Why assume people are smart? And why does that matter? It’s a starting point for just about everything else I do as a sociologist. I learned people are smart by spending over a decade of my life studying what they do and why they do it (and a lot longer than that interacting with them). What I mean is that people have reasons for doing what they’re doing that are as complicated and well thought out as the reasons you have for doing what you’re doing. Because I am a pragmatist, this wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t some benefit to assuming people are smart, so I offer three rules, things to gain from assuming that People are Smart, and not the opposite, based on all this.

This isn’t an attempt to solve a problem: the problem I raise is moral, not technical, and therefore cannot be solved by technical means. This also isn’t an attempt to create another evil “they” to shift blame for my own missteps and incompetence onto, be it soci@l med!a or other manipulations of public opinion; I see the moralistic hypocrisy of that, and I reject the idea that we human beings, you and I, are just pawns or unwitting dupes. This is a “me and it” problem, not an “us and them” problem, if you like; if I am right, then I am a sucker, as much as any and more than some, and some time away to clear my head should make that evident. I can’t singlehandedly change the game, but I can leave it for a while.