Posted on 04/01/2021 11:45:52 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity
We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.
Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by, Cipolla wrote, you are invariably lowballing the total. This problem is compounded by biased assumptions that certain people are intelligent based on superficial factors like their job, education level, or other traits we believe to be exclusive of stupidity. They aren’t. Which takes us to:
Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Cipolla posits stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid college professors. There are stupid people at Davos and at the UN General Assembly. There are stupid people in every nation on earth. How numerous are the stupid amongst us? It’s impossible to say. And any guess would almost certainly violate the first law, anyway.
Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Cipolla called this one the Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.
The uncle unable to stop himself from posting fake news articles to Facebook? Stupid. The customer service representative who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up on you twice, and somehow still manages to screw up your account? Stupid.
This law also introduces three other phenotypes that Cipolla says co-exist alongside stupidity. First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense.
The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.
However, consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. Cipolla explains:
Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.
With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.
All of which leads us to:
Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril. This brings us to the fifth and final law:
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
And its corollary:
A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them are the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.
Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful ones. But they also have high percentages of helpless people and, Cipolla writes, “an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity.”
“Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid] fraction and makes decline a certainty,” Cipolla concludes. “And the country goes to Hell.”
Anytime you think something is idiot proof evolution produces the superior idiot.
6th universal law of stupidity:
6. Stupid people don’t know they are stupid. Pls see Dunning-Kruger Effect
Never attribute to malice, that which is explainable by stupidity.
While this may be true, the problem is few people perceive themselves to be stupid. The biggest problem is the Left is incapable of seeing their own stupidity. Which makes a Leftist the most dangerous stupid person there is.
And, do not forget, there is no fixing stu pit.
Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, a German general said there were four types of officers: “I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers.
Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff.
The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.
Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions.
One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.[
If you think the average American is stupid, half the population is more stupid than the average American
Yep, seen it in practice.
Arrogance amplifies the danger D exponentially, based on the following empirically-derived formula:
D = S0eA
where A is the level of arrogance and S0 is the theoretical level of stupidity in the absence of arrogance. In practice, A and S0 are always greater than zero. The level of arrogance A is partially correlated to stupidity, based on a more complex formula not included here.
It is more complicated. Intelligence is not a one dimensional value. People can be stupid in some things, brilliant in others . This is why we fall for their stupidity. Just because Einstein was truly brilliant in Physics is no reason to believe he know anything about how society should function.
Human stupidity is also a function of cerebral laziness. The avoidance of thinking, analyzing and learning.
Stupid people emote a lot. Its the fuel that drives them.
Perfect example:
A few years back I was walking out of a CVS about four in the afternoon and there was a guy at a Redbox, dressed in a suite, jacket off, white shirt still crispy pressed, in front of an S Class Mercedes.
He asked for help, he could not figure out how the Redbox machine worked.
True story.
.
The biggest problem is the Left is incapable of seeing their own stupidity.
************
The Left has made itself virtually immune to facts, logic and the lessons of history. There is no co-existing with people like that.
Not a great one.
Many stupid people are also very angry and violent people.
Malice and stupidity are not mutually exclusive.
And, do not forget, there is no fixing stu pit.
*************
That explains why the GOP is incapable of ever being turned into a real party. The Stupid Party is stuck on stupid. It is perma-stupid and some elements of it are bandits.
We cannot look to them for anything.
I don’t think the average American is stupid, but I agree that stupid people exist in all areas of life. You can tell the average American is actually quite bright because they don’t think they know everything and respect hearing new information from different people.
It’s just that the truly stupid, biased people are so noisy that there seem to be more of them than there actually are.
Anytime you think something is idiot proof evolution produces the superior idiot.
In product design Engineering, we would say “You can’t make it idiot-proof. Only idiot-resistant.
It is said that you can’t ‘fix’ stupid, you point out their anomaly.. Then they go crazy!
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