I asked google why smart people do dumb things, here is what it's AI answered. Socrates had come up in earlier answer.

[Swede]

Last edited Sat Dec 6, 2025, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

In ancient Greek philosophy, the concept you are referring to is likely amathia, which translates to ignorance or "intelligent stupidity". This philosophical idea, particularly explored by Socrates and the Stoics, relates to a fundamental lack of self-knowledge and an absence of wisdom regarding the true nature and values of life, which impacts the soul. 

Amathia: Ignorance of the Soul Definition of Amathia: Amathia is not merely the absence of factual knowledge, but a deeper, more profound form of ignorance. It is described as "knowledge instilled into the soul by bad upbringing and bad education" or a "refusal to understand" one's true condition.

Impact on the Soul: In Greek thought, the psychē is the term for "soul" or "mind". Amathia means a person can be highly intelligent in a conventional sense (e.g., in a specific field like science or commerce) but remain profoundly ignorant of their own divine identity, true purpose, and spiritual reality.

The Socratic View: Socrates famously linked evil actions to this form of ignorance, suggesting that people commit evil not because they are inherently bad, but because they are ignorant of what is truly good for their soul. Realizing one's own ignorance "I know that I know nothing" was the first step toward acquiring true knowledge (gnosis) and purifying the soul.

Consequences: This ignorance leads individuals to focus on material things, physical bodies, and worldly desires, rather than seeking self-knowledge and the betterment of their psychē, a process described as "the winnowing of the soul". In summary, amathia describes a state where an individual is unaware of their own spiritual identity and potential, leading to actions and beliefs that work against the well-being and true purpose of the soul.

[mjvpi]

1. Good one. And it didn't use the word asshole once.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. like ask AI philosophical questions?

[Swede]

3. No I googled it, I just didn't expect the Ai part, just links to what others thought.

It also provided said links.

[highplainsdem]

8. See my reply 7 below. Do you have a copy of your exact query/prompt? If you didn't save it, it should

still show up in your browser history - not just that you did a Google search, but what you searched for.

[Sneederbunk]

4. And then there are MAGAts, dumb people doing dumb things.

[Norrrm]

5. "amathia" - always something new to learn.

"refusal to understand"

It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It

Said in different ways.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

[c-rational]

6. Sinclair Lewis, I believe, wrote that. Almost a century ago.

[Grown2Hate]

11. Not an EXACT correlation, but it reminds me of this verse from a NOFX song (especially the bolded part):

Dan, the company man, felt loyalty to the corp
After 16 years of service, and a family to support
He actually started to believe the weaponry and chemicals were for national defense
Cause Danny had a mortgage and a boss to answer to
The guilty don't feel guilty, they learn not to

[Norrrm]

16. It fits.

[highplainsdem]

7. Swede, did your prompt include a request for what (Greek) philosophers would say? Same query just

now got ZERO mention of philosophy or amathia.

Typed this into Google

why do smart people do dumb things

and got an AI summary beginning

AI Overview
Smart people do dumb things due to overconfidence, amplified confirmation bias, emotional vulnerability, or a focus on complex analysis over practical wisdom, leading them to ignore red flags or rationalize poor choices, even when they're skilled at logic;
they often overcomplicate things, trust their own reasoning too much, or suffer from "mindware gaps" where they lack real-world experience, making them prone to errors that less "intelligent" but more critically-thinking individuals might avoid.
This video explains some reasons why intelligent people fall for foolish ideas:

Cognitive Biases & Overconfidence
Overconfidence:
A lifetime of success can breed an unflappable faith in one's own smarts, leading to risk-taking or ignoring help.
Confirmation Bias:
Smart people can become experts at justifying beliefs, even flawed ones, by finding data to support them and ignoring contradictory facts, notes this Reddit thread.

and continuing on for several more paragraphs, with no resemblance to the answer you got.

As I've explained often here, genAI is not actually intelligent or reasoning, and it can provide an endless array of different responses to the same prompt. Most people are aware of this because of the neverending options image generators can offer from a single prompt, but the same is true of AI-generated text, and the responses can be wildly contradictory.

It's also possible you said something the AI responded to that led it to bring up Greek philosophy. That could have been in the prompt, but could also have been in an earlier Google search.

Whatever the reason you got such a different answer, the most important thing about AI Overview is that it, like other AI search summaries, is extremely harmful to the web, since Google has scraped the info from websites that are losing traffic because of AI search. Sometimes it provides links to where it found that info, but not always. Perplexity AI, for instance, has been known to provide nearly exact copies of articles, then bury the link to the actual article at the bottom of a list of unimportant websites that referred to the article. A Google X account bragged about a recipe stolen from a website recently, with no link at all to the website: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220836210

Please don't use AI summaries. They're destroying websites, exploiting them to make AI companies and AI bros richer and more powerful.

I just quoted AI Overview here to show you how different that response was to the one you got.

[Swede]

9. I had asked a previous questions about good and evil. And why normal people do bad things.

Socrates did come up in one of the answers to that one. So I guess philosophy did come up. I know AI is not sentient, it just has near instant access to the sum of man's knowledge. Would it track all my string of questions?

[highplainsdem]

12. Yes, it would. Algorithms do that, whether offering you more videos from the same artist or similar

ones, or ads for products you looked at.

AI is the most efficient data gathering and surveillance tool ever.

And chatbots are particularly dangerous because data saved about users can convince people that the chatbot really understands them and is a friend, sometimes a friend who thinks just like they do, who can be trusted more and more.

[highplainsdem]

13. Would you consider editing your OP to add a note about these replies (7, 9 and 12) with the

possible explanation of why you got that response about Greek philosophy? A lot of DUers read OPs but not replies.

[Swede]

14. Will do.

I didn't put 2 and 2 together until your post.

[highplainsdem]

15. Thanks!

[ananda]

10. Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.

So so true.

[Karadeniz]

17. The post is consistent with jesus teachings.