Proto-Cliodynamic 201: The Basic Laws of Humani Stupidity

Proto-Cliodynamic 201: The Basic Laws of Humani Stupidity

Proto-Cliodynamics Economist, Carlo M. Cipolla, published an outline of the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Not just a danger to themselves.

Stupid people, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity; the only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by, you are invariably lowballing the total. This problem is compounded by biased assumptions that certain people are intelligent based on superficial factors like their job, education level, or other traits we believe to be exclusive of stupidity. They aren’t.

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 First Basic Law prevents attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate.

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Cultural trends favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of humani as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all people are naturally equal and if some are more equal than others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature.

Years of observation and experimentation, people are only equal before the law, not equal in quality. Some are more stupid and others are less so, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired or right-handed; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid person is born a stupid person by an act of Providence. Although convinced that fraction of humani are stupid and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race discrimination; stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all humani groups and is uniformly distributed.

This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

In this regard, Nature seems indeed to have outdone herself. It is well known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For instance, whether people proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the Equator, whether the matching couples are developed or underdeveloped, whether they are green, red, black, white or yellow the female to male ratio among the newly born is roughly constant, with a very slight prevalence of males. We do not know how Nature achieves this remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve it Nature must operate with large numbers. The most remarkable fact about the frequency of stupidity is that Nature succeeds in making this frequency equal to the probability quite independently from the size of the group.

Thus one finds the same percentage of stupid people whether one is considering very large groups or one is dealing with very small ones. No other set of observable phenomena offers such striking proof of the powers of Nature.

The evidence that education has nothing to do with the probability was provided by experiments carried on in a large number of universities all over the world. One may distinguish the composite population which constitutes a university in five major groups, namely blue-collar workers, white-collar employees, students, administrators and even the professors.

Whenever blue-collar workers were analyzed, it was found that the fraction σ of them were stupid. As σ's value was higher than expected (First Law), paying tribute to fashion it was thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder it was found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and among students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, the same fraction σ of the professors are stupid. So bewildered by the results, a special point to extend the research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: σ fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid.

This idea was hard to accept and digest but too many experimental results proved its fundamental veracity. The Second Basic Law is an iron law, and it does not admit exceptions. The underdeveloped worlds could possibly take solace at the Second Basic Law as they can find in it the proof that after all the developed are not so developed. Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move in distinguished circles or you take refuge among savage head-hunters, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people - which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your expectations.

Stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid university professors, stupid medical doctor, stupid lawyers, stupid accountants, and even stupid heads of state. There are stupid people in every nation.

It is impossible to say how numerous the stupid are amongst us? And any guess would almost certainly violate the first

Law 3. 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.

The Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.

The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that humani beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid.

When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour.

Abandon the lofty plane of theory and look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. Upon thoughtful reflection you should probably admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life.

Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

The relatives unable to stop themselves from broadcasting untrue bigoted news articles on social media? Stupid. The customer service representatives who keeps you on the line for an hour, disconnects twice, and somehow still manages to screw up your account? Stupid.

There are three other phenotypes that that co-exist alongside stupidity. First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense.

The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.

The perfect bandit is one who, with his actions, causes to other individuals losses equal to his gains. The crudest type of banditry is theft. A person who robs you of 100 pounds without causing you an extra loss or harm is a perfect bandit: you lose 100 pounds, he gains 100 pounds. The basic graph of the perfect bandits would appear on a 45-degree diagonal line that divides the area B into two perfectly symmetrical sub-areas. "Perfect" bandits are relatively few. Most bandits receive benefits somewhat below that of 100% of the losses they incur to others. If someone kills you in order to rob you of fifty pounds or if he murders you in order to spend a weekend with your spouse, we can be sure that he is not a perfect bandit. Generals who cause vast destruction and innumerable casualties in return for a promotion or a medal are in the same category.

