A Study in Stupidity

Well, Duh

Stupidity is an inherent characteristic of the human race. It is not just that humans are stupid: stupidity permeates every facet of the human experience. Human society is full of stupid, as is human history, human politics, human economics and human anything else.

This study does not seek to question whether or not humanity is stupid: this is a given, something that is instantly obvious to all but the... er, dumbest of us. What this study aims to do is to challenge the basic, underlying assumptions of stupidity, to analyze and categorize the many forms of stupidity, and to ask the most paramount questions: why are we so damned stupid, and where will our stupidity ultimately take us?

The Stupid Gene

Scientists have thus far been unsuccessful in isolating the genes responsible for stupidity (though their efforts have been moderately more successful than attempts at isolating intelligence genes). However, the history of monarchy offers tantalizing hints that stupidity is inherited. Taking into account the ubiquitous manifestation of stupidity at all levels of humanity, the prevailing theory argues that multiple discrete stupidity genes make frequent, sporadic appearances in random generations of all human genetic lineages. These stupidity genes release stupidity hormones that suppress native intelligence. It has been suggested that even the most intelligent of people have stupidity genes, expressed in reaction to certain stimuli. Known stimuli include falling in love, entering a reality television competition, or talking to strangers online.

Intelligence, on the other hand, is rarely inherited: the chances of an intelligent parent having a similarly intelligent offspring is lower than the mean of low probabilities arbitrarily assigned by random people pontificating on their blogs.

Furthermore, genetic inheritance analysis indicates that the chances of stupid genes proliferating in the human gene pool are much higher than that of intelligence genes. The reasoning is simple. Intelligent people are often far more interested in intellectual pursuits such as the arts, literature, playing RPGs and so forth than they are in having sex. Stupid people, on the other hand, are less distracted by these things and hence are more likely to engage in sex. Ceteris paribus, stupid people will always outbreed intelligent people.

Survival of the Stupidest

Contrary to common belief, stupidity is in fact a positive selective mechanism for advancement in human society.

The Dunning-Kruger effect demonstrates that stupid people are far more confident of their own abilities than intelligent people are. In general, the dumber you get, the more confident you are of your competence. Thus, in fields where self-confidence is more important than actual ability - such as politics, motivational speaking and management - stupid people will get to the top every time.

Evidence strongly suggests that you will almost always inevitably end up working for someone stupider than you.

The Future of Stupidity

In terms of intelligence, humans are the opposite of social insects: as individuals we can be clever and sensible, but when we amass, we create a hivemind of Collective Stupidity. According to the Pratchett formula of mass idiocy, the intelligence of any given crowd is equal to the IQ of the dumbest person in the crowd divided by the number of people in that crowd.

Einstein has said that human stupidity is unlimited. However, before the development of mass communication technology, our collective stupidity was bounded by geographical limitations, only reaching brief peaks of stupidity during select moments such as national elections. Now, with the advent of the internet, human stupidity can finally soar to new, unimaginably idiotic heights. The internet enables the instantaneous, simultaneous communication of millions of stupid people across the world, creating a global overmind of unlimited idiocy. Everyone gets dumber online, communicating in truncated, grammatically mutilating grunts and gestures. The few shiny points of intelligence in this sea of stupidity - the poignant blogs, the thoughtful forum discussions - are drowned out by the chorus of idiotic comments, stupid flamewars and mindless trolling.

We are now hurtling into an era of hitherto unknown dimensions of stupidity. Already, programmers are working hard on the creation of artificial stupidity, and our astronomers are searching the skies for possible signs of extraterrestrial stupidity. Soon, humanity will attain the ultimate apex of idiocy, as our minds merge into a single, moronic consciousness. At long last, the Singularity of Stupid will be upon us.

