Monday, October 10, 2005

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Economics prof. Carlo M. Cipolla wrote this in 1987:
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

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

A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

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 costly mistake.

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
The Swedish Economics prize (sometimes called a Nobel prize) just went to a couple of game theorests, and this amusing article seems appropriate.

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