The Power of Stupidity

By Madeleine Kando

You cannot call someone stupid these days, or you could be arrested for political incorrectness. There are other alternatives, like calling someone an airhead, a bird brain, or a dumbass, but that might land you on the floor with a bloody nose.

Thanks to the incredible richness of the American language, however, there are safer ways to describe a stupid person (preferably without them being present): ‘He’s one fry short of a happy meal. ‘The light is on, but nobody’s home. ‘As bright as Alaska in December. ‘Goes surfing in Nebraska. ‘His belt doesn't go through all the loops. ‘His cheese has slipped off his cracker.’

Humor goes a long way, but it doesn’t change the fact that of all our human qualities, stupidity is the most abundant.

What is stupidity? Wikipedia’s definition is: ‘Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit. It may be innate, assumed or reactive’. Does that really explain why the world is full of stupid people and why non-stupid people do so many stupid things?

I was lucky enough (not smart enough) to come across an essay called: "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity", written by Carlo Maria Cipolla, an Italian economic historian. This is what he has to say about stupidity:

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

by Carlo M. Cipolla 

THE FIRST BASIC LAW: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

THE SECOND BASIC LAW: The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.*

THE THIRD BASIC LAW (The Golden Rule): A stupid person is a person who causes losses to others while deriving no gain to self and even possibly incurring losses.

Human beings fall into four basic categories: the Helpless, the Intelligent, the Bandit and the Stupid (See figure 1). If you suffer a loss while producing a gain to someone else, you are in field H: You act helplessly. If you make a gain while also creating a gain to others, you in area I: You act intelligently. If you gain something, but cause someone else a loss, you are in area B: you act as a bandit. If you do something that harms others and yourself, you fit in area S. You act stupidly.

Rational people have difficulty understanding irrational behavior. We can deal with a devious person’s motivation, or avoid being played for a patsy, but because you have to be smart enough to recognize how stupid you are, a stupid person will never realize that they are stupid. They will overestimate their own competence, knowledge etc.

Nuclear War and other Bad Things. Probabilities and a Bit of Game Theory.

Tom Kando

I continue to fret about the war in Ukraine. I worry about Putin's nuclear saber rattling.

All the pundits keep reassuring us that this is mere bluff and  that there is very little chance of this war escalating into nuclear Armageddon. Most of us don't have sleepless nights worrying about the possibility of nuclear war. Many of us did, during the Cuban missile crisis, but not now.

 Let me try to approach this topic with a statistical or a game-theoretical mind. Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. The probability of a  bad event  happening should be inverse to how terrible the event is likely to be.  Put differently, the greater a  risk is,  the smaller the probability of failure, when taking that risk, should be.

For example, it is possible that I will catch a cold this winter. If a doctor  told me  that there is a probability of .33 (one out of three) of this happening, I will not worry very much. On the other hand, if someone told me that there is a .003 probability of nuclear war  in the coming six months (one out of 300), I would worry quite a bit.

In other words, the greater a possible upcoming catastrophe is, the closer to zero its probable occurrence should be.

I have no idea whether there exists a   negative correlation between how terrible  an event is and how likely it is to happen.

One important aspect is  the time frame: Is the bad thing likely to happen  soon or in the distant future?  The catastrophes which Hollywood likes so much - giant earthbound  asteroids, devastating earthquakes, etc. - have the advantage of following geological and astronomical timetables. We don't worry about them, in the belief that they only occur once in a million years. What about global warming - the destruction of the planet? This may be the worst thing that can happen to  us, and its likelihood  is quite high. But it is happening gradually. We are the slowly boiling frog.

Do Voting Systems Matter?

By Madeleine Kando

It’s election time and many of us are biting our nails, to see what will emerge after November 8. It’s like watching a football game: Two teams against each other. Or fighting with your sibling on which flavor ice cream your mom should buy, except the store only sells chocolate and vanilla.

But why is it like that? I come from a tiny country where there are no less than 17 political parties represented in the Legislature. Why is the US so stingy with its political parties?

To be fair, we really have four political parties rolled into two. We have the Sanders Democrats and the Biden Democrats on one side and the Trump Republicans and ‘Rino’s’ on the other side. Both parties have always been ‘big tents’, but now the ‘centrists’ are being so radicalized by their own extreme wings that they might not survive. Then all hope of compromise and working together goes out the window.

The two-party system is an outlier in the modern world. Wouldn’t it make sense to allow for these four parties rolled into two to legitimately exist on their own? This could only happen if we changed the way we vote.

In the US we have what is called a First Past the Post electoral system, or winner takes all. The candidate who receives the most votes wins. Sounds fair? Not really. If there are more than two candidates, that candidate could win with a minority of the votes. That is why we have red states and blue states. About a third of Massachusetts voters are Republicans, but since we have a ‘single member district’ voting system, all our Representatives are Democrats.

The First Past the Post electoral system does not allow for third parties to emerge. If you vote for a budding third party that has no chance of winning, you take away a vote from your preferred major party and the party you don’t like, wins. It’s called the spoiler effect. Ralph Nader caused Al Gore to lose the presidency in 2000.

What if you could have a system in which your vote did not ‘spoil’ the outcome? That system is now used in Alaska and Maine. It’s called Ranked Choice voting. You rank your candidates in order of preference. If you like a third party the best, that’s your first choice, but you can rank your preferred major party second. That way, even if your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your second choice. The spoiler effect is gone.