The power of Stupidity

I felt a strange need, over the past week, after some conversations that I had with Sunjye,to go back into my files and dig up the following piece. I consider it to be seminal work, in that it posits the actual task facing anyone who would dare to question the bureaucratic machine. It also raises some interesting reference points and parameters for forming groups which facilitate the creation of conscious communities.

The opposite of consciousness is sleep.

The most common manifestation of sleep is stupidity.

Einstein said "There are two things that I know to be infinite. The universe and Human Stupidity...and I'm not sure about the former...

Marx said that stupidity was just behind capital and violence as a causal factor in shaping world events.

I personally think that Einstein got it right, and Marx was off by 2, but he was in the ballpark.

Please enjoy the following.

The Power of Stupidity


*I've decided to amend the original posting from it's full length to
its most salient points, in order to move the discussion along.
I'd be happy to pass along copies of the entire paper to anyone who's interested.

The following are the Great Laws of Stupidity, as well as an insightful look into human nature,


First Law

We always underestimate the number of stupid people.
This is not as obvious as it sounds, says Cipolla, because: people we had thought to be rational and intelligent suddenly turn out to be unquestionably stupid; and day after day we are hampered in whatever we do by stupid people who invariably turn up in the least appropriate places.
He also observes that it is impossible to set a percentage, because any number we choose will be too small.


Second Law

The probability of a person being stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
If you study the frequency of stupidity in the people who come to clean up classrooms after hours, you find that it is much higher than you expected. You assume that this is related to their lower level of education, or to the fact that non-stupid people have better chances of obtaining good jobs. But when you analyze students or University professors (or, I would add, computer programmers) the distribution is exactly the same.
Militant feminists may be incensed, says Cipolla, but the stupidity factor is the same in both genders (or as many genders, or sexes, as you may choose to consider). No difference in the sigma factor, as Cipolla calls it, can be found by race, color, ethnic heritage, education, etcetera.

Third (and Golden) Law

A stupid person is someone who causes damage to another person, or a group of people, without any advantage accruing to himself (or herself) -- or even with some resultant self-damage.
(We shall come back to this, because it is the pivotal concept of the Cipolla Theory.)

Fourth Law

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid people. They constantly forget that at any moment, and in any circumstance, associating with stupid people invariably constitutes an expensive mistake.
That (I would say) suggests that non-stupid people are a bit stupid -- but I shall get back to this point at the end.

Fifth Law

A stupid person is the most dangerous person in existence.
This is probably the most widely understood of the Laws, if only because it is common knowledge that intelligent people, hostile as they might be, are predictable, while stupid people are not. Moreover, its basic corollary:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit

leads us to the heart of the Cipolla Theory. There are four types of people, he says, depending on their behavior in a transaction:

Hapless
Someone whose actions tend to generate self-damage, but also to create advantage for someone else.

Intelligent
Someone whose actions tend to generate self-advantage, as well as advantage for others.

Bandit
Someone whose actions tend to generate self-advantage while causing damage to others.
I have always been fascinated with Stupidity.
M