I’ve been thinking a lot about how stupid so many people are these days. You probably have, too. So when I ran across this article “The Five Basic Laws of Stupidity” I knew I had to read it. The article has been out for several years but this is the first time I saw it.
As it turns out Carlos. M. Cipolla, an Economics professor at UC Berkeley, published an essay of his five “laws” in 1976, referring to stupidity as the greatest existential threat to humanity. You can read his essay if you want. Or read on for the highlights.
Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
Everyone keeps trying to underestimate the number of true MAGA followers. According to this law we do this underestimation at our peril. Some times we do this because we figure that someone has a college degree or a medical degree, other times because the person is articulate. Think about all the medical folks who are spouting off anti-vaxx propaganda. How can someone get all the way through medical school and end up opposing the COVID vaccine? Stupidity!
Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
There are stupid people in every category of life: race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, education level, income. As a teacher, I tend to think of this profession as being above stupidity. Then I read about a Social Studies teacher who tells his eighth grade class that Trump is still the President. Nope. There are stupid teachers, too!
Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while deriving no gain for himself and even possibly incurring losses.
Don’t believe this law? Read some of Kos’ Anti-Vaxx Chronicles here on DK, or the stories on Sorry Antivaxxer website, or the Herman Cain Awards on Reddit. Stupid people are dying for their stupid “beliefs” and taking down others with them. Fox news hosts tell people to not wear masks and to avoid getting the vaccination yet they are required to have a vaccination to work there. Super Stupid!
Law 3 is the golden rule of stupidity, according to Cipolla. A person who causes problems for others without a gain for self is the epitome of stupidity.
It is at this point in the essay, Cipolla describes three other phenotypes that exist next to the stupid: The Intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. The Bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense.
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.
Remember when we used to say that this or that action by Trump would be his undoing? And it never was. He may have lost the election but this has only energized his followers.
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. And its corollary: A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
Believe it or not, the stupid person is more dangerous than the bandit because rational people cannot understand or even imagine such irrational behavior. Think about the people who are pushing Ivermectin (anti-worm paste) over getting a vaccination to prevent COVID. They will go to their graves spouting their misinformation. It makes no sense. We think we can be logical with them. We can’t. They are stupid, logic does not compute.
So what can we do?
We can do nothing about the stupid people. What we can do is counter-balance their stupidity with intelligence and a willingness to do good for benefit of ourselves AND others. Declining societies have the same number of stupid people as successful people but they also have a lot of helpless people who can’t seem to do anything that benefits or helps anyone.
Conclusion: The Italian economist Carlo Cipolla taught us that by using only irony and common sense, it is possible to conceive captivating ideas. As we have just seen, he was able to lightheartedly address human stupidity in a clear and incisive way. By summarizing such a complex and controversial subject in five basic laws, he devised a genuine and fascinating theory. Initially shared only with his friends, that theory became internationally known, and it is now studied in many disciplines. Although it should not be taken too seriously, this theory is something to keep in mind when inevitably hampered by human stupidity.
This may have been written as ironic by Cipolla but his “laws” have legs and seem to explain what we are experiencing right now with Trump and his followers who have decided to embrace stupid stuff (no vaccines, no masks, no critical race theories, use of unproven drugs and therapies.) Cipolla died in 2000. I wonder what he would say about stupidity today?