But,
It’s not about stupid people. It’s about, for example, me, not schooled in medicine, thinking I can fully understand an article in JAMA.
Or a newly hired employee looking at the tasks they are assigned and thinking they are “easy,” because they don’t yet understand the complexities of those tasks, and are therefore performing them at a sub par level, but thinking they are doing great.
This was a very smart post. 
Hey hey hey! I’m right here yanno!
More seriously this might be more true when applied to younger, perhaps less experienced groups of people, it seems to me.
I think a lot like how you describe stupid folks, but that’s because I’ve learned to not worry or care about somethings. I only have so much energy for worry in my budget and I spend that energy carefully.
In other words what you say may be true, but not generally applicable just based on experience alone, never mind education, upbringing, culture etc.
It’s probably the better way to live.
I’ve been working on stopping rumination with good results. It was such an aha moment when I learned that I get to choose what I think about.
My mother if she were to actually take an IQ test would probably run somewhat low in terms of being a “normal person”, she was extremely social, people loved to hang out with her, and you ould have any type of conversation/discuss with her. But since I was around her all the time I definitely found her limits. She was not interested in “the big picture”, any long form decisions had to directly involve her or her family, so if you tried to get into stuff like global warming or geo-politics she would check out or try to change the subject. Her grasp of history was also suspect besides being able to directly relate it to stuff she read/saw in pop culture. She could tell you about the Holocaust but only in terms of relating it directly through examples in Schindler’s List for instance. If it didn’t happen in a movie she could not comprehend it. She has no idea for instances how other cultures live UNLESS it was in a movie or if she directly relates to it from her own personal experience, so for example she thinks modern day Japan is basically just like us where everybody drives a car, has a big house, people drive big trucks and SUVs as status symbols etc. If you were to tell her otherwise she literally would not understand it UNLESS she could think of a movie or book about Japan where that DIDN’T happen and then that single example is how they all live in Japan.
She was also hilariously wrong with how divorce worked which is where all her stupidity came into play. She literally thought she could sue in a divorce for “mental anguish” and if she could lie enough about it the judge would give her “100% of the assets” and her plan was to sue for millions of dollars, win it, and then live her own life. When asked how she expected to win millions of dollars in a divorce when our combined family assets came to only $300,000 her constant response was “The government will step in and make up any difference because that would be the fair thing to do for me”.
Yes, but only if you are completely truthful about the mental anguish. If they catch you lying they will throw you in divorce prison, like they do in Japan.
My wife’s family strikes me as very stupid. Part of it may just be that they are very old and rural, but most of them aren’t particularly well educated and I suspect they don’t have a lot of mental horsepower to start with.
Whatever their actual IQ, stupid is as stupid does, as they say.
Basically you can’t have any in depth or complex conversations with her mom about anything. Which doesn’t stop her from raising complex topic in a highly simplified (and usually incorrect) manner. They often make decisions that I consider thoughtless, in the sense that they literally put no thought into the consequences or outcomes.
It’s like they are pleasant enough, but annoying because they don’t seem to grasp boundaries or social conventions. So it creates a lot of frustration with me and my wife because she’ll ask them to do something or not do something and they won’t listen.
And her cousin is just a dumbass. He married this woman (no genius herself) who actually interviewed him at the company where she works and turned him down. Like…you don’t think he would be a good enough provider to be coworker, but you’ll marry him? In any event, he cheated on her and they are now going through this messy divorce fighting over some crappy little house that’s partially in his parents name because neither of them could qualify for the mortgage. Same sort of bullshit “legal” arguments you described. Like she thinks her personal credit card bills should be paid off and asking for more than their total assets are worth.
Oh yeah my mom did the same thing during her divorce. After separating legally but before getting a lawyer involved she took out a bunch of personal loans assuming they would make my father pay for ALL of it because “The Man makes all the money, so he needs to pay for it”
The Japanese divorce prisons are the very worst prisons in Japan. They’re hell on earth. Convicts are forced to drive a big car, have a big house, and drive big trucks and SUVs as status symbols. They are psychologically tortured by being treated like obese buffoons that watch TV all day and don’t care about their parents and ancestors.