@Stercus Tauri : If I had to guess, driver was in desperate hury and rationalized that they weren't driving very far and figured they'd make it and deal with the mess later. People who drink and drive may follow similar patterns. "I have to get somewhere..."
And they're not exactly wrong.
If you drive a relatively short distance whilst only mildly impaired, on roads you are familiar with and with little traffic, the risks are small.
NHTSA says that crash risks are increased by a factor of 4 at a BAC of 0.08%, and by a factor of 15 or more at 0.15%. We all agree that risk-taking behavior is increased with even a modest amount of alcohol in the system. (For reference, driving with a 0.08% BAC and driving whilst tired present a similar increase in risk.)
But a factor of 4 or 15 increased risk on a very small risk is still a very small risk, and the drunk driver who rationalizes that they're not going far, that the roads are quiet, and that they'll be OK - is probably right. If the probability of crashing is increased by a factor of 4 when mildly impaired, then driving 10 miles in that state poses the same risk as driving 40 miles awake and sober.
You still shouldn't do it, of course. But the rationalization isn't exactly wrong.
I think there's potentially a similar calculus at play with the guy driving a snowball. How risky is is depends on the details of the roads you're driving on. Are you going somewhere where there are (or might be) pedestrians, in which case your limited visibility is a big problem? Are you going somewhere with busy, chaotic traffic patterns? Ditto.
But there are other roads where a lack of peripheral vision matters much less.
If you're setting off from home, there certainly will be a high probability of pedestrians, not to mention cyclists and other vulnerable road users who you could easily kill.
Also surely there's a high risk of the sheet of snow on the windshield moving as the car moves and suddenly collapsing into the space that's been wiped clear? That's even more dangerous. Surely it takes longer to specifically clear a small gap as opposed to just sweeping the whole windshield clear?
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Also surely there's a high risk of the sheet of snow on the windshield moving as the car moves and suddenly collapsing into the space that's been wiped clear? That's even more dangerous. Surely it takes longer to specifically clear a small gap as opposed to just sweeping the whole windshield clear?
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
I think the significant thing to note is that while a .15% chance of an accident when driving home after drinking on one evening is indeed a very small absolute increase on a 0.01% chance, if you drive home three hundred times a year for three years, your chance of having an accident goes from less than 10% to just less than 75%. It's not the increased risk of an accident on one specific occasion - it's the increased risk of you make a habit of it.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
Not wearing a seat belt also results in avoidable catastrophic injuries, which can add up to a pretty heavy social cost that will be carried by a lot of people regardless of the injured person's political beliefs.
And it's a very easy thing to do. I understand traffic laws are inconvenient, but given the cost of reckless behavior with automobiles, I can understand why the government gets involved.
Also surely there's a high risk of the sheet of snow on the windshield moving as the car moves and suddenly collapsing into the space that's been wiped clear? That's even more dangerous. Surely it takes longer to specifically clear a small gap as opposed to just sweeping the whole windshield clear?
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
Still perfectly legal to not wear a seatbelt in New Hampshire.
I'm not for a moment defending not wearing a seatbelt by the way, I fully support it being illegal - but there is an odd strand of "motorists' rights" type people who are very into the right to not wear one.
Also surely there's a high risk of the sheet of snow on the windshield moving as the car moves and suddenly collapsing into the space that's been wiped clear? That's even more dangerous. Surely it takes longer to specifically clear a small gap as opposed to just sweeping the whole windshield clear?
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
Still perfectly legal to not wear a seatbelt in New Hampshire.
I'm not for a moment defending not wearing a seatbelt by the way, I fully support it being illegal - but there is an odd strand of "motorists' rights" type people who are very into the right to not wear one.
The New Hampshire car licence plate slogan is still "Live free or die", suggesting that stupidity is protected there and certain of them are ready to die for for that right.
The New Hampshire car licence plate slogan is still "Live free or die", suggesting that stupidity is protected there and certain of them are ready to die for for that right.
Also surely there's a high risk of the sheet of snow on the windshield moving as the car moves and suddenly collapsing into the space that's been wiped clear? That's even more dangerous. Surely it takes longer to specifically clear a small gap as opposed to just sweeping the whole windshield clear?
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
Still perfectly legal to not wear a seatbelt in New Hampshire.
