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Re:Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976) by psi75 on Thursday July 28, 2022 @01:50PM (#32267868)
The thing about this stupidity is that it's the thrill of being the cause and, as the essay observes, it is not just low-IQ or low "class" people who indulge. Some people like to steal stop signs, and some people like to ruin their co-workers' reputations. It has little to do with actual low intelligence, but it is irrational and unpredictable.

The most dangerous people, though, are bandits who figure out how to use stupid people for their own purposes. They can turn uncorrelated human stupidity, moderated by the central limit theorem, into correlated human stupidity and use it as a weapon. They come with armies; they become the bosses.

Re:Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976) by polotics on Thursday July 28, 2022 @01:55PM (#32267930)
Having seen the posted articles quite a few times in past years, this is the first case of a comment contributing a new idea to the riff. Thumbs up!
Re:Five Laws of Human Stupidity (1976) by psi75 on Thursday July 28, 2022 @05:21PM (#32270279)
I was one of the best posters on Hacker News until my real name account got banned. Now I'm 30 of the best posters on Hacker News.