Stupidity and ignorance

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And this week we're discussing Wayne Hennessey. Chris, who's Wayne Hennessey?

Speaker B: 00:00:26

Well, he's the goalkeeper for Crystal Palace and Wales. And the reason we're talking about him is because recently a photo appeared of him on Instagram where he's sort of behind a crowd of other people. So it's sort of in the background. And he appears to be doing a sort of Nazi salute and doing a kind of Hitler mustache with the other finger. And so there was an investigation into this, an FAA commission investigation. And it's emerged from that investigation. The phrase they used was that so he's been kind of exonerated. This was apparently a sort of sign that he does to kind of get people's attention when he's playing in goal or whatever to sort of, you know, raise his hand and calls through his hand. But during the investigation, it emerged that the phrase they used was that he had a lamentable degree of ignorance about Hitler, fascism and the Nazi regime, which is a phrase dripping with class prejudice as well. But nevertheless, it seems that apparently, you know, whether he's gaming, you know, whether he's actually playing the people who did the investigation or not is another matter. But it seems he didn't really know anything about Hitler or the Nazi salute. And he genuinely was. You know, this was a movement that he couldn't really see was was wrong. So this issue of ignorance came came up and and are in my interest in how it also gets conflated with stupidity. So kind of ignorance being the, you know, the absence of knowledge and stupidity being kind of, well, more difficult to define, but, you know, an inability to process or sort of mental slowness, lack of intelligence, you know, or capacity to reason, you know, why do the two things very often seem to go hand in hand that the ignorance, you know, we can all be excused for not knowing something potentially, but very often that seems to

Speaker A: 00:02:44

get associated with our stupidity. But I think, as you were saying that stupidity can be quite difficult to nail down, but it's something you didn't mention, but I think one trait of it can be a lack of curiosity. And that when you find out that you don't know something that you just don't particularly care. So for example, I once worked with this lady who didn't know who Mao Tse Tung was. And we were saying, well, you know, this is who he is. Have you heard of Hitler? Have you heard of Stalin? Then, you know, you might want to know who Mao is. And her response was, why, why? I mean, why would I want to know that kind of thing? And so it seems to me that in this case, to be that ignorant, you need to be pretty stupid as well. Yeah, and I think... Well, certainly lacking

Speaker B: 00:03:32

in curiosity. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting that, you know, if he hadn't known some information about some more obscure dictator, like Choy Bolson from Mongolia, for example. I thought you were going to say Game of Thrones. Yeah, that's right. You know, we wouldn't be up in arms and saying, how could this person be so stupid? So the sort of ignorance about something which we feel should be known is kind of more alarming than ignorance

Speaker A: 00:04:07

about some, you know, esoteric piece of piece of knowledge. Okay. I mean, returning to the question there, why is it that we conflate the two? Is that the right word? Conflate? Yeah. I think it's pretty obvious why. Nick. Yeah, there's plenty of evidence that they are connected.

Speaker C: 00:04:24

hink. A guy called Seymour in: 1929

Speaker B: 00:05:36

But is stupidity the absence of intelligence?

Speaker C: 00:05:40

I can't think of any better way of defining it, really. Yeah. So, you know, so it's been found to be correlated. General knowledge, general knowledge in itself predicts exam results in British school children. There was a, and that even after controlling for IQ and various other things, criminals are, it turns out, less intelligent than non-criminals. So in fact, intelligence and criminality are negatively correlated. But neither of them seem heavily correlated with working memory capacity, which is another sort of cognitive element. But anyway, the gist is that, yeah, there is a correlation. It's not perfect, but there is a correlation between intelligence and general knowledge. But both general knowledge and intelligence both correlate with other positive things. So they're both good. But in theory, it's possible to have lots of general knowledge and low intelligence and vice versa. But in practice, if you have lots of one, you like to have lots of the other. And I think, you know, so it's not quite as clear cut as it's not quite as obvious as I thought. But I think, you know, and actually just knowing that correlation, it's not necessarily obvious which way round the causation goes, whether they're both caused by the same thing or whether it's the case that actually, if you learn lots of things, you therefore have a large, let's say, bank of examples to draw from in when you're reasoning, for example. If we think that reasoning, which a lot of it is, is about analogy, then knowing lots of things enables you to say, well, in this situation, it's a bit like all these other situations. And so therefore, you know, I think this is more likely to occur. Or whether it's as you're suggesting, well, being intelligent means that you're just much more able to process and ingest more information and you have more intellectual curiosity to find out in the first place.

