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Never blame on malice what can be explained by stupidity — the oldest joke in politics is also the sharpest diagnosis. This lecture from Academy of Ideas uses Carlo Cipolla’s essay on human stupidity to explain what is wrong with society. Stupid people, Cipolla showed, harm others without gaining anything for themselves — and we always underestimate how many there are. While bandits can be reasoned with and the helpless can learn, the stupid simply cannot. The warning lands hard: a society that puts too many of them in power makes collapse certain.
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Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the
power-hungry? Is it due to a conspiracy of the ruling class? In this video, relying on the
Italian historian Carlo Cippola’s essay, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, we explore how much of
what ails society can be attributed to the widespread prevalence of human stupidity.
The stupid are all around us. They are in every place, in every class, ready to cause damage to
others and naturally to themselves. The stupid form the most dangerous category of human beings.
Woe betide those who underestimate them.
Cipolla believed that most of us are ignorant to the immense destruction caused by human stupidity.
We easily recognize the effects of evil, corruption, and greed,
but we tend to overlook the damage caused by human stupidity.
Cipolla wrote his essay to help correct for this blind spot, or as he wrote,
The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know,
and thus possibly neutralize one of the most powerful dark forces which hinder the growth
of human welfare and happiness. In his essay, Cipolla enumerates five basic laws of human
stupidity, the first of which states,
Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The philosopher Voltaire echoed the sentiment behind this law when he wrote,
Common sense is not so common. While Einstein, in conversation with a German
psychiatrist Frederick S. Pearls, reportedly said,
Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.
Not only do we tend to underestimate the number of stupid people in society,
but we also tend to underestimate the number of stupid people in our social orbit.
We like to believe that members of our family and those we socialize with are smarter than average,
and it is only when they do something so incredibly stupid that it dawns on us that
this person may in fact belong to the class of the stupid. Or as Cipolla writes,
No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently
startled by the fact that a. People whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to
be unashamedly stupid. b. Day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s
activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient
places and at the most improbable moments. The second basic law of human stupidity states that
the probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of
that person. The stupid are spread throughout all classes, ethnic groups, genders, and races.
They are found as frequently among the rich as the poor. They are found in politics and the
business world, in academia and in science. There is, in other words, nowhere to hide from the
effects of the stupid. Or as Cipolla writes,
surpass your expectations while there are more stupid people than most of us can imagine and
while they occupy all walks of life some may wonder how sipola defines human stupidity this
is explained by his third law to understand this law however we need to explore a basic way of
categorizing people firstly there is the category of the helpless the helpless person is one whose
actions produce a loss for himself, but a gain for someone else. Secondly, is the category of
the bandit. The bandit is a person whose actions produce a gain for himself, but a loss for
another. The third category is that of the intelligent. An intelligent person behaves
in such a way that they produce a gain for themselves as well as a gain for others.
And finally, there is the category of the stupid, and as the third basic law of human stupidity
states, 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. Often our behavior will oscillate
between these different categories. Sometimes we act in a helpless way, sometimes like a bandit,
while at other times our actions will be characterized by their intelligence. But the
stupid are different. The stupid consistently harm other people while not deriving a gain for
themselves.
Cipolla even defined a class of the super-stupid who take their stupidity to another level.
Unlike the run-of-the-mill stupid person who hurts another person through their actions
while deriving no gain or loss to themselves, the super-stupid consistently hurt themselves
and others through the way they behave.
The stupid and the super-stupid are a menace to society.
They are responsible for many of our social problems and in some cases the havoc they
a wreck can lead to the downfall of a civilization. Most people fail to recognize this and so
the fourth basic law of human stupidity states,
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular,
non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and under any circumstances, to
deal and or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.
Cipolla claims that the damage a stupid person causes is determined by two factors.
The first factor is their innate stupidity.
According to Cipolla, some people are genetically wired to act in profoundly stupid ways and
the stupider someone naturally is, the greater the damage they will cause.
The second factor determining the damage caused by a stupid person is the amount of power
and social influence they possess.
A stupid person who occupies a high-level position in government, the military, or in
a large corporation can cause far more damage than a stupid person who is unemployed.
But how do the stupid reach such positions of power?
Shouldn’t their stupidity prevent them from climbing the heights of social status?
Cipolla explains, The question that reasonable people often
raise is how and why stupid people can reach positions of power in consequence.
Class and caste were the social arrangements which favored the steady supply of stupid
people to positions of power in most societies of the pre-industrial world.
Religion was another contributing factor.
But in lieu of class and caste we have political parties and bureaucracy, and in lieu of religion
we have democracy.
Within a democratic system, general elections are a most effective instrument to ensure
the steady maintenance of the stupid among the powerful.
Elections allow the great number of the stupid in the general population to determine which
politicians hold office, and very often they elect someone stupid like them.
And once a stupid person is in office, he or she helps to maintain the proportion of
stupid people in bureaucracies and the judicial system by appointing them to positions of
power.
Thus, democracy ensures that a continual supply of stupid people walk the halls of governmental
power.
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Another reason that stupid people are such a menace to society is that most of us fail
to detect their stupidity and fail to put up defenses against their actions.
In Cipolla’s view, stupid people are far more dangerous than even bandits as at least
with a bandit there is rhyme and reason for how they behave.
The bandit wants to obtain a gain for himself, he is just not intelligent or moral enough
to do it in a way that produces a reciprocal gain for someone else.
the bandit’s actions, even if immoral, are still rational and so somewhat predictable. Not so with
the stupid. Or as Cipolla explains, a stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no
advantage, without any plan or scheme, and at the most improbable times and places. You have no
rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted
with a stupid individual, you are completely at his mercy. Because the stupid person’s actions
do not conform to the rules of rationality it follows that a one is generally caught by surprise
by the attack b even when one becomes aware of the attack one cannot organize a rational defense
because the attack itself lacks any rational structure and this leads to the fifth and final
basic law of human stupidity which states a stupid person is the most dangerous type of person
The stupid, impoverished society ruin lives, including their own, and if they become too
influential and occupy positions of great social power, such as a president or prime minister,
social ruin is the inevitable result. Cipolla believed that the only way to prevent stupid
people from ruining a society is if more people move from the classes of the bandits and the
helpless into the class of the intelligent. For while the stupid lack the ability to change
categories it is possible for the helpless and the bandits to learn to act in intelligent ways.
And if there are enough intelligent people in society then their mutually beneficial
actions will outweigh or neutralize the damage caused by the stupid.
Sadly, in the modern day social forces are moving people in the opposite direction,
away from the class of the intelligent into the classes of the bandits and the helpless.
paternalistic governments promote helpless behavior by minimizing the consequences for
those who act in this manner on the other hand we have a social value system that elevates the
attainment of wealth and material goods above all else which is creating such an insatiable desire
for these things that many people have no problem acting like bandits to enrich themselves without
enough intelligent people to neutralize the effects of the bandits and the stupid social
collapse becomes an ever more likely possibility. Or as Cipolla writes,
In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is relatively constant.
However, in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of
the bandits with overtones of stupidity, and among those not in power, an equally alarming
growth in the number of helpless individuals. Such change in the composition of the non-stupid
population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the stupid fraction and makes decline
a certainty, and the country goes to hell.
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