What does it mean to be “smart” or “dumb”? Few questions are more deceptively complex.

Most of us have strong opinions about what those words mean, but scratch the surface and it becomes clear that “smart” and “dumb” are slippery, subjective constructs.

What seems smart to one person may strike another as naive, arrogant, or shortsighted. Worse still, our own perception of what’s smart can shift over time. Yesterday’s clever decision can look like today’s regrettable blunder. Take Jay Gatsby, for instance. His grand plan to reinvent himself, amass a fortune, and win back Daisy once seemed like the height of romantic intelligence; but in the end, it revealed itself as delusional folly, built on illusions as fragile as the dream he chased.

For a famous path reversal (from allegedly dumb t

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