I'm not for a moment defending not wearing a seatbelt by the way, I fully support it being illegal - but there is an odd strand of "motorists' rights" type people who are very into the right to not wear one.
The New Hampshire car licence plate slogan is still "Live free or die", suggesting that stupidity is protected there and certain of them are ready to die for for that right.
Pedantic point: Live Free or Die isn’t just the license plate slogan; it’s the state motto. As the Wikipedia article on it says, “It is possibly the best-known of all state mottos, partly because it conveys an assertive independence historically found in American political philosophy and partly because of its contrast to the milder sentiments found in other state mottos.”
That article also says:
The phrase was adopted from a toast written by General John Stark, New Hampshire's most famous soldier of the American Revolutionary War, on July 31, 1809. Poor health forced Stark to decline an invitation to an anniversary reunion of the Battle of Bennington. Instead, he sent his toast by letter:
Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.
(Footnote omitted.)
The intent, at least, seems to be that the motto refers to something more worth protecting than stupidity.
New Hampshire is, for good and ill, a libertarian bastion by reputation. That they wouldn't have a seat belt law doesn't surprise me.
I wouldn't call it stupidity, exactly, but questionable judgment. I do see a quip about live free and die.
People really should buckle their seat belts. A shame it takes law enforcement to make it happen, and God knows police aren't that mindful. Even when those laws started coming out I was trying to imagine how a cop could so easily see into a passing car. Seems like one more thing you could tag someone for after you'd already pulled them over.
Even when those laws started coming out I was trying to imagine how a cop could so easily see into a passing car. Seems like one more thing you could tag someone for after you'd already pulled them over.
These days, enforcement by traffic camera is entirely plausible. Here's a high-resolution photo of you driving your car. You're not wearing your seatbelt. Image recognition to flag that and send out $200 tickets would be relatively straightforward.
I think in the UK such things are usually only regulated post-hoc and mostly by finances. It's highly unlikely that the police would stop you for a seatbelt, unlike not having the correct paperwork where cameras and automatic recognition seem to be effective at alerting police.
However having an accident whilst not wearing a seatbelt would have immediate consequences beyond the increase in danger. One would likely be uninsured and if one survived likely this would mean that one was effectively disbarred from driving. If one was caught driving in that state, the consequences would be significant.
I don't think this is deliberate but in general it is the financial consequences of doing the wrong thing that are increasingly used to manage the practice of things like driving.
There are technological possibilities. Maybe your car should not start at all unless everyone aboard is using a seat belt (properly).
But, what if you are transporting a heavy object or a German Shepherd (in the back seat, of course)?
Dogs shouldn't be loose in the back seat. There are dog seats, hammocks etc that are secured using seatbelts. Ditto heavy objects - what if there's a crash and the heavy object goes flying into the head of the driver?
Cipolla's work continues to look like satire to me. What better way to satirise stupidity than by treating it seriously, as though it were a fact of life, subject to laws of nature?
Nevertheless, stupidity is a feature of human societies, or at least the ones we belong to. To the extent that stupidity is a social construct, which seems likely, it exists for a reason. Maybe stupidity gives societies a way of managing and moderating attitudes to avoidable misfortune. Without stupidity, compassion would be the order of the day, which gets unwieldy as the need for compassion increases.
In some places (including the UK) darkened car windows are illegal for this reason, alongside general safety reasons.
That'd be lovely.
Since we have ICE in the US, there's a sudden interest in the number of SUV's with tinted windows driving around the neighborhood. Ah, Americans...(speaking as an American.)
Cipolla's work continues to look like satire to me. What better way to satirise stupidity than by treating it seriously, as though it were a fact of life, subject to laws of nature?
Nevertheless, stupidity is a feature of human societies, or at least the ones we belong to. To the extent that stupidity is a social construct, which seems likely, it exists for a reason. Maybe stupidity gives societies a way of managing and moderating attitudes to avoidable misfortune. Without stupidity, compassion would be the order of the day, which gets unwieldy as the need for compassion increases.
Being intelligent about all things all the time is freaking expensive. I'm kinda joking, but kinda not. Everyone is stupid about some things. It's just a question of which things are important.
I have strong opinions about cars in general and seatbelts in particular so I'm probably not the one to try to rationalize that particular carelessness.
