Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Transition News:

The five basic laws of human stupidity

And: the stupid are more dangerous than the bandits.

by Christopher Pfluger

35 years ago, the Italian economic historian Carlo Maria Cipolla published a 60-page essay on the fundamental laws of stupidity, which he sees as the greatest existential threat to humanity.

The essay became an international bestseller, which also annoyed him a bit. He spent decades on major historical studies that two or three peers took note of, while an essay from one sleepless night reached an audience of millions.

You can also look at his quick shot on the laws of stupidity from a certain ironic distance. But they fit well into this crazy time that many people can no longer understand.

Cipolla (1922-2000), professor at various universities and with an honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich, divides humanity into four categories: intelligent, bandit, helpless and stupid. They are defined based on a win/loss concept.

A stupid person is a person who causes problems for others and harms himself. An intelligent person is someone whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit who enriches himself at the expense of others. And finally the helpless, whose actions enrich others at his expense. Cipolla developed a diagram from this.

Law 1: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people.

This problem is exacerbated by the assumption that some people are intelligent because of superficial factors such as occupation, education, or other characteristics that we believe preclude stupidity. A typical fallacy is the assumption that rich people are inherently intelligent.

Law 2: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of all other characteristics of that person.

Cipolla postulates that stupidity remains constant in all populations. In every conceivable category — gender, race, nationality, education, income — there is a fixed percentage of stupid people. University professors or US presidents can also be stupid, i.e. benefit neither themselves nor others and, in the worst case, benefit only the bandits.

Law 3. A foolish person is a person who harms another person or group of people, although he himself does not benefit from it and even suffers losses.

It is impossible to determine how many fools there actually are, not least because the not-dumb are an inconsistent group. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are abused or selfish villains, and sometimes a little of everything. The stupid ones are a paragon of consistency in comparison.

According to Cipolla, stupid people are dangerous and harmful above all because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person can understand the logic of a robber: he wants an advantage for his account; he just isn’t wise enough to find a way that benefits everyone. One can thus anticipate a predator’s actions and his foul maneuvers, and therefore build a defense.

All this is not possible with a stupid person, as the third basic law explains. There is no rational way to tell if, when, where, how, and why he or she will attack. If you face a stupid person, you are at his/her mercy. This analysis leads to law number 4:

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid people.

In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that associating and/or collaborating with stupid people anytime, anywhere, and under any circumstances is a costly mistake. We underestimate idiots, and we do so at our own peril. This brings us to the fifth and final law:

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous kind of person.

And the direct consequence: a stupid person is more dangerous than a robber. We can’t do anything for idiots. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those that overcome them lies in the composition of the non-stupid.

Societies that thrive despite their stupid citizens have a high proportion of intelligent people who make up for the losses of the stupid by making gains for themselves and those around them.

The only way for a society not to be overwhelmed by the burden of its idiots is for the non-stupid to work even harder to compensate for the losses of the stupid.

Cipolla’s text from a sleepless night is stimulating. But one would have to supplement his idea of the superiority of intelligence — which is perhaps also due to his time — with humanity, connection to the big picture and the powers of the heart, which can unfold beyond intelligence.

Afterword from the translator:

Well, I guess, since by now the utterly stupid have been placed by the bandits through the “educational system” into each and every cranny of public life, we’re screwed as a species.