Stupidity
To an intelligent man, human beings and human institutions really are intolerably stupid. Stupid people have no idea how stupid they are, fueling impatience and annoyance among the educated. If you are very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you are very stupid? A person has to be relatively intelligent in order to realize how stupid they are. Hence, the more we know we don’t know is in direct proportion to the more that we know. There is a wonderful bit of research by David Dunning at Cornell University in New York State that suggests that in order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. This means that if you are absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you are absolutely no good at it. This explains not just Hollywood, but almost the entirety of Fox News. It explains the ridiculous and transparent over-confidence that stupid people have in themselves.
It’s a smart creature that understands very well the nature of its own stupidity.
If you are absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you are absolutely no good at it.