Stupidological Theoryism

Let's talk some more about stupidity!

Our regular two readers know that stupidity is my favorite subject. It was my favorite subject in grade school. I tried to major in stupidology in college, but it wasn't offered in those days. So I have had to study stupidity on my own, working without official recognition.

The founding principle of stupidology, as it has emerged from my studies, is that there are really only a limited number of forms that stupidity takes, and that most of them can be found in nearly all humans who have not been taught to watch specifically for them.

The individual study of stupidology is the only method I know for increasing intelligence. After all, intelligence is merely the relative absence of stupidity in the application of imagination and memory to life's problems. The less stupidity the higher the intelligence. So in order to get smart, stop being stupid.

I have discussed different forms of stupidity in previous columns. My favorite is what I call the Universal Negation stupidity. That is the stupidity that is apparently hard-wired into human brains at birth, which is most clearly expressed in the conviction that if not all things of kind X are Y then all things of kind X are not Y. An example is found in this Lou Dobbsism: Not all of American war veterans are potential terrorists. Therefore no American war veteran is a potential terrorist, and to suggest the possibility is an outrage.

A variation on that Lou Dobbsism that would apply to homelessness in Seattle would go like this: Not all homeless people in Seattle are sex offenders. Therefore no homeless people in Seattle are sex offenders, and so if you're looking for sex offenders you don't have to look there. That is a stupidity, and those who insist that we who desire to find sex offenders in Seattle look among homeless people for sex offenders are right to point that out.

However, one of the tricky things you learn in the study of stupidity is that as soon as you get past one stupidity you almost always run smack into another that was waiting for you around the corner. In this case that next stupidity is almost always the Profiling stupidity.

The Profiling stupidity takes over when you have figured out that Ys can be found among things of kind X, so you immediately ONLY look for Ys among things of kind X. This stupidity is often extremely appealing and attractive. The attraction is that looking for Ys everywhere is time-consuming and expensive, so why not only look for Ys where you know that they could be, and not look for Ys elsewhere (where they could be)?

The answer to why Profiling is stupid is that saving time and money isn't everything. There's also thoroughness for one thing. But even more important than thoroughness, is the negative impact that profiling has on the Profiled immediately, and the Profiler, eventually.

By only looking for Ys in one place, you can only find them there. So the Profiling automatically, by its application, generates the illusion that the Profiled are really the best place to look for the quality sought.

The Profilers, then, become convinced by their own Profiling that thoroughness was more than a waste of time and money, "Gosh, look at this! Every single sex offender we've found was homeless! We were right to only look there!" Meanwhile, their friendly next-door neighbor, who was always as likely to be a sex offender as any homeless person, is looking for an opportunity to rape their toddlers in the alley.

The very real and immediate success of Profiling, by saving time and cost and turning in some results, makes the stupid user of the Profiling stupidly cling harder to it. It's a self-intensifying stupidity.

So to summarize, not only is Profiling merely stupid (because it isn't thorough), it is beyond stupid, because it makes those who do it stupider and stupider over time.