The basic laws of human stupidity.

As a student I was a fan of the works of Carlo Cipolla, one of the great economic historians. As part of my reading for a current project I came across this little gem, which he had privately printed originally.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb says in his introduction it's hard to tell if this is dark comic humour and satire or profound sociological analysis. (As he goes on to say, it's both and the underlying message is such that the only way to take it is as humour and to have a good laugh).

The best aspect is the foundational definition that a stupid person is someone who harms others while gaining no benefit from it and even, in the pure case, harming themselves.

The best insight is that there is an invariant proportion of the population that is stupid and that this proportion is found in all societies in all times and places and also in every subgroup of every society (so it's fractal) but the impact the stupid have on society as a whole varies according to the degree to which two of the other subgroups (bandits and the helpless) approach the stupid.

I would add, that stupidity by his definition can be made worse and intensified through the process of education. It's a minor masterpiece. Even has little charts where you can plot people and groups to work out who to avoid.

Here is a free pdf if one doesn't want to help the tax-evading, monopolistic predator..

https://www.academia.edu/11274021/Cipolla_The_Basic_Laws_of_Human_Stupidity