Photo by demotivators.cc

The Italian historian-economist Carlo Cipolla thoroughly approached the question of the nature of stupidity. Long years of research led the scientist to the fact that he formulated 5 universal laws working in any society.

It turned out that stupidity itself is much more dangerous than we used to think about it.

historian-economist Carlo Cipolla (Italy)

The first law of stupidity:

A person always underestimates the number of idiots that surround him.

It sounds like a blurred banality and snobbery, but life proves its truth.

No matter how you evaluate people, you will constantly come across the following situations:

A man who always looked smart and rational turns out to be an incredible idiot.

Fools all the time arise in the most unexpected places at the most inopportune time to destroy your plans.

The second law of stupidity:

The probability that a person is stupid does not depend on his other qualities.

The years of observations and experiments have confirmed me in the thought that people are not equal

- some are stupid, others are not - and this quality is laid by nature, and not cultural factors.

A person is a fool just like he is red-haired or has the first blood group. He was born like that by the will of Providence, if you want.

Education has nothing to do with the probability of having a certain number of fools in society. This has been confirmed by numerous experiments in universities on five groups: students, office employees, service personnel, administration staff and teachers.

When I analyzed a group of low-skilled employees, the number of fools turned out to be greater than I expected (First Law), and I wrote it off on social conditions: poverty, segregation, lack of education.

But, rising higher up the social ladder, the same ratio I saw among white-collar workers and students.

Even more impressive was to see the same number among professors

- Whether I took a small provincial college or a large university, the same proportion of teachers turned out to be fools.

I was so impressed with the results that I decided to conduct an experiment on the intellectual elite - Nobel laureates.

The result was confirmed by the super powers of nature: the same number of laureates were stupid.

The idea expressed by the Second Law is difficult to accept, but numerous experiments confirm its reinforced concrete rightness.

Feminists will support the Second Law, since it says that there are no more women among females than fools among men.

Residents of the Third World countries will be comforted by the fact that the developed countries are not so developed.

Conclusions from the Second Law frighten: will you turn in the British high society or move to Polynesia, making friends with local bounty hunters; Whether you imprison yourself in a monastery or spend the rest of your life in a casino surrounded by corrupt women, you will always have to face the same number of idiots that (First Law) will always exceed your expectations.

The third law of stupidity:

A fool is a person whose actions lead to losses for another person or group of people and at the same time do not bring benefits to the actual actor or even turn into harm to him.

The third law presupposes that all people are divided into 4 groups:

simpletons (P), clever men (U), bandits (B) and fools (D).

If Petya takes action, from which it bears losses, and at the same time brings benefit to Vasya, then it belongs to the simpletons (zone II).

If Petya does something that benefits both him and Vasya, he is clever, because he acted cleverly (zone V).

If the actions of Petit benefit him, and Vasya suffers from them, then Petya is a bandit (zone B).

And, finally, Petya the Fool is in Zone G, in the negative zone along both axes.

It is not difficult to imagine the scale of the damage that fools can inflict, falling into the management bodies and possessing political and social powers.

But separately it is necessary to clarify what exactly makes a fool dangerous.

Stupid people are dangerous because rational people can hardly imagine the logic of unreasonable behavior.

A smart person is able to understand the logic of the bandit, because the bandit is rational

- he just wants to get more benefits and at the same time is not smart enough to earn them.

The bandit is predictable, because you can build a defense against him.

To predict the actions of a fool is impossible, he will harm you for no reason, without a purpose, without a plan, in the most unexpected place, at the most inopportune time.

You have no way to predict when an idiot will strike.

In a confrontation with a fool, an intelligent person completely gives himself up to the mercy of a fool, creating rules without intelligible rules. Attacking a fool is usually taken by surprise. Even when the attack becomes obvious, it is difficult to defend against it, because it does not have a rational structure.

This is what Schiller wrote about: "Even gods are powerless against stupidity."

The fourth law of stupidity:

Non-fools always underestimate the destructive potential of fools.

In particular, non-fools constantly forget that dealing with a fool at any time, anywhere and under any circumstances means making a mistake that will be costly in the future.

Strangers from Zone II are usually not able to recognize the danger of fools from Zone G, which is not surprising. It's amazing that fools are also underestimated by clever men and bandits. In the presence of a fool, they relax and enjoy their intellectual superiority, instead of urgently gathering and minimizing the damage, when a fool throws something out.

A stereotype is spread that a fool harms himself only.

No. Do not confuse fools with helpless simpletons.

Never enter into an alliance with fools, imagining that you can use them for your own benefit - if you do, it is obvious that you do not understand the nature of stupidity. So you yourself give the fool a field on which he can roam and do more damage.

The fifth law of stupidity:

A fool is the most dangerous type of person.

Consequence: a fool is more dangerous than a bandit.

The result of the actions of the ideal bandit is a simple transfer of benefits from one person to another. The society as a whole is neither cold nor hot from this.

If all members of this society were ideal bandits, it would softly rot, but the catastrophe would not happen. The whole system would be reduced to a transfer of wealth in favor of those who undertake for the sake of this action, and, since the ideal bandits would be everything, the system would enjoy stability.

It is easy to see on the example of any country where the government is corrupt, and citizens constantly bypass the laws.

When fools come on stage, the picture changes completely.

They deal damage without gaining benefits. The blessings are destroyed, the society becomes poorer.

History confirms that at any time the country progresses when there are enough clever people in power to restrain active fools and not to let them destroy what the intelligent people have done.

In the regressing country there are as many fools, but among the top there is an increase in the share of stupid bandits, and among the rest of the population - naive simpletons. This change in the pattern invariably reinforces the destructive consequences of the actions of fools, and the whole country rolls into the abyss of chaos, hatred and destruction

Source: newconcepts.club 
Author: Carlo Cipolla (Italy)

Illustration: Rusdemotivator.ru

newrezume.org/news/2017-04-24-20861