the basic laws of human stupidity by carlo cipolla

If Tom helps himself, but causes Jerry a loss, he’s a bandit. If Tom benefits himself, while also benefiting Jerry, he’s intelligent. If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss, he’s helpless. A person can cause benefits to others, benefits to themselves, losses to others and losses to themselves. four factors of human behaviorĬipolla then considers four factors of human behavior.

Education, wealth or status have nothing to do with it.ģ: A stupid person is someone who causes losses to other people while himself deriving no gain.Ĥ: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid people and keep forgetting that to deal with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.ĥ: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person, even more dangerous than a bandit. five basic laws of human stupidityġ: Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.Ģ: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. To arrive at this conclusion, we need to understand his 5 Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. The stupid person is the most dangerous type of person, and in groups far more powerful than the Mafia, the Military or Communism, Cipolla warned. In 1976, Carlo Cipolla, a professor of economic history, derived a social law, by which we can group people into four categories: The first he called “the helpless”, the second are “the intelligent”, the third are “the bandits”, and the last are “the stupid”.

Today Cipolla’s law is often used to highlight the importance of critical thinking and careful decision making in order to counteract the potential effects of endemic ignorance in politics and corporations. Even though Carlo Cipolla originally formulated his principles in the form of an amusing letter to his friends, it soon gained wide attention among social theorists. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation, Cipolla’s Law of Stupidity states.

The basic laws of human stupidity by carlo cipolla