Dinner on Stupidity

This dinner will be about stupidity as outlined by Carlo M. Cipolla in his (very) short 1976 book "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity"

Here they are:

1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

As is evident from the third law, Cipolla identifies two factors to consider when exploring human behaviour:

Benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself and to others.

Helpless people: contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it
Intelligent people: contribute to society and who leverage their contributions into reciprocal benefits
Stupid people: whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others' interests
Bandits: who pursue their own self-interest even when doing so poses a net detriment to societal welfare

We need not, of course, restrict ourselves to discussing Cipolla's views. We can, if we like, consider other views of stupidity (or intelligence) as well!