For Gwendolin Kirchhoff, stupidity is a matter of decision quality: whoever acts stupidly, as she describes it, perceives only a limited part; for instance, they perceive only their strong affects and passions, act them out at once and are not aware of the consequences, which can harm them or others (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 01:00–01:25). “When we say someone is stupid or someone is clever, if one can say that at all about a person as a whole, then what we usually mean is the quality of their decisions,” she says in a conversation with Elisa Gratias on stupidity, cleverness and wisdom, published by MANOVA in August 2026 (ibid., 01:00, transl.). The differences between the three, in her words, show in their long-term consequences (cf. ibid., 00:55). Even a highly educated person, according to Kirchhoff, can fail to feel themselves over long stretches, and where they do not feel themselves, they act stupidly (cf. ibid., 19:43–19:56).
#How is stupidity different from ignorance?
Gwendolin Kirchhoff distinguishes stupidity from ignorance through the figure of the beginner: a beginner, in her words, has no idea yet, whereas when we call someone stupid we usually mean the quality of their decisions (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 01:00–01:54). Many people, she says, are at first simply beginners: children, or people who find intuitive feelings and thoughts in themselves, a strong desire pulling in a certain direction, for instance, without yet having a clear thought about which of it makes sense and which does not (cf. ibid., 01:47–02:17). At a certain point an insight can form: an impulse is noticed, a gap opens between the impulse and the action, and sometimes one can foresee where it leads; that, she says, is the core of wisdom (cf. ibid., 02:19–02:41).
The consequences of a stupid decision can, according to Kirchhoff, harm the person who makes it or others (cf. ibid., 01:20). Because things in the larger context tend to return, for instance along ancestral lines, to people who are closer to us than we think, it is “not really a good idea to set open loops into the world,” that is, to open up big themes in such a way that they have to come back to us later (ibid., 01:25–01:45, transl.). What an open loop is and how it closes is set out in the entry Closed Loops.
One example in which Kirchhoff judges stupidity and cleverness in terms of a system is that of a reinsurer. As she tells it, the reinsurer gets more back from an American catastrophe fund than it pays out for hurricane damage; if there were a landscape-architecture solution after which the hurricane would not return, at a fraction of the cost, it would have no interest in it (cf. ibid., 10:50–11:22). “He’d be stupid in terms of this system. He’s clever if he takes the money.” (ibid., 11:23, transl.).
#Why do educated people act stupidly?
Educated people act stupidly, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, wherever they do not feel themselves: “A highly educated person who has read an enormous amount and so on can fail to feel themselves at all over long stretches.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 19:43, transl.). Where such a person does not feel themselves, she says, they act stupidly in the sense of dull, blunted; the feeling is not there, one picks up no signals that something might not fit (cf. ibid., 19:49–20:03).
Kirchhoff locates the source of insight in emotional presence with the phenomena, in an openness and depth of feeling through which they can speak to us according to their true nature (cf. ibid., 19:12–19:33). She describes the opposite case in the first person: if she numbs herself and tells herself all sorts of other things, she makes stupid decisions, in the sense of directed against her own life, because she does not feel what she is doing (cf. ibid., 19:33–19:43). The entry Thinking Empathy takes you further from here.
The first effect of trauma, according to Kirchhoff, is a local stupidity, “a stupidity with regard to particular themes”; people are not to be blamed for that, she adds, and trauma is not the only cause of stupidity (ibid., 22:10–22:26, transl.). Of the signals that come from life, she says: “The signals come and they are not taken in. We are dull towards these signals, that is, stupid.” (ibid., 23:03, transl.). That a great many of the signals life sends are not processed is something one notices everywhere, she says; often they are processed only very late, when the matter affects a person personally and the feeling arrives in perception together with the pain (cf. ibid., 23:10–23:30). The trauma side of this thesis is explored further in the essay on Attachment Trauma.
#Does AI make us stupid?
Artificial intelligence can, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, bring a dumbing-down with it: if people carry on with AI, she expects productivity gains in many areas “and a very great dumbing-down in many other areas” (Kirchhoff, G., 2025, Everlast AI conversation, 49:19–49:28, transl.). She describes this dumbing-down as a “loss of abilities” that is no real progress (cf. ibid., 49:28–49:33). In the same stretch of the conversation she says that everything we outsource to a machine is a cognitive function we then have less of, orientation for example (cf. ibid., 48:03–48:15). From here, the entry Pathogenesis Not Progress takes you further.
#How did Schopenhauer define stupidity?
Arthur Schopenhauer defined stupidity as a lack of understanding: “A lack of understanding is called stupidity in the proper sense, and it is precisely dullness in applying the law of causality, an inability to grasp immediately the chains of cause and effect, motive and action.” (Schopenhauer, 1819, § 6, transl.). A stupid person, according to Schopenhauer, does not see the connection of natural phenomena (cf. ibid.). In the same section he calls a lack of applying reason to practical matters folly and a lack of judgement simplemindedness (cf. ibid.). For Schopenhauer, the degrees of sharpness of the understanding cannot be learned: “These very different degrees of its sharpness are innate and cannot be learned” (Schopenhauer, 1847, § 21, transl.).
