Is There ‘Stupidity’ in the Big World?

Marcin GORAZDA

Abstract

The paper presents an attempt at an interpretation of ‘stupidity’ in cognitive and evolutionary terms. Stupidity is a concept used in everyday language and clearly loaded with disapproval. The application of the concept requires a privileged epistemic position and a valid normative model of wisdom. These conditions cannot be met if the problem is considered from a cognitive and evolutionary perspective. However, by referring to some concepts of rationality developed in economics and decision theory, one may try to consider whether it is possible to interpret stupidity as irrationality or bounded rationality. The paper briefly discusses three classical theories of rationality (theory of ordinal utility, theory of expected utility, and game theory), as well as a theory of the so-called ecological rationality. The latter demonstrates that in the ‘big world,’ with its inherent uncertainty, apparently irrational behaviors may be strongly adaptive. In the ‘big world,’ it is impossible to identify any unique, justifiable model of individual rationality which permits us to pass a judgement on someone’s irrationality (stupidity). Such judgements can be made exclusively in precisely defined ‘small worlds,’ such as financial markets, providing, however, that the applied model of rationality is relevant to a given world.