Speaker B: 00:07:35

I mean, I think there's more than that as well, though. I think sort of knowledge begets knowledge. I mean, this weekend I was sort of in a walking through a nature reserve with my brother-in-law, who is a kind of keen ornithologist. And he was able to kind of hear the bird song and say what bird it was, whether it was a chiff chaff or a stone chat or whatever it might have been. But his knowledge was giving him access to be able to process an information stream, which I didn't really have access to. I mean, I like bird song, but I can't differentiate between it. And that in turn was sort of telling him more things about what was going on in the environment. And I think knowledge about a subject enables you to access more knowledge about that subject because you sort of learn things about how to learn more effectively.

Speaker C: 00:08:40

Acquiring general knowledge does feel very much like connections in a network between facts where things have to slot in at the right time and in the right place so that you can't... I mean, one of the things that I... when I was at school, I was hopeless at sort of history, really, just memorizing things from history, events that occurred. Because when people talked about the Tudors or the Industrial Revolution, it didn't mean anything to me, right? I just... I knew it had happened and I could read the words telling me about what happened. But I didn't really have any other reference points to slot that into. Whereas now, I'm actually much more interested in those things because I know a hell of a lot more about social, economic developments. I know I'm... having played board games about these things, I've got a kind of framework to fit in the kinds of decisions people were making. And I'm able to now, when I learn about a factory owner or cotton production increasing, I'm able to think about that in the context of, well, how does a firm work? What are the drivers of costs? What are the drivers of profit? How can you... where were they getting their inputs from? What was happening to the price of labor? All of these things, which enable me to understand something that I read about the Industrial Revolution with much more depth now than I did when I was at school. So yeah, I does feel like there is... you can't just go round and learn stuff. You have to learn things almost in the right order.

Speaker B: 00:10:08

That's right. And obviously, the way history is taught in our schools tends not to be particularly within context. So you do the Victorians one week and then you do ancient Egypt or something. And not being... that's obviously more difficult than to build it all into one overarching narrative.

Speaker C: 00:10:28

But in a way, you then have the bits, they're scattered bits. But at some point when you draw a connection between them, you can go, oh, yeah, the Egyptians. I remember that.

Speaker A: 00:10:36

Just as an aside, something I struggled with at school. And actually, I'm quite good at this now. I consider myself a bit of a linguist. But when I first started learning language at school, learning French when I was nine years old, I think, I had no idea what it was all about. And I just didn't understand this whole, je suis tuer. I just did not get it. Yeah, I didn't understand what that was about.

Speaker B: 00:11:25

And so, you know, the acquisition of knowledge just becomes easier, as Nick was saying, when you can do analogy, but when you've got the mental apparatus to conceptualize what it is you're thinking about.

Speaker C: 00:11:39

Yeah, so I think that ties in with this model of the two being quite closely correlated. You know, that actually, if you find it, if we think that, you know, general knowledge is acquired in this sort of, you know, it has to be built up slowly and in a piecemeal kind of way. It makes sense that people who are faster at assimilating information, because they're more intelligent, are going to be able to do that process faster. So it just, you know, you sit down, you know, a person who's highly intelligent with someone who isn't, and give them the exact same general knowledge to learn, the intelligent person is going to find it easier to learn that stuff because they have more things to slot it into.

Speaker B: 00:12:18

And I think, you know, this is why I come back to what do we mean by stupidity? Because part of stupidity seems to be manifested through behavior, right? So you say that person was really stupid when they did that thing, not just they couldn't answer a question, but they did something that was seemingly stupid. And I think, you know, it's kind of explaining that is also quite interesting. You know, there's the there's the Dunning-Kruger effect where, you know, those who are less expert in something imagine themselves to be more expert. And those who are more expert are more kind of the Hermione Granger effect, you know, are more likely to feel they don't know something because they realize by knowing something about a field, you realize how much else there is to know about it, the enormity of the total knowledge. Whereas if you just know a little of something, you might imagine, you know, it know it all. And I think that that misplaced confidence might be the driver of stupid behavior that people think, well, I know all about. There's the case of MacArthur Wheeler, who was who famously sort of acted as the stimulus for Dunning and Kruger's research. But he was the the Pittsburgh based bank robber who in the 90s went into he didn't have a mask. What he did was he rubbed lemon juice over his face. And he believed that this would because it was used in invisible ink. He believed this would make his face invisible. But he didn't just he didn't just go in. He tested it first by rubbing lemon juice on his face and taking a picture of himself with a Polaroid, like an old school selfie with a Polaroid camera. And it was all blurred. So he had tested his theory. And then he and when they when he was arrested, he was sort of incredulous three months later or whatever. He's like, but I used the juice. I used the lemon juice. How did you find me? And so that that sort of, you know, that little bit of knowledge leading to stupid and bizarre behavior, I think, is exhibited.

