Right off the bat, congratulations on being in the top
eighty percentile. We can read, and that puts us well ahead of the seven
hundred million adults that can’t (I know the pictures are pretty, but focus.
Focus!). Let’s bump us up a few more pegs for knowing what a percentile is as
well. You’re smart; you know it; and I’m so so sorry… turns out this is bad
news. Smart people are idiots.
Don’t panic!!! You’re obviously one of the exceptions. For
God’s sake, quit panicking. Quick mental test:
In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the
patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire
lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
You said 24, right? Good, that means you’re smart. Unfortunately,
the right answer was 47. I’m afraid you may be suffering from a condition
called smart-idiot-itis, an affliction on the rise amongst intellectuals. See,
because you’re smart, your brain immediately heard “half” and “48” and
karate-chopped out a quick 24. Oops, this mental shortcut is called
dysrationalia. Dysrationalia afflicts 100% of people who, when asked the
question “how much dirt is in a hole 6 ft. by 3 ft. by 9 ft?” answer anything
but zero, zero dirt (There’s no dirt in a hole, silly). Dysrationalia is the
leading cause of smart-idiot-itis.
Don’t take my word for it. According to a long string of
individuals with PhD’s, MBA’s, and various other impressive acronyms, “smart
people are stupid.” The idea they present about our educational system can be
summed up nicely in this quote by one of the said intellectuals (Michael
Sherman):
Smart people believe weird
things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for
non-smart reasons.
Essentially, smart people are used to being smart people, so
they assume they’re right, because usually they are, even when they aren’t,
right that is. Wow, that’d make more sense if I was one of those smart people,
but if I were, it’d be wrong apparently. Thank you, brain.
It seems to boil down to something called the bias blind
spot. Everyone is biased, and everyone who is biased believes they are not.
This is why it’s so obvious when someone else is doing something stupid, but
our own dumb actions confound us. Since we’re stuck in our own heads, when we
put our briefcase in the dishwasher last week, or tied our shoes and completely
forgot we’re not wearing pants yet, we don’t see ourselves as the bumbling
morons we all are from time to time. It’s because of the cloud of
justifications and excuses always swirling around our heads.
Sorry to say it, but being aware of this makes no
difference, apparently. Currently, medical science has no cure for
smart-idiot-itis, short of a lobotomy. As research into this horrible
affliction progresses, should a cure be found, how could we ever trust these
brainy buffoons anyway?
For more information on this disease, see Daniel Kahneman’s
“Thinking, Fast and Slow.” If you think you may have smart-idiot-itis, seek medical
attention immediately, and cross fingers that your doctor didn’t nail his hand
to his refrigerator for no apparent reason.
