Is there a difference between stupidity, foolishness, dumbness and, say, plain boneheadedness?
Well, the book is really about foolishness, which is the opposite of wisdom. There are many smart people who are unwise. The book is not about stupidity in the classical sense, which is usually thought of as a very low IQ. So I would distinguish the “mental retardation” kind of stupidity from the kind of foolishness this book discusses. The problem is that smart people often do not realize how susceptible they are to being foolish, as any number of world leaders have gone out of their way to show. So we can’t really be reliable judges of our own stupidity? Unfortunately, no. It usually takes others to point it out to us. Or, looking back, we often marvel at how we could have been oblivious to our stupidity. But the problem is that smart people often use their intelligence to find ways to immunize themselves or isolate themselves from feedback. For example, they may hire toadies who just tell them what they want to hear. Are there recognizable warning signs that stupidity is about to oc
