een slimmerik over domheid

Carlo M. Cipolla was hoogleraar Economische Geschiedenis aan de Universiteit van Californië, Berkeley.

In 1976  schreef hij reeds  The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, dat  in het nederlands is vertaald.

Zijn  aanname  is dat er vier typen mensen bestaan: zwakke mensen, intelligente mensen, schurkachtige mensen en domme mensen.’

1.Intelligent people (top right), who contribute to society and who leverage their contributions into reciprocal benefits

2.Naive people (top left), who contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it (and especially by the "bandit" [q.v.] sector of it); note, however, that extreme altruists and pacifists may willingly and consciously (rather than "naive[ly]") accept a place in this category for moral or ethical reasons

3.Bandits (bottom right), who pursue their own self-interest even when doing so poses a net detriment to societal welfare

4.Stupid people (bottom left), whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others' interests

5.      Helpless/ineffectual people (center)

Met deze grafiek classificeert Cipolla personen. Op de x-as voordeel/ nadeel voor de persoon zelf, op de y-as voordeel/ nadeel voor anderen. Vallen de acties van een persoon voornamelijk in het z kwadrant dan is hij een zwak persoon, misschien duidelijker in het Engels a naive person. De I staat voor intelligente mensen, de S voor schurken en de D voor dommen. Bijvoorbeeld: Een persoon die een actie uitvoert die positief is voor hemzelf, maar negatief uitvalt voor andere betrokkenen is een schurk.

Amsterdam University Press, Carlo M. Cipolla

De vijf fundamentele wetten van menselijke stupiditeit zijn volgens Cipolla:

- Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

- The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

- 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.

- Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

- A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Cipolla further refines his definition of "bandits" and "naive people" by noting that members of these groups can either add to or detract from the general welfare, depending on the relative gains (or losses) that they cause themselves and society. A bandit may enrich himself more or less than he impoverishes society, and a naive person may enrich society more or less than he impoverishes himself and/or allows himself to be impoverished. Graphically, this idea is represented by a line of slope -1, which bisects the second and fourth quadrants and intersects the y-axis at the origin. The naive people to the left of this line are thus "semi-stupid" because their conduct creates/allows a net drain of societal welfare; some bandits may fit this description as well, although many bandits such as sociopaths, psychopaths, and non-pathological "jerks" and amoralists may act with full knowledge of the net negative consequences to a society that they neither identify with nor care about.

Bron: wiki