Modern society is experiencing what appears to be a decline in cognitive ability but the moreprecise formulation asks whether what is declining is not ability itself, but the conditions that makesustained cognition possible. This manuscript reframes “stupidity” not as low IQ or lack of formaleducation but as a functional inability to sustain attention, tolerate ambiguity and integrateinformation into independent judgment. Contemporary environments digital platforms, economicincentive systems, and now AI-mediated workflows systematically reward cognitive shortcutswhile penalizing slow, deliberate thinking. Drawing on attention economics, reinforcementlearning and reward circuitry, human factors research on automation bias, and philosophicaldiagnoses of “thoughtlessness” and crowd dynamics, this manuscript proposes that “functionalstupidity” has become a stable equilibrium: socially safer, economically monetizable, andtechnologically reinforced. If this manufactured regression is indeed an optimal equilibrium asystem-level attractor rather than a temporary distortion what is our ethical obligation to resist ormitigate systems that encourage intellectual passivity at the expense of individual and collectivecritical capacity? And what does it mean when the tools designed to augment human intelligencemay, through the very mechanics of their convenience, erode the cognitive muscles they claim toserve?
Fabrizio Degni (2026) studied this question.