“Do not underestimate fools in large numbers,” says a character in a science fiction novel. In a world that is dominated by fools, the wise are seen as fools. Sometimes you must play the role of fools to fool the fools that think that they are fooling you. This is very evident with people who are incompetent, inferior, irrational, and not fit. Whatever crosses their way, they feel threatened.
I have always been fascinated with stupidity. My own, of course; and that’s a big enough cause of anxiety. But things get much worse when one has a chance to find out how Big People make Big Decisions. We generally tend to blame awful decisions on intentional perversity, astute mischievousness, megalomania, etc. They are there, all right; but any careful study of history, or current events, leads to the invariable conclusion that the single biggest source of terrible mistakes is sheer stupidity.
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When it combines with other factors (as happens quite often) the results can be devastating.
One of the many examples of stupidity is that intrigue and power-mongering are called “machiavellian”. Obviously, nobody has read his books, as that is not what old Niccolò meant.
Another thing that surprises me (or does it?) is the very little amount of study dedicated to such an important subject. There are University departments for the mathematical complexities in the movements of Amazonian ants, or the medieval history of Perim island, but I have never heard of any Foundation or Board of Trustees supporting any studies of Stupidology.
I have found very few good books on the subject. One I read when I was a teenager, but never forgot. It is called A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity by Walter B. Pitkin of Columbia University, and was published in 1934.
I found it by chance many years ago while browsing around my mother’s bookshelves; and much to my delight, when I went to her home yesterday and looked for it, it was still there.
Old as it is, it’s still a very good book. Some of Professor Pitkin’s observations appear extraordinarily correct sixty years later.
Now… why did he call a 300-page book a “short introduction”? At the end of the book, it says: Epilogue: now we are ready to start studying the History of Stupidity. Nothing follows.
Professor Pitkin was a very wise man. He knew that a lifetime was far too short to cover even a fragment of such a vast subject. So he published the Introduction, and that was it.
Pitkin was well aware of the lack of previous work in the field. He had a team of researchers hunt through the files of the Central Library in New York. They found nothing.
According to Pitkin, there were only two books on the subject: Aus der Geschichte der menschlichen Dummheit by Max Kemmerich, and Über die Dummheit by Lewenfeld. Unfortunately, I don’t understand German, though “Dummheit” sounds clear enough; and I guess Kemmerich and Lewenfeld must have had a special abundance of material for their studies, considering what happened in Germany in 1933 and the following years.
In Pitkin’s opinion, four people out of five are stupid enough to be called “stupid.” That was one and a half billion people when he wrote the book; it is over four billion now. This, in itself, is quite stupid.
He observed that one of the problems of Stupidity is that nobody has a really good definition of what it is. In fact geniuses are often considered stupid by a stupid majority (though nobody has a good definition of genius, either). But stupidity is definitely there, and there is much more of it than our wildest nightmares might suggest.
In fact, it runs the world — which is very clearly proven by the way the world is run.
But somebody, fifty-four years later, came up with a rather interesting definition. His name is Carlo M. Cipolla and he is Professor Emeritus of Economic History at Berkeley.
All of his books are in English, except two. The first was published by “Il Mulino” in Bologna in 1988.
In that book there is a little essay called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, which may be the best ever written on the subject.
Here are the Five Laws of Stupidity according to Carlo Cipolla:
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.
Here is the final part of the rewritten article:
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.
- Stupid: We already have this definition in the Third Law.
Cipolla’s theory also categorizes people into four types based on their behavior in transactions. He argues that stupidity is the most destructive force in society, causing more damage than benefit to anyone.
As a historian, Cipolla notes that the prevalence of stupidity is a constant factor in human society, but its impact can vary depending on the societal context. He warns that a declining society is characterized by an alarming percentage of bandits with a strong stupidity factor among those in power, and an equally alarming percentage of hapless individuals among those who are not in power.
Where are we now? That’s a good question…
But stupid people don’t know they are stupid, and that is one more reason why they are extremely dangerous.
Which of course leads me back to my original, agonizing question: am I stupid?
I have passed several IQ tests with good marks. Unfortunately, I know how these tests work and that they don’t prove anything.
Several people have told me I am intelligent. But that doesn’t prove anything, either. They may simply be too kind to tell me the truth.
Conversely, they could be attempting to use my stupidity for their own advantage.
Or they could be just as stupid as I am.
I am left with one little glimpse of hope: quite often, I am intensely aware of how stupid I am (or have been). And this indicates that I am not completely stupid.
When I read the book, I liked it so much that I wrote a letter to Carlo Cipolla. (I have done this sort of thing only twice in my life).
Much to my surprise, he answered, briefly but kindly.
I had two questions:
- Why do the wise die early?
- Why don’t the wise produce the wise?
Don’t fight the tides of life; let them guide you. As the saying goes, “You can’t control the wind, but you can adjust your sails with the help of experienced sailors.”
Kangave Mudi
National Chairperson, Private Teachers Platform Uganda
General Secretary, Coalition of Private Schools Teachers Associations and Unions.
0776 5247 80
0757525254
mudikangave@gmail.com
