The French thinker Voltaire said: “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”

The late Carlo M Cipolla, who taught for many years at Berkeley University in the US, did more than contemplate the extent of human stupidity; he postulated several laws after much research.

The professor of economic history came up with five laws which he penned in an essay called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

• Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid 
• individuals in circulation;
• The probability that a certain person is 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, dealing and/or associating with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake; and
• A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. 
• 
  
• I think Malaysians have for far too long underestimated the number of not-so-intelligent people in our midst. That was a mistake because now we find our destinies being decided by some of them, whether in politics or the civil service or elsewhere.

• Regarding the second law, Cipolla asserts: “It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors.”

  However, not everyone will agree with this view.

  Interestingly, the Italian goes on to say that, “One finds the same percentage of stupid people whether one is considering very large groups or one is dealing with very small ones.”

• He says people whom we judged as rational and intelligent at one time could turn out to be unashamedly stupid.

  I suppose an example of this would be when, say, an eminent leader or a noted doctor or a speaker of Parliament whose right-mindedness you respect, suddenly says or does something that leaves you flabbergasted.

  In talking about his third law, Cipolla divides humans into four categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit, and the stupid.

  He gives an example of each category. For instance, if Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick, Tom acted helplessly; if Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom acted intelligently; If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom acted as a bandit; and if Tom takes an action that causes a loss to Dick but does not himself gain anything or even causes himself a loss, he acted stupidly.

  His argument about the helpless category, I think, is partially right because there are people who sacrifice for others out of love, duty or kindness. Tom may give up his seat in the bus to an elderly person out of a feeling of concern, not helplessness.

  But the other categorisations are just about right. For instance, we know there are many bandits at high levels in the nation. One has only to look at court cases or the auditor-general’s report to have an inkling of the prevalence of bandits in our midst.

  Cipolla says we meet those in the fourth category more often than those in other categories in our daily life. We lose money, time, energy, appetite or cheerfulness because of the improbable action of someone who gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm, he adds.

  What do you think?

  Cipolla is not the only one to have grappled with stupidity. To find answers to the question, “What people mean by stupid”, three psychologists asked 154 undergraduates to read 15 of 180 stories of people acting stupidly that they had compiled, rate the stupidity of the actor in the story from 1 to 10, and explain why the action was stupid.

  Balazs Aczel and Bence Palfi of the Institute of Psychology at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and Zoltan Kekecs of Baylor’s University, US, found about 90% of the undergraduates agreed on what deserved to be called stupid and what didn’t.

  They said: “The first situation in which people call an action stupid is when the actor takes high risks while lacking the necessary skills to perform the risky action. A typical story for this is when burglars wanted to steal cell phones, but instead stole GPS navigation devices. They didn’t switch them off so the police were able to track them easily. We named this category ‘confident ignorance’.”

  I’d say there are many in high positions who qualify to be categorised under this.

  “The second cluster consisted of cases of ‘Absentmindedness – lack of practicality’… A typical story here is when someone inflates more air in the car tires than allowed. Here the person either forgot to pay attention to the action or he or she doesn’t know something essential about tyre inflation.”

  The third category is “Lack of control”, and it results from the actions of those who are obsessive or compulsive or who exhibit addictive behavior. One of the stories in this category described a person who cancelled a meeting with a good friend so that he could continue playing video games at home.

  The trio also found that test subjects judged a stupid action more harshly when that person held a position of responsibility or if the act itself resulted in serious consequences.

  A study published in Nature Human Behaviour by a team led by cognitive scientist Philip Fernbach showed that extreme views often stemmed from people feeling they understood complex topics better than they did.

  For instance, they say: “Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most.”

  Perhaps that is why those with extremist views think they know best or that only they are right or that only their way is right. I’m sure you’d agree we have seen an increasing number of people who’d fit into this frame.

  There is something known as the Dunning–Kruger effect (after Justin Kruger and David Dunning), which states, briefly, that people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability, and people with high ability at a task underestimate their own ability.

  The fact is, stupidity can be found in the words or actions of people everywhere, including us.

  The danger arises, however, when the stupid become administrators or leaders. Such a country will stagnate or decay, or worse, end up as one of those nations where people are constantly warring against each other.

  As Cipollo says: “A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.” This is because, without meaning to or realising it, a stupid person can set in motion events with disastrous consequences; a stupid leader can even cause economic collapse or civil strife or war.

  It, therefore, falls on citizens to be careful about who they vote into office and the type of policies being formulated and implemented in their name and for their good.

  Lighting the fire of intelligence, courage and compassion, we have to work on removing the darkness of stupidity in ourselves and society. Light – and the positivity it signifies, such as knowledge, wisdom, love and brotherhood – is the best antidote for such things as stupidity, ignorance, anger and egoism.

•