Why are people so stupid?

A famous quote by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) claims: 

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

I do not consider myself as very intelligent. I know that I do not know very many things. Sometimes, I even do stupid things. I do consider myself as curious – unlike many others. I’m always interested in the Why question because Everything follows Why.

The question in my blog’s title is also a topic on Quora. The more popular answers are about biology (eg, animals, evolution), definitions, emotions, morality, physics, religion, technology, and internal curiosity, which is different from external curiosity.

The physics answer is more interesting than you would expect: “Being dumb is the path that requires less energy []”. Note LO: bold and italic markings in quote by me. Hence, this answer may explain why many people are not curious because our energy is always limited. Optimizing its use is key to our survival (ie, the evolution argument above).

Once you combine the various arguments, a weird picture emerges: 

• Survival is much easier now (increase in life expectancy, my blogs of 2016 and 2016);
• Technology outsourced knowledge to machines, making life easy and complicated;
• since the 1990s, information retrieval changed from offline (eg, books) to online;
• IQ tests show an increase in intelligence until the 1990s; then a decrease (Flynn effect – Wiki);
• ergo, the easier information retrieval becomes, the less likely we will ?!

The above conundrum is probably the reason for my blog’s title: Why are people so stupid?

Nevertheless, Albert Einstein died in 1955 and still came to the same conclusion. Hence, there must be more to this. In other words, why do people retort to opinions rather than facts? 

In 2016 and 2018, I published these relevant blogs:

• 2016: Why are opinions stronger than facts?
• 2018: Why are beliefs stronger than intuition, imagination and even knowledge?

Are these decades of complacency becoming our Neanderthal moment in human evolution?

Homo sapiens sapiens is leaving, viva Humanoid sapiens?

Viva la Vida (2008) by Coldplay
band, lyrics, video, Wiki-band, Wiki-song

But that was when I ruled the world

Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise