How To Not Be Stupid
my "how to" guide to not be an idiot in 2025
There are a lot of stupid people in the world. Too many in my opinion. And while there are days where I wonder if I’m just another one of these stupid people…there are also plenty of days where I can feel very proud of my efforts to, not even be smart…but just to not be stupid. And in my journey of attempting to ensure that I do not become just another stupid person, I have learned that there are three essential steps to avoid this outcome of stupidity. And if you follow these three steps, I can ensure that a life of stupidness will be guaranteed to be avoided. Let us begin…
Don’t Get All Of Your Information From One Source
Step one on our journey to not be stupid…evaluate where and how you are getting your information.
In order to not be stupid, we need to know things, right? To know nothing seems to be a rather stupid way to exist, so in order to avoid that, a good place to start would be to figure out how to know a few things. So, in order to know things, there are two routes we can take.
Option one is to look outward.
Option two is to look inward.
Let’s start with looking outward. There are more places to look for information now than there ever have been before in human history. Everywhere, everybody is saying something about anything. There is an opinion on every topic and happening imaginable, and there are platforms for everybody to share their every thought at every second of every day. So there is really no excuse to not take in information, as even if you didn’t want to, it’d be near impossible to avoid.
But, very important to note, just because there is a never-ending supply of information to take in, doesn’t mean that all of that information is good. And I don’t just mean it’s not positive information, I mean the information itself may not be correct. Because remember, the whole reason we are here discussing this is to ensure we (you) don’t become just another stupid person in the world, because earth is full of them at the moment. But the same stupid people that the planet is filled with are the same individuals that are spewing a large portion of the “information” you may be exposing yourself to, and that is crucial to remember.
So at this point you may be thinking to yourself, “well if in order to not be stupid, I have to know things, but in my search to know things, all I can find are words being shared by other stupid people, then how do I know that the things I’m trying to know aren’t just the mindless banter of stupid people that will just continue to make me more stupid?” That’s an excellent question.
The answer is tricky but in the simplest way I can think to explain it….there are stupid people out there that either don’t know they are stupid and are just spewing things they truly believe are fact, and then there are stupid people who know they are stupid, but would prefer to live in a world full of other stupid people, so they will always try to trick you into remaining as one of them. AND THEN…this is going to be hard to fathom…but there actually are some moderately intelligent people out there who don’t want the world to be full of stupid people, and who are going to spread good information.
What I’m not going to do, is use this article to tell you exactly where the stupid people are and where the smart people are. I have my opinions, but forcing my opinion onto you would be in direct violation of rule number two which we’ll get to in a minute…and I also think it’s crucial to the journey of becoming not-stupid that you figure this out for yourself. And if you truly want to be not-stupid, in your journey, you will quickly begin to be able to sniff out the stupid-spreaders when you encounter them.
The best thing you can do if you want to know things in an effort to not be stupid, would be to make sure if you’re looking outward for information…do NOT get all of your “information” from one source. Because if you do, there are two scenarios that play out, and neither of them are good…either:
The source you found is actually stupid, and they have managed to trick you into believing the stupid things they say in an effort to keep you stupid so they can benefit off of your stupidity in some way, or…
The source you found is smart…but even if they’re smart, every source in a way is only approaching its choice of information through its own perspective. It’s own human, narrative lens. And this, by nature, is going to be a little flawed no matter what. Even if it’s true information, you want to understand that truth from every angle, not just the angle of one source
The only way to avoid both of these scenarios, is to seek out as many sources as you can for information. Find things that intrigue your interest, and then also listen to sources who oppose the things you think and feel, and learn to see things from their perspective. Being stupid is different from being evil. Just because you’re stupid doesn’t inherently make you evil, and even if you find that the source of a particular set of information is mostly stupid, it’ll still make you smarter to see where the stupid people are coming from in terms of the ideas that they are formulating.
Not to be overlooked is the second option for seeking information, which is instead of looking outward, you can look inward.