The Cute, the Tasty and the Extinct

Selection, Natural & Abominable

According to Darwin's concept of natural selection, species that have the traits best suited for thriving in its environment have the greatest chance of passing on those traits to the next generation. Thus, species are forced to adapt and evolve because of drastic changes to their environment - global drops in temperature, for example, or huge flaming rocks in the sky, or even (as Hollywood tells us) a numerically significant date in the calender.

But that's forgetting the biggest kahuna of 'drastic change to the environment'. That's right: if you want to know who's always roughing up Mother Nature, that would be none other than humanity itself. Humans have always had a massive impact on the evolutionary development of other creatures - how else could such an abominable creature as the Chihuahua (surely, a being that should be placed in the Bestiary right between Basilisk and Chimera) have come into existence, if not to fulfill the extremely narrow ecological niche of being the pet companion to little old ladies?

If Little Old Lady was a character class, then "Summon Pet Chihuahua" would be a level 1 ability.

A Selection of Slavery and Sauce: How Animals Sucked Up to Survive

When humans first appeared on the planet, there was much ruckus as the assorted species went, "Oh-oh, look who's here to wreck the place!" The smarter animals were of course the first to arrive at the adage that has served the minimum wage worker well for ages: If you can't beat 'em, work for 'em!

A brilliant adaptation to the human-dominated environment is to make yourself as useful to humans as possible, thus ensuring your survival. As evidenced by the following paleolithic cave painting, which painstakingly recreates the life of the prehistoric caveman, animals have availed themselves to human service since the Stone Age:

In addition to bad dental hygiene, the Stone Age also featured atrocious labor laws.

Alas, this was not to last. As human civilization rapidly advanced, Stone Age technology became obsolete, and animals found themselves increasingly replaced by machines (even for sex - uh, so I'm told). Being 'useful' to humans would no longer suffice. Fortunately, some species found another, evolutionarily revolutionary tactic: to become tasty.

Now, being tasty has always been a backward adaptation in Darwin's world. You don't want to be tasty. You don't want to give big, nasty predators more incentive to hunt you down and eat you. You want them to take one taste of you and spit you out, then go blog about how bad you taste. But humans, the cow revolutionaries realized, are different. Humans are lazy. All that hunting and stuff? Too much work. Wouldn't it be easier if your food just hanged around all day and let you slaughter them without too much fuss?

And so the cows latched on this radical idea: by making themselves really easy prey to the humans, they ensured that humans would keep them around to be eaten! They have bargained away their milk and their meat, purchasing the future of their species in exchange for surrendering themselves to a gastronomical fate!

Survival of the Cutest

But the Bovine Bargain does not work for everybody. For some species, selling away the meat of their body, even if it means the future of the species, is too distasteful a path to take. For others... well, others are simply too distasteful, and no amount of seasoning will change that.

But evolution takes many twists and turns. Humans have many peculiarities, one among many being their proclivity towards cute animals. Cats, those evil, cunning & manipulative predators, quickly seized on this predilection, and ruthlessly exploited it by adopting cute mannerisms (cuteflaging, as opposed to camouflaging) when in the presence of humans. This tactic has been purringly successful, as we bear witness to those feline masterminds insinuating themselves into human households everywhere.

With the advent of cute animal crusaders (as in, crusaders for cute animals, not animal crusaders who are cute), we can expect more and more species to become cuter in order to survive. The logic is impeccable: Our presence on this planet ravages the environment and pushes many species to the brink of extinction. Humans (especially teenage girls) will go out of their way to rescue cute animals from extinction. Therefore, only animals deemed 'cute' by the average teenage girl will survive to pass on their cute-encoded genes to the next generation. The Darwinian process is thus ruthlessly adhered. In the future, we can expect all animals to be furrier, fluffier and much more adorable. It's a matter of survival.

And what of those animals that are useless to humans, are not tasty, and considered far too ugly for salvation? The sad fact is that ugly animals have no place in the human-dominated world. The next extinction event will most certainly be an ugly one.

Animals in danger of extinction due to excessive ugliness.