THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

The Whole Earth Review ^ | Spring, 1987 | Carlo M. Cipolla

[Backwoods Southern Lawyer]

Thanks to theFIRMbss for putting me on this article. I never knew something so good could come out of U.C. Berkley.

[jocon307]

Pinging this one for a later read. Maybe it will explain why I suffer so on a daily basis!

[Norman Conquest]

Except in Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men good-looking, and all the children are above average.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[megatherium]

So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, the Nobel laureates.

Even if you discard the Economics, Peace and Literature prizes, I suspect this is still true. Well, there's the example of Kary Mullis, inventer of the polymerase chain reaction (used to identify genes from very small amounts of evidence). In his book "Dancing Naked in the Mindfields", Mullis suggests that astrology not be dismissed out of hand. He also testified in the O. J. Simpson trial for the defense.

[Randjuke]

Thanks to theFIRMbss for putting me on this article. I never knew something so good could come out of U.C. Berkley.

I poked around the prometheus6 website this is linked from and found a bunch of stuff more consistent with the usual Berkeley mindsets. The "stupid" article is pretty good, though.

[headsonpikes]

Whole Earth Catalogue memory lane placemarker. ;^)

[Keith in Iowa]

More proof that "Common Sense is an Oxymoron".

[Lil'freeper]

Ping!

and bumpmark

[tpaine]

THE GOLDEN BASIC LAW

The 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.

If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick, Tom acted helplessly.

If Tom takes an
action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom acted intelligently.

If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom acted as a bandit.

As the Golden Basic Law explicitly clarifies:


---- 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. ----

When confronted for the first time with the Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity.
The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behavior.

But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life.

We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss:
we had to deal with a bandit.

We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain:
we had to deal with a helpless person.

We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained:
he was intelligent.

Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life.

Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm.
Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does.

In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation:
the person in question is stupid.
______________________________________

I took the liberty of cleaning up the authors main premise a bit..
Great article.. Thanks.

[Alain2112]

I poked around the prometheus6 website this is linked from and found a bunch of stuff more consistent with the usual Berkeley mindsets. The "stupid" article is pretty good, though.

You know what they say - even a stopped clock is right, twice a day.

[tpaine]

New tag line bump.

[djf]

You can't make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

[Joe Bfstplk]

Pure drivel drives away ordinary drivel.

[AlbertWang]

Half the group are below the Median, not average. In a large population the average and median become almost the same number.

Consider the following group of 5 test scores: 100, 100, 25, 25, 25. The Average is 275/5, or 55. Note that 60% of the scores are below average.

[Revolting cat!]

Pedestrianism on display. Sorry, but the whole premise of the article is stupid. "Stupidity" itself is a vaguely defined vernacular term to begin with, and neither scientists nor philosophers concern themselves with it. Pseudo-intellectuals do.

[tpaine]

Revolting cat! wrote:
Pedestrianism on display. Sorry, but the whole premise of the article is stupid.
"Stupidity" itself is a vaguely defined vernacular term to begin with, and neither scientists nor philosophers concern themselves with it. Pseudo-intellectuals do.


______________________________________



Or, a stupid person might accuse intellectuals of pseudo-ism while himself deriving no gain, or even incurring a loss of his own credibility.

[MosesKnows]

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals

One of life's more important lessons and one that needs to be learned early is to never never underestimate the power of ignorant people in large groups.

There is a difference between ignorant people and stupid people. After gaining knowledge an ignorant person is no longer ignorant. However, an ignorant person who does not seek knowledge becomes stupid.