
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity - shalmanese
http://www.cantrip.org/stupidity.html
======
mpk
Before you start categorising yourself or other people, you might want to read
up on the Dunning-Kruger effect,

    
    
        The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in
        which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make
        unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them
        of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The
        unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, 
        rating their own ability as above average, much higher
        than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled 
        underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory 
        inferiority.
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

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ggchappell
Suspending disbelief for a moment, and taking this seriously ...

I take issue with the following statement:

> A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Sometimes, perhaps. However, a bandit, by his gain, can give himself more
resources with which to continue his banditry. A stupid person, on the other
hand, will tend to deprive himself of resources.

For example, I decide I want to be nasty. I'll drive around town and siphon
gasoline out of people's cars. As a bandit, I might put this gas in my tank,
thus enabling me to drive on to the next victim. I'm not a perfect bandit,
since it cost me some gas to get to my victim, and so the total amount of
available gasoline in the world is reduced by my actions, but I do gain
somewhat. On the other hand, as a stupid person, I might simply dump the
siphoned gas on the ground. And eventually, I run out of gas, making it more
difficult for me to victimize others.

(Okay, I'll stop taking it seriously now.)

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gojomo
If you can get past the curt/cocksure/consciously-provocative first two laws,
the laws starting at the third have an interesting quadrant-based analysis of
human interactions.

The stuff about 'bandits with overtones of intelligence' brings to mind
Coasian analyses -- we really don't want to prohibit such net-positive
banditry, just arrange side payments. So it didn't surprise me to find at the
end that the piece was written by an economics professor.

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heresy
His laws are too rigid. I gravitate between the areas on his chart, depending
on various factors.

Alcohol consumed, location, whether I'm among friends or not, etc.

~~~
pw0ncakes
It's a 2-by-2 matrix, so of course it's going to be oversimplified.

The stupid people often believe they're pursuing their own gain, but are too
ignorant and misguided to do so.

In practice, I think the bandits are more dangerous. In a corrupt and
declining society such as ours, they end up running the show.

Stupid people are like the magnetic charges in a block of iron. Because their
stupidity is fairly random, they tend to cancel each other out under normal
conditions, and therefore are not very dangerous (except to themselves) on a
macroscopic level. When those charges become aligned and they now have
macroscopic pull (as we see in the modern "religious right" and the Tea Party
movement) they become scary, but that can only happen when they've been
manipulated by (crafty, and likely intelligent at least in the IQ sense)
bandits.

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jk4930
Stupid people usually are a burden. But for startups they're an asset. We make
complicated things so simple and dangerous things so easy that those morons
out there can use them without hurting others and themselves (too much). The
process of creating a solution for the non-geeks out there means: "Dumbing
down." It's a pain. And the price they pay heals our intellectual wounds. :)

~~~
sabat
My wife likes to say: the problem with making something idiot-proof is that
they will always invent a bigger idiot.

~~~
slig
One teacher once said: The sum of all human intelligence is constant over the
time.

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joe_the_user
"stupidity" is a poorly-formed category evoked by those too lazy to find the
real processes determining other people's behaviors.

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JohnnyBrown
if you suffer from the action of a stupid person, you have participated in an
interaction where both you and the other party lost. By the author's
definition, you are stupid.

~~~
smallblacksun
No, the author says that the person who PERFORMS an action that causes loss to
both parties is stupid.

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potatolicious
What pointless drivel.

The author starts off by being blatantly offensive to the point where I
wondered if he was trolling.

Then, as if to excuse himself with a "ahhh! got you all!" he drops this gem
halfway down the article:

> _"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."_

Thanks, if we're going to go around redefining the accepted _and_ colloquial
definition of "stupid", it would seem relevant to put this near the top of
your treatise.

This would also seem to contradict the author's previous assertion that
stupidity is genetic and largely unrelated to nurture - unless the author
seriously believes that personality traits (i.e., the tendency to go for lose-
lose arrangements) are genetic.

Plausible claim, but pointless without real research, or at the _very very_
least some semblance of qualification for the author to make such a wild
assertion.

I couldn't really make it too far beyond that without being profoundly
disturbed by the author's self-important vigorous mental masturbation.

~~~
dustingetz
its funny! relax!

~~~
potatolicious
If that was supposed to be satire, it went _right_ over my head :S

~~~
ellyagg
It was tongue-in-cheek. Like most humor, parts are more or less true.

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alanthonyc
That was really stupid.

