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Carlo M. Cipolla (economist who studied and categorized stupidity) (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 6 days ago by dantheclamman@lemmy.world to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world

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These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:

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

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[–] PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

Thanks for sharing, definitely saved his wikipedia article.

I also like the the graph showing the differences of people: stupid, intelligent, helpless, and bandits.

Love the perspective.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Fun fact for anyone who doesn't speak Italian: his last name literally means onion.

[–] EnthusiasticNature94@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I must be a reincarnation of this guy, cuz I'm literally working on a micro-book called, "Rationalized Malice: How Faulty Logic Justifies Harm."

The book won't be out for a while (I'm in uni and have some high-impact research projects coming up), but it'll be practical in that 80% of it will be what you can do, as an individual.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Do you have a mailing list? Yours would be a periodic email I'd actually love to see.

[–] EnthusiasticNature94@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago

No, but I will by April. 👀 Thank you for the idea.

I'll reply to this post when I set it up. It's high priority on my to-do list.

[–] courageousstep@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I am interested in the relationship between stupid people and narcissistic people. Narcissism hurts both society and that individual, as well.

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

It feels like many in leadership positions display narcissistic tendencies. I am not sure if we currently have adequate accountability for such people. If they are lucky, they benefit and then externalize those costs on society at large

[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Accountability? We've straight up rewarded them for generations. Sociopathy is practically a required trait for climbing the corporate ladder.

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Yes, I hope someday our species adopts systems that weed out such people rather than reward them