Why are there dumb* people in our smart society?

tl;dr: Increases in societal knowledge enable increases in tolerable levels of individual ignorance.

Credit: The Far Side

Reflecting on the anti-vax, homeopathy and other examples of modern ignorance, I’ve been struck by the apparent paradox our society seeming to get both smarter and dumber over time. That is, how is it that a society smart enough to put a man on the moon can also harbor people dumb enough to believe that the lack of ingredients in a medicine would make it more potent?

My hunch is that technology serves as an enabler.

  1. Society’s knowledge of the world increases via science.
  2. This knowledge enables technology that insulates us from the harsh realities of the world.
  3. This insulation lowers the minimum level of knowledge required by individuals in society.

So as the collective knowledge of society increases, the the minimum required knowledge for an individual decreases.

This aligns with the observation of Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel where he noted that the New Guinea natives he worked with seemed more intelligent than westerners: For someone living outside of the technological cocoon of modern technology, having true beliefs about the world is simply more consequential. If such a pre-industrial person is wrong in their belief that a mushroom they found is edible, it may be their last meal. OTOH, a modern individual in a supermarket might have wrong beliefs about food, but are in no danger of getting sick and dying as a consequence.

The extended implication is that by freeing us from the hard real-world consequences of beliefs, these beliefs then become more important for “soft” social matters. To continue on the food example, one’s choice of foods (organic, fast-food, kosher, vegan, etc…) are more significant as social/tribal indicators. But that’s another topic on it’s own.

How much will we as a society learn? How dumb as individuals will we become?

*Please note that by “dumb” I am not implying any sort of genetic or moral deficiency in people.