Finding Stupidity Down a Rabbit Hole
Neil Gonsalves on a 1976 short essay about the laws of stupidity.
Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack
During one my many sleepless nights, I found a rabbit hole and decided to jump down it. I binge read several short stories that night, hoping my eyes would tire and sleep would come. Unfortunately for me, once I embark down a rabbit hole I can often spend the entire night reading and inadvertently miss the part where I was supposed to sleep. But it is on these late night thought excursions, fuelled by curiosity, that I come across works I may not have otherwise read. That’s how I encountered Carlo M. Cipolla and his Basic Laws of Stupidity. The takeaways from that story has stuck with me for decades,
In 1976 Cipolla, a professor of economic history at UC Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat, namely Stupidity.
These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:
LAW 1 - Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
Cipolla argued that we all know stupid people exist, but we underestimate both the number of them and their impact on society. Perhaps it’s our nature or maybe our socialization that prompts us to look at others in the most charitable light, even when the evidence does not support it. After all stupidity, or whatever kinder name you wish to call it by, is a regular feature of the human condition. We all have experience dealing with someone we perceive that way even if we don’t vocalize it.
LAW 2 - The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
What we do know from “lived experience” is that stupidity does not discriminate. The condition is fairly universal and exists within every culture, gender, nationality, ethnicity and political ideology. Cipolla often quoted his father who often suggested that the best course was to assume “half of everyone you meet is below average.” - This sounds like a fair hypothesis supported by basic arithmetic.
LAW 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.
For Cipolla, stupid people cause losses to others while deriving no benefits personally. He didn’t consider them to be ill-willed, but rather merely incapable of seeing the effects of their actions in a broader context. Not benefitting, or potentially losing out, in this case is not a virtue but an unintended consequence. The inability to see downstream impacts may be a by-product of our hyper focus on living in the here and now. While I’m all for being present, we need to be cognizant about the ripple effects of our decisions. It is arguably a critical condition for civic engagement and leadership.
LAW 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.
His best advice to people who are not stupid is to avoid the stupid people whenever they are encountered. “Stupid people are deadly dangerous because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand stupid behavior.” - It is the state of disbelief or the inability to comprehend stupidity that exposes the rest of the population to the misfortunes of dealing with them.
I once watched a comedy skit featuring John Cleese on the subject of stupidity, his contribution to the subject is both entertaining and eerily accurate. Cleese quips that people who are stupid lack the precise skill needed to know that they are stupid, thereby leaving us all in the precarious situation of living with oblivious ignorance . A significant social disadvantage for everyone involved.
LAW 5 - A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. (Corollary: a stupid person is more dangerous than a corrupt person)
He argued that stupid people act in unpredictable ways. That lack of predictability makes stupid people incredibly dangerous because their motivation is not easily discernible, even to themselves.
I draw upon Socrates here who posited that the greatest good is knowledge and the greatest evil, ignorance. But he also emphasized that the real problem lies with “Double Ignorance” - Socrates defined double ignorance as not being aware of one’s ignorance while thinking that one knows!
As I lay reflecting on this article and sleep finally seemed to plausibly be on the horizon, another rabbit hole appeared! - I wonder what David Dunning and Justin Kruger would say if they sat down with Carlo Cipolla’s favourite group… alas that might be a wonderland for another night - Then again, do I really need sleep? Stay tuned…
About the Author: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college educator, a TEDx speaker, a columnist, a recreational dog trainer and an advocate for new immigrant integration and viewpoint diversity.
