It is utterly staggering how many clueless individuals confidently parrot the phrase, "education doesn’t make you smart," without ever bothering to define what intellect actually means. Usually, these people fall back on the lazy defense of "common sense." Let’s destroy that myth immediately: there is no such thing as common sense. The so-called common sense of the masses is generally absolute garbage, an accumulation of unexamined prejudices, old wives' tales, and intellectual laziness. There is nothing good, reliable, or intelligent about most people's ideas of common sense; it is merely a weapon used by the uneducated to justify their own ignorance. Let’s correct the record: education absolutely builds intelligence by providing the foundational framework of knowledge, but how you apply that knowledge dictates your wisdom. There is a massive, fundamental difference between being educated and being wise, and it is about time the masses learned it. Instead, society is flooded with people possessing so little education and such a microscopic understanding of how the world works that they remain entirely eager to dispense unsolicited advice on subjects they are catastrophically unqualified to address. This is the textbook manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the delusion that executing a single, minuscule task passably well once in life suddenly grants someone total comprehension of an entire profession. ■
Furthermore, intelligence requires continuous application; simply earning a degree decades ago means nothing if the knowledge has been left to rot. For instance, I know a house painter who holds a degree in fine art, but he has never used that education since his graduation sixty years ago. If you attempt to discuss fine art with him today, he cannot engage in the conversation because he simply does not know it anymore. You must actively apply what you learn, or the education vanishes. Having a dusty piece of paper on the wall does not grant lifelong expertise if the brain has gone dormant. ■
This Dunning-Kruger delusion reveals a pathetic hierarchy of arrogance completely devoid of intellectual humility. We see it constantly in the business world: the bookkeeper poo-poos the certified accountant because the bookkeeper thinks they are the only one who truly knows what numbers need to be plugged into the system. Then, that very accountant turns around and poo-poos the economist, completely blind to the fact that the economist possesses a vastly superior understanding of macroeconomic systems and economic theory than any accountant ever will. To top it all off, the independent businessman arrives to poo-poo the entire lot of them, arrogantly believing he can run his empire entirely on gut instinct without the advice of any of these experts. It is a comedy of unearned confidence. A person possessing a truly intelligent, humble brain actually recognizes their own limitations and respects the boundaries of specialized expertise, rather than assuming their narrow vantage point grants them universal mastery. ■
Perhaps nowhere is this unearned confidence more terrifying and dangerous than in the realms of health, medicine, and healthcare. The medical profession is a brutal, exceptionally difficult discipline requiring grueling years of specialized study, yet ninety percent of the public knows absolutely nothing about how human physiology or pharmaceuticals actually function. This ignorance does not stop them from playing doctor, nor does it stop unqualified fringe practitioners from overstepping their boundaries. We constantly see chiropractors stepping completely outside their scope to lecture people on complex systemic health issues they are utterly unqualified to treat. Worse yet, naturopaths confidently dispense opinions on pharmaceuticals and pharmacology when they possess zero legitimate biochemical training on the subject. For me to tolerate advice from these charlatans, or to argue with actual medical researchers, would be as utterly absurd as me trying to lecture my father-in-law on woodworking when the man has spent his entire life doing it exceptionally well, or me trying to instruct my mother-in-law on investing and finances when she has successfully managed those systems for the majority of her life. It takes a severe lack of self-awareness to walk up to a lifelong expert and assume your baseline opinion holds equal weight. ■
We see the exact same delusion in discussions around religion and theology. People love to lecture others on faith as if they are biblical scholars simply because they sat through Sunday school, relying on basic, uncritical interpretations. Newsflash: we all went to Sunday school. Real theology is a deeply complex, independent academic discipline, and it becomes outright dangerous when intellectually lazy people start treating nuanced texts as literal truth under the guise of common sense. The same farce occurs in project management; people treat it like an effortless job that anyone can handle based on instinct alone. Sure, anyone can do it—anyone can do it completely wrong and crash an entire operation into the ground. ■
True intelligence requires the humility to recognize your own limitations and respect actual credentials, rather than assuming your baseline intuition is sufficient. For instance, I do not handle finances because I am not good at them, so I leave that specialized work to professionals. I hire experts to manage my taxes and my bookkeeping. Recognizing a personal deficit and choosing not to engage in it does not make someone stupid; it makes them rational. But you will never see me lecturing a professional accountant when I do not hold an accounting degree. People completely lack that basic decency today, especially when it comes to child-rearing. Everyone thinks they have the "common sense" required to raise children simply because they possess the basic biological capacity to breed. Raising a child correctly is not a product of blindly copying your parents or trusting your gut, considering that ninety percent of the time, parents completely screwed it up. People need to find some damn humility and admit that they are at least a little bit damaged by their upbringing, rather than passing those broken patterns down while pretending they hold a degree in parenting. ■
This suffocating, unsolicited advice extends completely into how people choose to live their lives, driven by a herd mentality that people mistake for practical wisdom. Society loves to dictate a rigid, boilerplate checklist for success based on this collective nonsense: you must own a house, a car, and an RRSP. But what if you do not want those specific burdens? What if you would genuinely prefer the freedom of a condo over a house, or simply choose not to own a vehicle? It is your life to live exactly how you see fit. The absolute worst of these critics are the miserable souls who claim traveling is a waste of money and demand that every single penny be hoarded for retirement because "it's just common sense." I refuse to save all my living for when I am dead or almost dead. It is time for people to mind their own business, recognize their profound ignorance, realize their collective instinct is garbage, and stop lecturing others on lives, medical sciences, religions, and professions they know absolutely nothing about. ■
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