Is a person smart, but people dumb?

You know that saying… a person is smart but people are dumb?

I think that in almost all of the very important ways that matter, it’s the opposite.

A person is dumb. That’s why people believe there’s some magical thing about being smart. They look around them and it’s a wonder any given individual can even function. And if that’s true, and it sort of is, then how could people, in aggregate, be anything other than dumb-multiplied?

So we need that super smart person who somehow can assure us that even if life is messy and scary and chaotic, that someone does know better. We don’t have to be afraid.

Except that even a dumb person knows more about their own life, what they need, and what’s possible, than the smartest person who isn’t them. And the inability of that smart person to know more about any given person’s life than them… well, *that* is what multiplies.

People with the freedom to make and then change any number of sub-optimal choices, to try and then fail and try again, to respond to their own life as best they’re able, well, it might be *chaotic* but in aggregate it creates a robust and dynamic system that actually comes up with the best answers, the best use of resources, the speediest adaption to change, and all around better results than centralized planning by “smart” people.

A person is dumb. People are smart.

Comments

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