Tongue-in-cheek, but parts of this ring true: the basic laws of human stu­pid­ity.

  • Always and inevitably every­one under­es­ti­mates the num­ber of stu­pid indi­vid­u­als in circulation.
  • The prob­a­bil­ity that a cer­tain per­son be stu­pid is inde­pen­dent of any other char­ac­ter­is­tic of that person.
  • 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.
  • Non-stupid peo­ple always under­es­ti­mate the dam­ag­ing power of stu­pid indi­vid­u­als. In par­tic­u­lar non-stupid peo­ple con­stantly for­get that at all times and places and under any cir­cum­stances to deal and/or asso­ciate with stu­pid peo­ple always turns out to be a costly mistake.
  • A stu­pid per­son is the most dan­ger­ous type of person.

I par­tic­u­larly liked the dis­cus­sion about the ‘per­fect bandit’.

via Mar­ginal Revolution