Why Stupid People are Destroying Society – The Laws of Human Stupidity

Academy of Ideas

Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Hanlon’s Razor What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry? Is it due to a conspiracy of the ruling class? In this video, relying on the Italian historian Carlo Cipolla’s essay The Basic […]

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0:15.0	Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
0:20.0	What is responsible for the sickness of modern society?
0:23.6	Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry?
0:26.6	Is it due to a conspiracy of the ruling class?
0:29.6	In this video, relying on the Italian historian Carlo Cipola's essay,
0:34.6	the basic laws of human stupidity,
0:36.6	we explore how much of what a.L. society can be
0:39.9	attributed to the widespread prevalence of human stupidity. The stupid are all around us. They are in
0:46.4	every place, in every class, ready to cause damage to others and naturally to themselves.
0:52.4	The stupid form the most dangerous category of human beings.
0:56.6	Woe betide, those who underestimate them.
1:00.5	Sipola believed that most of us are ignorant to the immense destruction caused by human stupidity.
1:06.0	We easily recognize the effects of evil, corruption, and greed, but we tend to overlook the damage
1:11.9	caused by human stupidity.
1:14.3	Sipola wrote his essay to help correct for this blind spot, or as he wrote, the following
1:19.4	pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, no, and thus possibly
1:24.6	neutralize one of the most powerful dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.
1:31.4	In his essay, Cipola enumerates five basic laws of human stupidity, the first of which states,
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