Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

harmful.cat-v.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#81

Post by jjoonathan »

elihu wrote: post #73
jjoonathan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd law: stupidity is independent 3rd law: stupidity causes harm (definition) There is a contradiction here. By this definition, if you select for attainment of any kind that would be sabotaged by the harm, you had better start seeing less stupidity. If you don't, it's a hint that your model of stupidity is wrong. Indeed, his model is wrong, but instead of taking the hint the author simply chalks the pile of contradi…

> By this definition, if you select for attainment of any kind that would be sabotaged by the harm, you had better start seeing less stupidity. That's kind of the point: you might expect that, and maybe it's true to some extent, but if you think there's some group of people somewhere that has some reliable method of excluding people who act in irrational and self-destructive ways, you're probably going to react the w…

> That's kind of the point

No, you've mistaken excuses for profundity.

> if you think there's some group of people somewhere that has some reliable method of excluding people who act in irrational and self-destructive ways

Yes, successful people, for many any definition of succesful that you respect. If one is successful, one clearly wasn't meaningfully self-destructive. If one is self-destructive, one expects to be systematically less successful. On average, in expectation, and with time lag. This isn't an observational trend, it's a definitional link.

Let's be concrete: if a professor makes a great discovery and then Cipola writes them off as stupid because he sees them struggling to tie their shoes, Cipola's model of stupidity is invalidated by the reality of the professor's useful contribution to society.

I've seen this happen.

> The usual response is to assume some sort of nefarious plan.

Cibola blamed the failure of his model on chance. He could also have chosen to blame it on conspiracy. He would still be wrong -- it's just a poor model.

> Not recognizing [self-destruction] is a cognitive blind spot that people who don't do those sorts of things tend to have have.

Sure, but this guy has enshrined Fundamental Attribution Error into a philosophy. It's not a blind spot, it's a blindfold.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#82

Post by theonething »

enraged_camel wrote: post #54
wildmanx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. When reading material that's so utterly flawed, full with oversimplifying stereotypes and arrogance, then it's entirely possible to have formed an opinion before finishing the piece. Nothing could have come after the first "law" that would have made the part up to that point better or more defensible.

>> When reading material that's so utterly flawed, full with oversimplifying stereotypes and arrogance, then it's entirely possible to have formed an opinion before finishing the piece. The irony here is that this itself is a very arrogant opinion.

I don't understand why you think so. Having a strong opinion about something is arrogant?

If he/she said something like "This is my opinion and if you think different, you're stupid." then that would be arrogant. I don't see an inkling of that here.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#83

Post by elihu »

tpoacher wrote: post #78

And if you found yourself nodding along through Steps 1 to 5, you are now fully primed and will have no trouble believing Step 6: The stupid person is a threat to the Aryan race, and must be eliminated. Congratulations. You nodded along right into a Hitler trap.

That would be ignoring the 2nd law:

"The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."

The stupid person (according to Cipolla's definition) is a threat to the Aryan race in the same way that the stupid person is a threat to all people everywhere, and an Aryan is just as likely to be stupid as anyone else.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#84

Post by wvenable »

brazzy wrote: post #71
wvenable wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turtles all the way down? I don't think you need precise definitions of "harm" and "benefit" to understand the point. The subjectiveness of these terms don't not undermine the definition.

I really think it does. Case in point: what about emotional benefits? A whole lot of things humans do has no material benefits yet come at considerable cost: vacations, concerts, hobbies. Are those "stupid"? Presumably not. But if you allow for such non-material benfit, then what if your "stupid" people who are causing harm to others are actually deriving emotional benefits from it? What it "stickin' it to the libs"…

> What it "stickin' it to the libs" makes them happy or feels to them like bringing a little bit of justice to the world?

If that's entirely all of it then it's clearly a benefit. But conversely if "stickin' it to the libs" makes them lose their family, their job, or something else then the harm might outweigh the benefit and that would be stupid.

Seems straight forward to me.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#85

Post by inglor_cz »

elihu wrote: post #76
spicymaki wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who causes harm to other people without any benefit or causing harm to themselves. Everyone is guilty of doing this from time to time. Collectively we are doing plenty of harm to the environment and we lack the will or the wherewithal to stop. It is a pretty universal behavioral pattern.

That's an interesting point. This was written before climate change was a major concern, and maybe in the mean time it's become harder to engage in "intelligent behavior" (i.e. actions which benefit ourselves and others). I would say, though, that in almost all cases, emitting CO2 is more like bandit behavior than stupid behavior. If I drive 100 miles in my car, I probably benefit from that a lot more than the harm I…

Tragedy of the commons [0] is a tragedy precisely because it is not stupid for each individual player to take more than sustainable from the common environment.

It is only in aggregate, and possibly after the player's lifetime, when the negative consequences arrive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#86

Post by elihu »

simonh wrote: post #39
lobstrosity420 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a satirical piece, you are allowed to not like it but you don't have to peer review it.

Why do you think it's satirical? Read the other articles on the blog, they're all like that. Dull, plodding blobs of boorishness. Check out the screed on gay marriage.

