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5 Laws of Stupidity

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Cipolla calls it the golden law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is a person who causes problems for others without having a clear advantage for himself. Uncle couldn`t help but post fake articles on Facebook? It`s stupid. The receptionist at your hotel who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up twice and always manages to ruin your reservation? Stupid². Stupid people, Explained Carlo M. Cipolla, share several qualities of identification: they are abundant, they are irrational and they cause problems to others without obvious benefit to themselves, thus lowering the general well-being of society. There is no defense against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way for a society to avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is when the non-stupid work even harder to make up for the losses of their stupid brothers. No matter how many idiots you think you`re surrounded by, Cipolla wrote, you`re invariably low. This problem is exacerbated by biased assumptions that some people are intelligent based on superficial factors such as their work, level of education, or other characteristics that we believe exclude stupidity.

This is not the case. These are the words of the famous professor of economic history Carlo Cipolla, who taught at the universities of Pavia and Berkeley and published academic articles in which he analyzed overpopulation throughout history, but was passed on to posterity through his “theory of stupidity”, summarized in his book “The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity”. a treatise on human stupidity with satirical overtones. 2. Lack of control. It is an average degree of stupidity that corresponds to impulsive people who lack self-control and get carried away by the first impulse. Constant stupidity, however, is the only coherent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. Cipolla explains: “All human beings are divided into four basic categories: the naïve, the intelligent, the wicked and the stupid… The intelligent person knows that he is intelligent. The evil one is aware of being evil.

The naïve is painfully imbued with the sense of his own openness. Unlike all these characters, the stupid doesn`t know how to be stupid. This helps to give more power, frequency and efficiency to its devastating action. The stupid is not inhibited by self-confidence,” Cipolla wrote, describing the last basic law of human stupidity. In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay describing the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity`s greatest existential threat: stupidity. His behavior is irrational and difficult to understand, but it`s likely that you`ll remember more than one person who blocked your way and created difficulties, frustrations, and prejudices, even if they didn`t gain anything at all. According to his theory of human stupidity, “there are people who, with their improbable actions, not only harm others, but also themselves. These people belong to the super stupid kind. In addition to labeling people, it`s important to understand the risks that make up stupidity.

In fact, we can all behave stupidly if we don`t measure the scope of our actions or words. If we do not develop critical thinking and forget the necessary introspection, we can become victims of stupidity, suffer it or exercise it. The second essay “The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity” (“Le leggi fondamentali della stupidità umana”, 1976[3][4][5] examines the controversial subject of stupidity. Stupid people are seen as a much more powerful group than large organizations like the mafia and the industrial complex, which nevertheless manages to operate with great impact and incredible coordination without regulations, leaders or manifestos. [Citation needed] Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful societies. But they also have a high percentage of defenseless people and, Cipolla writes, “an alarming spread of bandits with connotations of stupidity.” “Intelligence and stupidity are not the opposite of each other, any more than stupidity is the lack of intelligence, but intelligence is the more or less fruitless product of a continuous series of attempts to dominate or escape the stupidity that constitutes all that is human,” wrote Matthijs Van Boxsel. Cipolla called this the golden law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is someone who causes problems for others without having a clear benefit for himself. There is no defense against stupidity. The only way for a society not to be crushed by the burden of its idiots is for the non-stupid to work even harder to compensate for the losses of the stupid. If you draw parallels with the environment and some people try to compensate for other people`s, Cipolla wasn`t far from the truth. These are the five fundamental laws of Cipolla`s stupidity: 1.

Ignorance or overconfidence. This would be the highest degree of stupidity and appears to people who take risks of any kind, even if they do not have the skills or knowledge to deal with them. Let`s take a look at Cipolla`s five fundamental laws of human stupidity: A very interesting study conducted at Eötvös Loránd University gives us other clues to gain self-confidence that determines the 3 causes of human stupidity: we can also fall into the error of thinking that a stupid person can only hurt himself, that we are immune to their actions, but when we think so, we confuse naivety with stupidity and since we believe that we are invulnerable, we lower our defenses. This law also introduces three other phenotypes that, according to Cipolla, coexist with stupidity. First of all, there is the intelligent person whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit who benefits himself at the expense of others.