Box Cutter Co.

Box Cutter Co.

"Functional Stupidity" is how shitty workplace practices become normalized. Have you seen it?

Beware: functional stupidity is a paradox.

David Loewen's avatar
David Loewen
Oct 21, 2022
∙ Paid

“Functional stupidity” isn’t about individual intelligence or smarts. It’s about systems and organizations that become stupid. The reason it’s called ‘functional’ is because things keep moving along. Think of the term ‘functional alcoholic’.

There are three components to functional stupidity:

  1. taking one’s assumptions as given (an absence of reflexivity),

  2. n…

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