> Why do you think it's satirical?

I'm not the person you were replying to, but I think it's satirical because it's kind of funny, it's written in a style of exaggerated confidence, it's worded in an unnecessarily inflammatory way, and it has amusing diagrams. That doesn't mean I think it's just meaningless nonsense; a lot of satire does have something interesting to say about people or society. But I also don't think it was meant to be taken 100% seriously either. And maybe satire isn't quite the right word, because it's not really satirizing or parodying anything in particular other than overly pretentious essays.

> Check out the screed on gay marriage.

That wasn't written by Cipolla, they just happen to be hosted on the same site. The argument seems to be that government shouldn't be involved in defining marriage in the first place, for anyone. I agree with that. But since there are practical reasons why a society should want something like a legal notion of marriage recognized by the government, the part I would add back in (which wasn't part of the "screed") is that consenting adults should be able to mutually agree to formally recognize each other as belonging to the same family, and that should be recognized by the state. We can get rid of the unnecessary notion of applying a special legal status to the person you're sleeping with and allow people to form families for any reason, without necessarily any implication that they're sleeping together, and we can apply certain legal rights to members of the same family, like the right to jointly file taxes or to be on each other's health insurance plans.

Obviously there would be a lot of weird side-effects, corner cases, and implementation details you'd have to work out for that to be a workable thing.

I suppose this topic is guaranteed to stir up controversy: https://xkcd.com/592/

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#88

Post by candiodari »

titzer wrote: post #74
coldtea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article defines stupidity in a very precise way: for the purposes of this essay, it's someone who causes harm to other people without any benefit or causing harm to themselves. It's only precise in the abstract. When it comes to concrete information, it's a BS non-definition. In real life scenarios of any real importance (that is, non trivial examples of Dumb and Dumber style behavior), it quickly gets difficul…

> it's a BS non-definition. I disagree. It's very quantifiable and utilitarian. It doesn't descend into moral judgment or elitism or simple dislike for a person's starting assumptions. Stupidity is just judged by its results.

Unfortunately a great many people simply immediately and without thinking follow their feelings, never questioning the results before acting. And I'm not talking during a terror attack, or other high-tension situations where it might be understandable. Always, or very nearly always.

So the "advantage" people are after is often an immediate and tiny satisfaction of their feelings, a perceived slight increase in their social status. Most examples in the article, such as not stepping aside when something is in your way.

And, frankly, being "ready for that" to some extent is a great piece of advice. Unfortunately.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#89

Post by tpoacher »

elihu wrote: post #83
tpoacher wrote: post #78

And if you found yourself nodding along through Steps 1 to 5, you are now fully primed and will have no trouble believing Step 6: The stupid person is a threat to the Aryan race, and must be eliminated. Congratulations. You nodded along right into a Hitler trap.

That would be ignoring the 2nd law: "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person." The stupid person (according to Cipolla's definition) is a threat to the Aryan race in the same way that the stupid person is a threat to all people everywhere, and an Aryan is just as likely to be stupid as anyone else.

It does not contradict it, because you misunderstood my quote.

The Nazi movement, and propaganda in general, succeeds via dehumanizing the enemy, portraying the "other" as "less than human". My use of "Aryan" here was meant to shake you out of that hypnosis, which was created by a a series of arguments which sound logical when viewed in isolation, but have been framed in a restricted narrative chain that leads to the malicious conclusion. It was supposed to wake you up to the fact that once you have accepted the first five tenets unquestionably, you've essentially been brainwashed into the same state of believing the 'other' is less human, and thus measures against this group are acceptable --- which was the defining narrative of the Nazi party regarding the civilised Aryans and their duty against the evil caricatures that seeked to destroy civilisation as we know it.

To use your own words: if you were to believe that a 'stupid person' is a threat to 'people everywhere', you've been brainwashed by this argument into accepting that 'stupid people' are not 'people' (or somehow less than valid people), in the same way that Aryans were led to accept that jews were somehow less human than Aryans, and their exctinction was for the good of the world at large.

And since the term 'stupid person' is extremely vague and malleable towards any political agenda that could stand to benefit from abusing it, this becomes a very dangerous division to make. Not unlike the whole trend of people labelling everyone on the other side as "literally hitler" in modern US political discourse.

Re: Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976)

#90

Post by tpoacher »

tpoacher wrote: post #89
elihu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be ignoring the 2nd law: "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person." The stupid person (according to Cipolla's definition) is a threat to the Aryan race in the same way that the stupid person is a threat to all people everywhere, and an Aryan is just as likely to be stupid as anyone else.

It does not contradict it, because you misunderstood my quote. The Nazi movement, and propaganda in general, succeeds via dehumanizing the enemy, portraying the "other" as "less than human". My use of "Aryan" here was meant to shake you out of that hypnosis, which was created by a a series of arguments which sound logical when viewed in isolation, but have been framed in a restricted narrative chain that leads to the…

This scene also comes to mind :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PrFocPT-Rs

Post reply on HN