Have you ever thought, "People can't be THAT stupid . . . can they?" Well, guess again.
I offer up the following for your enlightenment and entertainment:
"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" (1976) by Carlo M. Cipolla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
Carlo M. Cipolla's essay entitled, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" explores the controversial subject of stupidity.
Here's a video on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqIp-jWJKSM
These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:
- Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
- The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
- 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.
- 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.
- A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
By creating a graph of Cipolla's two factors, we obtain four groups of people.
- Helpless people contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it;
- Intelligent people contribute to society and leverage their contributions into personal benefits;
- Stupid people are counterproductive to both their and others' interests;
- Bandits pursue their own self-interest even when this poses a net detriment to societal welfare.
- An additional category of ineffectual people either exists in its own right or can be considered to be in the center of the graph.
I find this to be both thought provoking and a warning.
Non-stupid people are welcome to share their non-stupid thoughts.
"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" by Carlo M. Cipolla
