FIVE LAWS OF STUPIDY

The first law says: a person always underestimates the number of idiots who surround him.

Sounds like a blurred banality and snobbery, but life proves its truth. No matter how you evaluate people, you will constantly encounter the following situations:

• a person who always looked smart and rational turns out to be an incredible idiot;

• fools all the time appear in the most unexpected places at the wrong time to ruin your plans

The first law keeps me from the temptation to determine the quantitative share of fools in society: it will still be an understatement. Therefore, simply denote it by the letter G.

Modern trends of Western culture, which is considered the most progressive, are based on an egalitarian approach to life. Everyone likes to think that all people off the assembly line at some technologically perfect factory are equal, and if one of them turns out to be more equal than others, then this is due to education, and not its nature.

I am an exception. Years of observation and experimentation confirmed me in the thought that people are not equal, some are stupid, others are not, and this quality is laid by nature, not cultural factors. A person is a fool just as he is red or has the first blood group. He was born that way by Providence, if you will.

The second basic law of stupidity is:

The probability that a person is stupid does not depend on his other qualities.

Here nature has surpassed itself. It is well known that it clearly provides the frequency of some phenomena. Regardless of geographical location, level of development of civilization and race of parents, the ratio of boys and girls among newborns is a constant, always a very small margin of boys. It is not known how nature achieves this, but for this it has to operate with large numbers. The same story with the number of G - the proportion of fools in any group is saved, regardless of the size of the group.

Education has nothing to do with probability G. This has been confirmed by numerous experiments at universities on five groups: students, office workers, attendants, administration officials, and teachers. When I analyzed a group of low-skilled employees, the number D turned out to be more than I expected (First Law), and I wrote it off on social conditions: poverty, segregation, lack of education. But as I climbed higher on the social scale, I saw the same ratio among white-collar workers and students. It turned out to be even more impressive to see the same number D among professors — whether I took a small provincial college or a large university, the same proportion of teachers in G turned out to be fools. I was so amazed at the results that I decided to experiment on the intellectual elite - the Nobel laureates. The result was confirmed by the superpowers of nature: the laureates were stupid.

The idea expressed by the Second Law is difficult to accept, but numerous experiments confirm its reinforced concrete correctness. Feminists will support the Second Law, as it says that there are no more fools among women than fools among men. Residents of third world countries will be comforted by the fact that developed countries are not so developed. The conclusions from the Second Law scare you: will you turn in British high society or will you move to Polynesia, making friends with local bounty hunters; whether you sharpen yourself in a monastery or spend the rest of your life in a casino surrounded by corrupt women, you will have to deal with the same number of idiots everywhere that (First Law) will always exceed your expectations.

The third law assumes that all people are divided into 4 groups: simpletons (P), clever men (U), gangsters (B) and fools (D).

If Petya takes an action from which he has a loss and at the same time brings benefits to Vasya, then he belongs to the prostitels (zone P). If Petya does something that benefits him and Vasya, he is a clever man, because he acted intelligently (zone U). If Petya’s actions are beneficial for him, and Vasya suffers from them, then Petya is a bandit (zone B). And finally, Peter the Fool is in zone D, in the minus zone on both axes. The Third Law says about this case:

A fool is a person whose actions lead to losses for another person or a group of people and at the same time do not bring benefit to the actor himself, or even turn into harm for him.

Frequency distribution

Most people do not act consistently and are not constantly in the same zone. Under the influence of some circumstances, the same Petya acts like a clever man, under the oppression of others - like a simpleton or a thug. The only exceptions are fools: they find themselves in zone D much more often than in all other zones. Any person, based on the analysis of his actions, can be placed somewhere on this chart: he will be there, where most of his cases will lead. On this basis, it is possible to draw interesting conclusions regarding the fools and gangsters.

The ideal thug is the one who causes damage to other people equivalent to his own benefit. The simplest illustration is theft: a thief stole a thousand rubles from you without causing any other harm. He caused you a thousand damage and earned himself a profit of the same thousand: the perfect thug. On the graph, it will be placed on the OM diagonal, which symmetrically divides zone B in half. Ideal thugs in life are rare, each of them usually falls in either B1 or B2.

