My friend Suman Hossain (Ashfaq) came with excitement last weekend after finishing this book and asked us that we must give him a pen and paper and listen to him. He explained The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla which he just finished! He even bought few copies of this book and gifted me one to read quickly (tiny book, you can finish in half an hour). I finished it and am equally excited to share with you fo what I understood about intelligent, helpless, bandit and stupid people across any population and time.
The Five basic laws of human stupidity described are -
- Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
- The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
- A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or a group of people while they gain nothing or may even suffer losses.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that in any time and place and circumstance dealing and/or hanging out with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
- Stupid people are the most dangerous type of people. A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
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