The frequency distribution of the stupid people is totally different from that of the bandit. While bandits are mostly scattered over an area stupid people are heavily concentrated along one line, specifically on the Y axis below point O. The majority of stupid people are basically and unwaveringly stupid - in other words they perseveringly insist in causing harm and losses to other people without deriving any gain, whether positive or negative. There are however people who by their improbable actions not only cause damages to other people but in addition hurt themselves.

Consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous.

Social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person dangerous to other people - in other words what constitutes the power of stupidity.

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person may understand (even when not agreeing with) the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. 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.

The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defense problematic but it also makes any counter-attack extremely difficult - like trying to shoot at an object which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements. This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated that "with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much" and the latter wrote that "against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain."

Law 4: 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 to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

The failure of helpless people to recognize how dangerous stupid people are is just another expression of their helplessness. The amazing fact is that also intelligent people and bandits often fail to recognize the power to damage inherent in stupidity. It is extremely difficult to explain why this should happen and one can only remark that when confronted with stupid individuals often intelligent men as well as bandits make the mistake of indulging in feelings of self-complacency and contemptuousness instead of immediately secreting adequate quantities of adrenaline and building up defenses.

One is tempted to believe that a stupid person will only do harm to himself but this is confusing stupidity with helplessness. On occasion one is tempted to associate oneself with a stupid individual in order to use him for one's own schemes. Such a manoeuvre cannot but have disastrous effects because:

a) It is based on a complete misunderstanding of the essential nature of stupidity and

b) It gives the stupid person added scope for the exercise of his gifts.

One may hope to outmanoeuvre the stupid and, up to a point, one may actually do so. But because of the erratic behaviour of the stupid, one cannot foresee all the stupid's actions and reactions and before long one will be pulverized by the unpredictable moves of the stupid partner.

Through centuries and millennia, in public as in private life, countless individuals have failed to take account of the Fourth Basic Law and the failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

 

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them are the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.

Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful ones. But they also have high percentages of helpless people and, an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity.

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 all goes to Hell.

Instead of considering the welfare of the individual let us consider the welfare of the society, regarded in this context as the algebraic sum of the individual conditions. A full understanding of the Fifth Basic Law is essential to the analysis.

The result of the action of a perfect bandit is purely and simply a transfer of wealth and/or welfare. After the action of a perfect bandit, the bandit has a plus on his account which plus is exactly equivalent to the minus he has caused to another person. Society as a whole is neither better nor worse off, as it is an efficient transfer. Inefficient Bandits are a drain on society because some of the losses are gone from the benefit of society, accounting entropy.

When stupid people are at work, the story is totally different. Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account or anyone else’s. Thus the society as a whole is impoverished.

In other words the helpless with overtones of intelligence, the bandits with overtones of intelligence and above all the intelligent all contribute, though in different degrees, to accrue to the welfare of a society. On the other hand the bandits with overtones of stupidity and the helpless with overtones of stupidity manage to add losses to those caused by stupid people thus enhancing the nefarious destructive power of the latter group.

All this suggests some reflection on the performance of societies. According to the Second Basic Law, the fraction of stupid people is a constant σ which is not affected by time, space, race, class or any other sociocultural or historical variable. It would be a profound mistake to believe the number of stupid people in a declining society is greater than in a developing society. Both such societies are plagued by the same percentage of stupid people. The difference between the two societies is that in the society which performs poorly:

a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions;

b) there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations of areas I, H1 and B1 and a proportionate increase of populations H2 and B2.

This theoretical presumption is abundantly confirmed by an exhaustive analysis of historical cases. Historical analysis allows us to reformulate the theoretical conclusions in a more factual way and with more realistic detail.

Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern or contemporary times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its unavoidable σ fraction of stupid people. However the country moving uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage to keep the σ fraction at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a certainty.

In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still equal to σ; 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 σ fraction and makes decline a certainty. The country goes to Hell.

Cipolla originally published his genius thesis anonymously; he left behind offspring who promptly tried to scrape money out of everything he had ever written, although - in the case of this text - it was clearly earmarked and stated by the Author even in its original version that it was intended for the public domain.