Why Smart People Still Do Stupid Things

Let me begin with a confession.

I won’t claim to be the smartest person around, but I’ve certainly had my moments of believing I knew better. In my final year of mechanical engineering school at the University of Utah, I decided it would be a good idea to connect the terminals of two 12V wet cell batteries in a way that created a direct loop between them. To be honest, I don’t remember the exact configuration anymore. That was 21 years ago.

What followed was immediate and unforgettable. The wire heated up almost instantly, melting and burning my fingers. One of the batteries began a chemical reaction that made it unstable enough that I wasn’t willing to leave it in my garage. I took it to a hazardous waste facility that same day.

The absurd part? I knew exactly what would happen. I had already taken an electrical engineering course and studied circuit design. Nothing about the outcome, aside from my burned fingers, was a surprise. If the wire had been thicker, both batteries would have suffered the same fate. Physics and chemistry, after all, don’t bend to confidence or curiosity (mostly).

The older I get, the less convinced I am that intelligence and good judgment share an office. They might work in the same building but they report to different managers.

Sir Isaac Newton, arguably one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, famously lost a fortune during the South Sea Bubble of 1720. It was a speculative company, but Newton actually turned a profit in the early days. As he watched his friends and acquaintances become even wealthier, he bought back in near the market’s peak and lost an enormous sum when it tumbled back to earth.

It’s hard to confirm something that happened 300+ years ago, but one report claimed that Newton said, “I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

Whether Newton actually said those exact words is difficult to verify, but they’re beautifully consistent with the lesson.

For my part, I’ve always found that statement comforting. It’s an acknowledgement that one of the greatest minds of all time made a terrible financial decision based on FOMO.

Intelligence, as it turns out, is not a vaccine against being human.

Newton co-invented calculus and used it to describe a universe governed by astonishing mathematical precision, but he somehow couldn’t overcome the same thing that has persuaded millions of otherwise sensible people to chase rising stock prices, order dessert when they’re already about to burst, or connect two batteries together just to see what happens, even when they already know exactly what will happen.

Knowledge and wisdom have offices on the same floor, but they’re definitely not in the same department. I’ve known plenty of incredibly wise people who couldn’t pass a basic math test or write legibly. I’ve also known just as many academically brilliant people who possessed the common sense of a three-year-old running with a blanket over their head.

What we can readily infer from this: this isn’t about smart people. It’s about the gap between what we know and what we do.

That’s pretty much universal for people. All of us have experienced it in more commonplace ways. We know…

• exercise is good.

• sleep matters.

• yelling at each other actually won’t help.

• the stock is overpriced.

• the dessert isn’t necessary.

• not to short two batteries.

Most people in most things are not irrational yet we repeatedly fail to act on what we know.

Why?

Let’s not talk brain chemistry or psychology here. Because I’m not a brain scientist or doctor of anything.

Let’s reframe the question: why do most of us (all of us?) continue doing things we already know are stupid?

For most of human history, knowledge was expensive. If you wanted to become something — a blacksmith, a farmer, a physician, or a scientist — you learned through apprenticeship, repetition, and often painful mistakes. Experience was the tuition. Safety regulations came later as a direct result of the lesson.

Today, though, we’ve inverted the equation. Never before have so many people had access to so much good information and advice. We know how to lose weight. We know how to save for retirement. We know that sleep, exercise, and meaningful relationships matter. We know smoking is bad for us, and that checking our phones eighty-seven times a day definitely is not reducing attention span issues or anxiety.

Yet obesity is common. Debt is common. Loneliness is common. Burnout is common.

If knowledge alone changed behavior, we would be the healthiest, happiest, wisest civilization in history.

Instead, we’ve become experts at confusing knowing with becoming.

Wisdom isn’t the accumulation of facts. Holding a ton of knowledge just makes you good at Jeopardy. Wisdom comes from taking what we know, however little or much that is, and putting it into daily practice, especially on the days we’d rather do something else.

But why do we confuse them?

I think gaining knowledge gives us a certain kind of emotional satisfaction like we’re making progress. Scientists have shown that thinking about exercise is actually good for you, so why not just think harder about it? Watching cooking videos also feels a little like learning to cook.

Planning a business feels a little like building one. I know, I planned a business and became an entrepreneur then watched the whole thing burn down because I didn’t manage cash well enough.

The business arc is the same as the batteries. Twenty-one years later, I’m still connecting the wrong things together. Sometimes it’s my pride attached to an idea I know is bad but pursue it anyway. Sometimes I attach my schedule to unrealistic expectations. Today, it was attaching my appetite to a Big Mac.

No wires are melting but that doesn’t make the damage any less real.

Many of us will spend a great portion of our lives trying to get smarter, but I’m not sure I see that as the primary challenge anymore.

I wonder if the bigger, more rewarding challenge is becoming the kind of person who consistently acts on the wisdom they already possess.

Good answers have never been easier to find yet somehow good decisions have never been harder to repeat.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom isn’t what we know.

It’s what we practice.