Italian Economist Carlo M. Cipolla Proved That We Are Even Stupider Than I Thought
Let me tell you, it's a compelling argument.
If there is a dark force in the universe preventing humankind from reaching its fullest potential, a force that is both absent and omnipresent, nowhere and everywhere at once, it is stupidity. Unfortunately, too many people suffer from too great an abundance of it, and even non-stupid people can have a hard time recognizing the trait in themselves and others.
Because of my own stupidity and an intrinsic, very egalitarian, Northern European belief that nobody is better than anybody else, that even the most blithering idiot has wisdom to share, I’ve been reluctant to embrace Cipolla’s theorem. After all, my entire life has been napalmed by instances of my own stupidity, so who am I to judge whether someone else is stupid, too?
Yet the older I get, the shakier and less defensible this position becomes. There are too many stupid people running around for me to turn a blind eye. Former President Trump’s rabid followers, for instance. Climate change denialism. Or the crass stupidity of same-party obstructionist senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and those who believe Covid-19 and its sub-variants are “just the flu.” What other explanation is there for this behavior than massive, crippling amounts of stupidity?
Unfortunately, we must consider the possibility that we are literally too stupid to live.
It feels ungenerous to relegate vast swaths of our fellow humans (and possibly ourselves) to the dust bin of the mentally deficient, but all the evidence is there. In his infinitely readable, black-humored, and really-but-not-actually tongue-in-cheek book, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (published in 1976) economic historian Carlo M. Cipolla (the surname means “onion” in Italian) posits the following theories:
Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. When you consider that 98% of people seriously believe that they are far less stupid than average, the implications are dire enough to keep you awake at night. George Carlin said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” Bam! Perhaps you, like me, dismissed the threat posed by racist gameshow host Donald Trump back in the early days of his campaign. “No one is stupid enough to vote for that moron,” I used to say. Boy, was I wrong about that.
The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. I’ll admit—I needed to hear this. All too often I find myself flabbergasted by instances of intense stupidity perpetrated by otherwise intelligent, educated people. Author Naomi Wolf, for example. How can the same brilliant woman who wrote The Beauty Myth and Vagina: A New Biography be the cloth-eared bint that now rages against vaccines, the incarceration of Julian Assange, and how chemtrails are a government conspiracy to poison an unsuspecting populace? Is it possible to be both smart and stupid at the same time? Isn’t education supposed to be a hedge against stupidity? It’s all too easy to dismiss the Louis Gohmerts of this world as cringeworthy and stupid because they’re not educated. But when your former idols (Assange, for instance, or Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Scahill, even previous iterations of Glenn Greenwald) start spewing the kind of nonsense that makes you feel as though the world itself has tilted on its axis, it’s time for a re-read of The Basic Laws of Stupidity. Only then are you able to put things, and people, into their proper perspective.
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. Per Cipolla: “There are people who, by their illogic actions, not only cause harm to other people, but also to themselves. Such people belong to the genus of the super stupids.” We have a notable example of this in Russian President Vladimir Putin who has pitted himself against the world by his senseless and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. With 10% of his army killed, only three days of food left to feed them, and a devaluation of the ruble that will take years to claw back, things aren’t looking good over there, even if his bombardment of Ukraine ultimately proves successful. Despite his brilliant game of cyber-terrorism and disinformation, Putin isn’t guilty of a simple miscalculation in strategy. His is actually brutish and stupid.
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. More than any other law, this one has eaten my lunch. We have a saying for this behavioral phenomenon: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas. My very egalitarianism conspires to work against me. Why? Because all too often I see the potential in a specific person while at the same time blinding myself to his faults. In fairness, I’ve learned that lesson enough times to avoid those kinds of people (and my own tendencies), but I continue to underestimate the amount of damage stupid people can do. For my example, I give you January 6, 2021. I did not see that coming.
This is why I am convinced, after years of experience and observation, that humans are not created equal. Some are stupid, others are stupid but less stupid than the truly stupid, and still others are only occasionally stupid. We are dealt a certain hand of genetic cards, cards that determine our height, our hair color, and yes, our general level of stupidity, and that’s that. An even distribution of stupidity is sprinkled across all races, genders, ethnicities, education levels, and ages.
You can’t change stupid, but if you’re smart enough to know how smart you’re not, it’s probably a step in the right direction.
This is a hard idea to digest. I struggled with it, too. But in terms of simple IQ points, there is a howling abyss of difference between someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene and any random NASA scientist. Yes, I know IQ is not a predeterminer of intelligence in the sense that Cipolla meant, but it’s a trail of bread crumbs that we can follow, hoping along the way that we don’t wind up disappointed.
I’m ready for a (s)hero. Are you?
Please weigh in here! I want to know what you think about Cipolla’s fascinating theory. Leave your comments below.
Herstein's First Law: Never underestimate human capacity for denial.
Herstein's Second Law: Never assume intelligence when stupidity will do the job.
I'm still working on the third law (there's *ALWAYS* three.) #1 is over 30 years old, so I've been chewing on this for a while. (#2 is only about 5 -- 10 years old.) One possibility for #3 would be something like, "Never confuse schooling with education." One of the best educated people I ever knew was a waitress with only a GED.
Speaking of intelligence, one characterization I've variously noodled with over the years is this:
-- INTELLIGENCE: The broadly ranging multi-modal capacity for, and interest in, variegated forms of inquiry and experience.
My thought here is that stupid people with a lot of schooling are persons who have aggressively compartmentalized what ever materials they may have learned in school, as well as the habit of learning itself, so that they can rattle off the answers to the quiz and get the grade, but never actually risk their cherished beliefs by anything so dangerous as thinking. The formula still needs some refinement, because account must be given not only to breadth but depth, not merely a lot of isolated data, but a coherently assembled grand view as well.
I'd never heard of this, it's genius!