences on someone else, you are an idiot. If you pretend you didn’t know negative consequences were likely when it is obvious they were likely, you are an idiot.
I could not make a list of strict criteria that always indicate someone is an idiot because there is always context that alters what may or may not warrant the idiot designation.
What would have been your assessment of the dinosaur skeptic? What appalled me was how condescending she was about it, like I was the idiot. I remember I said, “That’s interesting; I never considered that! Well, catch you later: I’ve got a phone conference!” I considered relating the conversation to her boss, but didn’t.
I would shove that under the willful blindness idiot category. For one thing, the rationalizations don’t even make any sense. Dinosaurs died out before humans existed, the ark was supposedly constructed by a human, ergo dinosaurs were extinct before the ark was constructed and wouldn’t have needed to fit on it.
The simplest way to reconcile religion and real world conflicts with religious doctrine is to view the passages that conflict as metaphorical rather than literal. Personally, I posed the explain the dinosaurs in religious context query to my father when I was around 9, and he easily countered with “The bible says the earth was created in 7 days, but it doesn’t say how long a day is. It’s a metaphor.” He didn’t need to deny the existence of dinosaurs to retain his faith, and neither does anyone else. Insisting on literal interpretations of metaphysical beliefs is willful blindness.
That was how William Jennings Bryan countered Clarence Darrow on the stand in the Scops Trial, when Darrow was mocking the idea of “days” that occurred before the Sun was created in the Genesis text.
I think there is at least one strict textualist here.
“If you knew something was going to have negative consequences and you did it anyway, your an idiot. If you blame the consequences on someone else, you are an idiot. If you pretend you didn’t know negative consequences were likely when it is obvious they were likely, you are an idiot.”
Rules to live by. I would say in the first one that I would add “net” before negative because all things have downside risk. The question is do the positive consequences outweigh the negative.
Can a person ever escape the idiot category? So, if someone was once an idiot but is no longer so?
I usually call someone an idiot in jest or if the person has normal intelligence but just isn’t using it. People who should know better but don’t care about knowing better.
When one has the reputation of being an idiot, confirmation bias colors the reaction to everything they say or do, just as when someone is believed to be brilliant, even fatuous statements are heard as deep and considered pearls of wisdom.
Yes, see Peter Sellers’ Chance in Being There.
“bias, willful blindness and blame shifting are all things that can lead me to call someone an idiot… If you blame the consequences on someone else, you are an idiot.”
The aforementioned (+ malice/spite) seems to undergird wokeism.
Can an entire movement, philosophy, perspective, be idiotic?
You know the answer is yes. I can come up with a bunch without even straining.
Well, just under 2 billion in this world believe in an ideology that believes in gender apartheid, that women must hid their faces and shapes, in killing gay people, either murdering those who do not believe like you or turning them into de facto slaves, and not only that this was all revealed to one man in a cave by a god no one else could see or hear, but that what was revealed was the complete and eternal record, so there is no room for any changes.
More than a billion more still cleave to “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
All on my snap list!!!!
I won’t pretend Christianity doesn’t have its issues too, but if your entire faith is defined not by love (at least nominally) but by submission (which is what “Islam” means”), and it authorizes the abuse of your own family as well as the murder of those who disagree with you, you’re not praying to the God above, you’re praying to the one below.
Wokism is primarily driven by narcissism and sadism, rather that idiocy. The woke knowingly do things that will harm other people by arranging things so that uninvolved parties will suffer the consequences of their actions rather than themselves. So far as I can tell, this is an effective tactic. They are not stupid, just evil.
NP
I wouldn’t go as far as saying sadism but sociopathy fits well within the construct of being “woke”.
What if the idiot phenomenon is nothing more that a combination of a fight or flight response?
The bumper sticker rationaliztions are ready for application when needed to protect a way of living which provides security, direction etc. The most stridently dismissive of others’ rationalizations are those who consider themselves to have the more thoughtful rationalizations.
But even retorts like the following are evenly unthinking: “For one thing, the rationalizations don’t even make any sense. Dinosaurs died out before humans existed, the ark was supposedly constructed by a human, ergo dinosaurs were extinct before the ark was constructed and wouldn’t have needed to fit on it.”
Must a dinosaur be full grown to fit on the ark?
Might there have been adult dinosaurs who’s eggs were taken aboard?
Did dinosaurs die out 10 years or 100M before Noah?
What has been the outcome of “science” concerning all of the dinosaur fossils being discovered with squishy tissues that contradict conventional scientific wisdom concerning decay rates of biological material and carbon-14.
We are all insecure, hateful and self-decieved creatures seeking superiority of mind over eachother.
The last thing people want is to be shamed by others, and yet the last thing realized is the rejection they have inflicted with unthinking truisms.
Decided to run an internet search for ‘how to recognize an idiot’ and quickly came to the convmclusion that Ms. Mahdawi is no minority in this field of writers who either are representatives of the subject at hand, ignorant of the subject, or simply lack skills to formulate criteria.
Somewhere around page three (hard to tell since it’s in vogue for webpages to flip automatically to deeper pages for you) finally found something that actually seemed informational.
https://www.growthlodge.com/7-sure-signs-of-stupidity/
Wallphone: That was a good article.
I’d like to add an item to all such lists: Compiling a list of red flags for idiocy which don’t make sense is a red flag that the write of said list is an idiot.
Jack, I see the rare triple negative here: “…but have done or said something nobody who isn’t stupid would never do”
pretty sure it’s supposed be either somebody or ever. 🙂