This is a very unintelligent world view, and it leads to disastrous consequence. If you do not understand why someone believes what they do, or why they take t

This is a very unintelligent world view, and it leads to disastrous consequence. If you do not understand why someone believes what they do, or why they take the actions they do, it is easy to just assume they are stupid or irrational. But that prediction can not be disproven. No matter how many times you see that same person acting intelligently and rationally, that could simply be the stopped clock being right twice a day. And we very much desire for those people we don't understand to be stupid or irrational, as it means we do not need to reconsider our own assumptions, and can safely feel smugly superior to those simpletons. Of course when our assumption is incorrect, we do not even realize that we are in error and just keep going through life blissfully unaware of our ignorance. On the other hand, if we assume that this person who has spent a lifetime developing a unique worldview knows something we don't, then we must spend great effort trying to see the world from their perspective to try and figure out what we're missing. We may, after extensive searching, find that there really was no missing piece, that the other person actually is stupid and irrational, but still we will come out ahead for having learned more about the world. It's also possible, and indeed far more common, that the person is not stupid but still holds incorrect beliefs because of a specific and identifiable issue with their prior learning, which can help us to better understand how to properly communicate with those people. And indeed, if you do go through life with the latter viewpoint, you find that people knew something you didn't nearly every time. Perhaps I have merely been particularly blessed in my acquaintances, but I'd estimate I've met less than 100 genuinely stupid or irrational people over the course of my life, a tiny fraction of the total. In general, I simply knew less about a topic than I thought I did, or there is some seemingly intuitive but ultimately wrong idea that is widely believed. I've yet to meet an intelligent person who simply assumed everyone else to be stupid and irrational.