6 ms·

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1987) [pdf]

209 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

rawgabbit 1y ago
I like this quote: 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.
- pksebben 1y ago
  kinky.
- hammock 1y ago
  That actually sounds like what the more intelligent animals will do to you (monkey, cat, etc) not the least intelligent ones (bug, snake, bird).
- childintime 1y ago
  Misses the mark. The motive for stupidity is corruption, hence the exercise of power. An anonymous unidentifiable third party gains from it and you are to pay for it with obstruction (active attacks are rare). By definition you don't know if it's corruption or stupidity, and that's why stupidity must exist, as unmotivated corruption, meaning it's just a part of the person or organization, for example ideology. Stupidity then tends to equate to incompetence. But to the observer victim there is no difference.
java-man 1y ago
(the reader cries in despair)
titzer 1y ago
"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." Yeah, this lines up with my personal description of stupid: incapable of achieving one's own goals because of stubbornness, mean-spiritedness, pride, persistent misunderstanding, inability or unwillingness to learn. A danger to themself and others. Usually and unfortunately coupled with overconfidence. This is stark contrast to being merely ignorant (lacking knowledge, naive or sheltered) and dumb (incapable of learning or grasping complex subjects). Ignorance is generally fixable and with some capacity, dumbness too. But stupidity is a special kind of bad.
- cwmoore 1y ago
  But, ummm, if nature abhors a vacuum? And all these things provide "opportunity" for improvement? Maybe the special bad is by design.
pstuart 1y ago
I think we're well served by distinct language: * "intelligent" is the intellectual capacity one is born with * "stupid" is the failure to use that intellectual capacity I know plenty of very intelligent people who have been quite stupid at times. I know that while I may have adequate intelligence I've certainly been stupid more than once (or maybe even twice).
- elzbardico 1y ago
  > I know plenty of very intelligent people who have been quite stupid at times. I know that while I may have adequate intelligence I've certainly been stupid more than once (or maybe even twice). I call those people skilled instead of intelligent.
- ergonaught 1y ago
  That is not the "stupid" used in this context.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    Sure, the "stupid" is effectively "unintelligent" in that context (unless I'm being stupid here ;-) My point is that even intelligent people can be incredibly stupid and Dunning-Kruger can still apply (because they know they are intelligent and are too arrogant to question their positions)
anonu 1y ago
> One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. But we also have self-awareness. Stupid can be de-stupefied through learning. Whereas you can't really change your race or blood type.
- gtech1 1y ago
  Don't you feel yourself getting stupider with age ? Try and correct that by learning. Now imagine that some people are actually born that way
  - pksebben 1y ago
    That's not a word. I think the phrase you were thinking of was "dumberer"
ayongpm 1y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20110420000627/http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/stupidity/basic.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20110420000627/http://wwwcsif.cs...
_carbyau_ 1y ago
> 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. This is a characteristic of spite. Maybe spitefulness is stupid. But true spitefulness is a whole other level to watch out for.
- dr_dshiv 1y ago
  But the stupid usually have what they think are good intentions.
  - gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
    Omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est --Seneca The modern nuance on "infirm" makes that seem more relevant. aside from the unintentional cruelty..
    - pksebben 1y ago
      I saw that movie, and I don't recall seneca ever talking about infirm ferrets. I know for a fact that eminem wasn't in it.
      - gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
        https://youtu.be/0pSVV_LxqRg?t=23s https://youtu.be/0pSVV_LxqRg?t=23s
  - taneq 1y ago
    Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from enemy action.
- evilduck 1y ago
  Spite implies intent. As an outside observer spitefulness and stupidity may appear the same, but the stupid person may have had good intentions and no ill-will towards those they harm.
xivzgrev 1y ago
So in this metaphor, is -trump a B2 (aims to enrich himself, while overall a net negative to society) -his voters are helpless (by voting for him, they don't actually gain anything) -and intelligent people, including myself, are mostly sitting on the sidelines, save attending a no kings protest. A few are valiantly fighting (filing court cases to check trumps power grabs, newsom pushing prop 50, journalists / media folks calling out the emperor has no clothes) The only way this country gets saved from Trump is either the intelligent get off their duff and start fighting, or the helpless wake up and turn on Trump
- komali2 1y ago
  I am sorry to say that according to the metaphor of the PDF, your resistance probably falls into either "helpless" or "stupid," since it doesn't really do anything to check Trump's power (ICE agents still freely roam and abduct people at gunpoint, SNAP will run out and judgement induced distribution is blocked by Trump) and at best do nothing to him or anyone else or help him by giving him ammunition to justify further domestic action. Or if you're just sitting on the sidelines, then under the model, you're not defined as intelligent, but helpless, whereas his supporters are stupid. According to the model I would class legal efforts and some media efforts as intelligent or banditry (media is self serving; in the end it loves Trump for the headlines), and a protest as maybe intelligent but maybe also helpless. Inarguably intelligent might be something like following ICE movements and warning neighborhoods when they're coming, or establishing mutual aid food systems for people whose SNAP is about to run out. Or wasting ICE time somehow through civil disobedience to reduce their effectiveness.