In some places (including the UK) darkened car windows are illegal for this reason, alongside general safety reasons.
That'd be lovely.
Since we have ICE in the US, there's a sudden interest in the number of SUV's with tinted windows driving around the neighborhood. Ah, Americans...(speaking as an American.)
Well - there are exceptions here for the intelligence agencies I assume. But tinted windows in general are illegal.
UK law is that the front windscreen must let at least 75% of light through and the front side windows must let at least 70% of light through. There are no restrictions on rear windows or rear side windows.
Nevertheless, stupidity is a feature of human societies, or at least the ones we belong to. To the extent that stupidity is a social construct, which seems likely, it exists for a reason. Maybe stupidity gives societies a way of managing and moderating attitudes to avoidable misfortune. Without stupidity, compassion would be the order of the day, which gets unwieldy as the need for compassion increases.
Being intelligent about all things all the time is freaking expensive. I'm kinda joking, but kinda not. Everyone is stupid about some things. It's just a question of which things are important.
How do you mean?
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
Well, in the illustration, it’s not so much lack of peripheral vision as it is choosing to focus on a small screen in front of you instead of looking where you’re going. So, yeah, I’d say it’s stupidity.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
Well, in the illustration, it’s not so much lack of peripheral vision as it is choosing to focus on a small screen in front of you instead of looking where you’re going. So, yeah, I’d say it’s stupidity.
I was doing just this yesterday to find my way to the art gallery.
My phone was smart and useful. My peripheral vision excellent and I found my way easily without bumping into anyone or anything.
Not stupid at all.
Don't assume people's reasons for being on phones.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
Well, in the illustration, it’s not so much lack of peripheral vision as it is choosing to focus on a small screen in front of you instead of looking where you’re going. So, yeah, I’d say it’s stupidity.
I was doing just this yesterday to find my way to the art gallery.
My phone was smart and useful. My peripheral vision excellent and I found my way easily without bumping into anyone or anything.
Not stupid at all.
Don't assume people's reasons for being on phones.
The illustration is about walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone. The illustration did not say that using a smartphone while walking is stupid. If anything, what your account illustrates is that looking at a smartphone while walking is not, in itself, a stupid thing to do.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
Well, in the illustration, it’s not so much lack of peripheral vision as it is choosing to focus on a small screen in front of you instead of looking where you’re going. So, yeah, I’d say it’s stupidity.
I was doing just this yesterday to find my way to the art gallery.
My phone was smart and useful. My peripheral vision excellent and I found my way easily without bumping into anyone or anything.
Not stupid at all.
Don't assume people's reasons for being on phones.
I didn’t assume anything about people’s reasons for being on smartphones, and I’m not sure what in my post suggests I was making assumptions of that kind.
What I called stupidity was choosing to focus on a screen instead of looking where you’re going. To say that more clearly, I would call it stupid, and unsafe, to focus on a phone screen while walking if doing so means that you (generic you) cannot see where you are going and cannot safely walk.
I, too, have used my phone for directions on how to walk somewhere. Sometimes, under some circumstances, I can safely do that while walking. At other times, it cannot be done safely, so I need to stop and move out of other people’s way. Not to do so would, in those times and circumstances, be stupid.
I felt quite clever when I realized I can put in earbuds and have my phone give me turn-by-turn directions while I'm walking in an unfamiliar place. I not only know where I'm going, I look like I know where I'm going.
I felt quite clever when I realized I can put in earbuds and have my phone give me turn-by-turn directions while I'm walking in an unfamiliar place. I not only know where I'm going, I look like I know where I'm going.
And your phone can be safety tucked away from possible phone snatchers.
Nevertheless, stupidity is a feature of human societies, or at least the ones we belong to. To the extent that stupidity is a social construct, which seems likely, it exists for a reason. Maybe stupidity gives societies a way of managing and moderating attitudes to avoidable misfortune. Without stupidity, compassion would be the order of the day, which gets unwieldy as the need for compassion increases.
Being intelligent about all things all the time is freaking expensive. I'm kinda joking, but kinda not. Everyone is stupid about some things. It's just a question of which things are important.
How do you mean?
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
For instance, a professor of chemistry might not know very much about how to fix a broken motor. Or someone who is very smart about running an investment portfolio might not be the sort of person you'd want running a social welfare organization.
