-Hypotheticus
A question has been forwarded to our periodical from an employee of the Internet Website; "FiendishSatan.com." Namely, why do some individuals enjoy the site, while others feel imperiled, angry and/or simply just don't get it?
After examination of the site, and through our exhaustive and comprehensive research into the field of adequacy and metaretrospective skills, we feel that this phenomena of duality can be attributed to but one thing: Stupidity. This one-word description may in fact be politically incorrect, but it is accurate. Unfortunately, one of the essential features of ignorance is that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is in fact stupid. Moreover, to have such information would be a panacea for the offense.
We intend here to make several points. The first point is noncontentious. Specifically, in any area of existence, personal prosperity and gratification depend on comprehension, sagacity, or at least the most simple postulation in knowing which rules to follow and which tactics to pursue. This is true not only for important preservitory human behaviors such as sustaining physical heath or maintaining gainful employment, it is also true for many tasks in the human social or intellectual domains, such as conceptualizing a solid and logical argument or pursuing successful sexual tactics. These rules of informed and successful performance branch out to even the most negative or self-destructive of human behaviors, such as war, gambling or committing crimes.
Our second point is that people contrast widely in the perception and strategies they apply in these areas of being, and with widely irregular levels of prosperity. Some of the information and conjecture that people apply to their behaviors are reasonable and meet with advantageous results. Others are imperfect at best or stupid and petulant at worst.
Perhaps more debatable is this point, when we argue that when people are stupid in the tactics they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a twofold impediment: Not only do they reach inaccurate conclusions and make inept choices, but their stupidity robs them of the capacity to recognize that they are in fact acting in error. Instead, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are proceeding correctly. As Charles Darwin judiciously noted over a century ago, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".
In essence then, we could ask the question: 'How could a truly stupid person in actuality truly understand anything?' They simply do not. Stupid individuals lack what cognitive psychologists variously term metaperception, metaretrospection, metacomprehension, or self-regulating skills. These terms refer to the ability to know how well one is achieving. More simply put, it is the personal capacity to comprehend when one is likely to be accurate in judgment and action, and when one is likely to be in error.
-The Experiment
We decided to explore stupid people's comprehension skills in a domain that requires not only sophisticated knowledge and wisdom about the taste and reaction of a person’s own normal cultural or societal environment, but the cultural attitudes and reactions of various other societies or peoples.
That domain was humor.
To understand what is and what others will find funny, one must have at least a rudimentary base of general knowledge and understanding about other people's tastes. Thus, we presented the participants with a series of jokes and asked them to rate the humor of each one. We then compared their ratings with ratings provided by a panel of comic specialists, namely, several unemployed stand-up comedians, former High School ‘class clowns’, drunken yet fascinating local bar regulars, and employees of B. L. Zeebub Industries. These are persons who employ their skills recognizing what is widely considered comic. (Albeit sexual, morbid and/or blasphemous and profane.) By comparing each test participant's ratings with those of our master panel, we could roughly estimate the participants' ability to detect and comprehend humor.
The participants were 50 test subjects from a variety of what are generally considered and agreed upon to be traditionally unfunny or stupid environments, which ranged from the somewhat stupid, (e.g., transients, mental patients, DMV employees) to the truly imbecilic, (e.g., rednecks, chimpanzees and people who watch 'Survivor' regularly). All contestants earned either pennies or peanut butter flavored crackers for their participation.
-Methodology
We created a 30-item questionnaire made up of jokes we felt were of varying comedic substance. To assess the caliber of a joke, we had the employees of B. L. Zeebub Industries rate each joke on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all funny) to 10 (very funny). The ratings provided by the employees were reasonably consistent (a = .72). We thus calculated the humor value of each joke, producing a final a of .76.
The analysis of jocularity levels revealed that jokes ranged from the not funny or ’tired’ (e.g., "Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? Answer: To get to the other side." Mean expert rating = 0.2) to the very funny (e.g., "Question: Why did Pat Robertson cross the road? Answer: He had his dick stuck in a chicken." (Mean expert rating = 8.8).
Highest scoring joke: A nun wearing a full black habit is walking past a bar when a drunk shuffles out, sees her, and starts punching her in the face. Before she can scream, he slams her with an uppercut to the jaw, and she goes down on the sidewalk, out cold. Hearing the commotion, a few of the drunk’s friends stumble out of the bar and see him repeatedly kicking the now bloodied nun. As they pull him off of her, he screams “You’re not so tough now, are you Batman!”
