The 5 Universal Laws of Human Stupidity

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Interesting article I’d never heard of before. Dr. Cippolla had some interesting takes on the Human Condition.

Core take-away: Never underestimate The Stupid.

2

I recently watched this on the same topic with the same observation:

It goes a step further and says what we all know to be true, and that is: You can’t fix stupid.
The only remedy is to “liberate” people from influences that make them stupid (around 3:55 mark). It doesn’t offer any specifics on how to go about that.

3

I don’t think I agree. I’ve known people who can be smart in some areas and stupid in others.

There are people who are stupid uniformly across almost all areas. Many of them end up bitter, dysfunctional or in jail. I’ve met uniformly stupid people. They aren’t super common but they exist. What is more common is people who are stupid in some areas but not in others.

Like with myself I can admit there are areas where I’m intelligent and areas where I’m stupid. I think thats more common, just that people have areas where they are smart and areas where they are stupid. I think identity/tribalism is one (but not the only factor) in it. Another is just wishful thinking, not wanting to deal with the painful emotions of accepting the truth, so you believe something that is untrue to hide from it (ego defense mechanisms basically). I would wager a lot of stupidity comes down to wanting to avoid the painful emotions of seeing your identity be threatened, accepting/facing reality, or just general laziness.

If I had to make a list of universal laws of stupidity it would probably be more along those lines. In what situations are people stupid? When their sense of social identity/tribal identity is under threat, when the emotions of accepting reality are too overwhelming, when they are too lazy or entitled to bother to correct their ignorance, a wide range of factors that can limit higher cognitive function, etc.

4

I have that in hardcover book form:

5

Seems like the more correct term to use here would be Wisdom, but that’s a term/concept that apparently is deeply out of fashion anymore. IOW if such people were as dumb in their career capacities as they apparently are interpersonally or politically, they’d never be able to dress, feed, or adequately hygeinenize themselves.

6

I once met a stupid person who was a professor of mathematics somewhere and had a PhD. We were both on sabbatical at a math research institute in Zurich. My office happened to be next to the kitchen where people came in every morning to made coffee or have a snack and every morning, I would hear this guy harangue the secretary (who was definitely non-stupid) and one day I asked her how she could bear to listen to this idiot every morning. She turned to me, smiled sweetly and said, “Who listens?”

BTW, we can now confidently say that there at least 74 million stupid people in the US.

7

So… boiled down, the article is basically saying the following (reordered a bit to make more sense):

  1. Stupid people are those who engage in actions that fuck stuff up, and that they, nor anyone else benefits from.

  2. What makes a person stupid is independent of other characteristics- age, income, gender, etc…

  3. We constantly lowball the number of stupid people out there.

  4. We constantly underestimate how damaging this stupidity is.

  5. Stupid is more dangerous than anything else- at least the others are logical, while stupid is just stupid.

I can get on board with that; it divorces stupidity from questions of mental horsepower, although I suspect it’s easier to do stupid stuff if one can’t see why things might be stupid (i.e. causing harm without any advantage to anyone).

8

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

-Dickens