I come across this maybe once a year while browsing the internet, and I'm always impressed. The author's ability to get <i>just</i> the right mix of resigned dry wit so he doesn't come across as cocky or a jerk or a defeatist... it's rather incredible.<p>There's gems in there, too -<p>> 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.<p>Indeed. You can deal with a person who wants to gain, and is comfortable gaining at your expense. They're somewhat predictable, so you can deal with them if you're careful. But the person who is a whirlwind of calamity - making his own life worse and others around - you can't deal with that guy.<p>The author continues:<p>> A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.<p>And then, and I love this -<p>> A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.<p>Indeed! Bandits are unpleasant, but usually easily understandable. With appropriate cautions, you might even be able to transact with a bandit for a short time if it's necessary. But like the author says, the man who does stupid things is much more dangerous.<p>With a bandit, it's possible to assess what you have and where you're at that they might want to take from you, and to take precautions. With the man who randomly breaks things for no reason, no such precaution can be taken because even the most basic, unevaluated, routine action could be bungled leading to bad results for all inclined.<p>Gosh, I always enjoy reading this piece, even though I've seen it a bunch. I should send it to some people who might have not have read it.
This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head.<p>Just in case, I will critique in the spirit of the original article:<p>The first immutable law of madeupistan is that this article makes no sense. If one quantifies by Q the amount of sense this article doesn't make, and divides it by L, which is how badly the sense it doesn't make is, one can plot the result on a graph, with axes and everything like in science.<p>As you can see by even a cursory examination of the diagram, anything can be positioned from "scotsman" to "no scotsman" on the Y axis, and "sense" to "no sense" on the X axis. This explains the fundamental nature of mankind.<p>The second immutable law of madeupistan is that your position on the scotsmanian axis is irreversibly determined at birth. You may be confused initially by the observation that even someone with a high degree of scotsmanity will sometimes act like a non-scotsman and vice-versa. Never fear, that is explained by the graph.<p>The fourth immutable law (and, by extension, the third) is that anything can be proven by decomposition into a punnett square.<p>The fifth immutable law is that once someone has been determined to be a scotsman, they will take actions without any basis in rationality whatsoever (I will heretoafter call these actions "Just So" actions). Note, though, that as per the second law, sometimes they will not.<p>The danger of these Just So actions is inexplicably large, and it behooves any non-scotsmen among us to immediately seek out and prevent Just So actions by dangerous scotsmen. If we do not do this, society will collapse.[1]<p>[1] Myself, 2011, Journal of Just So Information
<i>The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate.</i><p>We could always start with 100% and see how it goes. I suspect this upper bound method was applied by more than one writer.<p>Never mind the quibbles, it's good to see this one back. As the footnote says, there's genius in it.
I just look at the first picture and completely lose it laughing. "Hmm - something wrong... what could it be?"<p>Aside from that - if I may add a serious comment - I think the most important insight of this article is to recognise that stupidity has a kind of power. It reminds me very much of the writings of Castaneda whose Don Juan character always advised to disrupt ones routines in order to prevent others from taking advantage of them.<p>I think what the article misses, however, is that intelligent people can in fact take advantage of this very same power. If your reasons are thought out ahead of time - to a degree beyond what most people are capable, then your individual actions may well appear random to those with short attention spans. It is just too much for them to place them within a greater whole.
The article is very funny, but I do find the definition of stupidity as the tendency to perform actions that benefit nobody as particularly insightful.
"The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."<p>This is assuredly true, on the basis of replicated research, with regard to IQ. There is essentially no correlation between IQ and rationality.<p><a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1/English" rel="nofollow">http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1/Engli...</a><p>High-IQ people can be every bit as irrational ("stupid" in the language of the submitted article) as low-IQ people, and worse still, not notice that they are being stupid. There are whole books on the subject.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Smart-People-Can-Stupid/dp/0300101708" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Why-Smart-People-Can-Stupid/dp/0300101...</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make-Decisions/dp/1596916435/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Blunder-Smart-People-Make-Decisions/dp...</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes-Without/dp/0767928067/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes-Without/dp/076792...</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Beha...</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expande...</a><p>All we can do about that here on HN is take other people's comments seriously and try to see ourselves as others see us as we ponder our decisions.
Sometimes stupidity is indistinguishable from pure evilness. That's why I believe it's more practical to focus on removing inefficiency instead of corruption.
A lot of truth here, but one statement seems incorrect:<p>"If all members of a society were perfect bandits the society would remain stagnant but there would be no major disaster."<p>There would be no incentive to actually work, as everything presumably would be stolen. So I don't think stagnation would be the result. A steady decline back to hunter gatherer seems more likely.
As a basis for a World View and model for conducting one's affairs this is pretty hard to beat. The Second Basic Law and σ in particular also gives plenty of material for more comtemplative moments.
Hey! I came up with 4-th law independently. All I needed was 5 years of business experience as freelancer and striving entrepreneur.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842922" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842922</a>
Some very apt descriptions there, good read. Interesting and pithy lens to view the world through.<p>One dimension that struck me as missing: What about indifference? Surely there's a difference in quality between say helplessness and indifference, even if it isn't captured in the win/loss-for-me/you framework.<p>Many behaviours can be explained by indifference, as it's not obviously right or even rational to think of the Total Humanity Utility as a goal-in-itself. There seems to be an assumption of utilitarism hidden there.<p>Despite this problem the view described here seems to me to shine light on many phenomena of human existance.
Definitely has the slant that everyone in the world is stupid. I don't like that kind of world view, but still somewhat interesting. Can't stop estimating that most of the people in the world are stupid. Pretty antisocial.