The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity

[OneGrassRoot]

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

(Over the last year I've realized I'm certainly guilty of the First Law: Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.)

The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.

However, consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. Cipolla explains:

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-five-universal-laws-of-human-stupidity

[multigraincracker]

1. the list

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Law 3. 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.
Law 4: 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.
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

[OneGrassRoot]

4. Thank you. n/t

[PortTack]

11. Bookmarking.

Saw this b4 here and lost rack of it..thx

[Xoan]

13. Law 6?

True stupid people never learn.

[Probatim]

2. I wondered when this would make its rounds on DU.

It's a completely fascinating look at where we are today and how we got here - masses of stupid people being led by bandits.

How do we turn this ship around is the larger question?

[PatSeg]

3. Yes, I certainly underestimated how many

truly stupid people there are, as well as how dangerous their stupidity could be.

[Tommymac]

5. George Carlin had Rule #1 Down Cold:

Thanks for posting. Interesting read. Of coarse, some say I'm stupid...

[OneGrassRoot]

8. He was always right on the money. Thanks. n/t

[PJMcK]

6. I realized how many stupid Americans there are in 2016

Approximately one-half of the American electorate-- 70,000,000+ voters-- supported a bandit who would rip off his followers and the country. And they proved themselves really stupid in 2020.

I've come to the realization that there's nothing that can change that fact.

[OneGrassRoot]

9. Me, too...

I thought maybe one-third were beyond hope...tried to give them the benefit of the doubt for a couple of years, but the explosion of QAnon (in people across the ideological spectrum, btw) showed that it's most definitely at least half of the electorate. And I'm not so sure this is limited to the US, seeing the rise of fascism yet again across the globe.

[FakeNoose]

7. It's amazing to me how many people choose to be stupid

... when the converse is directly before them and they shun it, or ignore it.

[PJMcK]

10. It's because they're stupid!

A stupid person will act stupidly even if it isn't in their best interest.

It's because they're STUPID.

I know quite a few stupid people. Sadly, I'm related to a bunch of them.

[colsohlibgal]

12. It is Another Pandemic

Decades of unbridled, thanks to Reagan, Right Wing talk, has changed the brains of the people who either took part or supported the events of January 6.

They believe in an alternate reality that isn’t reality.

I hope some of the lawsuits filed against right wing propagandists bring about if not a shared reality something closer to it.

The other things we need to tackle are racism, the Anti Asian Wave, and hate against LBGTQ folks......all hate against the “Other” by close minded White people.

[hedda_foil]

14. The corrolary he posits at the end is

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them are the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.

Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful ones. But they also have high percentages of helpless people and, Cipolla writes, “an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity.”

“Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid] fraction and makes decline a certainty,” Cipolla concludes. “And the country goes to Hell.”