  - heresie-dabord 1y ago
    > your resistance probably falls into either "helpless" or "stupid," since it doesn't really do anything to check Trump's power Some combination of "helpless", "lazy", and "stupid", like the narrator in Niemöller's poem "First They Came." [1] It is to do nothing except to fret (and to post on social media), despite knowing that eventually no one will be spared by energetically unethical monsters. [1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
greesil 1y ago
There are four kinds of people, those that put things into categories, and those that like matrices. There's at least two meanings for stupid. One is someone who is not intelligent, and it's just kind of an intrinsic thing. The other is someone who does something stupid, irrespective of their intelligence. This is a conditional attribute that depends on available information / motivation / laziness. Point being a 2x2 matrix is just an oversimplification of real life and also wtf are the axes here???
- danparsonson 1y ago
  > There are four kinds of people, those that put things into categories, and those that like matrices. I must be missing the joke here - those are not exclusive categories, and there are only two of them. > wtf are the axes here??? It's explained in the text just below the drawing....
  - greesil 1y ago
    It's not?
dieselerator 1y ago
The number of responses here lends statistical support to the first basic law.
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
the 0th law of human stupidity: the urge to categorize human stupidity numbs the intellectual ability for self-reflection. Thus the categorizer is by definition not stupid, and their assignment of categories and observations obviously correct. -- Kurt Gödel
infakelife 1y ago
Full issue of the Whole Earth Review in which this appeared: https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-spring-1987?format=spreads&index=5 https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-spring-1987?for... Highly recommend spending some time in the Whole Earth publication archives if you haven't had the chance.
- ListeningPie 1y ago
  Is there a modern day equivalent to The Whole Earth catalog? Maybe a collection of blogs and online media or otherwise
  - infakelife 1y ago
    No equivalent as far as I know but would love to see one. The function it served has been scattered across Youtube, X, Substack, Hacker News, etc. but scale makes it hard to curate exclusively for such a specific audience with such a specific aesthetic. Kevin Kelly is still writing through The Technium [0], which might scratch some of the itch but is more an island than a colony like Whole Earth was. Time for a hippie futurist revival? [0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/
    - 8bitsrule 1y ago
      Revival, yes! I mailed off for so much weird stuff from WEC ... stuff I'd never known about before ... from all over the hemisphere. Unusual teas and bakeries, kinnikinnick, oddish books, even some chair-caning materials (used on one VERY old chair). Sometimes forgotten about because of "Please allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery."
    - mcswell 1y ago
      Well, I had short hair during the 60s and 70s. I have had a ponytail since I hit double nickels (if you don't understand that phrase, get off my lawn). So yeah, hippy!
max_ 1y ago
"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." Reminds me of people supporting the senseless bombings and genocide in the middle east.
- dh2022 1y ago
  Reminds me of Trump supporters.
- locknitpicker 1y ago
  > Reminds me of people supporting the senseless bombings and genocide in the middle east. The genocidal arguments frame them as solutions to long-standing problems, including labelling them as a "final solution". This is clearly an attempt to frame it as something where they derive a gain.
Sniffnoy 1y ago
In this copy, the letter sigma appears to have been replaced by å, presumably due to an encoding error...
douglee650 1y ago
Ha, I have independently arrived at this theory, with far less structure and elegance. Flaize = flail + lose. You're flailing and you're losing (and taking other people down with you). "The world is full of flaizers, non-stop flaizing," encompasses laws 1 and 3.
- hammock 1y ago
  Crabs in a bucket
  - douglee650 1y ago
    Crabs in a bucket is probably the bandit left triangle, people competing by dragging others down. Flaizers are the lower left quadrant, what original author refers to as "stupid" — causing harm to themselves and others with no benefit for any parties. Yeah I know stop trying to make fetch a thing
lifeline82 1y ago
[dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
adornKey 1y ago
This article is a good starting point for researching stupidity. Nowadays stupidity is big on the rise to power, so I appreciate anything going into researching it. The article calls the stupid unpredictable, but I think most of them are very rational emotion maximisers. Motivation for stupid people is often an imaginary gain. They think they do something for society or themselves, but the payment is only in emotions. From the outside this looks stupid, but for the stupid the gains are often very measurable feelings. In the end the psychology of stupidity isn't that different from normal rational psychology. Adding emotions to capitalistic thinking can also be used to explain "Stupidity in large groups". The stupid get good vibes from others around while just causing a total loss for everyone. Maybe this is a starting point for counter measures... I think the most dangerous people out there are the good helping stupids that just want to help - and just make everything worse. They get a lot of gain from the emotions that they did something good.
tomomomo 1y ago
[dead]
IAmGraydon 1y ago
Ever notice how you’ll meet lots of people who think everyone else is stupid, but you almost never meet someone who believes they’re stupid? Here’s another law of stupidity: Stupidity is unable to recognize itself.
- Zorbanator 1y ago
  That is the Dunning Kruger effect.
egberts1 1y ago
America is powered by influx of immigrants of all sorts. Yet, shows the weakness the greatest while wielding its strength: thru its American people.
jobigoud 1y ago
