The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla

Always and inevitably, each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in the world These are the words of the famous professor of economic history Carlo Cipolla, who taught at the universities of Pavia and Berkeley and published academic works in which he analyzed overpopulation throughout history but passed to posterity thanks to his “Theory of Stupidity”, condensed in his book “The Basic Laws od Human Stupidity”, a treatise on human stupidity with satirical overtones. “With the smile on his lips, as if he were doing the most natural thing in the world, the stupid will appear on the spur of the moment to spoil your plans, destroy your peace, complicate your life and work, make you lose money, time, good humor, productivity, and all this without malice, without remorse and without reason. They’re an unorganized group, without a leader or norm, but in spite of that, they act in perfect harmony, as guided by an invisible hand. “The stupid ones are more fearsome than Mafia, the military-industrial complex or the Communist International. Cipolla adds a corollary to the fifth law: a stupid person is thus more dangerous than a bandit.The 5 basic laws of human stupidity, according to Cipolla

They constantly forget that at any moment, and in any circumstance, associating with stupid people invariably constitutes an expensive mistake.Ī stupid person is the most dangerous person in existence. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid people. The probability of a person being stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.Ī stupid person is someone who causes damage to another person, or a group of people, without any advantage accruing to himself (or herself) - or even with some resultant self-damage.

the underestimation is after the first law itself is already accounted for.

day after day we are hampered in whatever we do by stupid people who invariably turn up in the least appropriate places, and.

people we had thought to be rational and intelligent suddenly turn out to be unquestionably stupid.

We always underestimate the number of stupid people. There is no upper bound on the amount of stupidity that can exist within any particular individual.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla