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.”
Einstein said “there are only two things that are infinite, the universe and stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the universe”.
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
I have observed, however, that there is a contingent of people who appear to be stupid but are just naive. These are the ones the read the NYT and believe every word.
A great Schiller quote...And a great tagline.
“It’s just that the truly stupid, biased people are so noisy that there seem to be more of them than there actually are.”
Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
A friend of the family was hand picked by Rickover for Nautilus and later command of Sargo. He had some interresting stories about him.
But they typically double down on actions.
Yep...I’m sure you have heard some interesting stuff. The KOG (Kindly Old Gentleman) was, like him or dislike him, one of a kind.
Imagine the damage he could have done had he been really focused, determined and hell bent to get results.
Fortunately he wasn’t. He was only interested in criticizing and belittling the country and the accomplishments of others.
Soros has found his perfect tools in the Biden/Harris administration
LOL - not me ;) I’m actually an expert on being stupid. One of the things I realized long ago is that the more a person becomes expert in one or 2 areas, the more they forget how to “not know”. They get frustrated dealing with areas where they have little or no knowledge and jump to conclusions without considering what they don’t know. This makes them appear stupid and even do stupid things.
I am acutely aware of what I don’t know in most areas and tend to do very thorough research when that area of knowledge or expertise encroaches on my otherwise placid life. Because of that I have a great deal of knowledge in many areas; not to the extent of “expert”, but enough to discuss them intelligently and ask good questions of experts when I encounter them. Then, people think I’m a ‘know-it-all’ but it’s actually the reverse. I’m just really good at “finding out”, i.e., an expert in knowing how to “not know”.
Average people are much more comfortable with not knowing and have no egotistical interest in projecting greater knowledge than they possess.
I strongly suspect that these universal laws were written by an expert in one or two areas who thinks that everyone who doesn’t know what he does must therefore be stupid. The person who sees stupidity everywhere is projecting.
LOL. You’re right about that.
Stupid squared. ;)
Good post, bump and mark.
I strongly suspect that these universal laws were written by an expert in one or two areas who thinks that everyone who doesn’t know what he does must therefore be stupid.
Here, the term is defined by actions and their results.
Where this concept and yours intersect is fairly well summed up in several chapters of “Vision of the Annointed,” by Thomas Sowell.
Thank you! I don’t have that book by T. Sowell yet. It’s now on my list.
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