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Answer (1 of 44): During today's massive missile attack by Russia on Ukraine, Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed 36 cruise missiles: 33 missiles of the X-101/X-555 type, as well as 3 Kalibr missiles. If we look at the cost of the destroyed missiles, Russia could build 3 modern schools for th...
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During today's massive missile attack by Russia on Ukraine, Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed 36 cruise missiles: 33 missiles of the X-101/X-555 type, as well as 3 Kalibr missiles.
If we look at the cost of the destroyed missiles, Russia could build 3 modern schools for this money. But they used it to destroy buildings and kill people in Ukraine.
And that’s just one missile attack in one day.
Russia has no chance to win the war in Ukraine. Russia has killed tens (possibly, hundreds) of thousands of their own men whom they sent to the war in Ukraine.
Russian economy works to build missiles, tanks and shells, which are then destroyed in Ukraine.
- Life is Russia gets worse.
- Russian economy gets worse.
- Russia became a pariah on the world stage – even in Africa: only 1/3 of African leaders came to the Russia-Africa forum in St. Petersburg, which opens today, while 4 years ago, nearly all African leaders came to Sochi to the 1st Russia-Africa forum.
- But Russians still support the war in Ukraine. (Here comes the face palm icon.)
There is a theory of stupidity by Italian historian Carlo M. Cipolla.
Cipolla was born in 1922 and died in 2000. He grew up during the historical period similar to today's Russia. And it was classic fascism.
But he managed to grow up without sharing the ideology of fascism, become an outstanding specialist and made an impressive career. Cipolla became professor of economic history in post-war America at the University of California, and he didn’t lose touch with Italy.
Cipolla‘s "Basic laws of human stupidity" ("Le leggi fondamentali della stupidità umana", 1976), perfectly explains the situation Russia is in.
Basic laws of human stupidity
Stupid people are seen as a group far more powerful than large organizations such as mafia or military-industrial complex, leaders of which manage to operate successfully, with incredible coherence.
The are 5 main laws of stupidity.
1st law of stupidity: A person always underestimates the number of idiots that surround him.
It sounds like banality and snobbery, but life proves the truth of the law.
No matter how you evaluate people, you will constantly encounter the following situations:
- A man who always looked smart and rational turns out to be an incredible idiot.
- Fools all the time pop up in the most unexpected places at the most inopportune times to ruin your plans.
2nd law of stupidity: The probability that a person is stupid does not depend on his other qualities.
Years of observations and experiments have confirmed that people are not equal: some are stupid, others are not, and this quality is laid down by nature, and not by cultural factors.
A person is a fool in the same way that he has ginger hair or the first blood type. He was born as such by the will of God or Nature, whichever you prefer. Education has nothing to do with the probability of having a certain number of fools in a society.
This was confirmed by numerous experiments at universities on 5 groups: students, office workers, service personnel, administrative staff and teachers.
When Cipolla analyzed a group of low-skilled employees, the number of fools turned out to be greater than he expected (1st Law), and he attributed this to social conditions: poverty, segregation, lack of education.
But moving up the social ladder, he saw the same ratio among white-collar workers and students. Even more impressive was to see the same number among professors.
Whether he took a small provincial college or a large university, the same proportion of teachers turned out to be fools. He was so amazed by the results that he decided to experiment on the intellectual elite, the Nobel laureates.
The result confirmed the superpower of nature: the same certain number of Nobel laureates were stupid.
The idea expressed by the 2nd Law is hard to accept, but numerous experiments confirm its correctness.
The implications of the 2nd Law are daunting: whether you move into the high society or move to Polynesia and befriend local bounty hunters, whether you lock yourself in a monastery or spend the rest of your life in a casino surrounded by hookers, it makes no difference. You will have to deal with the same number of fools everywhere, which (1st Law) will always exceed your expectations.
3rd law of stupidity: A fool is a person whose actions lead to losses for another person or group of people and at the same time do not benefit the acting subject himself or even turn into harm for him.
The 3rd law assumes that all people are divided into 4 groups: the helpless, the intelligent, bandits and fools.
- If someone takes an action from which he suffers losses and at the same time benefits another, then he belongs to the helpless.
- If a person does something that benefits both himself and the other, he is the intelligent because he acted smart.
- If the actions of a person bring him benefits, and the other suffers from them, then the first is a bandit.
- And finally, the stupid is in the minus zone on both axes. Whatever a fool does, it does not benefit anyone.
It’s not hard to imagine the extent of the damage that fools can cause when they get into the governing bodies and have political and social powers.
But it’s worth clarifying separately what exactly makes a fool dangerous.
- Stupid people are dangerous because rational people can hardly imagine the logic of unreasonable behavior.
- A smart person is able to understand the logic of a bandit, because the bandit is rational — he just wants to get more benefits and at the same time is not smart enough to earn them.
- The bandit is predictable, so you can build a defense against him.
- It is impossible to predict the actions of a fool, he will harm you for no reason, without purpose, without a plan, in the most unexpected place, at the most inopportune time. There is no way to predict when an idiot will strike.
- In a conflict with a fool, a smart person completely surrenders himself to the mercy of a fool, a creature without rules that a smart man can understand.
- A fool's attack usually takes everyone by surprise. Even when an attack becomes obvious, it is hard to defend against it because it has no rational base or structure.
4th law of stupidity: Non-fools always underestimate the destructive potential of fools.
In particular, non-fools constantly forget that to deal with a fool, at any time, in any place and under any circumstances, is to make a mistake that will cost dearly in the future.
The helpless are usually unable to recognize the danger of fools, which is not surprising. What is surprising is that fools are also underestimated by the smart people and the bandits.
In the presence of a fool, they relax and enjoy their intellectual superiority instead of urgently mobilizing and minimizing damage thar a fool would cause when he does something. A common stereotype is that a fool only harms himself. No. Fools are dangerous to everyone around them.
- Do not confuse fools with the helpless.
- Never ally with fools, imagining that you can use them for your own benefit — if you do so, then you don’t understand the nature of stupidity.
- Then you yourself provide the fool with a field to roam and cause irreparable damage.
5th law of stupidity: The fool is the most dangerous personality type.
Consequence: a fool is more dangerous than a bandit.
- The result of the actions of an ideal bandit is a simple transfer of assets from one person to another. Society as a whole doesn’t suffer from this; it’s a zero sum game.
- If all members of a society were ideal bandits, it would quietly rot, but avoid a catastrophe. The whole system would be reduced to the transfer of wealth, and since everyone is an ideal bandit, the system would enjoy stability. We can see this in any country where the authorities are corrupt, and citizens constantly circumvent the laws.
- When fools enter the scene, the picture changes completely. Fools inflict damage without benefiting. Wealth is destroyed, society is impoverished.
History confirms that a country develops when there are enough smart people in power to restrain active fools and prevent them from destroying what the smart people have produced.
There are just as many fools in a regressing country, but there is an increase in the proportion of stupid bandits among the group in power, and most of the population turns into the helpless.
Such a change of alignment invariably raises the destructive consequences of the actions of fools, and the whole country turns into hell.
This is what we see in Russia today.