The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

 The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity is a book by Carlo M Cipolla, who was a UC Berkeley professor of economics.

The book is short and humorous.  It explains the frustration I often felt in encountering acts of stupidity.  It describes five basic laws:

1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person
3. A Stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.  (A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.)

 The author divides the universe into four personalities based on the individual's actions.  Does the action cause gain or loss to the individual and does it cause gain or loss to the other person.  It can be drawn on a page using the ubiquitous four quadrants method.

The stupid is more dangerous than the bandit because the bandit's actions are predictable, allowing us to defend ourselves.  The acts of the stupid are irrational and therefore unpredictable.  Furthermore, acts of big-time bandits lean towards the "intelligent" side and do not cause greater harm than their gain. Thus they have a net-zero impact on society. The acts of a powerful stupid person can hurt organizations and societies.    

This reminds me of a saying, not from this book, and whose source I do not remember.  Reciting it reduced my stress on many occasions:  "Never attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity"  If the book won't help, I am sure this saying will.