The helpless, intelligent, and the bandits all underestimate the danger posed by stupid people. 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 infallibly turns out to be a … Read more

Stupid people are dangerous because reasonable people can’t predict unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person can understand the logic of a bandit, because the latter is at least rational. The bandit wants personal benefit, and since he cannot think of win-win situation, he will harm others. But, if you are rational, you can foresee the actions … Read more

The extent to which the stupid person is dangerous depends on two things, the genetic factor (the inheritance of exceptional doses of the gene of stupidity), and the position of power in society. Among bureaucrats, generals, politicians and heads of state one has little difficulty in finding clear examples of basically stupid individuals whose damaging … Read more

Human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. 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 Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity The … Read more

There are many types of bandits as there are many types of stupid people. The more intelligent kind of bandit is the one who’s behavior yields to them more profits when compared to the losses caused to other people. But these types of bandits are not numerous. Most bandits yield gains that are inferior to … Read more

Individuals vary in their propensity to socialize. For some, contact with people is a painful necessity. At the other extreme, there are people who cannot live by themselves and are willing to spend time with people they don’t like rather than be alone. Between the two extremes, there are many variations, but the greatest majority … Read more

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity Stupid people are everywhere. Cipolla believes that stupidity exists indiscriminately across all human groups and is uniformly distributed in equal proportion. There is an equal proportion of stupid … Read more

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. Carlo Cipolla, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity This may seem like an uncharitable exaggeration, but one is repeatedly surprised by how individuals that you once considered intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. And one is also surprised to see … Read more