I know someone whose political taste is questionable, but he's a pilot. As much as I despise his political views, I think I'd rather have him flying a plane than myself. I understand politics, but I don't know anything about flying planes.
I think "intelligence" in my experience is a system-bound concept. And people are smart about different things.
Your example is different, but I'll try to work my notion in. This person is very smart about operating a phone, but in that moment they are not very smart about their immediate environment. And there's also the intelligence of being aware that you're not aware of your surroundings, which I might call humility. People who are proudly ignorant of their own ignorance are truly dangerous.
Does that help? I have a lot of complicated thoughts about "intelligence" as a concept.
Thanks Bullfrog. I can see what you're saying, but I'm not sure that stupidity is the converse of intelligence in this sense. Not knowing how to do something isn't stupidity. Intelligence might be system-bound, as you put it, but I don't think this is the case with stupidity. I think your recasting of my illustration touches on the distinctiveness of stupidity, although it replaces the concept of stupidity with a number of other qualities.
Part of the context of the OP is about outcomes. It isn't a question about being stupid about different things, but about stupid actions with relevance to the things you do know about.
As a rule, we don't say that people who don't know much about a field we work in are stupider than us (I hope). But attempting to work in a field we don't know much about, eg DIY (home improvement), is the point at which stupidity comes into play. It isn't about knowing how to do DIY, or even knowing how much we don't know about DIY, but about having some idea about the consequences of getting it wrong. Drilling into a live cable or water pipe is a stupid thing to do.
The issue with our own stupidity is the extent to which we either overrate or underrate our capacity for doing something, in any field, while avoiding misfortune. I'm comfortable working with domestic mains electricity (which these days is around 230V 50Hz in the UK, though the Isle of Man is still 240V). Many people I know are not. It's an area where the sensible thing to do is underrate one's own abilities. The stupid thing to do is overrate them. Sensible is starting to look like the converse of stupid. (Which I see Lamb Chopped first alluded to, on this thread.)
@pease : Oh yes! The stupid of boldly exceeding one's knowledge, especially in a known field is a special kind. I recently bought a house and I can feel that with electrical stuff.
Here's a funny youtube video by ElectroBOOM. I'm pretty sure I could do what the guy did in the video, change an outlet. But the way he jokes - very seriously - about "If you try to do this without license, screw it up, and burn down your house, and your insurance finds out..." is enough for me. I'd rather spend money and get it done right, even if it's a fairly simple technical task. I'm risk-avoidant like that.
And here's an hourlong beast leaning more into my field, politics and history... To summarize a good chunk of it, apparently there was this Italian guy, Giulio Douhet, back in the early 20th century who was super-excited by the prospect of aerial warfare, specifically bombardment, as a way to break the trench-warfare-hell of World War I. And he was fully persuaded that "Carpet bomb civilians into submission" was the secret sauce of aerial war. He died with his amazing mustache in 1930, but his books were apparently the go-to manual for all of the nascent air forces of WWII and they took his lesson to heart.
And yes, they killed thousands and thousands of people by trying to bomb civilians into submission. It didn't work to end the wars. You still need infantry. Also, contra Giulio Douhet, it was quite possible for defensive airplanes to be be developed.
His ideas were stupid because he was setting up a conceptual framework lacking experience, and was apparently very enthusiastic about it. He was right that aerial warfare revolutionized war, but very wrong about how it actually played out in practice. Always fighting the last war...
My job involves working with cognitively impaired adults, on the level of folks who require very serious physical support, so I think a lot about the word "stupid" and its various expressions. It's funny that I'll often say guys I work with are very smart, you can see a lot of agency in their life once you sit back and learn to pay attention. But it takes a certain kind of smart to learn to recognize that. And in the process you also learn a lot about how stupid allegedly smart people can be, because I think we're not that different.* I'm reading a book about the early 20th century and World War I might be a case study of very smart people being very stupid on a grandiose scale. "Clever" might be the word for that, I think. They were not very intelligent, I think.
* Pardon the thread cross-pollinating. My brain does this sometimes.
There are technological possibilities. Maybe your car should not start at all unless everyone aboard is using a seat belt (properly).
They don't work.