(Mean expert rating = 9.6)
Participants rated each joke on the same 10-point scale used by the employees. Afterward, participants compared their "ability to recognize what's funny" with that of the average B. L. Zeebub Industries employee by providing a percentile ranking. In this study, percentile rankings could range from 99 (I'm fairly smart) to 50 (I'm average) to 0 (I'm an idiot).
-Results
Race, gender and sexual preference failed to characterize any results in this or any of the studies reported in this article, and consequently receives no further mention.
However, much like the independent film “The Aristocrats,“ the comedic results were telling. On average, the test participants ability to recognize what is funny was in the 36th percentile, which lagged behind the actual mean percentile (50, by definition) by 14 percentile points, one-sample t (64) = 7.02, p < .0001. This underestimation occurred even though the ratings were significantly correlated with a postulated formula to determine random actual ability, r (63) = .39, p < .001.
Our main focus was on the perceptions of the especially stupid participants, which we defined as those whose test score fell in the bottom quartile (n = 16). As this model depicts, we grossly overestimated their humor ability, whereas their performance fell in the 12th percentile. Using the agreed upon 1.00 - 10.00 point rating system, some individuals in this bottom category had rated jokes as "11" or "b". In fact, two participants were invalidated when they accidentally poked themselves in the eye with their crayons and had to receive medical attention.
-Summary
In short, this study revealed two effects of interest. First, the depths of stupidity in the truly stupid is for all intensive purposes boundless. Although our hypothesis concerning levels of stupidity in our test subjects modestly correlated with their actual stupidity, we still tended to overestimate their intelligence relative to their peers. However, because the profoundly stupid participants scored at the bottom of the distribution, it was nearly impossible for us (or them) to underestimate their performance. There were also some unanticipated results, such as the chimpanzee group scoring significantly higher than the test group of DMV workers. To be sure, the DMV employees had an inkling that they were probably more stupid than the chimps, as evidenced by the significant variation between perceived and actual ability and the uneven distribution of peanut butter crackers.
At first, the reader may point to a "contrary-evolutionary effect" as an alternative explanation of our results. This theory is propounded by some scientists that believe human evolution is now working in reverse, as visibly demonstrated by the current popularity of low-fat mayonnaise, the magnetic heath bracelet and television shows like "Joe Millionaire."
Interestingly, it should also be noted that although it appears statistically obvious to the contrary, stupidity is not invariably correlated with any actual rate of individual or group success. The abnormal endurance of WWF wrestling and the fact that some of the North American population still vote republican demonstrates this converse effect.
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Footnotes
1 A few words are in order about what we mean by stupid. First, throughout this article, we think of ignorance as a matter of degree and not one of absolutes. There is no unconditional lambent line that separates "intelligent" individuals from "stupid" ones. Thus, when we speak of "stupid" individuals we mean people who are less intelligent than their like peers. Second, we have focused our examination on the stupidity individuals displayed in a distinct area. We make no claim that the test subjects would be stupid in any other domain, although there are numerous people in the world who are "generally" stupid. Although these people do in fact exist, they are not by definition the focus of this study.
2 Actually, some theorists argue that there are universal standards of stupidity (see, e.g., Everst & Glangestead, 1962), suggesting that this truism may in fact be true. Subsequently, it may be true that it would be false to immediately assume that something is a falsehood or a truism. False truisms are rampant. Its true. So, would these be called falseisms, whereas a true falsehood would be known as a truehood? Ha! Gotcha! That's false!
3 Although the means reported in the text were derived
from the ignorant interdependence coefficients, the t test was performed on the z -(mean n =-.065). transformed coefficients. I think you know what I'm trying to say.
4 A mediational analysis of the absolute miscalibration (independent of sign) in stupid participants' self-appraisals revealed a similar pattern: Controlling for objective performance on the test, deficits in metaretrospective skill predicted absolute miscalibration on the all three self-ratings we examined for both sets of self-appraisals. On the other hand, a stupid analysis of the absolute miscalibration (yield sign) revealed an argyle pattern. Controlling for objective performance on the test, deficits in bottom-quartile stupid participants' metaretrospective skill predicted their absolute miscalibration on all three of the self-ratings, b s(34) =-.79 to-.98,ps < .01. Now even I don't know what I am trying to say.
5 Falling coconuts can cause injury to the head, back, and shoulders. Since mature coconut palms may have a height of 24 up to 35 meters and an unhusked coconut may weigh 1 to 4 kg, blows to the head of a force exceeding 1 metric ton are possible. Four participants with head injuries due to falling coconuts were tested. Two required craniotomy. The other two had, as it turns out, died instantly after being struck by the dropping nuts.
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