Gangsters from the B1 area are those whose actions have brought them greater benefit compared to the losses of other people. For example, a burglar who takes insured money from a bank without crippling employees and customers. The bandits from B1 are smarter, the closer they are to the right side of the X axis. There are also few of them in life. In life, most of the bandits belong to the B2 area. For example, Gopnik, who kills you in the alley for the sake of a thousand rubles, to bring his wife to the club.

The frequency distribution of fools is radically different from the distribution of bandits. The bandits are distributed throughout the region, while the majority of the fools are concentrated in the area of ​​a straight line along the Y axis, which goes from point O and goes down. They constantly harm others solely by virtue of their stupidity, without much benefit or harm to themselves. There are super-fools who harm themselves and others. They will be located in zone G to the left of the Y axis.

Power of stupidity

It is not difficult to imagine the scale of damage that fools can inflict upon falling into management and possessing political and social powers. But separately it is necessary to clarify what makes the fool dangerous.

Foolish people are dangerous because rational people can hardly imagine the logic of irrational behavior. A clever person is able to understand the logic of the gangster, because the gangster is rational - he just wants to get more benefits and is not smart enough to earn them. The thug is predictable, because you can build a defense against him. It is impossible to predict the actions of a fool; he will harm you for no reason, without a goal, without a plan, in the most unexpected place, at the wrong time. You have no way to predict when an idiot will strike. In a confrontation with a fool, an intelligent man completely surrenders himself to the fool's mercy, of random creation without clear rules to the clever man.

A fool's attack usually takes a surprise.

Even when an attack becomes apparent, it is difficult to defend against it, because it does not have a rational structure.

This is what Schiller wrote: “Even gods are powerless against nonsense.”

Prostaks from zone P are usually unable to recognize the danger of fools from zone G, which is not surprising. It is surprising that both the wise men and the bandits also underestimate the fools. In the presence of a fool, they relax and enjoy their intellectual superiority, instead of urgently mobilizing and minimizing the damage when a fool throws out something.

A common stereotype is that a fool harms only himself. Not. Do not confuse fools with helpless simpletons. Never enter into an alliance with fools, imagining that you can use them for your own benefit — if you do this, it is obvious that you do not understand the nature of nonsense. So you yourself give a fool a field in which he can roam and do more damage.

The fourth law says:

Non-fools always underestimate the destructive potential of fools. In particular, non-fools constantly forget that to deal with a fool, at any time, in any place and under any circumstances, means making a mistake that will cost a lot in the future.

Now, instead of evaluating the individual good, we will appreciate the benefit of society as a whole. Consider it in the context of the mathematical sum of the states of individuals. Here it is important to have an absolute understanding of the Fifth Law, the most famous and most quoted:

The fool is the most dangerous type of person.

Corollary:

A fool is more dangerous than a thug.

The result of the actions of the ideal gangster is the simple transfer of wealth from one person to another. Society as a whole is neither cold nor hot. If all members of this society were ideal gangsters, it would quietly rot, but disaster would not have happened. The whole system would be reduced to the transfer of wealth in favor of those who undertake for the sake of this action, and since everything would be the ideal thugs, the system would enjoy stability. This is easily seen in the example of any country where the authorities are corrupt, and citizens constantly circumvent the laws.

When fools enter the scene, the picture changes completely. They do damage without gaining benefits. Benefits are destroyed, society becomes poorer.

The actions of people who are located on the graph in the right-upper region from the ROM line add benefits to the society. The actions of people from the left-bottom half - take them away. In other words, all the clever people, as well as simple intellectuals (P1) and intelligent criminals (B1), bring benefits to society, albeit in different sizes. And all the stupid criminals (B2) and stupid simpletons (P2) increase the scale of destruction caused by the society of fools.

In accordance with the Second Law, it is no less that there are no less foolish people in a prosperous society than in a rotting society, and it will be a mistake to think otherwise. The difference between a successful society and a stagnant one is such that in a poor society:

1. Non-fools gave fools greater freedom of action; and

2. In the zone of non-fools, there has been a gradual decrease in the number of wise men, intellectuals, simpletons and intelligent bandits. Accordingly, the proportion of stupid simpletons and stupid gangsters is proportionally increasing.

History confirms that in any period the country is progressing when there are enough smart people in power to restrain active fools and not let them destroy what the clever people have produced. There are as many fools in a regressing country, but there is an increase in the share of stupid gangsters among the top, and among the rest of the population - the naive simpletons. Such a change in the alignment invariably intensifies the destructive consequences of the actions of fools, and the whole country goes to hell.