My car has a little indicator that comes on on the dashboard to warn about not putting a car seat in the front passenger seat. It is unable to distinguish between objects that are car seats and objects that are not car seats, but are a similar size and weight.
(And I'll note that many car seats do not attach via the seat belt at all, but use LATCH anchors. I imagine @Pomona's dog bed could also be attached the same way.)
We learn by making mistakes. Most creativity is about having a go, making mistakes, learning and moving on. As is entrepreneurship.
You can be too 'safe' sometimes.
It's obvious that everyday safety matters and it's stupid to ignore it. But if nobody pushed the boundaries it would be a very grey world.
Reminds me of the time with the US was trying to catch up to the Soviets in the space race, but many of our attempts would end up being destroyed before they could get in orbit. Reporters asked Dr. Van Braun if the US can continue to afford to make such mistakes. His reply was "These are not mistakes. We learn something new every time."
We learn by making mistakes. Most creativity is about having a go, making mistakes, learning and moving on. As is entrepreneurship.
You can be too 'safe' sometimes.
It's obvious that everyday safety matters and it's stupid to ignore it. But if nobody pushed the boundaries it would be a very grey world.
Indeed it would.
Allowing businesses (in particular) to go bankrupt recognises long-term benefits to society of encouraging people to try things out. (It's a bit more complex in the case of individuals.) Following this train of thought to a terminus, it could be that societies that allow a proportion of their members to act stupidly allows those societies as a whole to progress, or at least improve their chances of survival in the long-term.
…
Giulio Douhet, back in the early 20th century … was fully persuaded that "Carpet bomb civilians into submission" was the secret sauce of aerial war. He died with his amazing mustache in 1930, but his books were apparently the go-to manual for all of the nascent air forces of WWII and they took his lesson to heart.
And yes, they killed thousands and thousands of people by trying to bomb civilians into submission. It didn't work to end the wars. You still need infantry. Also, contra Giulio Douhet, it was quite possible for defensive airplanes to be be developed.
As I recall, H G Wells addressed all these points in his novel The War in the Air, which was published in 1908, while wikipedia relates that Douhet's The Command of the Air wasn't published until 1921. (Although he wrote about air power, including a novel, in the years before then.)
Reminds me of the time with the US was trying to catch up to the Soviets in the space race, but many of our attempts would end up being destroyed before they could get in orbit. Reporters asked Dr. Van Braun if the US can continue to afford to make such mistakes. His reply was "These are not mistakes. We learn something new every time."
The four-minute flight ended in what the company called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" — meaning it blew up. But there was much to learn from the flight, the latest step in SpaceX’s explode-as-you-learn approach.
Although I don't think Wernher von Braun referred to attempts ending in destruction as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
I remember a pastor would often say "the person ('man', actually) who never made a mistake never made anything".
I think he was referring to being spiritually bold though!
Comments
---Martin Luther King Jr.
Alcohol isn't exactly good for one's ability to think lucidly.
If you're setting off from home, there certainly will be a high probability of pedestrians, not to mention cyclists and other vulnerable road users who you could easily kill.
It reminds me of the people who buy devices you clip into your seatbelt buckle (I feel like that's not what it's called, but the part you clip the seatbelt into!) to stop the seatbelt warning sound from going off when the vehicle is moving but you're not wearing a seatbelt - it's easier to just use the seatbelt as intended. There are a surprising number of people who are weirdly fixated on seatbelt laws as some libertarian frontier.
Not wearing a seat belt results in a pretty high fine these days, at least in Washington State.
Not wearing a seat belt also results in avoidable catastrophic injuries, which can add up to a pretty heavy social cost that will be carried by a lot of people regardless of the injured person's political beliefs.
And it's a very easy thing to do. I understand traffic laws are inconvenient, but given the cost of reckless behavior with automobiles, I can understand why the government gets involved.
Still perfectly legal to not wear a seatbelt in New Hampshire.
I'm not for a moment defending not wearing a seatbelt by the way, I fully support it being illegal - but there is an odd strand of "motorists' rights" type people who are very into the right to not wear one.
The New Hampshire car licence plate slogan is still "Live free or die", suggesting that stupidity is protected there and certain of them are ready to die for for that right.
There's something called "The Darwin Effect".
I believe in the power of evolution.
AFF
That article also says: (Footnote omitted.)
The intent, at least, seems to be that the motto refers to something more worth protecting than stupidity.
