The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Before you start categorising yourself or other people, you might want to read up on the Dunning-Kruger effect,

    The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in
    which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make
    unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them
    of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The
    unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, 
    rating their own ability as above average, much higher
    than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled 
    underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory 
    inferiority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Suspending disbelief for a moment, and taking this seriously ...

I take issue with the following statement:

> A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Sometimes, perhaps. However, a bandit, by his gain, can give himself more resources with which to continue his banditry. A stupid person, on the other hand, will tend to deprive himself of resources.

For example, I decide I want to be nasty. I'll drive around town and siphon gasoline out of people's cars. As a bandit, I might put this gas in my tank, thus enabling me to drive on to the next victim. I'm not a perfect bandit, since it cost me some gas to get to my victim, and so the total amount of available gasoline in the world is reduced by my actions, but I do gain somewhat. On the other hand, as a stupid person, I might simply dump the siphoned gas on the ground. And eventually, I run out of gas, making it more difficult for me to victimize others.

(Okay, I'll stop taking it seriously now.)

If you can get past the curt/cocksure/consciously-provocative first two laws, the laws starting at the third have an interesting quadrant-based analysis of human interactions.

The stuff about 'bandits with overtones of intelligence' brings to mind Coasian analyses -- we really don't want to prohibit such net-positive banditry, just arrange side payments. So it didn't surprise me to find at the end that the piece was written by an economics professor.

His laws are too rigid. I gravitate between the areas on his chart, depending on various factors.

Alcohol consumed, location, whether I'm among friends or not, etc.

Stupid people usually are a burden. But for startups they're an asset. We make complicated things so simple and dangerous things so easy that those morons out there can use them without hurting others and themselves (too much). The process of creating a solution for the non-geeks out there means: "Dumbing down." It's a pain. And the price they pay heals our intellectual wounds. :)

"stupidity" is a poorly-formed category evoked by those too lazy to find the real processes determining other people's behaviors.

if you suffer from the action of a stupid person, you have participated in an interaction where both you and the other party lost. By the author's definition, you are stupid.

What pointless drivel.

The author starts off by being blatantly offensive to the point where I wondered if he was trolling.

Then, as if to excuse himself with a "ahhh! got you all!" he drops this gem halfway down the article:

> "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."

Thanks, if we're going to go around redefining the accepted and colloquial definition of "stupid", it would seem relevant to put this near the top of your treatise.

This would also seem to contradict the author's previous assertion that stupidity is genetic and largely unrelated to nurture - unless the author seriously believes that personality traits (i.e., the tendency to go for lose-lose arrangements) are genetic.

Plausible claim, but pointless without real research, or at the very very least some semblance of qualification for the author to make such a wild assertion.

I couldn't really make it too far beyond that without being profoundly disturbed by the author's self-important vigorous mental masturbation.

That was really stupid.