"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity"

[M Paquette]

The things one finds on the Internet...

This is from an essay first published in 1976 by the Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

"Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."

"The probability that a certain person 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."
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[haha]

LOL! This fantastic. The entire site looks good also. I realize that I have been mistakenly classifying some people as morons when they are actually helpless. Likewise, some I took to be low level crooks (bandits) may have in fact been simple cases of stupidity. I expect this essay to be very useful to my cognitive processes, though it may not do anything very good for my personality.
I can now solidly and with no chance of being wrong assign my sister to absolute stupidity. Everywhere she goes she sows havoc, all the while deeply suffering within herself.
Ha

 

[MichaelB]

This is amazing. A gem. What an incredible find. M Paquette, a gold star!

The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. It will be easily recognized by the perspicacious reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas I, H, S, B, of the basic graph (see below).

Now we have an alternative to Myers Briggs personality types.

 

[W2R]

This is amazing. A gem. What an incredible find. M Paquette, a gold star!
Now we have an alternative to Myers Briggs personality types.

+1 Amazing! I love it.

Finally I understand why some people drive the way they do. Specifically, I now understand why some will cross four lanes of traffic at right angles on a busy street at rush hour in order to make a u-turn, when they could accomplish the same thing without bringing all traffic to a halt by simply turning right and going around the block.

 

[JmfromTx]

I wish my wife was still here to read this. She was the best read of stupid people and people with with less than good character than anyone I've ever known.

 

[M Paquette]

Now we have an alternative to Myers Briggs personality types.

That was exactly the thought I had when I saw that section and the great diagrams. It's an amazing piece of work. My cats are clearly in the Intelligent Bandit slice.

 

[MichaelB]

My cats are clearly in the Intelligent Bandit slice.

 

[donheff]

Excellent! Lets move this over to the political forum and have some fun.

 

[eytonxav]

Excellent! Lets move this over to the political forum and have some fun.

My thoughts exactly

 

[Badger]

What a fun article. Thanks! And it leads to many more articles (Favia's Reality Cracking Lab) if you go to the link at the top of the page.

Cheers!

 

[Gumby]

Very funny. Life is a constant battle against stupidity. Unfortunately, I think stupidity is winning.

 

[Coolius]

Quote:
The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. It will be easily recognized by the perspicacious reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas I, H, S, B, of the basic graph (see below).



Perhaps one should realign the categories, and rename "Bandit" to "Thief" - an identical but modern word.

The categories are thus The Stupid, The Helpless, the Intelligent, and the Thief. Corresponds to the acronym S.H.I.T., which sums up the characteristics quite appropriately.

 

[yakers]

Very funny. Life is a constant battle against stupidity. Unfortunately, I think stupidity is winning.

Stupidity = entropy?

 

[M Paquette]

Stupidity = entropy?

Uh oh. This implies that there could be an information-theoretic definition of stupidity. Such a definition necessarily implies that algorithmic mechanisms must exist to model stupidity. From there we are but one step from...