> The bandits who fall in area B1 are those individuals whose actions yield to them profits which are larger than the losses they cause to other people. Are there real life example of this? Or does anyone that scams people richer than them qualifies maybe?
- adornKey 1y ago
  Maybe Robin Hood... and rare cases when a competent leader invests tax payer money into something really good. Maybe this was a thing back in ancient history.. Having a solid reserve of overproduction is a good thing for society. Seizing overproduction could also be B1.
131012 1y ago
I stopped reading when the author classified people in binary categories. Absolute proof of their own stupidity.
- tyleo 1y ago
  To be fair they aren’t binaries, they are a spectrum. I think it’s fine to classify things like this. It doesn’t preclude the existence of other dimensions. It limits the analysis and makes it easier to understand because the point gets lost when you classify things on an n-dimensional spectrum.
hammock 1y ago
General Hammerstein: “I distinguish four types (of soldiers). There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. “Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. “The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up ninety percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. “Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. “One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.”
- tempodox 1y ago
  That amount of wisdom can only come with boatloads of experience. Those are words to live by.
- lisper 1y ago
  I often tell people without irony that laziness is my super power. Laziness motivates me to put my efforts into finding ways of getting things done with less effort, to the endless annoyance of those around me who work a lot harder than I do. > One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking Oh, so true.
  - tempodox 1y ago
    “HLADE’S LAW: If you have a difficult task give it to a lazy man — he will find an easier way to do it.” ― Arthur Bloch
  - Isamu 1y ago
    Larry Wall: 3 great virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. Which is both a joke (turning virtue on its head) and kinda true, in that laziness makes you automate things, impatience spurs you to make things faster, and hubris spurs you to make sure that they work.
    - mcswell 1y ago
demetris 1y ago
My personal system is simpler: A stupid person is a person who thinks other people are stupid.
Quitschquat 1y ago
Needs a section on Performance Stupidity. “The January 6 people where tourists taking a guided tour”
- antonvs 1y ago
  Performative stupidity is much more widespread than many people realize. This article has many examples: https://afterdarkconfessions.com/acting-dumb-on-purpose/ https://afterdarkconfessions.com/acting-dumb-on-purpose/ And as the Jan 6 example suggests, it's been weaponized in the US lately. It encourages tribalism and discourages intellectual engagement.
  - cutemonster 1y ago
    Is that article AI generated, if you happen to know? It was pretty interesting in any case
nowittyusername 1y ago
Reading this made me think of "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" quite a lot. Maybe it was inspired by this...
- luckyobserver 1y ago
  https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  "Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies." Darkly real.
slicktux 1y ago
Maybe I’m too stupid to understand this sentence: “ A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” How is being born stupid and act of providence? How can parents willingly have the foresight to spawn a stupid person? Isn’t it rather the lack of providence by the parents?
- kileywm 1y ago
  In this context, "Providence" likely refers to a deity, which is indicated by the capitalization of the word.
- bruce_the_bruce 1y ago
  In this context, I believe the author uses 'providence' to mean an act of God. Translated to a non-religious context, it might be "A stupid man is born a stupid man by pure chance".
- tyleo 1y ago
  I generally liked this PDF but disagreed with this part. I’ve seen intelligent people become stupid depending on the context and vice-versa.
- abdulhaq 1y ago
  Sn act of Providence means an act of God expressed in this way so as not to disturb those who don't like to talk about God
- Joker_vD 1y ago
  The word "Providence" means "an influence that is not human in origin and is thought to control people's lives", or "God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny", or something like that. It does not mean "prudence" or "provision of care", usually.
ErroneousBosh 1y ago
Wow. Was it written by a 15-year-old high-schooler who had recently found a thesaurus? That is just so clunky to read. A great way to detect stupidity is by finding the people who use the biggest words they can, all the time.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  If you had read all the way to the end, you would have seen this: (There is genius at work in this thesis. It came round about by way of reader Sam Keen, who sent us a thin gray monograph printed in Bologna, Italy. The trail eventually led to Carlo M. Cipolla, the author, who is currently Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley - Kevin Kell) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
  - ErroneousBosh 1y ago
    Which is great, but I don't like having to unpick word salad.
capitanazo77 1y ago
Traducción al español de The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1987) https://las-leyes-basicas-de-la-estupidez-humana.pages.dev/ https://las-leyes-basicas-de-la-estupidez-humana.pages.dev/
shymaple 1y ago
IMO, Stupidity is like entropy and this randomness in our society seems to be increasing too. If we assume society is an ordered system (IF :-D ). So yes, stupidity seems to be on the rise. And the new fuel? unverified information on the internet.
Selkirk 1y ago
Looks like game theory interaction strategies presented with a bit of color: Stupid = Spite (lose / lose); Helpless = Altruism (lose / win); Bandit = Selfishness (win / lose); Intelligent = Cooperation (win / win) The OP "Laws": Everyone underestimates the number of spiteful individuals in circulation. The probability that a certain person be spiteful is independent of any other characteristic of that person. ... and so on through ... A spiteful person is more dangerous than a selfish person.

