Fundamental Laws of Stupidity

[George the original one]

I always find it telling that when you discuss something like this, 90% of the people assume they fall into the intelligent group, and 10% are honest enough to recognize themselves as bandits. The rational preening is thick, and no one recognizes their own stupidity or helplessness. And let's face it -- we're ALL stupid or helpless in some area of life.

Agreed, though intelligent people tend to recognize when they don't know and start asking questions. True bandits would see no gain in doubting their own actions.

[Tyler9000]

Agreed, though intelligent people tend to recognize when they don't know and start asking questions.

True. But too often they direct the questions in the wrong direction, such as at the intelligence of people whose behavior they don't understand.

The number of highly intelligent engineers I know who are helpless at investing (harming themselves while enriching others) and stupid at relationships (harming themselves while harming others) could fill a concert hall. And most realize it. But their natural inclination to rationally conquer every problem just digs the hole deeper.

[jacob]

@Tyler9000 - I think you're discussing this using different definitions of intelligence, stupidity, ... than defined in the OP.

[Tyler9000]

Using Cipolla's classification, the engineers I refer to behave intelligently with design matters but helplessly with investments and stupidly with relationships. Throw in a competitive bonus, and they're bandits. People are complicated.

[jacob]

Sure, people, being complicated and inconsistent, exhibit all four traits. Therefore, Cipolla works on a weighted average of the four traits to get the expectation value of a person's choices in order to make theoretical statements/practical guidelines. This is no different that MBTI.

[Tyler9000]

Fair enough. IMHO, reducing the totality of human psychology down to a single score destroys too much information in the process. At least MBTI attempts to make an inward evaluation of personality. The Cipolla metric is more about how you see others and is a bit judgmental for my tastes.

[Dragline]

Fair enough. IMHO, reducing the totality of human psychology down to a single score destroys too much information in the process. At least MBTI attempts to make an inward evaluation of personality. The Cipolla metric is more about how you see others and is a bit judgmental for my tastes.

Yes, that's true of most things by and large -- its not going to be easy to define what is stupid most of the time due to human complexities.

But some things are just stupid and would be agreed upon by a super-majority as being so -- like leaving loaded firearms where toddlers can get at them. And mind you, this article is from a sympathetic news source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/31/wo ... n-walmart/

[jacob]

@Tyler9000 - I don't see this/any classification as being a "hard judgement". I also try to avoid any vernacular connotations to the word "stupid". In this context I simply understand it as "harm to self/harm to others"-person. The "insight" would then be to realize that there are different kinds of people according to where their harm is directed. I prefer to make a quick(er) judgement rather than spend a lot of mental energy worrying about whether someone who has harmed me personally or others in general did so with mean intentions(*). If I can just write them of as being "stupid" (I can avoid them), "bandits" (I can fight back and win), or helpless (I can help them), it helps a lot.

Forsooth, I've already derived a lot of practical use over the past few weeks. The theory has been helpful.

(*) Perhaps that's due to being a public figure, but I have a lot of insults coming my way. In the past I spent a lot of time thinking about whether those were a truly informed opinion... trying to make sense of their statements. E.g. am I really wrong or are they simply projecting their shit onto me and flying off on a tangent. As noted, it's very hard for an "intelligent" person to really grok "stupidity". That some people are completely clueless wrt their impact on others and themselves. This theory helps to at least acknowledge the potential existence.---That some people really are just asshats. I mean that in the most politically correct sensitive manner

[Tyler9000]

This theory helps to at least acknowledge the potential existence.---That some people really are just asshats. I mean that in the most politically correct sensitive manner

Lol. That, my friend, is undeniable.

[cmonkey]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/meet-tomatan-w ... un-1488706


No words.

Definitely falls under the category of 'stupid' as defined in this thread. Not only does it hurt the makers of the product (since they probably won't make any money off of it), it hurts everyone that buys it (wasted money/time) and puts it on (uncomfortable/embarrassing).

[Myakka]

Reading Jacob's categories of stupid responses to his writing, I seems to me that all of them are indicative of prejudice. The first who reads and understands the book and then rejects it for emotive reasons is finding your words to contradict their prejudices and rejects them on that basis. The second who needs to sound intelligent has an inferiority complex mixed in with their prejudice. The third who can't even read the book has prejudice they must defend from all alternative points of view (kind of a Rush L type).

As I have progressed in my own inner spiritual journey and come to a place where I can look at myself more clearly, I have recognized myself in the second category more than the other two. My journey of releasing my prejudices has taught me that they are both responses to and causes of great emotional trauma. Where that trauma stays stored in a person's nervous system acts like a bruise in that it responds to even light stimuli with enormous waves of pain. It is pretty normal not to act rationally when one is in pain.

My best guess is that there are so many stupid people out there because there are that many people in our culture in a great deal of emotional pain. And the path of global suicide we are on now is thorough self-consistent with that explanation.

