In 1976, Professor Cipolla published a 60-page essay describing the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as the greatest existential threat to humanity: stupidity.
He divides humanity into four main categories: Intelligent, Bandit, Helpless, Stupid. All are defined on the basis of a win/lose concept, slightly echoing the prisoner’s dilemma. The question is: what category are you in?
Law 1: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation
No matter how many idiots you suspect you are surrounded by, you are invariably underestimating the total. This problem is compounded by the biased assumption that some people are intelligent because of superficial factors such as their job, education, or other characteristics that we believe rule out stupidity.
Law 2: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
More than less, you can have a rocket scientist that is stupid. Stupidity isn't about the job you hold or given factors. It is about how often you cause harm/loss to others for no gain of your own. So like you can have a teacher that tells you stuff that ends up hurting you down the road. But they have no gain from causing you this harm. And if they do this often, even if they are looked at as a good teacher when no one looks at the details. They are actually stupid.
Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or group of people when he or she does not benefit and may even suffer losses.
A stupid person, according to the economist, is a person who causes problems for others without any clear benefit for himself.
For example: The receptionist at your hotel who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up on you twice and still manages to screw up your reservation? Stupid
Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals.
In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances, dealing and/or associating with stupid people is always a costly mistake. We underestimate idiots, and we do so at our peril.
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those that transcend them is the composition of the non-stupid. Those who progress despite their stupidity have a high proportion of people who act intelligently, those who counterbalance the losses of the stupid by bringing gains for themselves and their fellows.
There is no defense against stupidity. The only way for a society to avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is for the non-stupid to work even harder to compensate for the losses of the stupid.
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So what does that have to do with us?
When you see people arguing against fully remote work. Ask yourself if they are stupid
When the boomers are saying something about how we are lazy. Ask if they are stupid
When you see someone brown nosing or going all out in basically working for no extra pay in hopes for a promotion. Ask if they are stupid.
Those who make it out to be that people shouldn't be able to live off of min wage.
Those who make it out to be that it should be normal that you work 3 jobs and still hope you get enough hours to pay for rent.
Those who have kids they in no way can afford or can't give a good life. Almost like they hate other humans and want to make sure there is less resources, less jobs, less money, etc to go around.
As law 5 says, a stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. For example, the people who try to work 80+ hours and doesn't ever say no make that into the new normal. And for the rest, stupid people who doesn't spend an ounce of time questioning things helps make the situation progressively worse.