In this work, we will use a mixture of two approaches to answer the question "What is stupidity?" One is to consider the conditions Barbara Tuchman, in The March of Folly, deemed necessary for an act to qualify as a folly: 1.) ample, relevant information must be available to the performer, who is in a knowledgeable state about the given situation; 2.) the act must be maladaptive for the performer; and 3.) there must be other possible ways of reacting available. An additional factor in the analysis of folly was "Best interest", with folly being the studied achievement of "Worst interest". Although we will eventually discard all of these considerations as inadequate for the purpose of defining stupidity scientifically, as we first examine and then dismiss them, we will learn much about the limitations of science and the non-Darwinian essence of human nature.

The other approach is to answer, "Stupidity is the learned corruption of learning". As such, it is a normal, dysfunctional psychic phenomenon which is caused when a schema formed by linguistic biases and social norms acts via the neurotic paradox to establish a positive feedback system which carries behavior to maladaptive excesses. This book is really devoted to elucidating the interactions of the enumerated specifics of this process, but by way of introduction, let us note that stupidity is generally produced by the interdisruption of two commonplace mental faculties—a self-deceptive inability to gather and process information accurately and a neurotic inability to match behavior to environmental contingencies. Further, it has epistemological, social and moral dimensions.

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In an epistemological context, stupidity is the failure to gather and use information efficiently. Traditionally, self-deception has been considered only in terms of the use or abuse of information present within a cognitive system—that is, a person would have to "Know" something in order to deceive himself about it. However, we must acknowledge it is also self-deceptive (i.e., misleading) and usually stupid for one to refuse to gather new, relevant information about matters of importance.

Thus, when considering stupidity in relation to knowledge and data processing, it is imperative to distinguish between the related phenomena of "Agnosticism" and "Ignorance". Both words may be used to indicate the condition of "Not knowing", but they describe different ways of maintaining that condition. Pure, innocent agnosticism is not really stupid, in that it does not indicate an inability or unwillingness to learn.

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