Sounded rather Borgian to me...
but then I just jumped into this discussion, wondering why I feel using the definition - someone who causes damage to another person, or a group of people, without any advantage accruing to himself (or herself) -- or even with some resultant self-damage. - as a definition for stupid bothers me.
Coming as it does from the Latin stupidus, from stupre, to be stunned, related to the word stupor, using it as a word that means causing damage with no gain seems an extremely biased and narrow subset of the common defintions for stupid, and thus, I am feeling that this whole exercise is an exercise in obtuseness.
Back to Gallifrey to wonder why someone would try to damage my brain with odd definitions with no real gain to himself....
"stupid" in current parlance refers to behavior on the part of non-stunned people which closely matches in thoughtlessness and potential/real harmfulness the behaviors one expects from someone who just got beaned with a ball-peen.
with that as given, the dissertation makes perfect sense.