{"id":194,"date":"2005-10-01T18:03:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-01T23:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=194"},"modified":"2005-10-01T18:03:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-01T23:03:00","slug":"the-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY<br \/>\n<br \/>by Carlo M. Cipolla<br \/>\n<br \/>illustrations by James Donnelly<\/p>\n<p><em>The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: <\/p>\n<p>Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. <\/p>\n<p>At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one&#8217;s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that: <\/p>\n<p>a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. <\/p>\n<p>b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one&#8217;s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol<\/em> \u00e5.<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalsoup.com\/mentalsoup\/basic.htm\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY by Carlo M. Cipolla illustrations by James Donnelly The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=194\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-38","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1302,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1302","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":0},"title":"&#8216;Bigotry&#8217; vs &#8216;Racisim&#8217;","author":"Jorah","date":"September 15, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"If you've ever wondered why some folks differentiate between the apparent synonyms 'bigotry' and 'racism,' here's why I make that distinction: Anyone can be bigoted, but racism is built in to our social structure. My guess is that most adults have some strain of bigotry in them, controlled or not,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophizing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":62,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=62","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":1},"title":"How do we protect ourselves without guns?","author":"Jorah","date":"July 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"David Yutar July 01 2004 at 09:53AM \"How will we protect our families now? Criminals prefer unarmed victims and so does the African National Congress.\" That was the message from members of Victims Against Crime who demonstrated outside parliament to protest against the new Firearms Control Act. The legislation, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=217","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":2},"title":"-=- RESOURCES for LEARNING ABOUT THE BIRD FLU -=-","author":"Jorah","date":"March 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I found this stuff online today, and thought you might be interested in it.INFLUENZA PANDEMIC (text from Ready.gov)A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza A virus emerges for which there is little or no immunity in the human population and the virus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1445,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1445","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":3},"title":"Rage and gender norms","author":"Jorah","date":"January 17, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I may be starting to figure out why people are so often panic-stricken (and frequently enraged to the point of violence) by others who don't comply with gender norms. I believe that it is because the norms are fragile, but also something we've been taught to measure our identity against.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social commentary&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social commentary","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=46"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":195,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=195","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":4},"title":"MercuryNews.com | 09\/30\/2005 | AMD brings bare-bones PC to consumers","author":"Jorah","date":"October 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"THRIFTY ALTERNATIVE PRICED AT $299 FOR WORLDWIDE MARKET By Dean Takahashi Mercury News Radio Shack plans to start selling a low-cost alternative to the personal computer starting Sunday. The $299 machine, dubbed the Personal Internet Communicator, was designed by Advanced Micro Devices to access the Internet and perform basic computing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=133","url_meta":{"origin":194,"position":5},"title":"strandbeest","author":"Jorah","date":"March 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}