The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

I often contemplate why people are so stupid. Why they are willing, as the old saying goes, to cut off their nose to spite their face. I came across this enlightening article on the subject about fifteen years ago in Whole Earth Review and I thought it would be fun to point folks to it and see what they think.

Briefly the laws are:

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

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

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.

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.

5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

and its corollary............

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

The full article is here.