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.
Cipolla called this one the Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.
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In 1976, Carlo M. Cipolla, professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity. We (still) grossly underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.
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Similar ideas to Stupidity Law #3
In 1976, Italian economist Carlo M Cipolla defined the laws as follows:
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
And its corollary:
A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens ...
This law also introduces three other phenotypes that Cipolla says co-exist alongside stupidity.
First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others.
Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense.
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