Speaker C: 00:14:42

Yeah, I mean, and then. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the correlation of intelligence and outcomes, there's no doubt that intelligent people have better outcomes in life. Right. So you'd hope that was the case. Otherwise, what's the point of having intelligence in the first place? Right. But it holds true across countries as well. Looking at average IQs, sort of average intelligence between countries and between individual states in countries apparently statistically significantly correlates with GDP growth. So, you know, it's good for the economy as well. So. So, yeah, I mean, basically, if you're intelligent, you have better life outcomes. I'm not quite sure if that's true of knowledge, but I did find one study where someone had looked at knowledge as a predictor of turnout in general elections and found that, you know, yes, it's significantly correlated with turnout. So if people know the answers to questions like, you know, what's the time between elections in the UK or, you know, whether or not, you know, you have to pay a deposit when you when you stand for parliament, if people knew those kinds of basic things, they were more likely to go and vote.

Speaker B: 00:15:52

Yeah. So that suggests they might have an interest in the democratic process and therefore be. I mean, I'm really interested in the sort of subjective value of knowledge, whether it is subjective or whether actually some knowledge is more valuable than other knowledge. And, you know, so for example, you know, if, you know, so like when David Cameron and George Osborne were berated for not knowing or it was said that they didn't know what the price of a pint of milk was and this was seen as being, you know, damning in some way. And, you know, the whole cultural relativist position of the fact that all knowledge is, you know, equally valid in some way, you know, the sort of offering your toenail clippings to the gods is as equally valid as, you know, sterilizing water or something and the knowledge required to do that. And the fact that this is now being used against those very sort of lefty cultural relativists by the alt-right with things like climate change denial and, you know, creationism that, you know, all knowledge. Well, you know, here's a piece of here's a piece of knowledge. This bit of information is just as valid as your scientific knowledge over over here. I find that that sort of the knowledge wars that are going on at the moment. Very, very interesting. Well, let's just talk.

Speaker C: 00:17:30

No, it's just I read a study that looked at bullshit receptivity and found that there were, you know, it's not so much that there is convincing bullshit is that there are people who are inclined to believe bullshit. So, you know, it's that. Exactly. So, you know, people, various things like so indicators included things like belief in the supernatural. If someone believes in the supernatural, they're much more likely to believe pseudo profound statements and, you know, conspiracy theories and things. So it tends to be that they're kind of correlated to those those things. I don't know about the correlation with intelligence, but yeah.

Speaker B: 00:18:08

But it's the use of ignorance as a political tool. That's that's what's funny. You know, you look at the sort of medieval, late medieval Catholic church in England and the mass resistance of the time. Then, you know, the Catholic faith of William Tyndale's Bible and, you know, the notion that the people on the street could read, you know, the contents of the Bible was seen as hugely subversive in some way. And it feels like we're a little bit in that stage at the moment where where deliberate maintenance of ignorance is being used as a as a political tool.

Speaker C: 00:18:47

That's a good point. And I and I feel like the Internet was in the 90s. We have this belief that, you know, there would be no such thing as propaganda anymore. It would be neutralized by the fact that you could get you could find the truth out on the Internet. You know, we genuinely believe that. I believed it. I thought, you know, well, in the future, you know, the truth is going to be democratized and that will mean that the truth will out and, you know, lies won't stand a chance. And what I hadn't reckoned on is what a bunch of, you know, of morons people are, you know, how much actually we don't people just don't care. They don't care about what's true. They'd rather, you know, go and believe something that they like rather than something that actually is true.

Speaker A: 00:19:32

I mean, I mean, we have to be careful in this podcast because sometimes we fall back into being grumpy old gits. I know I certainly do. But I'm just wondering if this sort of value of just general knowledge, if that has declined or not. So, for example, my mother, I think, has got fantastic general knowledge. And it's not just to do with the fact that she's lived a long time. I just sense there's a value there. And she's was brought up and educated in a way that that kind of thing is really important. And recently, in the last couple of years, just through work, I work with a lot of young people. And I'm just astonished by sometimes by the lack of general knowledge there is amongst even people with university education. And I don't know if that says something about the sorts of people or the barriers now to tertiary education.

Speaker C: 00:20:23

We've got to be careful because you're comparing the general knowledge of someone who's 20 years, 25 years younger than you with your general knowledge, which means that you would need. Or your mother's general knowledge. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the things that you know about.

Speaker A: 00:20:38

But things like, you know, who first climbed Everest. Things like what the Philippines is. Things like who was the first person on the moon. I would have thought that any generation that would have been appropriate, but maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker C: 00:20:50

ral knowledge of someone from: 1949

Speaker A: 00:22:22

If you want to say something, Chris.