209 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

I like this quote: 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.

pksebben 1y ago
kinky.
hammock 1y ago
That actually sounds like what the more intelligent animals will do to you (monkey, cat, etc) not the least intelligent ones (bug, snake, bird).
childintime 1y ago
Misses the mark. The motive for stupidity is corruption, hence the exercise of power. An anonymous unidentifiable third party gains from it and you are to pay for it with obstruction (active attacks are rare). By definition you don't know if it's corruption or stupidity, and that's why stupidity must exist, as unmotivated corruption, meaning it's just a part of the person or organization, for example ideology. Stupidity then tends to equate to incompetence. But to the observer victim there is no difference.

java-man 1y ago

(the reader cries in despair)

titzer 1y ago

"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." Yeah, this lines up with my personal description of stupid: incapable of achieving one's own goals because of stubbornness, mean-spiritedness, pride, persistent misunderstanding, inability or unwillingness to learn. A danger to themself and others. Usually and unfortunately coupled with overconfidence. This is stark contrast to being merely ignorant (lacking knowledge, naive or sheltered) and dumb (incapable of learning or grasping complex subjects). Ignorance is generally fixable and with some capacity, dumbness too. But stupidity is a special kind of bad.

cwmoore 1y ago
But, ummm, if nature abhors a vacuum? And all these things provide "opportunity" for improvement? Maybe the special bad is by design.

pstuart 1y ago

I think we're well served by distinct language: * "intelligent" is the intellectual capacity one is born with * "stupid" is the failure to use that intellectual capacity I know plenty of very intelligent people who have been quite stupid at times. I know that while I may have adequate intelligence I've certainly been stupid more than once (or maybe even twice).

elzbardico 1y ago
> I know plenty of very intelligent people who have been quite stupid at times. I know that while I may have adequate intelligence I've certainly been stupid more than once (or maybe even twice). I call those people skilled instead of intelligent.
ergonaught 1y ago
That is not the "stupid" used in this context.
- pstuart 1y ago
  Sure, the "stupid" is effectively "unintelligent" in that context (unless I'm being stupid here ;-) My point is that even intelligent people can be incredibly stupid and Dunning-Kruger can still apply (because they know they are intelligent and are too arrogant to question their positions)

anonu 1y ago

> One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. But we also have self-awareness. Stupid can be de-stupefied through learning. Whereas you can't really change your race or blood type.

gtech1 1y ago
Don't you feel yourself getting stupider with age ? Try and correct that by learning. Now imagine that some people are actually born that way
- pksebben 1y ago
  That's not a word. I think the phrase you were thinking of was "dumberer"

ayongpm 1y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20110420000627/http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/stupidity/basic.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20110420000627/http://wwwcsif.cs...

