Big Stupid
Your ancestors pet snakes and drank foul-smelling water. You (likely) do not, as you have learned from their mistakes via the ultimate streaming network of life lessons, always on in your head, called instinct+. In sum, our instincts help us predict the future. If you get close to a lion it will eat you, etc. However, there are decisions our society presents whose nuance/complexity has outpaced instinct. Our response to these challenges are what advances (and hinders) human progress. Just as 80% of people believe they are above average drivers, few people believe they make a lot of bad decisions … which makes them especially dangerous. Similar to death, stupidity is more painful for others. Professor Carlo Cipolla’s Basic Laws of Human Stupidity break it down:
- Everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals among us.
- 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 while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.
- A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
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Πηγή: profgalloway.com
