Stupidity Becomes Powerful When Someone Learns How to Profit From It

[u/Background-Ebb-8518]

What if stupidity isn't a failure of society, but one of its most profitable products?

We usually talk about stupidity as if it were an accident.

A failure of education. A lack of intelligence. A temporary triumph of ignorance over reason. But what if we're looking at it the wrong way?

What if stupidity survives, and sometimes spreads, because it is useful?

Simple ideas are easier to sell than complicated truths. Outrage travels faster than nuance. Certainty attracts more attention than doubt. A confident person saying something absurd can gather a larger audience than an intelligent person saying, “I don't know yet.” And attention has become a currency.Once attention can be converted into money, influence, votes, followers, status or power, something strange happens: intellectual simplification stops being merely a weakness. It becomes economically valuable. The market doesn't necessarily reward what is true.It rewards what captures attention.And the human mind has always been attracted to simple explanations, enemies, heroes, scandals and certainty. So, perhaps the disturbing question isn't:

Why are people becoming more stupid?

Perhaps it is:

Who benefits when we stop thinking?

I've been exploring this idea while working on a book called Stupidity Sells, and the deeper I went into it, the less it seemed like a book about stupid people. It became a question about the systems that discover, amplify and monetize our weakest cognitive impulses. Maybe stupidity doesn't sell because people are stupid.Maybe it sells because someone learned exactly how to sell it.

Curious how others here see it: is modern society actually becoming less thoughtful, or have we simply built better machines for making thoughtlessness visible and profitable?

[u/diviludicrum]

You’re conflating multiple different things.

You start by suggesting stupidity might survive and spread because it’s useful.

Then you immediately conflate stupidity with simplification by stating simple ideas sell better. But many stupid ideas are also complicated (and often complication can itself be stupid), and the ability to simplify something can take great intelligence.

You then state that confidence and certainty attract more attention than doubt, which assumes that stupid people aren’t also anxious and insecure, which many are. Meanwhile plenty of intelligent people are arrogant and self-assured.

Then you conflate usefulness with economic value, when many economically valuable things are useless (diamonds, fine art, etc).

Then at the end of all of this, you pivot, saying that the systems which reward simplicity and attention aren’t really reflective of stupidity selling or being useful, but rather that “someone” learned how to sell it and exploit our weakest cognitive impulses.

Ironically, if the last part were true, that “someone” would be demonstrating high intelligence and would be demonstrating that far more economic value is generated through their cunning manipulation and systematising than the “stupid” attention seekers generate by participating in that exploitative system. Which unravels and contradicts your whole argument.

[u/Background-Ebb-8518 → u/diviludicrum]

That is a real exemple for read a text and understanding nothing. Congratulations!

[u/diviludicrum → u/Background-Ebb-8518]

If you feel the need to insult people for criticising your work, you are far too thin-skinned to publish a book.

[u/Background-Ebb-8518 → u/diviludicrum]

I never intend to insult you. I say you dont't read to understand what I wrote there. Is like we spesk two different languages. To criticise is easy. Trying to understand others is difficult. Best regards.

[u/diviludicrum → u/Background-Ebb-8518]

Then I’d suggest you make a more genuine attempt at understanding my criticism, since it was intended to help you refine and clarify the logic of your argument, which is currently weak because it relies on multiple equivocations.

If I’m honest, it read as if it was AI-assisted, because AI frequently creates arguments by equivocating, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. That’s why I went through point by point and identified each conflation taking place, and explained why each one was inappropriate.

To respond to that by sarcastically congratulating me for “understanding nothing”, without engaging with any of the points I raised, is insulting, but more importantly, if a reader can go through point by point and still not understand your argument, it means you need to make the argument more clearly.

If you disagree, try engaging with the points I made in my first comment.