Battling brain rot

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1:03When I'm talking, I feel dumb. We were never, and I mean never, ever, meant to hear the thoughts of this many stupid people in one day. Like, we all know we're getting dumber, right? Like, you feel it, I feel it, we all feel it.

1:20Jonquilyn Hill:As you scroll through your feeds, do you ever feel like all that brain rot is taking a toll? It's not just that. We're investing less in schools, we distrust science, and we have AI doing a lot of our thinking for us. Some people are saying we're in a golden age of stupidity. I think we are at the dawn of the golden age of stupidity. It honestly feels like at times we solve the issue of not knowing things by deciding that we don't need to know those things. We are the most informed generation in history, yet somehow the dumbest. The words stupid and dumb are thrown around a lot, and definitely in ableist ways.

2:00Jonquilyn Hill:But what we're talking about here is willful ignorance, using our minds less and allowing them to get weaker. I'm John Glyn Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me From Vox, how do we get our brains back? A lot of people have a lot of opinions on what it means to be stupid. The easy way is to say that if you get less than 100 in an IQ test, the further you are away from 100 with your score, the more stupid you are. I really want to push back against that definition. I think it's a really stupid definition because it doesn't really capture at all what we mean when we talk about stupidity. And also IQ tests themselves are pretty clumsy ways of defining stupidity.

2:43Jonquilyn Hill:How do you define it? Damn you, that's a really good question.

2:51Jonquilyn Hill:This is Stuart Jeffries. He's a journalist and he wrote a book called A Short History of Stupidity. I like this idea of it being somehow a moral thing rather than data, you know, because I think we're so ready to data and it doesn't really capture what we really value. What we value, I think, is stopping being ignorant, having a will to stop being ignorant. And if you don't have that will, that to me is stupidity. Why are we talking about this now? Why have we returned to this discussion about it? There seemed to be a lot of it around. And when COVID hit, there seemed to be a lot of people behaving in rather stupid ways.

3:31A lot of people weren't. But it seemed to be a good time because of that and because of the rise of a kind of populist demagoguery, which still appalls me, still shocks me. You know, it's like people have abandoned the very critical thinking that we need.

3:47Jonquilyn Hill:Right now, there are a lot of things that make us feel, I don't know, like kind of numb. You know, our feeds are full of slop. The Pantone colors of the year have been so bland. I'd like to announce Pantone's color of the year 2025 is shit brown. Good news, everybody. Pantone just announced its 2026 color of the year and they're going with white. Plus, we have AI summaries for everything now. Choose watch video, and the AI agent will watch the entire video in seconds and summarize it. The truth is, nobody has time. But AI does. It all just feels flat. Is that making us less smart? I don't know.

4:31I'm going to push back. I'm always going to push back a little bit against the idea that AI is screwing us over. But I really take your point. There is a sort of blandification of life. it's like we feel that we're more stupid but you know looking at the history maybe we aren't we're just we're actually just dealing as we always have done um with new kinds of technology which threaten us you know really upset us like the luddites destroy the machines because they were terrified of them now we're terrified of ai because you know maybe an existentially different threat but it is a sort of it seems similar to me we're just threatened by the the unknown and we think we're on the chasm of something, you know, of our own extinction or something like that.

5:10I kind of think it's too soon to call it. But yeah, I know what you mean. The sense of brain rot we're feeling is out there. Do you know more about modern brain rot or OG brain rot? Let's find out. Gallerina Cappuccino. Yes. Chimpanzini Bananini. Perfect. Tung tung tung sahore.

5:28Jonquilyn Hill:Yes. And there are ways our brains are working less for things, you know. For instance, I don't necessarily need to know directions. I have Google Maps on my phone. There's not really as much friction in the world for payoff. Does that impact the way we interpret and understand the rest of the world? I think, yeah, I really take that point. That sort of cognitive outsourcing where we just made our technology do the work for us. That's worrying if that's what's really happening. There's also another thing, which is that we are made to feel stupid by the bureaucracies we live in. If you ever get mired, as I always seem to, you know, two-factor recognition, authentication and all that kind of stuff, you just feel dumb all the time, even though you aren't.

