Somewhat tongue in cheek, Carlo Cipolla's essay into stupidity provides thoughtful insights, writes Bill Hobbs
The ratio of stupid people to non-stupid people is the same no matter what size group we belong to and stupid people are the most dangerous of all. So wrote economist Carlo Cipolla, in his intriguing short essay “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”.
His five basic laws are that (1) a stupid person is a person who causes losses to others while deriving no gain and even incurring losses for himself/herself, (2) we always underestimate the numbers of stupid people in circulation, (3) stupidity is independent of other characteristics, whatever the size of the group and no matter how well educated we find the same fraction of stupid people, (4) non-stupid people always underestimate the power of stupid people and constantly forget that dealing with them always turns out to be a costly mistake and (5) a stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
To illustrate the destructive power of stupidity, Cipolla wrote of groups being made up of four types of people - the helpless person who benefits others with no gain or even losses for themselves - the intelligent person who does things that benefits them and others equally and two others who appear to loom large in our public narrative -the stupid person, and the bandit or pillager.
If a stupid person causes losses for both themselves and others, then a bandit acts for personal gain at the expense of others. In the extreme, bandits pillage - transferring wealth from society to themselves. Theoretically, if a society was made up solely of bandits then that it would neither be better or worse off, as gains and losses would balance out. In the real world, Cipolla reckoned that while the fraction of stupid people was a constant, their capacity to wreak havoc was amplified by the numbers of bandits acting with overtones of stupidity.
He suggested that limiting the losses wrought by stupid people and bandits depends on a counter-weight, the number of intelligent people acting. The greater the number of intelligent people the better a country will do. However as there will always be the same fraction of stupid people, if in the remaining population there is an alarming proliferation of bandits, then the composition of stupid people and non-stupid bandits will cause a decline in a country’s well being.
He wrote of how bandits, who are not stupid people, engage in activities that become stupid. For example bandits might make payments to politicians in the expectation of some form of gain or favour. The politicians may personally incur a gain. But these gains could become a loss if the payments are found to have been corrupt payments.
Does this mean the politicians are stupid people or acting as bandits with overtones of stupidity? As a politicians’ gain at the expense of society is undone over time and they incur losses, it’s probably the latter - they gain until they are found out. Perhaps then Cipolla would rate the making and receiving of corrupt payments as the action of bandits rather than stupid people.
Somewhat tongue in cheek, Cipolla’s essay provides thoughtful insights. Particularly when combined with the way we deal with memory and recall. We are not precise at recall, nor are our memories concise. We tend to recall the gist of events and make things up to fill gaps in our fuzzy memories. We fabricate stories to support and explain our previous actions. And we will do so even when faced with proof these actions didn’t happen in the way we think they did. This process is called confabulation – we construct a story from fuzzy memories. So compelling is our narrative that we then come to believe is the true version of events.
So, much of what we hear of people’s retelling of events are their stories which are frequently based on their delusion of the past rather than what may have actually occurred. For example, if our original intent and motivation was to act as a bandit and not an intelligent person, then when challenged to explain our actions we may confabulate. And our story will become so real to us.
Recognising people’s capacity to confabulate, we seek to impartially and objectively enquire into the past - to try to discern some reality from confusion.
Cipolla wrote of how non-stupid and stupid people when acting in consort cause losses for society and undermine the development of a country. Could one lens through which to view enquiries into stories people tell of the past be to use his laws Basic Laws on Human Stupidity? They may be useful in contrasting what would be the story expected of the intelligent person to those of stupid people and bandits.
A version of this article appeared in the Irish Examiner, Business Edition, Monday 28th March 2011
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