Evolution dislikes people who are too intelligent, scientists find — thank God

As the years go by, this columnist becomes increasingly aware of the vital importance of being stupid. Consider the evidence.

My rational friends said cryptocoins were stupid. An irrational friend of a friend launched one and made a fortune.

My rational friends said marriage was stupid. My irrational friends got hitched and have lovely families.

My rational friends said buying overpriced property was stupid. My irrational friends shelled out for some and are now comfortable.

My rational friends said spiritual practices were stupid. My irrational ones started meditating or praying and are visibly happier.

Irrationality wins every time. I think many people suspect this is true, but I learned recently that science has proved it.

"The key is to be averagely irrational," said reader Jehana Tufiq, a science lecturer. "Of course, being excessively stupid is not good for you, but so is being excessively intelligent."

Ultra-brainy people have fewer children -- not necessarily because they prefer small families, but because it seems to be programmed into humanity at a genetic level, according to studies in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States. "The spirit of evolution has a massive downer on excess braininess," Jehana said.

Why would evolution prefer people who aren't over-clever? One theory is that over-rational people train themselves to use only their logic circuits while the rest of us make snap decisions by a mixture of logic, instinct, impulse and emotion, using more of our brains, and leading to better outcomes and larger, happier families.

Evidence for this comes in the statistics that show that men who tend to strongly trust their own rational intelligence are far more likely to die in accidents than women, whose decisions involve a mixture of logic and intuition. It also explains why the winners of the Darwin Awards -- titles given to people who remove themselves from the gene pool by doing what they think are rational actions -- are a group which is 88.7 per cent male.

A recent Darwin Award recipient was the late Lim Ba, who decided to steam-clean himself by sitting in a large steamer-wok which also contained rice, corn, etc. Saunas are good for you, so being steamed should be great for his health, he rationalised. He died soon after being cooked for 30 minutes in Kuala Sanglang, Malaysia, in October last year.

But of course, be careful to not overdo the irrationality. Being extremely stupid is also deadly. A favourite bit of evidence is the terrorist who constructed a letter bomb but didn't put enough stamps on it. The post office returned it to the sender. He opened it and was blown to pieces. It sounds like an urban legend, but it really happened.

How to get the balance right? That's the tricky thing. If you accidentally kill yourself by firing a gun at your head to show it is unloaded, that's an unfortunate accident, all too common among males. If you accidentally kill yourself by firing a gun at your head to show it is loaded, that's a sign of too little rationality, which is also all too common among males. Either way, you're dead.

Note to male readers: Visit the kitchen if you must, but Stay Well Away from the wok.