Fisher's Law

"Half the population is below average intelligence."

Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much.
Goethe

Roger Fisher is a retired college professor with a PhD in Educational Research. 

At a lecture I once attended he was asked: Why do so many people fall for obvious lies and scams? In retrospect, his off-the-cuff response (which I call Fisher’s Law) was deceptively simple but deeply insightful.

Question: “Why do people fall for obvious lies and scams?
Answer: “Well, keep in mind that half the population is below average intelligence.”
Fisher’s Law

Half the population is below average on any characteristic.

It’s an indisputable “Law” of human nature that, statistically, half of any population is below average on any characteristic (eg, half the population is below average height; half the population is below average weight). That’s what “average” means, so it’s an indisputable statistical fact (well illustrated by the ubiquitous Bell Curve) that half the population is below average intelligence. And it explains a lot about Trumpism.

Of course, Trump’s followers are not ALL below-average on the intelligence scale, and there are clearly other factors that motivate (seduce?) them into believing Trump’s endlessly self-serving lies. But Fisher’s Law does explain a lot about why many (if not most) of Trump’s followers believe him. To be even more politically incorrect, they’re just not the sharpest pencils in the box.

Sometimes, just for fun, I spend an hour or two scrolling through Twitter/X, where I especially enjoy the (ironic) interviewers questioning stars-and-stripes-clad Trumpites who adamantly believe, and unabashedly profess, that, among other things:

• Trump is in the direct blood line from Jesus Christ (along with JFK and Elvis)

• Jan. 6 was an inside-job (perpetrated by the FBI, Antifa, & BLM) to make Trump look bad

• Joe Biden is actually dead and a group of actors are playing his role

• Trump is actually the President and ruling America from behind the scenes

• JFK is alive and will return one of these days (as a Republican)

• a global (Jewish) cabal (led by George Soros) is trying to make America communist

• Sandy Hook (and other school shootings) never happened, or were “false flag” operations peopled with “crisis actors”

• Barak Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya

• a Deep State (full of Communists!) is actually running the government

• COVID vaccines contained nano-chips that can track your location and/or turn your children gay

• climate change is a hoax, invented by the global communist cabal to raise your taxes and take away you American freedoms

• Democrats eat babies

• the earth is flat

• Trump won the 2020 election

• and other conspiracy theories too ludicrous to mention. 

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So, are these otherwise normal, God-fearing, hard-working, patriotic Americans all below average intelligence? Or are they delusional? Well, to me that’s just a semantic quibble. The key point is, these people wholeheartedly BELIEVE Trump’s Big Lie. And Fisher’s Law explains (partly, at least) why so many people are so gullible.

• Hitler himself knew and exploited this theme, telling his inner circle to “never underestimate the stupidity of the voting public.”

• George Carlin had the same take when he told his audiences to “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

And yes, before you get your flag-costumes all in a knot, of course there are other factors accounting for Trump-mania, and of course there are many reasonable Trump-fans who are intelligent, well-educated, and articulate - some of the smartest are right here on this Substack site! So it’s clear that many people on the Right have other reasons for being Trump followers.

But what I’m saying is that the simple but insightful truth of Fisher’s Law is a good starting point to understand Trumpism.

The question that day was: Why do so many people fall for obvious lies and scams?
Fisher’s answer was: Half the population is below average intelligence.

So maybe it’s time to bring Fisher’s Law out of obscurity and present it here as Factor Number One in explaining the mass delusion known as Trumpism.