TOPIC: Stupidity.

This week, Dan and Merlin tackle stupidity. And, brother, there sure are a whole lot of flavors of stupid.

Are we really talking about being clueless, unaware, dumb, absent-minded, or just plain-old ignorant? Because they're actually pretty different animals.

Whether you're dropping your library book in the mailbox, leaving your iPad at home, following baseless medical advice, or doing whatever Dan did with his garage door (don't worry: the car is fine), it's really helpful to understand where your real problem really lives.

From a tactical standpoint, try some useful failsafes, rituals, and habits. But, at a higher level, learn to develop the curiosity to keep evolving. Stay open to how you might be wrong by always seeking out the smartest person you can find who disagrees with you.

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In the novice stage, a person follows rules as given, without context, with no sense of responsibility beyond following the rules exactly. Competence develops when the individual develops organizing principles to quickly access the particular rules that are relevant to the specific task at hand
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Dreyfus: A five-stage model of the mental activities... - Google Scholar
SE Dreyfus, HL Dreyfus - 1980 Abstract : In acquiring a skill by means of instruction and experience, the student normally passes through five developmental stages which we designate novice, competence, proficiency, expertise and mastery. We argue, based on analysis of careful descriptions of skill acquisition, that as the student becomes skilled, he depends less on abstract principles and more on concrete experience. We systematize and illustrate the progressive changes in a performer's ways of seeing his task environment. We conclude that any skill- training procedure must be based on some model of skill acquisition, so that it can address, at each stage of training, the appropriate issues involved in facilitating advancement.
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