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Articles

Against Stupidity in the Media

Angela Phillips is the winner of Philosophy Now’s 2019 Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity. She gave this acceptance talk at Conway Hall in January.

Stupidity is not about intelligence, or education. Rather, a stupid action or statement usually follows an untested assumption. It is stupid to leave your house without your keys because you didn’t check that they were where you thought they ought to be. And our assumptions too often come from a broad understanding of the world that we have stopped bothering to reconsider, because, ‘Hey, we’ve always thought that, so it must be true’. Broadcasting a conclusion based on an untested assumption simply compounds the error.

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