PHILOSOPHY
The 5 Laws of Stupidity, According to Italian Historian Carlo Cipolla
#5: Stupid people are the most dangerous people on the planet
4 min readApr 12, 2022
Carlo Cipolla said there are five laws of stupidity. He might have been partly joking, but it’s food for thought nonetheless.
Rule #1: Everyone underestimates the number of stupid people
No matter how many idiots you think there are around you, there are probably more. Why? Because we tend to assume people are intelligent based on superficial criteria like:
- Job
- Education level
- Class
- Race
- Eloquence
We tend to assume that if people fulfil certain external criteria like these, they are not stupid. But actually, those things are irrelevant.
Rule #2: The probability of being stupid is independent of any other characteristic
Think of any external characteristic, whether it’s nationality, income, or profession. None of them are correlated with whether someone is stupid.
