It reminds me slightly of the Hammerstein-Equord Typology of Officers, which they explained in detail to us at Sandhurst.
"I divide officers into four classes," General von Hammerstein-Equord said, "the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.
"Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous."
And indeed my own Typology of Stupidity which divides the stupid into the Ignorant, the Slow and the Dumb. Ignorant people lack information; I am ignorant about horse racing. If someone asks me to make a decision about horse racing I will make a bad decision.
Slow people are just weak thinkers. They can't draw conclusions from facts they know, or can do so only slowly, or they come out with the wrong conclusions from the right facts.
But Dumb people are the dangerous ones. They actively resist learning new facts or forming new conclusions, and react with hostility when people try to make them do it.
We're all Ignorant about most things, and most of us are Slow at least some of the time, because that's just the human condition, but we can at least try not to be Dumb.
I share heebie's annoyance at the terminology -- and the whole point of the piece is the terminology, so I'm annoyed at the whole thing. The piece substitutes definitions for arguments. The definition of stupidity:
A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.
There's already another word in the English language that better fits this definition: "asshole."
A non-stupid economist who sees someone acting "without any clear benefit," looks for the benefit that isn't obvious. The "uncle unable to stop himself from posting fake news articles to Facebook" gets something out of that, I promise.
The piece says, in effect, "If I don't understand something, it's stupid." That attitude comes closer to being a definition of stupidity.
You know who I look for solid research on human stupidity from? Economic historians.
I think limiting this to humans is not necessary. We once had a dog that would eat June bugs until he threw up and then go back to eating June bugs. This didn't work for anyone involved.
4: I used to do the same thing with alcohol, and yeah, I was stupid.
My universal law of stupidity is that everyone is stupid sometimes.
5: I don't think it's physically possible for you to have cycled as fast as the dog did. Like three times in a hour.
There are two wolves inside you. One assumes if someone does something you can't explain, they are stupid. The second assumes that when someone does something you can't explain, they are perfectly acting on a utility curve that is unknown to you. Both wolves are very proud to be inside an economist.
The second assumes that when someone does something you can't explain, they are perfectly acting on a utility curve that is unknown to you.
Yeah, even as I was writing that, I was thinking that this, too, is dumb Econ101. Fortunately, forgiving of my own foolishness optimizes my utility.
she has written about everything from terrorism to the search for the Loch Ness Monster. She has a BA in English from Stanford University and reports now from southern California.
It would be stupid to pay for access to this article, but it would benefit the owner of the website.
A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.
There's already another word in the English language that better fits this definition: "asshole."
Or "spite", from the two-by-two matrix that otherwise has cooperation and competition.
For species, commensals, predator/prey relationships, and I think it was "spite" again, with some argument about whether all ecosystems had spite interactions.
Outside of an economist reading has much greater utility.
14.2: Asshole is one possibility, but because the word "stupid" does have an accepted meaning, the first possibility that comes to mind is the person that means to do good, but out of a lack of sense winds up doing harm to everyone without benefitting himself.
My feeling is that this terminology is stupid, by both this definition and the dictionary definition.
Words are very unnecessary. They can only do harm.
My lips are moving and the sound's coming out
The words are audible but i have my doubts
That you realize what has been said
You look at me as if you're in a daze
It's like the feeling at the end of the page
When you realize you don't know what you just read
What are words for when no one listens anymore
Sometimes it feels like every song that was popular when I was in high school is still being played at the supermarket and on random radio stations when I scroll through the dial, but I don't remember hearing this song for a long time. Does anybody else remember this?
18: It never occurred to me quite how large an overstatement that lyric may be.
80s music was almost universally bad advice.
18, 20: I don't think I'd ever heard that song. Now that I've heard it I think it kind of proves its own point, because it would be better as an instrumental track,
21: So, you're saying I should have forgotten about you?
My local Home Depot has a very high school sound track.
I can't actually tell if "living in a powder keg and giving off sparks" was being recommended or depreciated.