Famously, the United States Supreme Court held in 1977 that New Hampshire could not require New Hampshire citizens to display the motto on their cars.
I wouldn't call it stupidity, exactly, but questionable judgment. I do see a quip about live free and die.
People really should buckle their seat belts. A shame it takes law enforcement to make it happen, and God knows police aren't that mindful. Even when those laws started coming out I was trying to imagine how a cop could so easily see into a passing car. Seems like one more thing you could tag someone for after you'd already pulled them over.
These days, enforcement by traffic camera is entirely plausible. Here's a high-resolution photo of you driving your car. You're not wearing your seatbelt. Image recognition to flag that and send out $200 tickets would be relatively straightforward.
However having an accident whilst not wearing a seatbelt would have immediate consequences beyond the increase in danger. One would likely be uninsured and if one survived likely this would mean that one was effectively disbarred from driving. If one was caught driving in that state, the consequences would be significant.
I don't think this is deliberate but in general it is the financial consequences of doing the wrong thing that are increasingly used to manage the practice of things like driving.
But, what if you are transporting a heavy object or a German Shepherd (in the back seat, of course)?
Dogs shouldn't be loose in the back seat. There are dog seats, hammocks etc that are secured using seatbelts. Ditto heavy objects - what if there's a crash and the heavy object goes flying into the head of the driver?
Nevertheless, stupidity is a feature of human societies, or at least the ones we belong to. To the extent that stupidity is a social construct, which seems likely, it exists for a reason. Maybe stupidity gives societies a way of managing and moderating attitudes to avoidable misfortune. Without stupidity, compassion would be the order of the day, which gets unwieldy as the need for compassion increases.
That'd be lovely.
Since we have ICE in the US, there's a sudden interest in the number of SUV's with tinted windows driving around the neighborhood. Ah, Americans...(speaking as an American.)
Being intelligent about all things all the time is freaking expensive. I'm kinda joking, but kinda not. Everyone is stupid about some things. It's just a question of which things are important.
I have strong opinions about cars in general and seatbelts in particular so I'm probably not the one to try to rationalize that particular carelessness.
Well - there are exceptions here for the intelligence agencies I assume. But tinted windows in general are illegal.
Thinking of a way to illustrate the concept of stupidity, the example that comes to mind is of someone walking into a lamp post while looking at a smartphone.
That's not stupidity, it's simply a lack of good peripheral vision.
Women generally have better peripheral vision than men.
I was doing just this yesterday to find my way to the art gallery.
My phone was smart and useful. My peripheral vision excellent and I found my way easily without bumping into anyone or anything.
Not stupid at all.
Don't assume people's reasons for being on phones.
I didn’t assume anything about people’s reasons for being on smartphones, and I’m not sure what in my post suggests I was making assumptions of that kind.
What I called stupidity was choosing to focus on a screen instead of looking where you’re going. To say that more clearly, I would call it stupid, and unsafe, to focus on a phone screen while walking if doing so means that you (generic you) cannot see where you are going and cannot safely walk.
I, too, have used my phone for directions on how to walk somewhere. Sometimes, under some circumstances, I can safely do that while walking. At other times, it cannot be done safely, so I need to stop and move out of other people’s way. Not to do so would, in those times and circumstances, be stupid.
And your phone can be safety tucked away from possible phone snatchers.
For instance, a professor of chemistry might not know very much about how to fix a broken motor. Or someone who is very smart about running an investment portfolio might not be the sort of person you'd want running a social welfare organization.
I know someone whose political taste is questionable, but he's a pilot. As much as I despise his political views, I think I'd rather have him flying a plane than myself. I understand politics, but I don't know anything about flying planes.
I think "intelligence" in my experience is a system-bound concept. And people are smart about different things.
Your example is different, but I'll try to work my notion in. This person is very smart about operating a phone, but in that moment they are not very smart about their immediate environment. And there's also the intelligence of being aware that you're not aware of your surroundings, which I might call humility. People who are proudly ignorant of their own ignorance are truly dangerous.
Does that help? I have a lot of complicated thoughts about "intelligence" as a concept.
Part of the context of the OP is about outcomes. It isn't a question about being stupid about different things, but about stupid actions with relevance to the things you do know about.