6:16Even though, you know, if you're a college graduate or if you're a professor, you're going to feel dumb. So there is a sense in which you will feel dumb no matter how clever you are. I think life, living lives in, you know, technologically advanced society, it's got really complicated, perhaps too complicated.

6:35Jonquilyn Hill:You know, people say because of all of these different factors, that now we're in this golden age of stupidity. Yeah. Is that true? Do you think that is true? No, not really. What a father I would be, apart from anything else, suggesting that we're getting, you know, we're on average getting more stupid when my daughter's, you know i think cleverer than me you know she's got better opportunities better read and she's yeah you know more empathetic and kind of sweet a person than i'll ever be you know um yeah so i'm not going to say i'm not going to say that and i don't really believe it at all i you know and i look back at some of the things i was doing when i started my career you know they weren't great and i wasn't doing things that were particularly clever i think i'm cleverer and better now partly because of the technology i use that helps me to connect with people in ways that i wouldn't have been able to do when I say, you know, her age, when I was 20.

7:25Jonquilyn Hill:When we talk about stupidity, are we maybe thinking of a different kind of stupidity when we think of the era we're in now? You know, it's the lack of critical thinking, a lack of curiosity. Is that sort of where we are? Yeah, there's a fear. And you can see it in the way that people talk about how politics isn't working. People don't know the names of their representatives. They don't really get involved in politics. and that leaves the way open to demagogues of the kinds who are dominating the world at the moment. You know, yeah, you're right. There is a lack of critical thinking, but it was ever thus.

8:01You know, it's not like there was a golden age where everybody was really, you know, on top of democracy and really keen to sort of, you know, Hitler was elected, you know. I've said the H word already, but, you know, it's always worth bearing that point in mind. He was elected and by sophisticated people as well. So the suggestion that we are worse than our elders cognitively seems to me to be dubious.

8:34Jonquilyn Hill:Humans have been fretting over how smart we are and aren't for a really long time. That's next.

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10:25Jonquilyn Hill:I'm J.Q. This is Explain It To Me. And I'm talking with writer Stuart Jeffries about his book, A Short History of Stupidity. Turns out, this worry of ours goes a long way back. Well, as far back as I can find, I mean, it probably goes back further. It goes back certainly to Socrates 2 ,500 years ago in Athens. He has this dialogue with this guy called Alcibiades, who's an aristocrat, very rich, very beautiful, and really, really dumb. But he's completely full of self-belief that he should become a leading politician, that he has the right stuff to guide the Athenian people through the crises. So the whole dialogue is Socrates just gently saying to him, No, you haven't.

11:11You're not very clever. You know, you're ignorant. You are wedded to stupidity, my fine friend, of the vilest kind. You are impeached of this by your own words out of your own mouth. But that's not the worst thing they can say about you. You're stupid because, you know, you don't realize that you're ignorant. And even if you did realize that you're ignorant, you wouldn't do anything about it because you're so full of pride. You are not only ignorant of the greatest things, but while not knowing them, you think that you do. So that's like 2 ,500 years ago. And to me, it would be like today.

11:52Jonquilyn Hill:You've looked at the historical understanding of stupidity through different lenses, including the Buddhist lens. What conclusions did they come to? How did they think about stupidity? Yeah, well, Taoism as well. They're just very interesting perspectives to have on how we live in the West. The implication is that we live in a stupid way because we live for our possessions. They're saying you are leading worthless lives in your pursuit of materialism. How can we live without desire and how can we live without wanting to have things and possess things? Is that something that human beings can do?

12:30You know, in a way, that's what the Buddhists are saying, and that's why their critique of how other people live, particularly us in the West, particularly us now in the decadent, materialistic West.

12:41Jonquilyn Hill:It's so interesting how the definition of stupidity can change based on what time you live in or what culture you come from. Yeah, it's a social construct. It's always a reflection of what's valued at the times in which people are talking about. So, you know, like in Shakespeare's time, all those Shakespeare's plays is full of fools. And I, that I'm sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man. Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. But the fools are always kind of low-class people. They aren't kings. And they're always telling truth to power in a rather, you know, hidden way, in a clever, masked way.