_carbyau_ 1y ago

> 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. This is a characteristic of spite. Maybe spitefulness is stupid. But true spitefulness is a whole other level to watch out for.

dr_dshiv 1y ago
But the stupid usually have what they think are good intentions.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
  Omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est --Seneca The modern nuance on "infirm" makes that seem more relevant. aside from the unintentional cruelty..
  - pksebben 1y ago
    I saw that movie, and I don't recall seneca ever talking about infirm ferrets. I know for a fact that eminem wasn't in it.
    - gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
      https://youtu.be/0pSVV_LxqRg?t=23s https://youtu.be/0pSVV_LxqRg?t=23s
- taneq 1y ago
  Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from enemy action.
evilduck 1y ago
Spite implies intent. As an outside observer spitefulness and stupidity may appear the same, but the stupid person may have had good intentions and no ill-will towards those they harm.

xivzgrev 1y ago

So in this metaphor, is -trump a B2 (aims to enrich himself, while overall a net negative to society) -his voters are helpless (by voting for him, they don't actually gain anything) -and intelligent people, including myself, are mostly sitting on the sidelines, save attending a no kings protest. A few are valiantly fighting (filing court cases to check trumps power grabs, newsom pushing prop 50, journalists / media folks calling out the emperor has no clothes) The only way this country gets saved from Trump is either the intelligent get off their duff and start fighting, or the helpless wake up and turn on Trump

komali2 1y ago
I am sorry to say that according to the metaphor of the PDF, your resistance probably falls into either "helpless" or "stupid," since it doesn't really do anything to check Trump's power (ICE agents still freely roam and abduct people at gunpoint, SNAP will run out and judgement induced distribution is blocked by Trump) and at best do nothing to him or anyone else or help him by giving him ammunition to justify further domestic action. Or if you're just sitting on the sidelines, then under the model, you're not defined as intelligent, but helpless, whereas his supporters are stupid. According to the model I would class legal efforts and some media efforts as intelligent or banditry (media is self serving; in the end it loves Trump for the headlines), and a protest as maybe intelligent but maybe also helpless. Inarguably intelligent might be something like following ICE movements and warning neighborhoods when they're coming, or establishing mutual aid food systems for people whose SNAP is about to run out. Or wasting ICE time somehow through civil disobedience to reduce their effectiveness.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  > your resistance probably falls into either "helpless" or "stupid," since it doesn't really do anything to check Trump's power Some combination of "helpless", "lazy", and "stupid", like the narrator in Niemöller's poem "First They Came." [1] It is to do nothing except to fret (and to post on social media), despite knowing that eventually no one will be spared by energetically unethical monsters. [1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

greesil 1y ago

There are four kinds of people, those that put things into categories, and those that like matrices. There's at least two meanings for stupid. One is someone who is not intelligent, and it's just kind of an intrinsic thing. The other is someone who does something stupid, irrespective of their intelligence. This is a conditional attribute that depends on available information / motivation / laziness. Point being a 2x2 matrix is just an oversimplification of real life and also wtf are the axes here???

danparsonson 1y ago
> There are four kinds of people, those that put things into categories, and those that like matrices. I must be missing the joke here - those are not exclusive categories, and there are only two of them. > wtf are the axes here??? It's explained in the text just below the drawing....
- greesil 1y ago
  It's not?

dieselerator 1y ago

The number of responses here lends statistical support to the first basic law.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago

the 0th law of human stupidity: the urge to categorize human stupidity numbs the intellectual ability for self-reflection. Thus the categorizer is by definition not stupid, and their assignment of categories and observations obviously correct. -- Kurt Gödel

infakelife 1y ago

Full issue of the Whole Earth Review in which this appeared: https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-spring-1987?format=spreads&index=5 https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-spring-1987?for... Highly recommend spending some time in the Whole Earth publication archives if you haven't had the chance.