Speaker B: 00:22:23

Well, I was just going to I was just going to say it's it's carrying the knowledge in your own head is that is the key thing as opposed to having it sitting on the residing on the Internet, because it's that ability to access that instantly. And in the same place as you're doing your reasoning is is is the key thing. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:22:43

Yeah. Yeah. So I want to ask about.

Speaker C: 00:22:46

But Nick, you know, I just got some if we're at the sort of and finally segment, I've got a few go for it. Choice questions from quiz shows.

Speaker A: 00:22:54

Okay. Oh, brilliant. Let's do that.

Speaker C: 00:22:57

t so on tipping point between: 1991

Speaker A: 00:23:47

Well, he's got a frame in it. OK, well, I almost stole my thunder because I was going to run this off. I was going to I was going to ask either. What's the most stupid bit of behavior you've ever seen or ignorance displayed that you've ever seen? And or what's the most stupid thing that you have ever yourself done or said or. Yeah. Anything in mind, Chris?

Speaker B: 00:24:16

Well, yeah. So the most sort of stupid thing I've I've come across or most incredible bit of ignorance was a friend of mine who I was at school with, who I always regarded as being intelligent. And I was round at his house when we were sort of in our perhaps early 30s, late 20s, early 30s, something like that. And he was having a barbecue and I think I'd taken along a potato salad with new potatoes in it. And he he was sort of looking at the bag of new potatoes and said, oh, that's interesting. You know, what are they made from? I couldn't fathom what on earth was going on. And he didn't really know what potatoes were. So it was it was staggering. I still can't quite work it out to this day. Wow. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:25:17

And what about yourself? Have you ever? And I said, well, you know, you're meant to water it down, right? And he didn't know. He didn't know that you had to water down Ribena. I also went to school with a girl who didn't know. I remember this because I was again like like Chris's example. She she was very sort of bright and engaging, but she didn't know the dates of the Second World War, even to the decade. I found that staggering. I don't think ingrained in you. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the thing is that I I'm I really I, you know, I get really embarrassed by not knowing things like that. But no, just a recent example. And this is not this is going to sound really banal. But I didn't know. I discovered I didn't know where asbestos came from. Turns out you mine asbestos, right? It's not made in a factory. Again, that's one of those things where I think how could I've I've never asked the question where asbestos comes from. I always just assumed it gets made in a dangerous factory. But it comes from mines. I mean, you know, you can always it might turn out, you know, who knows if there's you know, let's say there's a one in a million chance. That you've gone through life and missed a really key bit of general knowledge. Well, the thing is, there's must be hundreds of millions of bits of general knowledge. So the chances are there's hundreds of them out there, which I'm yet to be embarrassed by.

Speaker B: 00:26:55

I've got quite a good one, which for myself, which is both ignorant and stupid, which is that for a long time, I thought that Cleopatra bathed in asps milk. Ah, you kind of got your sort of things mixed up there. Exactly. In my brain somewhere, it had gone into my brain that, you know, there was an asp involved in her in her death and that she bathed in ass's milk. And I'd got and it was only when I can't remember what it was that jolted me into this. And I thought, wait a minute. You know, and I'd also got in this picture the people milking the venom from snakes for various antidotes. And obviously I'd conjured up this weird sort of thing where reptiles produced milk that you could get in a volume to put in a bath and bathe in. It begs belief when I think about it. But there you go.

Speaker A: 00:27:50

It reminds me of that Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West, where she said, you know, you can in the song, you know, let's see if I can do this properly. He's going to give his his girlfriend milk to bathe in. He said, if you want, I can make it pasteurized. And she said, I'll just be happy if it comes up to my chest. Anyway. Yeah. So just I don't know about ignorance or stupidity. I remember once being in America, in small town America, and I got chatting to this bloke at the bar and he was just very confused by the fact that I was English speaking with an English accent. And I was wearing it happened to be wearing a Brazil football top at the time. And and then he looked at me and he just said, so are you white? And I was just I was just I didn't say anything for 30 seconds. I was just stunned by just what? I've never been asked before if I was white or black or whatever, you know. But my friend who was traveling with me at home thought it was hilarious because I was actually bright red that day because I'd be just didn't slot into any category.

Speaker C: 00:28:54

Yeah. Yeah. This poor guy was completely looks looks red, wearing a Brazil shirt. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:29:01

Speaking English baffling. And in terms of my own examples of stupidity and ignorance, they are just too humorous, too humorous to mention other than but certainly lots of stupid behavior, lots of stupid behavior, mainly involving alcohol and things like that. Anyway, let's draw to a close there. We brought some enlightenment to the world that I feel. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye. Transcribed by Ethan M.