[fiby41]

When an oblivious X does a single action that is beneficial to Y but detrimental to Z, where will he be sorted?

It so happens that X derives an unintended serendipetious advantage from the simple action. Now is he still stupid (by motive), bandit (by effect of outcome on Z) or intelligent (by effect of outcome on Y)?

Does the answer change depending on if you are X,Y or Z?

But a person does not do just one single action nor does he does it in a vacuum with only two participants: He does hundreds of small to big actions which have negligible to monumental outcomes on him and others throughout a day (inactions and deferred actions are also actions.)

Also if we take this so called 'absolute' method and take it to its logical extreme, then we are all stupid, by definition in the OP, precisely because we don't know why we are stupid (we are unaware we have been or are being harmful to ourselves and others when or before we were being harmful.)

As for ignorance, we are all ignorant to a different degree about different subjects as time (our lifetime on earth) is a limiting factor.

This utilitarian perspective is too simplistic to be objective or useful. You might find use for them in certain very specific and narrowly defined situations but that doesn't make them 'laws' (by the definition of the word) by any stretch of imagination.

[jacob]

@fiby41 - I see what you did there---trying to turn a 2-body mapping into a 3-body mapping. Now, ponder the parallels here...

viewtopic.php?p=95090#p95090
viewtopic.php?p=95004#p95004

Realizing that from a practical perspective, the rare "X hurts Z and benefits Y and also unintentionally benefits X"-case can be ignored in the name of pragmatism similar to "X benefits Y but hurts Z but then later Y's benefit helps Z to hurt Y" and so on and so forth. It's not really useful to pursue this as an exhaustive math problem or an exercise in metaphysics. Consider that the field of economics can be developed quite far by considering only 2-body transactions even as it's apparent that the real world sometimes involves 3-body and even more (but not much more). No reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

[black_son_of_gray]

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

So, then: as per 3 ('causes losses'), is it possible to 'short' stupid people? (E.g. take out a life insurance policy on idiot coworkers in dangerous jobs? http://fortune.com/2014/06/24/employee-death-insurance/) Bonus question: is it possible to do this without seeming evil/antisocial??

OR

As per 4 ('unpredictable, unexpectedly big impact, always costly'), aren't most stupid people just black cygnets? Not quite grown up, but little mini walking disasters (In the case of heads of state, I think they can be full blown swans - cuban missile crisis anyone?). Is antifragility to stupid people possible?

[fiby41]

The questions were genuine and not meant to be rhetorical or exclusively for the refutation purpose of the theory.

I'll agree that trying to understand for knowledge's own sake isn't worth the while.
So although your application helped you understand what you had trouble understanding without it (negative book reviews), it didn't help me do the same categorization for a particular case due to problem posed above.

Here, unlike in an economic transaction which can be measured, the magnitude of social impact of stupidity* or its lack thereof cannot be sufficiently measured or predicted. Also there is no denominated currency that measures it so barter would be a better analogy. My point being, there is no reason that the number of 3 participant interactions would be any less than the number of 2 participant interactions occurring. In fact the opposite is most likely true as the higher the number of current participants, the easier / cheaper it is for another person to participate. This is seen with 'well intended advice' that is actually harmful# yet regurgigated spreading like wildfire, misinformation acting on which can be detrimental to the person receiving it and also damaging the reputation of the person propagating it, unsustainable ideas+ that sway the public opinion only to fall to the detriment of the people who support it as well as those who implement it,...

*Bribery is one example where government makes a decision detrimental to both itself and citizenry for the benefit of a third party/corporation ( incidentally, it is legal in some countries under the guise of 'lobbying'), another example is vote bank / populist politics.

#eg: Follow your passion.

+ Some of which still survive. Are they anymore intelligent that those that didn't? How do we decide when to pass our judgement and categorize a person or decision?

Too early and we'll have to change categories ever so often.

If we wait until the last moment to have all the information, the judgement wouldn't be of any use then as we'd be busy dealing with the aftermath by then.

[jacob]

@fiby41 - Did you read the original text by Cipolla? Maybe that'll make it clearer.

The laws aren't meant to provide a measurably objective description of the world. They can't because impacts are subjective. However, they are a useful heuristic for understanding and dealing with the individuals and organizations that YOU run into. Is this people helpless? Helpless leaning towards intelligent or stupid? Is he a bandit? Etc. Then, how should I deal with him?

[fiby41]

Chanakya Niti may work as personal damage mitigation from such groups of people.

Saam: Reasoning with such people that what they are doing is harmful to you and possibly them

Daam: Alluring their sweet spots (monetary, social, cultural), so if what they are doing is of no consequence to them and damaging to you, you make your alternative is in their interest

Dand: Punishment or penalty by redirecting the consequences/costs of their actions on you back towards them

Bhed: Shunning, discriminating, dividing them amongst against themselves and leveraging information that might cause or further such divides as collateral in exchange for compliance.