The science of stupidity

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The French thinker Voltaire said: “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”

The late Carlo M Cipolla, who taught for many years at Berkeley University in the US, did more than contemplate the extent of human stupidity; he postulated several laws after much research.

The professor of economic history came up with five laws which he penned in an essay called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

• Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation;
  
• The probability that a certain person is 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, dealing and/or associating with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake; and
  
• A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
  
  

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