13:21And they're talking about the value of folly. You know, the value of not being, you know, easily consumed, not being easily sort of read. That's what, you know, a lot of Shakespeare is about.

13:33Jonquilyn Hill:How did the big psychologist's understanding of stupidity shape us? You know, I'm sure Carl Jung had a lot to say about it. Yeah, I mean, there's so many intellectual revolutions where we realize that we aren't masters of our own domains. We aren't, you know, in charge of our cognitive worlds at all. nowhere more so I suppose than Freud saying that we are you know subject to our unconscious impulses or you know Jung sort of talking about the idea that there's a collective unconscious so the idea that we're all connected we're all actually part of the same being in a way and it's stupid to imagine that we're individuals who can just force our wills from other people and you know that's that's what the game's about life isn't you know life that for them isn't really about these great big narcissistic displays of human will.

14:21Jonquilyn Hill:I wonder if there are other kinds of intelligence we should be thinking about, you know, not just IQ, but EQ, emotional intelligence. Yeah, EQ is a very interesting phenomenon, very different. You know, the reason we're not talking about it and the reason it's not really written, well, it is written about, but the reason it isn't held up as a yardstick is because it's hard to measure, you know, why the stereotypes of men not talking and men being, you know, very repressed about their feelings and all of that is often a symptom of a lack of emotional intelligence, for example. How did ignorance come to be associated with evil?

14:58Jonquilyn Hill:Because, you know, there's a history there, too. Yeah, well, there was with Socrates, you know, he was saying that Alcibiade is this, you know, that young, dumb and full of stupidity guy we were talking about before. He was evil because his soul was sort of bent on doing something which he wasn't ready for. You know, he wasn't ready to lead the people of the city. You know, he shouldn't have been anywhere near politics until he understood what politics was. He cut to a courtroom in Jerusalem in 1961. New Yorker sent Hannah Arendt, who's this German-Jewish philosopher, to cover the Eichmann trial.

15:36And she looks at this guy, this architect of the Holocaust, and says to herself, this guy is stupid, by which she means, and she, you know, expands on it, evil. And there she's got the idea that she equates stupidity with evil with a lack of empathy.

15:55Jonquilyn Hill:There's nothing deep about it, nothing demonic. There's simply the reluctance to ever imagine what the other person is experiencing. He had no empathy for the people he was killing. He just didn't see them as people. And that was, for her, a form of stupidity. So evil comes in. It's like a failure of your soul in some sort of way. So who has gotten this right? Which understanding of intelligence and stupidity is the one we should be looking at, especially right now? Oh, me. Me. Of course. I don't know. I mean, if you ever come across anybody who speaks with humility about themselves, who's deprecating about themselves, that to me is such a sign of intelligence.

16:43You know, I use this example all the time when The Guardian introduced, like the New York Times did, corrections and clarifications. so for the longest time you know you'd write something and it wouldn't get corrected even if it was garbage and even if you've got the you know the gender or the age of you know basic facts wrong about a person and then suddenly there were these corrections and i remember feeling absolutely absolutely humiliated by it because it was a threat to my sort of self-esteem you know but it was really good for my soul you know really good to have that you know to be made made to feel sense of humbleness, you know.

17:20But there are people around who have a humility which I think Socrates would have recognized. I think anybody you come across who has done that walk, you know, walked into a path where they can realize that they are wrong and learn from their mistakes, that's got to be a sign of intelligence, surely.

17:43Jonquilyn Hill:Do you think we can reclaim our intelligence? Is there a way for us to turn this thing around? Yeah, why not? I mean, and the other things, studying history, my daughter's studying history, that helps, having a historical perspective on how things... You know, we feel we're in a special, doom-laden, terrible age. Perhaps we aren't. You know, perhaps actually things were much worse back in the 18th and 19th century, you know, in these eras where things were supposed to be so much better. When it comes to a sort of cynicism about the age we live in, It's the worst of all possible worlds, and things are only going to get worse.

18:21I don't see that. I don't really believe that at all.

18:29Jonquilyn Hill:All is not lost. We can reclaim our brains and make ourselves smarter. Coming up, how to do it.

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