ListeningPie 1y ago
Is there a modern day equivalent to The Whole Earth catalog? Maybe a collection of blogs and online media or otherwise
- infakelife 1y ago
  No equivalent as far as I know but would love to see one. The function it served has been scattered across Youtube, X, Substack, Hacker News, etc. but scale makes it hard to curate exclusively for such a specific audience with such a specific aesthetic. Kevin Kelly is still writing through The Technium [0], which might scratch some of the itch but is more an island than a colony like Whole Earth was. Time for a hippie futurist revival? [0] https://kk.org/thetechnium/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/
  - 8bitsrule 1y ago
    Revival, yes! I mailed off for so much weird stuff from WEC ... stuff I'd never known about before ... from all over the hemisphere. Unusual teas and bakeries, kinnikinnick, oddish books, even some chair-caning materials (used on one VERY old chair). Sometimes forgotten about because of "Please allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery."
  - mcswell 1y ago
    Well, I had short hair during the 60s and 70s. I have had a ponytail since I hit double nickels (if you don't understand that phrase, get off my lawn). So yeah, hippy!

max_ 1y ago

"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." Reminds me of people supporting the senseless bombings and genocide in the middle east.

dh2022 1y ago
Reminds me of Trump supporters.
locknitpicker 1y ago
> Reminds me of people supporting the senseless bombings and genocide in the middle east. The genocidal arguments frame them as solutions to long-standing problems, including labelling them as a "final solution". This is clearly an attempt to frame it as something where they derive a gain.

Sniffnoy 1y ago

In this copy, the letter sigma appears to have been replaced by å, presumably due to an encoding error...

douglee650 1y ago

Ha, I have independently arrived at this theory, with far less structure and elegance. Flaize = flail + lose. You're flailing and you're losing (and taking other people down with you). "The world is full of flaizers, non-stop flaizing," encompasses laws 1 and 3.

hammock 1y ago
Crabs in a bucket
- douglee650 1y ago
  Crabs in a bucket is probably the bandit left triangle, people competing by dragging others down. Flaizers are the lower left quadrant, what original author refers to as "stupid" — causing harm to themselves and others with no benefit for any parties. Yeah I know stop trying to make fetch a thing

lifeline82 1y ago

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deleted 1y ago

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adornKey 1y ago

This article is a good starting point for researching stupidity. Nowadays stupidity is big on the rise to power, so I appreciate anything going into researching it. The article calls the stupid unpredictable, but I think most of them are very rational emotion maximisers. Motivation for stupid people is often an imaginary gain. They think they do something for society or themselves, but the payment is only in emotions. From the outside this looks stupid, but for the stupid the gains are often very measurable feelings. In the end the psychology of stupidity isn't that different from normal rational psychology. Adding emotions to capitalistic thinking can also be used to explain "Stupidity in large groups". The stupid get good vibes from others around while just causing a total loss for everyone. Maybe this is a starting point for counter measures... I think the most dangerous people out there are the good helping stupids that just want to help - and just make everything worse. They get a lot of gain from the emotions that they did something good.

tomomomo 1y ago

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IAmGraydon 1y ago

Ever notice how you’ll meet lots of people who think everyone else is stupid, but you almost never meet someone who believes they’re stupid? Here’s another law of stupidity: Stupidity is unable to recognize itself.

Zorbanator 1y ago
That is the Dunning Kruger effect.

egberts1 1y ago

America is powered by influx of immigrants of all sorts. Yet, shows the weakness the greatest while wielding its strength: thru its American people.

jobigoud 1y ago

> The bandits who fall in area B1 are those individuals whose actions yield to them profits which are larger than the losses they cause to other people. Are there real life example of this? Or does anyone that scams people richer than them qualifies maybe?

adornKey 1y ago
Maybe Robin Hood... and rare cases when a competent leader invests tax payer money into something really good. Maybe this was a thing back in ancient history.. Having a solid reserve of overproduction is a good thing for society. Seizing overproduction could also be B1.

