How can stupidity be measured

God takes care of the stupid. Having heard that Mr. So-and-so, a man in his forties or fifties, quite wealthy, decided to check if it really was so. He climbed the first floor and jumped out of the window. He fell on the pavement, broke his leg and got some bruises. Feeling happy he sighed with relief: That’s not bad.

This joke, really old chestnut, used to be told in different national variations, which is of no significance at all. Stupidity has no nationality although nations certainly thinks opposite – each nation considers itself wise and any other one stupid. No nation takes the notion of nationality as a symptom of stupidity thus clearly confirms its own stupidity and doesn’t have to climb the first floor and jump out of the window.
However Mr. So-and-so shouldn’t feel happy. Just making such an attempt doesn’t reflect well on him. The fact he climbed the first floor helps a bit yet not much since it’s really hard to say whether it was caused by a flash of wisdom or reaction of the self-preservation instinct, which, as a product of the thoughtless tool, should not be classified as an act of wisdom. Here some doubts appear. Thoughtlessness seems more reasonable than thoughtness, at least in this very case (and in many others). The action of Mr. So-and-so can hardly be considered totally thoughtless – on the contrary, it was really well-thought. Save the number of the floor. It’s not obvious if the choice was the result of intellectual speculations or of this highly automatised mechanism which tries to switch off the mind, or omit it or take it over, when the mind begins to head unconsciously towards an abyss and is absolutely sure it does right because it has made the absolutely right choice. This is not illogical that thoughtlessness is a part of wisdom while thoughtness supports stupidity merrily.

The joke told above is just a variation of a common saying, not even a proverb: a stupid man is a lucky man. Here we also should pay attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of people is not lucky – let us just think about the minimal number of those who won a lottery comparing to the huge number of those who play. But the losers are not happy, although they should be, after all they proved in a very simple way they were not stupid (which doesn’t mean they are wise, oh no, it would be much too simple and the world is not that simple, the world is really complex). The losers don’t pay attention to this and thus they don’t confirm they are not stupid. They lose their chance.
Of course, to be lucky does not mean to be happy. As we know well happy people can be not lucky while not lucky people can be happy. Many other variants and variations are possible. Nothing is clear and not muddy, as usual.

Let’s come back to the joke. Let’s ask a question: could a ten-floor building be a stupidity meter, a device to measure stupidity? Then the least stupid stay on the ground floor while the most stupid go to the top floor, even on the roof – has such a scale any sense? To some extent yes, it has. Supposedly people would prefer a lottery scale to the floor one, meaning the more you win the more stupid you are… Yes, undoubtedly this scale would be much less horrid, though equally unreliable.
The question which we haven’t asked in the beginning, which has been implicit, has not been answered yet. We still don’t know how stupidity can be measured. And we will not know it until we answer another question: can stupidity be measured at all?
Definitely we would need a unit. A sort of centimetre, gallon, foot, inch, metre, quantum of stupidity. What could it be? The joke just told prompts a floor. Yes. A floor could be, for want of anything better, for it would not be a very useful unit. Mainly because a floor is more real than abstract, while a good unit should be more abstract than real. Hence floor is much too variable as a measuring unit. A centimetre equals a centimetre. Always. A floor equals a floor seldom. If Mr. So-and-so chose the first floor in an old high quality tenement house he would be more stupid, even an idiot, than going to a typical modern block of flats where a man only little bit taller than average can touch the ceiling with the tips of his fingers stretching his body at the most while in an old tenement house would need a high ladder. So, indicting the floor number we should define the type of the house, of the building – various towers and other tall constructions have floors, too. The ground we fall on is also important – pavement seems move stupid than lawn is.
Defining this very lecture as a stupidity unit is another, very interesting idea, controversial idea, indeed. Let’s try to compare. This man is five floors stupid – it sounds really well, even having indicated no specific floor, or maybe because of that. And now: this man is as stupid as he would write three lectures on measuring stupidity – bad, really bad…. so stupid he could easily write six lectures on measuring stupidity – even worse. (How about n abbreviation? He is 4 LOMS stupid. Mmm...) Let’s try something else: what he has done is more stupid than writing three lectures on measuring stupidity. Sounds a bit better. But why did someone have to write three exactly the same lectures? Well, they should be exactly the same, otherwise centimetre wouldn’t equal centimetre like a floor doesn’t equal a floor, or even more, much more. So, not write but rewrite. Then: what has he rewritten this lecture seven times for? To prove his stupidity, just for that.
It looks like a floor is better.
Should wisdom be measured then with the number of underground floors?

Gosh! Silly ass I am! (Ass is not good idea, either. Nobody used to say: he is seven silly asses.) It looks like I have made a mistake. Everything is the other way round, isn’t it? Someone who jumped from the tenth floor and landed on the pavement with no bruises would be an absolute idiot, while the one who turned into a bloody beefsteak would be a sage... Am I right?

It’s so easy to confuse stupidity with wisdom and vice versa.


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