We have all come across stupid people, they mess things up for you, themselves and others. They say you cannot fix stupid but I wondered if anybody had actually studied stupid people. I discovered a man called Carlo M Cipolla, a highly acclaimed academic, who wrote an essay in 1976 called The Basic Laws Of Human Stupidity. Here are his five laws:
- 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.
He went on to chart human stupidity against 2 factors;
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself.
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to others.
Helpless people contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it (and especially by the “bandit” sector of it); note, however, that extreme altruists and pacifists may willingly and consciously (rather than helplessly) accept a place in this category for moral or ethical reasons
Intelligent people contribute to society and who leverage their contributions into reciprocal benefits
Bandits pursue their own self-interest even when doing so poses a net detriment to societal welfare
Stupid people whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others’ interests
Those who fall exactly in the middle are deemed Ineffectual People
I had a lot of fun recalling people I have met over time and pinning them on the chart. Where do the people you know fit?