“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise” said one supposedly wise man, and many agreed. While I’m not denying the truth and value of this saying, we shall be exploring a different angle, one from which a fool need not even persist in order to be wise, because they already may be.

Let’s think of wisdom as understanding. If knowledge is the forests we cut down, understanding is the things we make out of wood. One is something raw we take from nature, the other is something structured and organized we create. And we need less wood for a violin than for a cupboard. But this is not the point, so now with this understanding of wisdom in mind, let’s proceed to the wisdom of understanding.

Understanding itself is a rather baffling process which often times seems to be oscillating in the relationship of the individual with the universe. The oscillatory nature becomes apparent when a binary argument needs to be settled. Is something good or evil? Is a technology safe to use? Is candiate A or candidate B a better choice in the election? All these are usually difficult questions and they divide people into camps, but the most interesting observation is that both sides have spectrums of smart people with varying degrees of understanding. If we were to linearly increase the understanding of a person, we would observe the person oscillating back and forth between the 2 conclusions.

Let’s take a simple, hypothetical example with cell phone radiation. A very stupid person might not think much of it, using the phone and rejecting any argument against on the basis that they feel just fine. A normal person with some awareness might have some concerns that the radiation can affect their health, and would limit close exposure to the head. A person educated in the field, who understands physics and biology quite well has no concerns, because the radiation is low energy and the photons cannot ionize tissue atoms hence it cannot have a negative health impact like nuclear radiation for example. A person who is an expert in the field, and has very extensive understanding in biophysics might have some concerns, knowing that biological tissue is more than simple atoms and especially the brain has a delicate chemical and electronic balance which can be subtly affected by any electromagnetic waves. Then perhaps we have another person that tops everyone and thinks it’s ok.

Moving ahead hypothetically, we conduct a 1000 year long study and find the definite conclusion that phone radiation has no negative impact on the health. This puts the stupid ignorant person in the same bucket with the smart person, as they were both right in their conclusion. They were right for different reasons, but it’s irrelevant because we still don’t know the true reason anyway, as the scientific study tells us what happens, not why it happens.

It’s clear that more intelligence and cognitive effort are needed in order to advance to the next level of understanding. However, these levels are not linear like the stories of a building, but more like the branches of a tree. Are most of the leaves facing north, or south? It depends on the kind of tree, on the geographical hemisphere, the wind in a particular moment. I guess most of us wondered why there are so many stupid people in the world, and an alarming percentage of them fairly successful. Maybe because wisdom is not as much the intelligence and knowledge we possess, but how we use it and when we stop for the conclusion. Maybe it’s just luck.

Perhaps we should stop looking for the right answers, and start looking for the right questions.