Perhaps? I know if I overhear others speaking that I often lack full context. I also know that I don’t know everything. In fact, people that are smarter or more knowledgeable than us can often seem “stupid” because we lack the information or cognitive ability they have.
Many things in life that are the “truth” as best our civilizations knows it and can reproduce it are counter intuitive. While not as common today as long ago, people will still argue things like butter works best for burns despite all the medical knowledge and study to the contrary. We often teach “incomplete” facts in school- sometimes curriculum aren’t up to date and sometimes there was an error or sometimes the full truth is deemed (and likely) too complex for the audience, so a more simplified or easily understood version is taught as it will functionally work well enough for most people.
We have perceptive biases and all manner of things that can obscure the “truth” or the “truer truth” from us, and things change. I learned to paint (cars etc.) from someone who was a sought after custom painter and charged many tens of thousands of dollars for their work. They won or placed in numerous globally or nationally acclaimed competitions that were highly competitive and offered large rewards.
Then decades later I was working with this young guy who kept questioning why I was doing things or saying to do things in an order or way that made no sense to me. It was “wrong.” Well- it turns out technology in body and paint had moved ahead quite a bit from the “old school” methods I learned.
While you could still use those materials and techniques to achieve the same results they always have, more durable methods exist today. Far less labor intensive methods exist to achieve the same results or better. “Safer” chemicals and materials and methods exist. Many of the older chemicals aren’t commonly available if at all- and trying to use the newer stuff the same as the older stuff can be disastrous as the new stuff isn’t designed to work or be used those ways. Had I heard this person talking to someone else about their plans to paint I might have thought they didn’t know what they were doing. Because we were working together I was able to ask them questions about why they were saying that, and I learned some new things that really helped me achieve great results as someone who doesn’t do that type of work professionally but learned from a pro.
That’s a personal example for me, and I’m sure others have other examples- I know I do. Having confidence can be very good. At the same time, if we allow ourselves to be too certain that we know the answers or we are correct and people who say otherwise are wrong or “stupid,” we generally don’t grow and we may not only judge someone harshly when we are wrong, but we may continue to be wrong, which can be embarrassing or even disastrous. This can be true of philosophical or moral or other points- but yes. It applies to facts. Yes, even most or many “indisputable facts..” because in science nothing is indisputable. To dispute you need to start with an idea something is not correct or is flawed and then you need to gather up solid ground to make your dispute from.
The fundamental behaviors and mechanisms of gravity in a specific environment which has produced consistent observations probably doesn’t change- on a long shot we could argue it might- but it isn’t gravity that is the practical worry in changing- it is our understanding of it. As we speak and for some time, gravity; one of the most fundamental, constant, readily observable (results) forces known intuitively to almost all through daily life and experience, is in an ongoing and credible dispute as to what it is or how it functions and interacts. Long after we had harnessed electricity to do work, after we could explain the function of electricity at a sub atomic level…. The common recognized fundamentals of electricity were re written as wrong. Literally backwards.
It isn’t an everyday thing at this point in scientific development that we discover some fundamental or even intermediate aspect of scientific understanding to be wrong or so functionally off base- but we do need to be mindful that it happens. We have theories. The theory of relativity and the theory of gravity and so forth. They exist as the best knowledge we have until someone disputes them with enough veracity to become the prevailing theory.
Beyond that so much is subjective. Your life and mine are likely very different. Our experiences are likely very different in many ways. A farmer in a rural area might think a kid is being “stupid” for saying they plan to move to some Mecca of entertainment and become a star of some sort or a big city executive might think some kid saying they plan to skip college to work a blue collar job is “stupid.” Maybe they are? Who can say? Many multimillionaire celebrities were once on track to being most likely mediocre in a more stable field. Aquafina lost a job and possibly a career many would say is smart because she was making songs online I get spare time and one for popular that was seen as vulgar. She’s been in several high profile movies, her own show and other shows, she’s toured and made what I am sure is more money than she was on track to make at her job.
At the time she was fired I wonder how many of her coworkers talked about how “stupid” it was to lose that job over some “internet song” and “5 minutes of fame”? Harrison Ford isn’t alone I’m being in Hollywood a LONG time before getting a big break. American graffiti is a classic now but it didn’t exactly launch his career directly. Had Ford given up he would have missed out on a storied career and all the wealth and freedom it brought him. A lot of people would have missed out on iconic moments. But of course you have people who spend I a lifetime in Hollywood and at best maybe get a decent job but never achieve their dreams in the industry- or worse they may never get beyond day jobs that barely pay for meager living expenses and never even brush against their dreams before they die. Arguably one might say the latter are foolish in retrospect, but that is an argument that says how “stupid” a person is depends on results.
Of course being “stupid” is arguably contextual- especially in behavior. Nick Cannon has quite a few kids with quite a few women. If someone making minimum wage did that on their salary and had to pay child support to most of them… one might likely call that a stupid move. Much Cannon would surely have much more wealth to use as he saw fit otherwise were he not caring for all those kids, so one might still call that stupid… but even with all those kids Nick Cannon still has more wealth and/or a higher lifestyle than most people in America… so is it stupid if he wants to have all those kids…? Maybe not. It’s subjective.
Many things in life that are the “truth” as best our civilizations knows it and can reproduce it are counter intuitive. While not as common today as long ago, people will still argue things like butter works best for burns despite all the medical knowledge and study to the contrary. We often teach “incomplete” facts in school- sometimes curriculum aren’t up to date and sometimes there was an error or sometimes the full truth is deemed (and likely) too complex for the audience, so a more simplified or easily understood version is taught as it will functionally work well enough for most people.
Then decades later I was working with this young guy who kept questioning why I was doing things or saying to do things in an order or way that made no sense to me. It was “wrong.” Well- it turns out technology in body and paint had moved ahead quite a bit from the “old school” methods I learned.