I ran across this book fifteen or twenty years ago and still find the idea to be both amusing and thought provoking. Doctor Welles presents the concept of stupidity as a specific form of maladaptive behavior (i.e. ‘if you do the same thing, even though it didn’t work last time…’).

This sort of classical definition of what stupidity is and does may be falsifiable…but it certainly does not encompass all of the dumb things we do… In essence this is a fine idea (irrespective of reasonable criticism of Dr, Welles writings (see below)), but only ‘kicks the can down the road’ in that it defines a specific form of ‘dumb’ and provides no answers for the myriad ways we find to screw things up.

One idea I have always taken from Welles’ series of related books (i.e. the history of stupidity) is that conventional history is the summation of the great, the dramatic, and the accomplishments of mankind (pardon the less than PC terminology…). Welles considered that this is only a tiny subset of all of human behavior over the ages…

It’s something to think about.

Understanding Stupidity, by James F Welles, Ph D
http://www.scribd.com/doc/301987/Understanding-Stupidity-by-James-F-Welles-Ph-D-

The Psychosocial Mechanism-of Stupidity
http://staff.imsa.edu/socsci/jvictory/currentevents_06/admin_06_topics/topics_theory_stupidity.htm

What is stupidity? It is the learned corruption of learning. At best learning about our surroundings and ourselves is an imperfect process anyway At worst it is rendered difficult, impossible, or self-defeating by stupidity, which promotes maladaptive behavior by denying us information about our environment and our effects on it. In general, learning is directed and controlled by a "Schema" a master cognitive plan by which each person organizes information. It is both a mental set which provides a context for interpreting events in the perceptual field and a program for behavior. Schemas are good if they are appropriate and adequate, or bad, if they are inappropriate or inadequate for the situations and problems at hand. Stupidity is a matter of unnecessarily modifying a good schema to its detriment or unnecessarily adhering to a bad one to one’s own detriment. We commonly do both, since we are all emotionally involved with our schemas to the extent that we identify with them. Thus, we may change them to suit our own self-image while being reluctant. To alter them simply bring them into congruence with information from the environment.

Stupidity
http://stupidity.net/story2/prefaup.htm

It seems that almost overnight stupidity has switched from being taboo to being a fad. Nearly every week some commentator in the media holds forth on the topic. I wish I could claim some credit for this phenomenon, but I have to admit it is more due to Forrest Gump and Beevis and Butthead than to me and my efforts. Still, stupidity is in—for how long, I do not know, but as I write this in April, 1995, it is all the rage.

Perhaps my influence would have been greater if I had done a better job of planning this book out. Unfortunately, it was not the kind of book which was laid out first with the results clearly in mind before the first word was written. Rather, it was a product of induction, with some forethought and organization but with inferential conclusions which surprised even me when I finally read it.

Not until I reached the last chapter did I realize I was really dealing with the limitations of science—the ethical dimensions of behavior which are beyond the range of science proper. A full understanding of human behavior will begin with psychology but must go beyond it and deal with metaphysics and morality.

Almost as an aside, I developed a model for the mechanism of maladaptive behavior. I did not set out to do this: the pieces of the puzzle sort of fell into place as I went along, so it was not until the end of the book that I realized I should make a statement which pulled it all together as I did in the epilogue. Since a reviewer—Dr. Thomas O. Blank of U. of Connecticut, Storrs—had such difficulty understanding the book, I have now decided to make a summary statement of the mechanism on page two. (Likewise, the reader can also thank Dr. Blank for the headers which now adorn the top of each page: he found the text by itself unfathomable and intimated headings would be helpful guideposts, so they have been added.)

The final realization for me as a reader was that I had taken Charles Darwin to task. Darwinian thought assumes that anything normal in life is adaptive—be it anatomy, physiology, coloration, behavior, etc., etc. Not until I finished the book did I realize I have challenged this idea by alleging that normal human behavior can be maladaptive. We all know that abnormal behavior can be maladaptive, but I am proposing that human behavior is a major qualification to Darwinian thinking because, by their very nature, behavioral trends tend to excesses unless limited by counter-trends. It may be that both Darwin and I are right—that normal behavior is immediately adaptive but at the price of adaptability. Perhaps if enough people take this book to heart, we will find a way to overcome ourselves and adopt a behavioral program set for long-term survival.

The Story of Stupidity
http://www.bikwil.com/Vintage19/Story-of-Stupidity.html

What are we to make of a book with a title like that? Well, I for one ploughed through it and lived to tell the tale. I choose the word “ploughed” advisedly, because it is a densely and intensely written monograph of 270 pages, difficult at times, which occasionally caused me to mutter in language that you can readily imagine if you’re agriculturally minded.
As to whether The Story of Stupidity is really b. s., you’ll have to decide for yourself. No doubt it can be accused of following the Whig historian’s approach. That is, instead of taking past people and events in their own social and cultural terms, it smugly evaluates them as Just-So stories against a modern set of ideas and values.
Even so, let’s get one thing straight. Regular Bikwil readers will have already gathered that I just love crank books. Even if they are wildly wrong scientifically or full of distortions, as long as they are a good plausible read, I can sit back and enjoy them immensely. Not, perhaps, as their authors intended, but that’s their problem.
Welles’ subject is what he sees as our flawed intellectual tradition. Greek Stupidity, Roman Stupidity, Medieval Stupidity, Stupidity Reborn, Stupidity Reformed, Reasonable Stupidity, Enlightened Stupidity, Industrial Stupidity, the Age of Arrogance — these are the chapter headings. Drawing heavily on Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy and H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History, plus data derived from over a hundred other cited sources, James Welles ponders the many “mistakes” made in philosophy, religion, science and politics over a period of approximately three thousand years, which errors according to him were all caused by maladaptive thinking.
So what is maladaptive thinking? In ordinary speech we use words like “preconception” and “prejudice” for it, or metaphors like “tunnel vision” and “blind spot.” In psychology there are several specialized words and phrases used for this, but to save bogging down in a welter of terminology, let us concentrate on the fundamental word “schema.” This is the word Welles uses.
Schemas are what psychology calls the abstractions our minds derive from prior experience, related events, and expectations. Such abstractions are essential for human survival – we couldn’t function without them. Even when they are mental maps of the physical world, schemas always carry emotional overtones. A trivial example is the concept of “armchair”: hear the word, and you conjure up mind pictures not only of an item of furniture for sitting in, but also of comfort, reading, music, television, conversation, knitting.

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