THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

Before I begin I have to admit…My speech will be

stupid. I am absolutely fascinated by the idea that
the most Brainy of all living beings can be brainless
and their intellect sometimes compared to that of a
bag of a hard lifeless substance. Note that I am
going to be that pretentious high school kid that
bases his speeches on works of great scientists or
philosophers by presenting to you….The 3 basic
laws of human stupidity.
The first basic law of human stupidity states without
any mystery that:
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the
number of stupid individuals alive.
At first, the statement sounds simple, vague and
horribly ungenerous. Closer inspection will however
reveal its realism. No matter how high one's
estimates of human stupidity are, one is repeatedly
startled by the fact that: a) people we had once
judged rational and intelligent turn out to be
unashamedly stupid. b) day after day, one is
harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals
who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most
inconvenient places and at the most improbable
moments.
As you have probably noticed I have employed
another one of my pretentious ploys to distance
myself from the topic at hand by replacing all
personal pronouns with the word one…it does me
sound smart right…
The First Basic Law prevents me from providing a
specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid
people within the total population: any ones
estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. It
reminds me of a popular quote by world renowned
physicist Albert Einstein. Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
no he not sure about the former.
The second law of human stupidity states that The
probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is
independant of any other characteristic of that
person.
In this regard, Mother Nature seems indeed to
have outdone herself. It is well known that Nature
manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the
relative frequency of certain natural phenomena.
For instance, whether people live at the Northern
Pole or at the Equator, whether they are black, red,
white or yellow .the female to male ratio among
babies is a sort of constant, a bit more of male. We
do not know how Nature achieves this remarkable
result but we know that in order to achieve it
Nature must operate with large numbers. The most
remarkable fact about the frequency of stupidity is
that Nature succeeds in making this frequency
equal no matter the size of the group. You will find
the same percentage of stupid people in a very
large group or a very small one. No other set of
observable phenomena offers such striking proof of
the powers of Nature. I should also note that this
probability is also independent of education and
background.
For my last basic law of human stupidity I would like
to reference the work of Carlo M. Cipolla (He was
born in Pavia on 15 August 1922 – 5 September
2000)He was an Italian economic historian.
Carlo Cipolla describes stupidity with help from the
way people act.
Cipolla identifies two factors to consider when
exploring human behaviour:
 Benefits and losses that an individual causes to
him or herself.
 Benefits and losses that an individual causes to
others.
He states that human beings fall into four basic
categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit
and the stupid.
Thus the third basic law of human stupidity
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to
another person or to a group of persons while he
does not gain anything and even possibly suffers
losses.
These include those who disrupt the nurturing
learning environment in the school, those who
bully, those who are inconsiderate, those who
pollute, with many other examples.
The harm of a stupid person is immeasurable. Those
who cause damage on purpose realise and plan
their destruction but the same insecurity rule
proposed by Albert Einstein on the vastness of
human stupidity apllies to the havoc they can
wreak. My father refers to stupid people as those
who do not know that they do not know.
I see stupid people as a group… , far more powerful
than major organizations such as the Mafia,
illuminati ( if you believe in it) and the industrial
complex, which without regulations, leaders or
manifesto nonetheless manages to operate to great
effect and with incredible coordination.
In the word of Kurt Vonnegit , American satirist And
here I include myself
If you cant do good, at the very least don’t do harm
With the idiots, the metaphorical double negative
we all lose.
All we can do is wait,
Wait for the inevitable, self inflicted, stupid end we
are all aware of but unable to stop.