In the conversation Kirchhoff does not refer to Schopenhauer’s definition of stupidity. She uses the word “dull” (stumpf) herself: for acting where a person does not feel themselves, and for the way we meet the signals that life sends (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 19:49–19:56, 23:06–23:18). An overview of his thought is given in the entry Schopenhauer.
#What changes stupidity?
According to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, stupidity changes only through its consequences: “And stupidity itself, as we have seen, changes only through consequences. Namely the consequences of suffering, failure or lack of success.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 51:34, transl.). That, she says, is the only thing that can have any effect on it (cf. ibid., 51:44). She is answering a viewer’s question about how a world is supposed to change for the better if stupidity rules; the viewer names Plato, Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer, and Dunning and Kruger (cf. ibid., 46:34–46:50). Her first sentence in reply is: “Stupidity, like everything, has to have its effects.” (ibid., 46:57, transl.).
“Some people have to hit the wall first.” (ibid., 51:51, transl.). That is so, she says, because people are independent centres of will, with a basic autonomy that cannot be overwritten; their path through life does not depend on anyone else’s consent (cf. ibid., 51:53–52:10). Something can only change, she says, by returning to one’s own sphere of influence and starting there; that is the only way anything changes (cf. ibid., 51:20–51:34). Most people, she says, want to change the world and say that stupidity rules, and cannot give up the smallest habit that annoys them about themselves (cf. ibid., 53:34–53:47).
Why people learn through pain rather than through insight she answers with a saying that she attributes to Confucius: there are three ways to learn, through insight, the noblest, through imitation, the easiest, and through experience, the bitterest; most people have to go through everything by their own experience (cf. ibid., 23:34–24:13). Asked whether people can consciously decide that an impulse gets through to them, or whether it rather happens to them, she answers: “I tend to regard it as grace.” (ibid., 25:25, transl.). Noticing what one already believes about the world can happen as a kind of grace: some suddenly begin to ask themselves questions through a burnout, a hormonal change, ageing or an external blow of fate, while others are reached by a word at the right moment, when the soul is open enough; none of this can be steered (cf. ibid., 26:49–27:34). Her father, Jochen Kirchhoff, always used to say that “you cannot force a thought, but you can invite it” (ibid., 27:38, transl.).
#What does Gwendolin Kirchhoff call a core trait of intelligence?
A core trait of intelligence in general, for Gwendolin Kirchhoff, is openness, meaning an openness of mind and an openness to learn; the capacity to develop, she says, also has a lot to do with intelligence, and with openness comes the readiness not to be right (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, MANOVA conversation, 30:47–31:04). She invites viewers to set an intention: “The intention is: I am ready not to be right.” (ibid., 30:23, transl.). The first question, she says, is whether the truth interests you at all, to what degree and in which areas, and where you would rather not look closely (cf. ibid., 31:21–31:31).
Kirchhoff describes what intelligence actually is in a further conversation with Elisa Gratias, published by TransitionTV in October 2026. Speaking there about the goddess Athena, she asks how things stand with intelligence in general: intelligence, even among the Greeks, is largely feminine, she says; the Muses, for instance, are all intelligent and all female; the holy Sophia, who appears as the goddess of wisdom, is likewise a feminine intelligence, and so, in the Buddhist world, is the Prajnaparamita (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, TransitionTV conversation, 34:41–36:21). It is feminine, one could say, because it is a receiving quality, “a way of perceiving that lets things in”, not a radiating but a perceiving, drawing-in quality; feminine here does not mean that it is absent in the masculine; both qualities are present in both sexes (ibid., 36:22–36:51, transl.). Intelligence, she says, is “always a form of receptivity” (ibid., 36:55, transl.).
How a sound assessment grows out of understanding, experience and wisdom is the subject of the entry Judgement; what distinguishes wisdom from mere cleverness, of the entry Wisdom. How to make a decision that holds in the long run is the question of the essay How to Make the Right Decision.
#Sources
- Kirchhoff, G. (2026). “Die gefährlichste Form von Intelligenz | Gwendolin Walter-Kirchhoff&Elisa Gratias im MANOVA-Gespräch” [Video, German]. MANOVA, YouTube, 14 August 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI43E5jdQQw (quotes 01:00, 01:35, 11:23, 19:43, 22:17, 23:03, 25:25, 27:38, 30:23, 46:57, 51:34, 51:51).
- Kirchhoff, G. (2026). “«Wie frei sind wir wirklich?» Gwendolin Kirchhoff über Fremdbestimmung, Wut & die Macht der Gedanken” [How free are we really?] [Video, German]. TransitionTV, YouTube, 10 October 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTW7B162RPs (quotes 36:31, 36:55).
- Kirchhoff, G. (2025). “Sie BELÜGEN dich über das WAHRE Ziel von KI!” [Video, German]. Everlast AI, YouTube, 17 July 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktkeUNHeaM (quotes 49:24, 49:28).
- Schopenhauer, A. (1819). Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Representation]. Vol. 1, § 6. Leipzig: Brockhaus.
- Schopenhauer, A. (1847). Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde [On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason]. Second edition (first edition 1813), § 21.