131012 1y ago

I stopped reading when the author classified people in binary categories. Absolute proof of their own stupidity.

tyleo 1y ago
To be fair they aren’t binaries, they are a spectrum. I think it’s fine to classify things like this. It doesn’t preclude the existence of other dimensions. It limits the analysis and makes it easier to understand because the point gets lost when you classify things on an n-dimensional spectrum.

hammock 1y ago

General Hammerstein: “I distinguish four types (of soldiers). There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. “Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. “The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up ninety percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. “Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. “One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.”

tempodox 1y ago
That amount of wisdom can only come with boatloads of experience. Those are words to live by.
lisper 1y ago
I often tell people without irony that laziness is my super power. Laziness motivates me to put my efforts into finding ways of getting things done with less effort, to the endless annoyance of those around me who work a lot harder than I do. > One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking Oh, so true.
- tempodox 1y ago
  “HLADE’S LAW: If you have a difficult task give it to a lazy man — he will find an easier way to do it.” ― Arthur Bloch
- Isamu 1y ago
  Larry Wall: 3 great virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. Which is both a joke (turning virtue on its head) and kinda true, in that laziness makes you automate things, impatience spurs you to make things faster, and hubris spurs you to make sure that they work.
  - mcswell 1y ago

demetris 1y ago

My personal system is simpler: A stupid person is a person who thinks other people are stupid.

Quitschquat 1y ago

Needs a section on Performance Stupidity. “The January 6 people where tourists taking a guided tour”

antonvs 1y ago
Performative stupidity is much more widespread than many people realize. This article has many examples: https://afterdarkconfessions.com/acting-dumb-on-purpose/ https://afterdarkconfessions.com/acting-dumb-on-purpose/ And as the Jan 6 example suggests, it's been weaponized in the US lately. It encourages tribalism and discourages intellectual engagement.
- cutemonster 1y ago
  Is that article AI generated, if you happen to know? It was pretty interesting in any case

nowittyusername 1y ago

Reading this made me think of "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" quite a lot. Maybe it was inspired by this...

luckyobserver 1y ago
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition
heresie-dabord 1y ago
"Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies." Darkly real.

slicktux 1y ago

Maybe I’m too stupid to understand this sentence: “ A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” How is being born stupid and act of providence? How can parents willingly have the foresight to spawn a stupid person? Isn’t it rather the lack of providence by the parents?

kileywm 1y ago
In this context, "Providence" likely refers to a deity, which is indicated by the capitalization of the word.
bruce_the_bruce 1y ago
In this context, I believe the author uses 'providence' to mean an act of God. Translated to a non-religious context, it might be "A stupid man is born a stupid man by pure chance".
tyleo 1y ago
I generally liked this PDF but disagreed with this part. I’ve seen intelligent people become stupid depending on the context and vice-versa.
abdulhaq 1y ago
Sn act of Providence means an act of God expressed in this way so as not to disturb those who don't like to talk about God
Joker_vD 1y ago
The word "Providence" means "an influence that is not human in origin and is thought to control people's lives", or "God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny", or something like that. It does not mean "prudence" or "provision of care", usually.

ErroneousBosh 1y ago

Wow. Was it written by a 15-year-old high-schooler who had recently found a thesaurus? That is just so clunky to read. A great way to detect stupidity is by finding the people who use the biggest words they can, all the time.

BizarroLand 1y ago
If you had read all the way to the end, you would have seen this: (There is genius at work in this thesis. It came round about by way of reader Sam Keen, who sent us a thin gray monograph printed in Bologna, Italy. The trail eventually led to Carlo M. Cipolla, the author, who is currently Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley - Kevin Kell) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla
- ErroneousBosh 1y ago
  Which is great, but I don't like having to unpick word salad.

capitanazo77 1y ago

Traducción al español de The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1987) https://las-leyes-basicas-de-la-estupidez-humana.pages.dev/ https://las-leyes-basicas-de-la-estupidez-humana.pages.dev/

shymaple 1y ago

IMO, Stupidity is like entropy and this randomness in our society seems to be increasing too. If we assume society is an ordered system (IF :-D ). So yes, stupidity seems to be on the rise. And the new fuel? unverified information on the internet.

Selkirk 1y ago

Looks like game theory interaction strategies presented with a bit of color: Stupid = Spite (lose / lose); Helpless = Altruism (lose / win); Bandit = Selfishness (win / lose); Intelligent = Cooperation (win / win) The OP "Laws": Everyone underestimates the number of spiteful individuals in circulation. The probability that a certain person be spiteful is independent of any other characteristic of that person. ... and so on through ... A spiteful person is more dangerous than a selfish person.