We have access to the universe at the palm of our hands, but we also have access to the universe inside our own minds. Of all of the information the world has to offer, nothing is more important than knowing and understanding how you feel. So as you’re scouring the world for information both stupid and real, don’t forget to dig inward, and uncover information that only you can reveal. That self-awareness is a wealth of knowledge that can’t be duplicated.
Form Your Own Opinions…Don’t Regurgitate
Okay, so we’ve passed step one, and we’ve taken in information from many different sources. We’ve heard about many different topics, different points of view from those topics, and have heard various voices speak on those happenings. The next step to not being stupid, is we need to take all of that information that we’ve accepted, and we need to form our own opinions.
Just taking in information isn’t enough. If we just take in the information, and then regurgitate it out exactly how we took it in…then all we are is another version of what we originally saw in the first place. To not be stupid is to learn how to form your own thoughts, and saying exactly what somebody else said isn’t forming or expressing a thought of your own at all. Even worse, if the sources you’ve been getting your information from are mostly full of stupid people, then you’ll just be saying more stupid things thus not really making any headway on this journey to avoid stupidity.
There are too many people in the world that just copy/paste something they heard from some random “news outlet” or even worse, and influencer who grew to fame by saying outrageously stupid things, and then these people think that by spreading their word and their information, they are somehow doing smart work. Well…they aren’t. And you don’t want to be like one of those individuals.
Now, that’s not to say that if you come across a piece of information that you feel like you really align with, and that you feel is incredibly important for your community to know about, then I fully support sharing the information of others in those moments.
But what we really want to strive to do, is to utilize both of the skills we learned in phase one of this journey. We want to look outward for information, but we also want to internalize that information, and examine it on our own without the influence of outside noise. We can use the self-awareness that we learned in phase one to help us further understand, and more deeply develop our own thoughts and opinions on the information we have received.
If you can do that, then you’ll be an individual with their own thoughts and opinions, and you’ll have various sources of information to back up those ideas…which means you are well on your way to not being stupid. Only one final step to go…
Have Real Life Conversations
Okay, so we’ve taken in information, looking both outward for opinions and stories of the world, and also inward to a better understanding of ourselves and our own existence.
Then, we took all of that information, and gave ourselves the time to think more critically of it without the influence of outside voices and opinions, and we’ve developed our own thorough viewpoints and conclusions on the information we have sought out. Now we’re on to the final step of not being stupid…
In order to not be stupid, we have to engage in real life conversations with other humans.
This is arguably the scariest part of not being stupid. Because here’s the thing, anybody can sit on the couch, take information, share that information, make a little comment, and then call it a day. But that’s not being not-stupid. That’s easy, and it’s not challenging ourselves at all. Also, we can seek out various sources of information and learn to see things from various perspectives, which is great…but we can take this to a whole other level when doing so in person. Having a real life dialogue with another person, particularly someone you don’t agree with, so you can come together and each share all of the information you’ve taken in, and explain your own thoughts to each other…having an intellectual conversation sighting different sources both worldly and personal….now THAT is NOT-STUPID.
The reason this is scary though is because, well we might engage in conversation and realize that the person we’re talking to has taken in way more information than I have. Maybe they have taken in a wider array of good information that allows them to form better and more detailed ideas than you and that can make you feel like you are still stuck being stupid. Or, even worse, they have dabbled in a variety of stupid sources and have made such outlandish arguments that you don’t even know how to use your good information to support you, because they brought weapons of stupidity and your weapons don’t know how to combat that…which can leave you feeling like you’re stupid when in reality you are not.
Both of these are anxiety inducing outcomes…but that’s part of being not-stupid. It’s not being afraid, not just being a keyboard warrior and hiding behind a social media platform or your phone. It’s having the courage to go out in the world, and risk falling conversationally on your face, knowing that if that happens, the experience will only inevitably help you to trek even further along down your path of stupidity avoidance.
And if you can do all of these things, I promise you, you can avoid becoming just another stupid person spewing stupid nonsensical stupidity. Now, if you actually want to be smart…..well, that’s a whole other conversation.
Best of luck!