Topics Knowledge

Question What is stupidity? IS it thinking the wrong way or is it having the ability to know and not using the potential? Also, is asking a stupid question necessarily stupid or does it make the person intelligent to make an unobvious connection when the answer should be obvious?

Accepted:
January 24, 2006

Comments

People use the word "stupid" in many ways. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for "ignorant." Sometimes it is used as a synonym for someone with low intelligence. This is unfortunate, for it makes it difficult for an important distinction to be drawn. A person who does not know some fact is ignorant of that fact. A person of low intelligence does not know some facts that most people know. A person who is stupid acts in a way that almost no one with his knowledge and intelligence would act. But, this must be qualified by saying that the person does not have a mental disorder, for people with mental disorders sometimes act in ways that no one with that knowledge and intelligence would act, but their actions are not regarded as stupid but as due to their mental disorder.

What is called "asking a stupid question" is often not stupid at all, just for the reason you give. It may seem as if no person with that knowledge and intelligence would ask that question, for the answer seems obvious. But once the question is asked, the unobvious connections become obvious and so it is clear that the question is not one whose answer is so obvious that no person with that knowledge and intelligence would ask that question.