Quote:
Originally Posted by nono1973
4. I agreed with your point number 4.
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Please note: that points are
NOT MY POINTS. They are
NOT MY opinion (although I definitely agree with the overall theory, because it is well elaborated and substantiated).
Those five points are the famous "Five Fundamental Laws of Stupidity" theorized by the economist C.M. Cipolla with his essay "Basic Laws of Human Stupidity".
He did a lot of work in his field (economy), of course, and this essay is just a half-humorous short text. It is readily available on the web (a PDF of about 25 pages, translated to several languages). However, there is a nice short summary on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
Quote:
Originally Posted by nono1973
3. I do not like to brand another person stupid, they were at most time just not-wise-enough.
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It is not good to brand anyone "stupid", because we all may have a different concept of "stupidity", not to mention the fact that some others might consider also us as "stupid". Also Wikipedia refers to
stupidity as a "controversial subject".
NEVERTHELESS, please note again that this essay is a
scientific socioeconomic treatise of the subject.
Stupidity is defined objectively, not based on personal opinions:
"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."
Therefore, classifying someone as "stupid" (according to Cipolla's Laws) is not a plain offense. It's a scientific, objective assessment of a fact.
There is a lot to learn reading that essay! In short, two factors are considered when exploring human behaviour:
- benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself;
- benefits and losses that an individual causes to others.
This allows to define objectively 4 categories of humans:
1)
Intelligent people, who contribute to society and who leverage their contributions into reciprocal benefits;
2)
Helpless people, who contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it (and especially by the "bandit" sector of it); note, however, that extreme altruists and pacifists may willingly and consciously (rather than helplessly) accept a place in this category for moral or ethical reasons;
3)
Bandits, who pursue their own self-interest even when doing so poses a net detriment to societal welfare;
4)
Stupid people, whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others' interests.
Finally, there are also:
5)
Ineffectual people (center of the diagram).
Each of us will find lots of practical sound examples of all categories, just looking into his/her personal experience among all people we know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nono1973
2. Different people from different parts of the world with different brought up and living within different cultures do things differently. Plenty of examples all over the news.
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This is the most interesting Law among the five:
2) The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Of course, people from different parts of the world and different culture will do things differently, but that is not the point.
If
stupidity is defined as above, then it is amazing to note that the percentage of "stupid" individuals in a group of people is largely independent on any other characteristic, including for example education, social class, richness, kind of job, and of course gender and race!
That means that it does not matter if we look at a group of university professors, technical engineers, accountants, office employees, seamen, factory workers, farmers, black or white, Chinese or Malay, etc. etc. We will always find the same percentage of stupid people, anywhere we look at. I think we all can recognize this fact, if we just look around us
In our present case, from which this discussion started, "stupid" people are those who overpay a service, without reason and getting no additional service or quality.
They are "stupid" because:
1) they spend more money than actually needed indeed (
thus, they incur in a personal loss);
2) they cause the market price for a service (e.g., massage++) to raise, without a corresponding increase of the quality (
thus, they cause a loss to others).
I think we will all agree with the 5th Law, also in this case:
5) A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
