Not knowing that thunder is the sound of lightning is not an instance of not knowing everything. Nobody knows everything. Candice Owens knows very little. The problem in this case is not what Candice thinks but how she thinks. A person who has to be told that thunder is the sound of lightning is the last person who should attempt to opine on capital cases. Of course, blowhards blow hard, so let me put it this way: A person who has to be told that thunder is the sound of lightning is the last person you should listen to when it comes to opinions on capital cases—really opinions on anything. If they’re right about something, it is only accidental.
A big problem for our species is the error of mistaking our innate linguistic capacity for native intelligence. The modern scientific understanding of language is that we evolved that facility relatively independently of the range of intellectual capacity. We can talk because our brains evolved this facility. A person unable to read or make obvious connections can still stand before a group of people and hold forth. They can recite a list of talking points without notes and never lose focus. They may be polished actors who deliver compelling performances, while holding the dumbest opinions on a range of cultural or political issues.
The dumbest people can sound smart because the facility of language is not that strongly correlated with cognitive ability. Inversely, some of the smartest people have trouble communicating. Yet the stupidest people can make arguments that sound compelling—to other stupid people. This is why stupid people with confidence can appear to so many as intelligent: because those people are stupid, too. Civilizations have been degraded and destroyed because of this basic misunderstanding. And because there have always been stupid people.
We see this today on X with people commenting on a post by Viva Frei. Comments on the thread, Frei posted a “serious question” to Candice Owens: “Did you really not know that thunder came from lightning? I will admit that I once thought penguins were much bigger than they are. But did you seriously not know that thunder came from lightning? It’s possible this was a bit. In which case, so be it. Can you confirm?” People are in the thread defending a grown woman who didn’t know thunder was the sound of lightning until she was in her forties. Bless her heart.
The gist of the comments on the thread is that some people were not taught that the sound of lightning is thunder. People don’t have to be taught this. Thunder isn’t like penguins. Penguins don’t run around my neighborhood. Unless I go to a zoo, travel to where penguins live, study the species, or watch videos where men stand among them so I can make a comparison, I have no idea how big those birds are.
This is not a trivial matter. It is the crux of the Owens situation. That Owens didn’t see the connection between lightning and thunder (words that are almost always paired in speech) and had to be told this explains why she can’t see the fact pattern in the Tyler Robinson case and draw the obvious conclusion. The woman’s thoughts are random happenings. That is the mark of a stupid person; in this case, a stupid person who believes that she alone can decipher the mysteries of the world—even when there is no worldly mystery.
Nobody bothers to tell kids that thunder is the sound of lightning because almost every kid figures it out on their own—so early in life, in fact, they don’t remember a time when they didn’t know it. That connection is a test of basic intelligence, namely the ability to draw an inference. It’s like knowing why your shin hurts after walking into a coffee table or what causes the tower of blocks your father spent several minutes erecting you push over with feigned astonishment (you little shit).
The ability to see cause and effect is built into most of us. It’s how we survived as a species with so little instinct. It’s why we don’t follow the serpent to our doom like alligator hatchlings who see a reptilian form and think “Momma!” This capacity can only be confused and deranged by ideology and religion—and one needs little intelligence to be confused and deranged by other stupid people. Or evil people. (At the same time, even intelligent people can be confused or deranged.)
When I brought this up at a pool the other day, the initial reaction was one of disbelief because “nobody is that stupid.” Candice Owens is. Then heads shook in amazement when I confirmed that she said it. I was at the pool with smart people. Yet millions of people hear Owens say things like this and nod their heads in agreement.
This is how you can identify the stupid people who walk among us. If a person says, “Candice is right. I didn’t know thunder was the sound of lightning until somebody told me about it,” then you know there is stupidity in your midst. After she announced her stupidity during a podcast, she asked others to tell her whether they also didn’t make the connections in the public chat. Turns out that there were a lot of stupid people in her chat.
There is no use arguing with people this stupid—except for sport. They don’t know they’re stupid because complete sentences spew from the hole where they put their food (and other things). They will never get what you’re saying. They will instead find you cruel, stupid, or part of the conspiracy.
There is no cure for this. Human attributes lie along a range of variation, and natural selection for our species has been largely derailed by culture. Our Darwinian moments have, to a considerable degree (they still happen from time to time, often to our amusement), been lost to civilization. We’re stuck with stupid people. This is why ridicule is such a vital weapon in the arsenal of progress.
freedom and reason 