On Stupidity

My roommate's thesis advisor sent her a link to the following article The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research. It was interesting to read, because I think it is absolutely true.

Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying. I'm not talking about `relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don't. I'm also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don't match their talents. Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.


I think Reed is actually abnormally good at making you feel very small and very stupid. Even if it's not quite the same as research, the classes are geared towards giving you problems in the current literature and making you think about them in novel ways. My organic chemistry tests and biochemistry tests were not dependent on just knowing the information, but also knowing the information and learning how to apply it to a new setting. We also spend a lot of time sifting through the literature in upper level classes, and you get a sense that you are very small and there is a whole unknown, unsolved world out there. On top of which, we have an unusual grading policy where we are not shown letter grades for the work we do; we are assigned letter grades for our classes, but to see them we have to ask our advisor, and we are only informed if we performed above a C which is "satisfactory" when we receive reports at the end of the semester. You see numbers, you see correct or incorrect answers on exams, you get comments on written assignments, but you never know exactly how well or poorly you did, just an overall sense, which is often skewed anyway. I also struggled with my intros, and didn't really start to do well until I hit my upper level classes, so I dealt with a lot of academic failure and feeling stupid in my time. And even so; it didn't end there. In advanced synth a class I did very well in, Pat assigned us problems that he didn't even expect us to get correct. I mean, sometimes I did but mostly I didn't. The point was learning a process of solving problems and to demonstrate that you have picked up that process. The point was just to grapple through some really tricky questions that are a little bit above your current level.

The school also pushes you to your limit emotionally; I feel intellectually accountable for my work, and like when I'm not doing it well I'm actually disappointing my professors. Basically, Reed College makes me feel very stupid, even when I'm doing well. I feel like there's always more I could be doing, more I could be learning, more about every topic I should know. This is not quite the same as addressing new, unknown problems (hell, the known ones are intimidating enough), but the feeling that I'm stupid is something I am very used to, and embrace. I've even heard the phrase "if you don't feel stupid all the time at Reed, you're not doing it right".

The world is a big place with a lot of smart people in it. No, I'm not a super genius, and in some ways I'm not even that conventionally intelligent (I have trouble with things like standardized exams). I don't mind the idea of failure in lab, because so many things are out of your control. Isn't that the exciting part, muddling through until you figure it out? Tweaking this and that? Few things are as simple as they look on paper. Lab is different from school, which is awesome in my book. It's a whole different set of puzzles. But I like chance games and gambling. Things that involve a lot of skill and a lot of luck. Keeps things exciting.

So what is the big deal about feeling stupid all the time anyway?