As a rule, we don't say that people who don't know much about a field we work in are stupider than us (I hope). But attempting to work in a field we don't know much about, eg DIY (home improvement), is the point at which stupidity comes into play. It isn't about knowing how to do DIY, or even knowing how much we don't know about DIY, but about having some idea about the consequences of getting it wrong. Drilling into a live cable or water pipe is a stupid thing to do.
The issue with our own stupidity is the extent to which we either overrate or underrate our capacity for doing something, in any field, while avoiding misfortune. I'm comfortable working with domestic mains electricity (which these days is around 230V 50Hz in the UK, though the Isle of Man is still 240V). Many people I know are not. It's an area where the sensible thing to do is underrate one's own abilities. The stupid thing to do is overrate them. Sensible is starting to look like the converse of stupid. (Which I see Lamb Chopped first alluded to, on this thread.)
You can be too 'safe' sometimes.
It's obvious that everyday safety matters and it's stupid to ignore it. But if nobody pushed the boundaries it would be a very grey world.
Here's a funny youtube video by ElectroBOOM. I'm pretty sure I could do what the guy did in the video, change an outlet. But the way he jokes - very seriously - about "If you try to do this without license, screw it up, and burn down your house, and your insurance finds out..." is enough for me. I'd rather spend money and get it done right, even if it's a fairly simple technical task. I'm risk-avoidant like that.
And here's an hourlong beast leaning more into my field, politics and history... To summarize a good chunk of it, apparently there was this Italian guy, Giulio Douhet, back in the early 20th century who was super-excited by the prospect of aerial warfare, specifically bombardment, as a way to break the trench-warfare-hell of World War I. And he was fully persuaded that "Carpet bomb civilians into submission" was the secret sauce of aerial war. He died with his amazing mustache in 1930, but his books were apparently the go-to manual for all of the nascent air forces of WWII and they took his lesson to heart.
And yes, they killed thousands and thousands of people by trying to bomb civilians into submission. It didn't work to end the wars. You still need infantry. Also, contra Giulio Douhet, it was quite possible for defensive airplanes to be be developed.
His ideas were stupid because he was setting up a conceptual framework lacking experience, and was apparently very enthusiastic about it. He was right that aerial warfare revolutionized war, but very wrong about how it actually played out in practice. Always fighting the last war...
My job involves working with cognitively impaired adults, on the level of folks who require very serious physical support, so I think a lot about the word "stupid" and its various expressions. It's funny that I'll often say guys I work with are very smart, you can see a lot of agency in their life once you sit back and learn to pay attention. But it takes a certain kind of smart to learn to recognize that. And in the process you also learn a lot about how stupid allegedly smart people can be, because I think we're not that different.* I'm reading a book about the early 20th century and World War I might be a case study of very smart people being very stupid on a grandiose scale. "Clever" might be the word for that, I think. They were not very intelligent, I think.
* Pardon the thread cross-pollinating. My brain does this sometimes.
They don't work.
My car has a little indicator that comes on on the dashboard to warn about not putting a car seat in the front passenger seat. It is unable to distinguish between objects that are car seats and objects that are not car seats, but are a similar size and weight.
(And I'll note that many car seats do not attach via the seat belt at all, but use LATCH anchors. I imagine @Pomona's dog bed could also be attached the same way.)
Reminds me of the time with the US was trying to catch up to the Soviets in the space race, but many of our attempts would end up being destroyed before they could get in orbit. Reporters asked Dr. Van Braun if the US can continue to afford to make such mistakes. His reply was "These are not mistakes. We learn something new every time."
(Yes, I go that far back.)
Allowing businesses (in particular) to go bankrupt recognises long-term benefits to society of encouraging people to try things out. (It's a bit more complex in the case of individuals.) Following this train of thought to a terminus, it could be that societies that allow a proportion of their members to act stupidly allows those societies as a whole to progress, or at least improve their chances of survival in the long-term.
As I recall, H G Wells addressed all these points in his novel The War in the Air, which was published in 1908, while wikipedia relates that Douhet's The Command of the Air wasn't published until 1921. (Although he wrote about air power, including a novel, in the years before then.)
Sound familiar? From wiktionary: Although I don't think Wernher von Braun referred to attempts ending in destruction as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
I think he was referring to being spiritually bold though!