Stupid is as stupid does?

I got my lunch today, as I often do, from Lenny's, an NYC chain of sandwich shops. They make your basic made-to-order sandwiches and do a good job. I like Lenny's.

The one downtown, which is to say the one I frequent when at work, is a mob-scene during the lunch rush, from about 11:30 to 1:30, as are most food places around here. The ones that are not mobbed are not long for this world.

As most of the successful places have, Lenny's has got their ordering system down to something of a science to deal with the crush. You order at one place, take your slip, grab your drink, chips, fruit salad or whatever, and head to the register to pay. The cashier gives you the number to listen for when your sandwich is ready and then you stand milling around with the others waiting for your number and, if you're like me, grumbling when numbers after yours get called before you.

Today I got wrapped up in some stuff and didn't actually head over until about 2:00. When I hit Lenny's it was empty, though the full lunch staff was still working, so you had two cashiers and a multitude of sandwich makers. Having established a routine, of course, they stick to it, so I went through the usual steps: ordered, got slip, grabbed lemonade and chips, paid, got number.

But, again, I was the only customer in the place. Just me and the staff.

So when my sandwich was ready and I was over perusing the selection of ready-made pastas thinking they might be good for a future lunch do you think the lady calling out the number took note that there was only one person in the place?

Of course not.

No, she called it and then paused for approximately 3 seconds -- and did not use those 3 seconds to realize there was not a crowd in front of her, but rather an empty store with one person over by the refrigerated section -- and then called it again and then, pausing for 3 seconds again, read the order. As if someone might have forgotten their number but would recognize their order.

As it happens I had not forgotten my number but it took me longer than 6 seconds to traverse the store. I must say, though, that the level of lack of awareness was somewhat startling.

I think of these kinds of encounters when people make the argument that we need to get dramatically higher percentages of our population through higher education. That this would somehow benefit our economy or our population.

This lady would not benefit in the slightest from college, though I am sure she would enjoy the parties. And she is not alone. In point of fact, I'd say we're already a good bit past the point of diminishing returns in terms of who goes through higher education today. Many of today's "students" would benefit far more from an apprenticeship or other on-the-job training. They have no capacity or use for abstract thought and forcing it on them is much like teaching a pig to dance: ultimately futile and annoying to the pig.

The way people fall into this thinking is, I believe, a classic sort of false logic. They see that people who graduate from college are more productive than people who don't and then make the inference that college must have made the difference. But this is selection bias: smart people are more productive and more likely to go to college, but they would be smart and thus more productive even without the input of college.

There's also a bit of selection bias in that the kind of people who think about these kinds of issues are smart themselves. Smart people tend to cluster, so odds are most of their friends and acquaintances are likewise smart. So, unless they are particularly observant (as is your humble blogger), they have limited encounters with people who would not benefit from college. Combining that with the noble impulse to believe, contrary to all evidence, that everyone is roughly equally capable, you have people who almost literally cannot conceive of stupid people. They just zone them out.

Of course, if there were no stupid people then more college would be great. But that is not reality.

Larry Sechrest, an economist who died recently, wrote a fun little essay on the subject called "A Strange Little Town in Texas". He made his home in a little college in rural Texas where he believe the entire college -- professors, students and all -- functioned roughly at the level of a decent high-school.