How do trail bikers and golfers relate to consciousness, decision-making, genetics, and our evolutionary biology? Read on for a story connecting these dots with the help of Forrest Gump....
The article title is a question confronting me recently as I biked on the W&OD trail in Northern Virginia. This trail is very busy at certain times of the day. The trail is shared with all kinds of travelers, such as bikers, runners, walkers, strollers, and everything in between. We all do our best to get along and follow some no-nonsense norms to keep us from getting hurt. The variety of travel speeds creates a unique challenge.
But this source of stupid question has nothing to do with the interaction between trail travelers -- It has to do with the golfers playing on a golf course that happens to straddle both sides of the W&OD trail. The golfers will finish putting at the prior green and then need to cross over the trail to tee off at the next hole.
They have a very clearly marked and large stop sign when approaching the trail. However, experienced trail travelers know, golfers are dangerous. They are more likely to cross without looking, which creates danger for trail users - especially the bikers.
This just happened to me. I was biking when a golf cart suddenly blocked the trail. I slammed on my brakes and ultimately swerved into the trail margin to avoid hitting a golf cart with two golfers chatting about their last putt. I felt the desire to yell out. “Are you really stupid or entitled stupid?!” Of course I didn’t, I just composed myself after avoiding a near collision and continued on my way.
So, what do I mean by “Are we really stupid or entitled stupid?” It is related to questions of “nature vs. nurture” and “genome vs. environment” based on evolutionary biology and natural selection. That is - how we become who we are is one part internal, related to our DNA, and another part past experience, related to our environment. Which of the two parts causes us to do stupid things is not always apparent.
First, for full disclosure, I am really stupid and a recovering entitled stupid. As it turns out, I am far from being alone. It has taken much of my adult life to appreciate the stupid nuances. As is usually the case with broad categories, those two stupid groups have subtlety and need interpretation.
Entitled stupid is easier to define because its definition is narrower. Entitled stupid relates to beliefs suggesting the belief holder is entitled to that belief. For example, a golfer may believe they should have the right of way to the next hole. Even though, there is a large stop sign suggesting otherwise. The entitlement attitude is best understood via the golfer’s cost lens. There is a significant cost to their golf experience - such as the round of golf, their clubs, their clothes, a golf membership, golf practice time and cost, their time to organize the golf outing, and many other trappings of entitlement. Notice, the cost entitlement lens is not necessarily the same as a blue blood, “my daddy knows your daddy” kind of entitlement, but it could be.
This entitled belief is rarely expressed as an active decision. Such as - a golfer would likely NOT consciously decide they are better than those not playing golf. More often, entitled stupid presents as a subconscious decision relating to attention. Entitled stupid deprioritizes information unrelated to the golf round and their “foursome” golf tribe. This means entitled stupid naturally deprioritizes that which their privilege does NOT value highly. If the distracted golfer caused a bike accident - they would likely say “I’m sorry! I did NOT mean to!” But their motivation was actually a feature of their lack of attention. They did make a subconscious decision to be entitled stupid. Motivation is tricky. Just because someone does not have conscious access to a decision does not mean their subconsciousness did not guide the decision. It often does. The Forrest Gump character sums up entitled stupid in a poignant movie scene when Forrest says: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Earlier, I admitted that I am a recovering entitled stupid. You may ask - why? The direct answer is that being entitled stupid is an artifact of my environment - I am a college educated, European American man. I am proud of my life’s accomplishments and how those accomplishments help people. However, I am now fully aware that the opportunity to help others and the wealth I generated is, at least to some extent, a result of privilege. I’d like to think I would not use privilege to further my accomplishments, but I am sure I did. When you are playing a game to win and your rivals are playing the same game to win, the only choice is to play that game by the rules to optimize your winning chances. Privilege is the outcome of cultural entitlement. And the rules of the American cultural game include privilege for some and the expectation to win. I only became aware of my entitled stupid later in life.
So I am a recovering entitled stupid - plus I now have the wealth and time for enabling my recovery.
Next, we transition from entitled stupid to really stupid. To start - let’s define really stupid as compared to entitled stupid. Back to our nature vs. nurture comparison - being entitled stupid relates more to how we were nurtured. Entitlement is often a product of our nurture-based environment and will relate to our family upbringing. But being really stupid is different - it is an outcome of our genetics. We have less control over being really stupid and the vast majority of us have at least one really stupid characteristic. Being really stupid relates to our lower-ordered smarts.
To help explain, let us start with the definition of smart. This is defined in my article called The case for range: Why 'polymathic' people are so valuable. I defined smarts along 2 dimensions.
The first dimension encompasses various characteristics defining “smart,” like:
Our memory capacity or speed of recall,
Our speed of processing or reasoning finite topics,
Our ability to find commonality between disparate topics, including spatial understanding,
Our ability to understand and integrate emotion, or
Our ability to build deep and enduring relationships.
Most of us have a comparative advantage in at least one of these characteristics. Plus, we have a comparative disadvantage in other, lower-ordered characteristics. Every person walks around with an ordered list of these “smart” characteristics, from high to low. Each person’s list is different.
The second dimension is what others value in how we express those smart defining characteristics. So it is one thing if someone has a smart characteristic and has applied it to some product or service, but the degree to which that thing creates value in other people’s lives is entirely another thing.
For example, if someone applied their amazing ‘top of list’ finite reasoning to smartphone engineering 25 years ago, few people would have thought them smart because the market was not yet deriving value from smartphones.
Thus, we can define our smarts as being those characteristics that we are relatively good at and of which others find value. This is the interaction between the smart-defining internal and external-based dimensions enabling our smarts. Those characteristics we are relatively good at are at the top of our smart list. Inversely, those we are NOT good at are found at the bottom of the list and define that which we are really stupid.
For example - my reasoning and spatial understanding are relatively high. This is at the top of my smart list. I focus on this, exercise my curiosity, get enjoyment from it, and regularly get positive feedback from others. This also makes sense because I am an introvert. Introverts tend to focus on the ability to transform communication into thought. However, at the bottom of my smart list and where my really stupid resides is my ability to interpret and integrate emotion. My ability to recognize emotional cues from others is relatively low. This makes sense because I am not an extrovert - or someone who gets energized by transforming thought into communication. Also, my natural tribal instincts are relatively low. I do not get energized by bringing social groups together or creating group culture. The genetic basis for lower tribalism is relatively low synaptic receptors for the oxytocin neurotransmitter.
So our really stupid relates to our nature and genetics. In general, we can change our genetic-primed personality like introvert or extrovert, but it takes great effort to attempt updating our genetic predisposition. The longevity or permanence of those attempted personality updates is uncertain. My experience is that people can adapt to situations requiring personality updates - especially in structured environments. However, under stress or in less structured environments, we tend to revert to our genetically predisposed personality.
My life habit is to grow my smarts and my really stupid tends to be a more neglected blind spot. I have found ways to compensate - like adding self-imposed structure - for my really stupid. I’m fortunate to have people around me to help identify when I’m doing something really stupid.
So, back to the golfer cutting me off on the W&OD trail. Was he entitled stupid or really stupid? It is possible the golfer was focused on his comparative advantages smarts, being a good communicator and he has poor spatial reasoning that impacts his ability to drive a golf cart. Or, maybe he is an entitled prick that just does not care. Then again, maybe he is somewhere in between, with a combination of entitled and really stupid.
I guess I’ll never know. But I will continue to be on the lookout for stupid, regardless of whether they are entitled or really stupid. Either way, avoiding stupid will help me lead a longer, happier life. When it comes to managing stupid in my life, my mantra is:
“I’d rather be wronged and alive than right and dead.”
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